How to Grow Yourself as a Professional Freelancer in Blogging?
When you 1st begin out as a freelance writer, setting your rates low to attain clients could be the quickest way to call in several cold, difficult cash. Typically, it's critical to locate a role and assign yourself to a government. you may wish to expend time acquiring trade nuances, gaining encounters and clients, and honing your writing talents. These are all integral steps in beginning a freelance writing profession. However, once you have discovered the excellent niche, and researched and written abundant essays on the subject, elevating your rates becomes appropriate.
Freelance Tips to Know Blog SEO
Understanding and keeping up with the latest SEO tactics is important for several reasons. Most clients want their articles optimized for search engines. As a freelance writer of web-based content, part of your job is to be able to provide this type of content. Knowing the proper way to create search engine-friendly content will land you more clients and raise the value of your writing.
Most freelance writing ads I see on Blogging Pro and Freelancer all require a skilled writer as well as someone who knows SEO. The two pretty much go hand-in-hand. It's not hard to learn the basics of keyword densities and search engine aggregation.
SEO copy is written specifically for websites and blogs. It helps search engines to index and categorize websites so people can find them online.
Websites and blogs are always in demand and have made up a substantial portion of my freelance work over the years. If you want to write for them, SEO skills are a must.
As a bare minimum, you should know how to research keywords and phrases and where to place them for the best results. You should also understand the best format for web copy that helps people to read it easily.
The following skills and knowledge will give you a more competitive edge:
- Keyword and key-phrase research — the best tools and techniques to use
- Long-tail SEO — how to research and make use of longer phrases
- Competitor research — to differentiate a website from its competition
- Web development — an understanding of how websites are designed and built
- Landing pages — how to write landing pages that convert
- User behavior — how website visitors find, use, read, and navigate websites
- Calls to action — what they are and how to use them
- Google Analytics — how to interpret and use the data
There's tons of free material online about it. It's important to begin studying these freelance writing necessities as soon as you begin your career. Billing yourself as a talented writer and an Internet marketing whiz will score you plenty of work and help you make that bank from a freelance writing career.
Don't slack on the SEO when you write content for your own sites either. Try to write each post with the search engines in mind, creating them to be easily "crawled". Doing this from the start will ensure your site gets placed high in search results later down the road.
Honor Your Skills Always
This is a hard one. I struggle with it every day because it can be
difficult to determine pricing as a freelance writer, especially when you're
first starting out. There's a fine line between growing a client base by
undercutting a competitor, and completely undervaluing your talents. Breaking
out of the "I'm getting experience" or "I need more
clients" phase can be tough, but essential if you want to turn this
freelance writing thing into a career.
1. Brush up on your written English.
Being able to write well is the most basic skill
you need as a copywriter. The following tips can help to build your confidence,
improve your writing skills and widen your vocabulary:
- Read widely — non-fiction books; quality newspapers and
magazines; websites and blogs; examples of successful sales letters,
press ads, and campaigns
- Analyze the formats, layouts, and sentence structures of
existing copy
- Write daily, or as often as you can
2. Develop some complementary skills.
It's always good to add some more strings to your
bow — even if it's only improving your understanding of a different discipline.
The following skills, which I developed in
previous employment, have been invaluable to me as a copywriter:
- Marketing
- Public relations (PR)
- Journalism/Reporting
- Research
- Client liaison
- Understanding of design and layout — in print and online
- Web development
For one, there are bills to pay, and writing for
pennies per word won't pay them without a whole lot of time and effort. There's
nothing wrong with hard work, but building your freelance writing career is
about more than just creating content. You have to have time to do other things
like grow your business and attract new clients. That's impossible if you're
writing articles all day.
Secondly, if you undervalue your skills, clients
will undervalue them as well. It can be tough raising your rates for the first
time, but as with most things, it all comes down to confidence. If you have
researched and written content on a specific subject for months or years, there
comes a time when you can confidently consider yourself an expert, and price
your services accordingly.
There is a wealth of information on the
Internet about freelance writing rates. Read blogs, connect with freelance
writers on LinkedIn, and investigate what others are charging. Before long
you'll be earning what you deserve, and living the good life as a well-paid,
freelance writer.
Never Lagging Your Learning
Recently, an editor for a freelance writing site critiqued
some articles I submitted. He explained that I'm confused about proper comma
usage. This didn't surprise me considering I don't exactly have a college
degree. But it did get me thinking. No matter how skillful of a writer you are,
there's always more to learn.
After his comments, I began Googling proper comma usage. I even
asked for help on Facebook. I realized that besides commas, I'm confused about
many things grammatical. However, this is easily fixed with an old-school study
hall.
Now, I work an hour of studying into my daily routine. I
usually do this in the morning while I check emails. Finding help on grammar is
as easy as a Google search.
Even if it's just a refresher, studying and understanding proper
grammar is invaluable as a freelance writer. Committing time to this
endeavor will help open doors to more lucrative and demanding clients.
Learn some copywriting best practices.
There are plenty of copywriting courses out
there, along with books, eBooks, blogs, articles, and exercises.
How you choose to learn is entirely up to you,
but look for recommendations or ask other copywriters about the resources they
have found most helpful.
I took a course from the Institute of Copywriting
back in 2006/7. By then I was already proficient in some aspects of
copywriting but wanted a more rounded introduction to the area. The course
provided this, along with mentoring from a professional copywriter.
Personally, I found the course valuable — even
though the diploma isn't a recognized qualification. It gave me insight into
the business of copywriting, taught me new skills, and helped to build on my
copywriting portfolio.
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