If you're trying to earn an income as a freelance writer, you'll start making MORE money FASTER if you figure out something unique to offer a specific target market.
The easiest way to figure out what your unique offering and your target market might be is to consider your background, education, and interests.
For example, do you have a business degree?
Are you an educator or a nurse?
Do you have experience in finances or financial services?
Next, determine who you might serve based on your experience, education, and interests.
Once you figure this out, next decide how you will reach this target market.
For example, the first thing you might do is set up your own blog and start creating rich content for it that will cater to your target market.
Keep in mind though, that you probably won't earn a huge income from your own blog unless you're able to heavily monetize it and also drive a lot of traffic to it on a regular basis.
So your blog will probably be an online portfolio for your blogging skills more than anything else.
But that's fine IF you take the next step!
The next step is to find other businesses that serve your target market and offer your writing or blogging services to them.
You will find ads for writers and bloggers at online job boards and sites.
But look for ads from specific companies for your target market instead of ads that say "we're looking for writers/bloggers for a variety of sites and topics."
Generally, these kinds of jobs pay very little, and you want to be well paid for your education, background, and expertise.
Also, spend some time finding popular blogs of medium-to-large-sized companies and follow those blogs for a while to see the types of things they blog about and the way their posts are structured.
Use these blogs as a self-study course to improve your own blogging skills until you feel you can blog just as well as the bloggers who provide the content for these sites.
Next, approach some of these companies (or others like them) and offer your blogging services.
Show these companies that you have something unique to offer - your experience, education, and expertise in the area(s) that cater to their target market.
Bigger companies can usually afford to pay more for freelancers.
They also expect to pay more for highly qualified individuals with relevant experience and expertise - and by this time, it will be very evident that you have this experience and expertise.
Don't settle for the low-paying freelance jobs that ANYONE can do.
Instead, figure out something unique to offer a specific target market.
Then aggressively promote your services to this target market.
Try it!
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Suzanne Lieurance is a freelance writer, best-selling author of over 40 books, and a writing coach. Check out her weekly group coaching program for writers, The Monday Morning Shove.
2 comments:
Suzanne, this is such a helpful article on starting and earning money as a freelance writer. It takes non-stop promotion and becomes a balancing act with writing.
Suzanne, these are fantastic guidelines for monetizing a freelance business!
And, we'll get no-where without determining "who we might serve based on our experience, education, and interests." So helpful! thank you Suzanne.
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