Level Up - Be a Freelance Blogger

Business Skills for Freelance Bloggers (How to Survive and Grow Your Income)

When you decided to become a freelance blogger, did you immediately write up a 5-year business development plan? Calculate a full financial forecast?

If you did, you have everyone’s permission to skip this blog post and order more champagne while you wait for the rest of us to catch up.

But most freelance bloggers start with a talent for writing and then pick up a bit of business sense along the way. If that sounds more like you, don’t worry — you can still grow your blogging into a lucrative business. We just need to fill some of the gaps in your understanding of how your business works.

Here’s the important part, though: you need to fill the knowledge gaps in your business now, because every month they go unfilled is another month you go without the money you deserve.

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By Carol Tice

5 Simple Ways Freelance Bloggers Can Move Up to Well-Paid Article Writing

Tired of earning small money for paid blogging? If you’re looking to move up, article writing can be a great next step in your freelance career.

After all, you already know how important headlines are online. And you know how to focus an idea into an article-sized slice, organizing it into subheads or a bulleted/numbered list.

All great fundamentals for article writing.

How can you cross over from the world of $50 blog posts to earning $1 a word and more for articles?

Here are five proven paths for moving up to writing articles:

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By Pinar Tarhan

How to Prepare for Freelance Blogging Emergencies

Freelance blogging is an amazing career.

You don’t have to write about something you don’t care about to make money. There are so many niches that you’re bound to find one (or several) that is both lucrative and fun.

You can find clients that make payment arrangements work for you, and you set your own hours. It’s possible to spend time with family and friends while still working on passion projects.

However, it’s also ripe with problems and complications that can drive you mad: disappearing websites, changing regulations, unpaid invoices, ghost clients, writer’s block… you name it. And life’s regular lemons like health problems, family emergencies, and beyond can also interfere.

I’ve been a freelance blogger for about a decade now. And even though it’s a dream career, it hasn’t been a smooth ride.

2019 proved especially challenging with a loss in the family, recurring health issues, computer breakdowns, and a decent-sized collection of rejections. There were times I questioned why I was doing this, whether I should follow a less bumpy career path.

But when I think about the pros of this life, they win easily. Every period in my time of freelancing also featured great moments. In this “awful” 2019, I got to go on a fantastic writers’ retreat where I met fellow writers and hung out in New York, have a beach vacation when I wanted because I don’t have a boss, release my second book, and work with wonderful editors at some of my favorite publications.

So yes, there are a lot of ups and downs. And while it’s not possible to be prepared for everything, improving your defenses can help your bank balance, sanity, and overall health.

Here are some suggestions on what you can do to offset (or even eliminate) the bad times:

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By Sophie Lizard

Another 52 Free Resources for Freelance Bloggers

You want some free stuff? Not just any free stuff, but genuinely useful things you’ll be glad you found?

Here are 52 things just like that.

See, I poke around the internet a lot. Every now and then I find something so good, I bookmark it and keep going back to use it again. The coolest thing, though, is that so much of what I find is free! You can take it, use it, don’t have to pay a cent.

With 52 free resources on this list, you can try a new one every week for the next year. Or, if you’re impatient like me, you can go nuts and grab ’em all today. Up to you. Take a look and help yourself to whatever you want.

This list contains only resources I’ve used and liked, and only resources that are free to use. If they cost anything, it’ll be your email address or maybe a tweet.

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By Robin Geuens

52 Free Tools and Resources to Superfuel Your Freelance Blogging

You know most people think we’re idiots, right?

I mean, why would we go through all the trouble of starting our own business when we could just get a job?

We could do as we’re told, quit working at 5pm, and watch TV for the rest of the night. Why make it hard for ourselves?

To be honest, they’re right.

It is a stupid thing to do.

Starting your own business requires a ton of hard work. It takes time and dedication to learn all the skills you need to get off the ground.

You have to know how to write. You have to know how to market. You have to know how to sell.

And we don’t have the luxury to stop thinking about our work when the clock hits 5pm. Once you choose this lifestyle, it creeps into your mind and you find yourself thinking about it all the time.

But once it starts working, man does it feel good. Seeing that hard-earned cash roll in makes it all worth it.

But again, it takes time. Lots of time.

To help you speed up the process, I’ve put together a list of tools and resources for you to use to supercharge your freelance blogging. It ranges from tools to get ideas quicker to resources that will give you a kick in the butt.

All of them are free or have a free plan.

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