5 Strategies To Success In Freelance Writing
Looking for a new career? Check out freelance writing. Among other things, it offers a great amount of personal freedom and the ability to chart your own success. It also requires discipline and consistent focus, now that you’ll be working for yourself. To get the most out of this career, here are some useful tips:
1. Control Your Environment. It’s really important to keep your space organized, partly because you’ll be dealing with a lot of paper in the form of press releases, product information, manuals, etc. Some of this will stay resident on your computer, other things you’ll want to print.
It’s really important to categorize the information and put it in folders where it’s readily accessible. Likewise on your computer. In addition, you’ll want to safeguard your data by backing it up. There are several ways that you can do that, by using external hard drives and by taking advantage of online storage. Whichever solution(s) you use, it’s wise to do backups once a week.
2. Marketing. The foundation of your business is with marketing. One of the things to consider is the 80/20 rule. In the beginning, roughly 80% of your time will go into marketing and 20% writing. This is because your business is new and like any business, it requires time and effort to build it. It will be necessary to do research, find potential clients, write up queries, send them out, follow up, etc. Eventually, you’ll find yourself writing more and marketing less. This is the natural order of things, though marketing will still be an ongoing effort, just easier and less time intensive because you’ll now have a client base.
3. Never Write on Spec. This is one of the worst mistakes a writer can make. This is where the article is written in advance, then you try to pitch the article to an editor. The problem is if the editor(s) don’t like your articles, you’ve wasted your time.
I recommend that you write a quick paragraph that summarizes what you have in mind. Here’s an example: “Compressing Images for the Web. In this article, the reader will learn how to compress images for the web. This will cover the most popular formats, including: JPEG, PNG and GIF. The article will deal with the different types of compression for photographs, art and type.”
4. Don’t Use Microsoft Word for Web Writing. MS Word inserts all sorts of undesirable characters in the copy which make it a nightmare for the editor on the other end. It’s even worse when you save documents as HTML. A better option is to use a dedicated HTML program, such as Notetab or Dreamweaver.
5. Momentum. A big problem for freelance writers (and many other freelancers) is that they quit too soon, before they even get a chance to develop momentum. Make no mistake, freelance writing is a business and like any other business, it takes time to develop a client base. This won’t happen overnight. It’s important to think of your work as a discipline and to do it consistently. This is one of the crucial things that will lead you to enduring success.
To Your Success In Freelance Writing !
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It’s important to realize that the editor plays a key role in your ability to get published. Not only does the editor smooth out any issues with your copy, he/she acts as the gatekeeper for the publication. A number of writers don’t like the editor because they feel the editor will ruin their work.
