Be a Freelance Blogger

5 Ways to Rock Your Guest Post After They Approve Your Pitch

You know you nailed your pitch because you just opened an email asking you to send over your first draft of your guest post.

You give a little fist pump, take a moment to let the glory of your success sink in, and then take a breath and open a blank word document.

Now what?

You know what you want to say, but how exactly can you say it so that you can deliver the awesome content you promised in your pitch? Start with these five tips to help you rock your guest post and please the blog owner (and their readers).

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By Sophie Lizard

UK Freelance Tax and Self-Assessment: A Quick Start Guide

Ugh. Taxes.

No matter what you do in your freelance writing career, you’ll have to face the tax ~~monster~~ man, right? And it looks pretty complicated, especially if you’re not a big fan of mathematics.

Chris Peden (a CPA and freelance writer) wrote a very helpful post last year about how to keep your financial records for U.S. taxation as a freelance blogger. But I know there are plenty of bloggers in the UK who need to know what’s required of them, too. So I’ve interviewed a UK taxation expert to give us the info we need. 🙂

Rosie Slosek founded the Money Haven to provide tax return help for solopreneurs who want to do their own tax return, and support and coaching for one man band limited companies who want to understand what their legal obligations are.

She talks plain English, explains the jargon you need to know (tax-deductible, anyone?), and she’s always on your side. She also has a great sense of humour, and promotes the use of cake and other incentives to meet your tax and accounting obligations.

Here are Rosie’s top tips for UK freelancers to handle your taxes with confidence and grace (and cake).

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By Bree Brouwer

The Shameless Blogging Success Secret No One Wants to Admit

If you’re anything like me, sometimes you want to punch the so-called “blogging gurus” in the face.

This is probably because you’ve done everything they’ve told you to do. You’ve implemented their social media strategies, and tweaked them for your own blog. You’ve written about controversial topics with a strong, original voice, and you’ve made your blog look clean and spiffy.

Yet no matter what you try, it always seems like a failure.

But guess what?

There’s something very important about all that work you’re doing, a blogging success secret that no one wants to talk about. And it all has to do with that ever-so-frustrating word: failure.

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By Karol K.

Why Publicly Available Gigs Suck for Freelance Blogging… And an Alternative That Doesn’t

If I were to ask: “I need a freelance blogging job. Where do I go?”

What would you say?

Let me give you a couple of seconds to think this through.

Job boards, am I right?

Even if that wasn’t your final answer, I’m pretty sure it was on your mind nevertheless.

Job boards (actually, all kinds of publicly available job listings, forum sections for freelance deals, sites like Fiverr, and so on) are THE obvious place to go for any kind of freelance-related work. It’s surely no surprise that many new freelance bloggers rely on them exclusively when hunting for their first gigs.

I did too.

And don’t get me wrong, they are very good at getting you employed. However, in the long run, they are not that great of a tool to keep your career advancing.

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By Kevin Muldoon

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!

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