Level Up 4 - Be a Freelance Blogger

Blog Audience Engagement: How to Live Happily Ever After With Your Readers

Have you ever watched longingly as other bloggers flaunt their engagement with their audience, while you cry alone in an empty comments corner?

Ever wonder what you’ve been doing so wrong when you try to boost blog audience engagement for your clients (or for yourself)? Chances are, what you’re doing isn’t wrong, but it may just not be enough.

Maybe you’ve been admiring your audience from afar. Pull them close.

Perhaps you’ve been flirting coyly for a while from your blogging balcony. Take them by the hand.

But you just haven’t mustered the right energy to compel your readers to take the plunge. Kneel down and put a ring on it.

Keeping an audience engaged with your writing is a key skill that all clients need you to possess. It’s also the foundation upon which a deeper writer-reader relationship is built, which can be particularly important with ongoing projects and retainer clients.

It takes consistent commitment to deliver on your promise of engaging content, ensuring that your readers can comprehend it, relate to it, learn from it, feel something about it, and do something with it.

If you’re ready to hear your audience shout, “We’re engaged!” then you need these five tips:

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By Linda Formichelli

Freelance Blogging IS a Numbers Game: The Throwdown

You’re going DOWN, Sophie Lizard!*

In 2014, Sophie collaborated with Gary Korisko on a post and video called “Why Freelance Blogging is NOT a Numbers Game” that contains this tidbit:

Dashing off sloppy pitches to every blog in the universe is not the most profitable use of your time.”

Since my pet saying is “Freelance writing is a numbers game,” I’m taking this very, very personally. What, Gary and Sophie, you lookin’ at me?

Wanna see me get mad? Just watch this video: [Read more…]

By Sophie Lizard

7 Ways to Take Charge of Your Freelance Blogging Career

That helpless feeling… it’s horrible, isn’t it?

You know you were born to be a freelance blogger. It’s the perfect fit for you. But so far, you’re kinda going nowhere with it.

You haven’t won the high-paying jobs you hoped would be yours, and you haven’t been invited to join that inner circle of pro bloggers who all seem to know each other.

You check a handful of online job boards regularly, but there aren’t many ads that sound right for you. And when you do apply for gigs, you often don’t hear back from them at all.

How are you supposed to make money at this when there’s no work available?

Oh, it’s available all right.

[Read more…]

By Chloe Brooks

Earn More in Less Time: 6 Tasks Every Freelance Blogger Should Automate

There’s more to being a freelance blogger than just writing helpful content.

As a freelancer you’re running your very own business of one, which means that everything from marketing and branding to sales and accounting is on your shoulders.

(And if you haven’t made the leap yet from side hustle to full-time freelancer, you’re probably juggling all of the above and a full-time job.)

But if you’re not careful, all of the administrative and marketing tasks that go into running a business can encroach on your client writing time, and when they do, you’re left scrambling to get back on schedule.

You need a way to get more done in a day without compromising on priorities or the quality of your work.

That’s where automation comes in. The key to getting more done as a freelance blogger is realizing that you shouldn’t do everything yourself. Automating repeatable tasks gives you more time to focus on creating content and finding new blogging clients.

If you’ve never used automation before or aren’t sure where to start, here are 6 tasks that every freelance blogger should automate.

[Read more…]

By Sophie Lizard

5 Ways to Adjust to Blogging on a New (Or New-Look) Platform

(We’ll get to the $100 prize in a few minutes — it’s all explained in this post, if you read through to the end.)

So your client wants you to use their blogging software to submit your posts.

And now you’re sweating with the fear that you won’t know how to use it and you’re gonna look incompetent.

Or maybe, like a lot of people in the blogosphere, you woke one morning not long ago, logged into your own WordPress website, and saw that — what in holy heck? — after the latest update, WordPress 5.0 has given you a very different looking new editing system… *eek*

Or perhaps you’ve never tried publishing on Medium or LinkedIn before, and you’re not sure how it all works.

Or you’ve been talking with a prospective client who sounds awesome, but they use Squarespace and you’ve only ever used WordPress?

Whatever the scenario, it’s all good. Relax and read these 5 simple ways to get your bearings inside a new blogging platform.

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