Starting Your Freelance Writing Business

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By Yvonne Perry

I heard a friend say recently that she had read an article in the newspaper that discouraged her from trying to become a freelance writer. How sad that good writers are told they can’t earn a living doing what they love. You may be thinking about becoming a full-time writer and earning your money as a freelancer. Let me share my experience with you and perhaps give you hope that you can make it.

I started my business Write On! Creative Writing Services in 2003 with a dream and a lot of hope. I still remember all the times I wanted to give up and go back to a corporate job where I could consistently make good money. Perseverance paid off and today I am happy to say that I am a full-time freelance writer supervising my own team of contracted writers.

How it all began

Before I considered striking out on my own, I started writing pro-bono copy for some volunteer organizations that needed promotional materials. You may want to offer your writing to charities and non-profits that you enjoy supporting. When my kids were teenagers, I wrote stories about daily homelife events. Each week I sent stories to my friends and each week they came back with the same response: You should publish these stories as a book. Their encouragement helped me see that I had exceptional writing skills that could be put to good use in making money for myself.

My day job required a lot of writing so I was naturally keeping my skills honed. It occurred to me that I could be making some money on the side so I started taking on writing assignments through Guru.com where I had to bid for projects. At first I was like a weed in a field. There were so many writers and tons of project leads, but I had no idea what to charge; and I was not that confident that I was a great writer. I felt overwhelmed; however, I had paid my yearly fee to join so I decided to give it my best shot. Services such as Elance and Guru are good ways to get started as a freelance writer, but you will not want to stay in a low-paying mode once you improve your skills, have your own portfolio and learn to market yourself and your business. You can either raise your hourly rate and only bid on jobs that will pay you what you are worth, or you can start to find jobs elsewhere.

Market Yourself

The first thing I had to learn was how to market myself. I had little experience but I showcased the few articles I had written and started bidding really low hoping to land a project. During that year, I managed to build my writing portfolio, and I learned to market my skills and define what type of writing I was best at. It seemed that everyone had a website but me and I wasn’t going to be left behind in the dust. I got a domain name from Godaddy.com and used their template to create a home page and post a few of my writing samples.

In that first year I learned by trial and error what prices to charge. I searched the Internet for other writing services and compared my prices to theirs. After my business grew to where I was not able to help all the clients needing my services, I took on a couple of experienced writers and formed a team. Together we set our prices according to market trends and stayed a little lower than the guidelines maintained by Writer’s Market in order to gain a competitive edge.

If you are considering a career as a freelance writer, you may want to read sign up for my free monthly newsletter or listen to my podcast about freelance writing. These are very helpful resources accessible from the home page of my website. By the way, I did have a professional who knows what they are doing redesign the site for me last year. Now it attracts much more traffic and clients.

There are always learning curves to be considered and even with the best advice, you are going to make some mistakes along the way. Keep believing in yourself. Learn all you can about the business and don't give up. It is worth the pursuit. I wish you well in your writing career.

Yvonne Perry is a freelance writer and the owner of Write On! Creative Writing Services based in Nashville, Tennessee. She and her team of ghostwriters service clients all over the globe by offering quality writing at an affordable price. Visit her site if you need a brochure, web text, business document, resume, bio, article or book. Be sure to subscribe to the RSS podcast feed and the free monthly newsletter about writing, networking, publishing and marketing.

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