Be a Freelance Blogger

Today, Be a Freelance Blogger is five years old.

5 years! Bring on the “wow” emoji!

You know what was the hardest thing about starting this blog?

It wasn’t the technology, or the content strategy, or the audience-building.

The hardest part was coming up with the damn name.

Seriously. I needed a name that made it clear what my blog was about:

Freelance. Blogging. 

Not freelance writing of any other kind, not personal blogging to push your own message or pro blogging for ad revenue and sponsorship money.

Plus I didn’t want it to sound like a content mill, or like a place to hire freelancers. I wanted people to know from the name alone that this is the place to learn how to be a freelance blogger.

I made a huge list of potential names, and they all sucked at least a little bit.

I’m pretty sure when I told Jon Morrow (my coach while I launched this blog) that the best name I had after two weeks of brainstorming and thesaurus abuse was “Be a Freelance Blogger”…

… yep, I’m pretty sure he was stunned into silence for a moment by my lack of originality. Would people even be able to remember a name like that?

Well, the answer is YES – most people remember it just fine, but also NO – because we still occasionally get emails addressed to “Dear Become a Freelance Blogger.” (Hey, it’s close enough; come on in. In a little while, I’m gonna tell you how you can win a prize…)

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At the beginning of your freelance blogging career, you worried about getting enough work. Now you have a better problem, but a problem nonetheless: you have more assignments than you can comfortably handle on your own.

This article will show you how to outsource some of your work to other writers while maintaining professional integrity with your client and subcontractor(s). Now, I know some of you are thinking “but I’m not at that point in my career yet. How do I get there?” While there are different ways to land more decent-paying freelance blogging gigs, the good news is it doesn’t necessarily take as long as you might assume.

Like many freelance bloggers, I started out writing for a content mill. After nearly a year of writing content in the evenings after my toddler was in bed, I was unhappy with the low pay and demanding deadlines. I knew there must be something better out there, but I wasn’t sure how to find it. Around that time, Sophie offered a new intensive mentoring program and I decided to enroll. Some people are good at putting themselves out there and forging their own path to freelance blogging success, but I’ve always benefited from personal mentoring and external accountability.

After two months of working with Sophie, I landed my first steady gigs as a freelance blogger. The first one came with a byline and the responsibility of writing a few articles a month for a personal finance website. I discovered it through a job ad and used Sophie’s pitch templates to send a winning application. The second gig involved ghostwriting blog posts and other content for a private client who filled out the contact form on my website. With Sophie’s help, I’d recently given my site a makeover to add a portfolio and focus on my freelance blogging services.

Both of these gigs expanded after a few months. My editor liked my work, so she assigned more articles. My client was starting a new marketing firm and as his customer base grew, so did my workload. After a year of freelance blogging on the side while working my “day job” as an adjunct English professor, I realized something had to give. I was overwhelmed and falling behind. If this continued, I would likely lose a writing client or receive bad evaluations from my students.

First, I scaled back my teaching load from three or four classes a semester to just one. Then I decided to share some of my blogging work with a few writer friends.

Here’s how I maintained my professional integrity in the outsourcing process so I could catch up, stay on track, and keep my clients happy. [Read more…]