Guest Posts 31 - Be a Freelance Blogger

Why Online Communities Matter for Freelance Bloggers

Everyone seems to reach the world of freelance blogging through a different path. My journey is a little different to most. In fact, if you had told me fifteen years ago that I would be making money through freelance blogging, I would have laughed at you.

My journey started in 2000. I was twenty years old and fresh out of University. Days dragged along slowly as I worked for a major UK pension company. As you can imagine, my mind started to wander whilst I was working those nine-to-five days.

One night, a friend and I looked at the possibility of making money buying and selling domain names. I cannot remember how we came across the idea, but we both registered domain names at the standard (read: high) price that UK domain registrars charged at the time.

We soon found out that the names we registered were not easy to sell. Rather than simply cut my losses, I built a website around one of the domains: a shopping directory. Having spoken to hundreds of other internet marketers over the years, I know that this was a strange choice for someone’s first website (most people at the time started fan websites).

The website was poorly designed using notepad and HTML, however I managed to generate a good commission within the first few weeks. That’s all it took. I was hooked!

[Read more…]

By Laura Leigh Clarke

How To Charge What You’re Worth

You love writing. You’re inspired, you have the skills and you live for those moments when you can settle down with a cup of tea, in the peace and quiet, alone with your thoughts and just write.

And if this was all that was involved and you got paid handsomely for it, freelance writing would make you a fortune.

But you and I both know there is much more to making it as a paid writer than just the craft.

There’s the whole money thing.

Yep, that’s right. At some point, somewhere, you have to sell your services to a client who will reward you with the green stuff. And herein lies the problem.

The vast majority of writers I’ve met (and there have been a lot of them) are paralysed when it comes to:

Charging for their services
Charging what they’re worth, and
Putting themselves out there

If this sounds familiar, you’re going to want to keep reading because there IS something you can do about it.

[Read more…]

By Lauren Spear

Why Your Guest Posts Keep Getting Rejected

For those of you who don’t know, my name is Lauren Tharp and I was the Be A Freelance Blogger official Community Helper for quite a while. (And I’m trying my very best to not let my moderate amount of power go to my head…)

Basically, I helped answer comments and questions on the blog and social media, and I was in charge of guest posts/writers for the blog. That’s right: I’m the one who made sure your guest post got uploaded into the BAFB backend, didn’t have any typos or weird grammatical errors, included your author bio and appropriate links, and was otherwise magnificent. 🙂

I was also the person you had to pitch your ideas to.

Yeah…

Anyone who wanted to write for Be A Freelance Blogger had to write to me first with their pitch. From there, I made the decision to reject your query outright or send you along to Sophie (the gal you really have to impress). I was the first gatekeeper.

I loved my job. But sometimes it made me a little sad. Out of all the writers who pitch, only 10-15% of them actually made it to the next step. I had to reject a lot of pitches.

[Read more…]

By Kirsty Stuart

How to Stay Afloat in a Sea of Information Overload

Albert Einstein once said that “information is not knowledge.”

I’m sure you’ll agree old Albert was an all-round clever guy.

Because while continuous learning is great, consuming bucket-loads of information without proper application doesn’t make you Einstein – nor does it make you a better freelance blogger.

As a freelancer, you need to access only the right information in the right way to remain productive (and sane). As a blogger, it’s imperative that you keep up with a whole host of ever-evolving information about the online world – some of which can change daily.

But if you’re both? A freelancer and a blogger? Well, you’re likely to be in the “extremely high risk zone” when it comes to information overload. Up the proverbial creek without so much as a paddle, as it were.

Worry not – there are strategies you can put in place to avoid drowning spectacularly in a vast sea of information. Just grab on to the following life rafts to stay afloat and ward off that out-of-your-depth feeling.

[Read more…]

By Jovell Alingod

When Can You Call Yourself a Professional Blogger?

Labelling yourself a professional is an act many bloggers for hire won’t immediately embrace.

Mind-chatter like “I don’t have enough writing samples” or “my posts don’t get a lot of engagement” fuels a bloggers’ belief that you can’t —or worse, mustn’t— call yourself a pro.

But what does being a professional blogger really mean?

Do you need to have written X number of articles before you can call yourself a pro blogger?

To answer these questions, let’s dig into the habits and characteristics of well-known professional bloggers, and compare them to your own distinguishing traits.

[Read more…]