How to sell your writing skills and make money
Experienced freelance writers earn money by ghostwriting dozens of articles for clients around the world. The following helpful tips for writing and selling articles will help budding writers find a foothold in the world of content writing. You can plan and prepare your writing career and prevent trial and error.
The important fact to keep in mind is that in order to be able to sell your writing services, you must first be able to follow some basic rules of online writing.
Tips for writing articles
1. Writing formats: Familiarize yourself with different writing tasks you may be asked to complete. For example, authors may be asked to work on grant applications (requests for funds for upcoming projects, usually related to NGOs and charities), press releases (information about the launch of a new product or service), website content (landing page , ‘ about our page, etc.) or e-books.
The formats of each form of writing are different. There is a lot of information on the internet; invest time in reading about different types of writing.
2. Choice of English style: Articles are usually written in American, British or Australian English. Please understand that these are different variants of the English language. Clients can request that articles be written for a local or international audience. There will be subtle differences in spelling as well as language.
For example, “neighbor” is American English, while “neighbor” is British English. Similarly, Americans say “counselor” while other countries spell the same word as “counselor”.
If you are unsure, ask your customer for further clarification. Correct spelling is a crucial factor in getting good job assignments. A misspelled word can spoil the impression.
3. Research: Research ability is another vital factor contributing to crafting a top-notch article. As a budding freelance writer, you may need to write articles on a variety of genres and topics. These can include finance, banking, gardening, cooking, health, business, home decor, parenting and several others.
Obviously, we can’t be experts on every subject under the sun. therefore intensive research will help you discover important facts and useful information.
For example, if you are asked to write an article about UK savings accounts, sit down and read four or five credible websites for information. If you read about “CD ladders” (bank deposits), search for more information about CD ladders and how they work.
Your article should be able to provide solid, useful and well-researched information to readers. Your goal is to gather information from various sources so that the reader can access it all information in one place.
A few words about choosing websites: Please note that there are excellent websites and a few mediocre and unreliable ones at the same time. Avoid collecting information from “forums” etc. Stick to government, educational, or reputable websites. This way, you can be sure that you are providing your customers with up-to-date and factual information.
4. Job count and keyword insertion: Keywords are important words and phrases that help an article or website attract traffic. They are based on the fact that all readers start a search with a word or phrase.
For example, readers who want to travel to Paris can type “holiday in Paris” into the browser to start searching for good Paris vacation deals. Clients can often request the use of certain keywords to help their website gain visibility.
For example, a client may ask you to write a 500-word article and use a specific keyword, say, three times in the article. You should be able to cleverly weave the keyword into the article without it looking contrived. Avoid just “stuffing” it. Use the keyword in a way that sounds reasonable and logical.
Ideally, keywords should be used in the title, first and last lines (this is not a hard and fast rule though). Pay attention to the required keywords and their number.
Please do not “fill” the article with useless, superficial information. In the freelance writing world, this is called “fluff.” As the name suggests, ‘fluff’ refers to useless, irrelevant information which is simply written to complete the required number of words.
Here is an example to illustrate this:
a. Everyone needs a bank account to manage their money. Banks offer customers several options for saving their money. Services and quality vary from bank to bank.
b. Opening a bank account is an excellent way to manage your money. banks offer several options, including deposits, savings schemes and investment portfolios, to help you build a consolidated fund.
Option (b) is a more informative sentence compared to (a). Avoid skimping on research. Shallow and inadequate research equals creating “fluffy” content.
5. Plagiarism problems: While creating content for customers, please do not copy and paste information. All information on the Internet is copyrighted and copying is illegal. Read the information and then write it in your own words. That’s what they pay you for.
Images, charts and photographs are also subject to strict copyright. Please make sure you use legal, copyright-free images as you are allowed to use.
Taking unscrupulous shortcuts is likely to bring a bad name and bad reputation. You may also consider purchasing credits from Copyscape; a website that helps you check your work for plagiarism.
6. Deadlines: Deadlines are sacrosanct and authors must unconditionally meet them. Research the amount of work you need to do and allocate the time you need. Avoid making promises that you will have a hard time keeping. If you need four days to complete a job, communicate that to your client honestly.
Missed deadlines and delays should be avoided because you will ruin your reputation with the client. Eventually, he will leave a bad review for you out of annoyance and frustration.
7. Choose your clients carefully: Please remember that there are thousands of clients looking for writing services. As in other fields of work, there are excellent clients. But not all are professional. During your writing career, you may encounter stingy, demanding, rude, and unreasonable clients.
In my humble opinion, looking for good clients is much more important than looking for good projects. The simple reason is that a good project will come to an end while a good client will provide regular work.
That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t consider work from new clients. However, learn to be careful in your choice of clients. You are here to sell valuable writing skills. Behave with dignity and treat your work with respect. Not everyone can write – that’s why your client wants your services in the first place. Avoid selling your work short—it also hurts the prospects of other writers.
Customers are left with the mistaken impression that they can always cut a deal and pay low prices for good work.
8. Etiquette client-writer: The good news is that 96% of customers are really nice. They are here to look for good writers and will be happy to pay for competent services. Ask for feedback from your clients after completing a job. Be prepared to include any requested changes/rework (within reason). Build good relationships with customers. Aim to respond to all inquiries within 24 hours. They will likely contact you for additional tasks.
9. Use your free time to build trust and a good reputation. Write on famous websites that accept articles for submission. This will help you prove your abilities and reliability to your clients.
There are thousands (really millions) of websites that require content writing, images and articles and blogs. Online writers can earn a decent income writing for clients who want to build websites. You can also write for agents who sell your work to clients.
Online freelance writing is an interesting field that brings pleasure and is profitable at the same time. It only takes effort, diligence and persistence to make a successful career through online writing.
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