Make REAL money blogging for hire.
Your dream client is visiting your freelance writer website right now, while you’re reading this.
They heard about you, they think you sound awesome, and their budget is huge.
But what they read on your website puts them off the idea. They don’t pick up the phone. They hit backspace, and they go somewhere else.
Do you want that to happen to you?
Of course not. But it happens more often than you’d ever like to think. So let’s do something about that, today.
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Freelance writing and blogging are terms you know and probably identify pretty strongly with.
But there’s another term you should feel equally close to, even if it sounds somewhat foreign and unrelated to your writing work. Content marketing could save our writing careers, yet far too many of us don’t really know what it is. Here’s what, and why, you need to know.
Content marketing is a marketing style that uses content (blog posts, infographics, e-books, videos, magazines, etc.) to engage potential customers, rather than directly sell a product or service to them.
If this sounds foreign to you, it shouldn’t. You’re more familiar with content marketing than you might think, and one of its earliest forms is something you certainly recognize: soap operas.
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I was brand new to freelancing. No idea what I was doing.
But I won 5 gigs in less than a week, and you can do the same.
A bit of background to this story: I come from the passive-income writing world where I create my own products and all the work I do is for myself. I didn’t know how to write up a freelance proposal, let alone how to successfully deliver services to a client! But I decided to try freelancing for two reasons.
I’d outsourced many aspects of my passive income business through the Elance platform, so I was familiar with that system and how the flow of bidding worked. I figured I’d set up as a freelance service provider there.
[Note from Sophie: Yes, I know some of you hate Elance with a passion. But Lior’s approach to sending proposals got him started and hired fast, so set aside your Elance-flaming reaction for a few minutes and consider how you can adapt this to your own proposals, no matter where you find your clients.]
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After three years of working in a cubicle, I became a full-time freelance writer in 2010—and from the first day I left my office job, I’ve been learning what it means to write from home.
While I started with multiple clients, today, I write predominantly for one Chicago-based marketing agency, a routine that gives me increased stability and more consistent hours (a freelancer’s dream come true!). And after years of writing for this marketing agency, I’ve also seen what it takes to succeed in this role.
Are you interested in freelancing for a marketing agency? Do you wonder what’s involved if you do?
If so, here are some tips from my experience. These are the habits to practice when you’re managing one single client instead of a handful of them, writing regularly in one style instead of many different ones, and reporting to one company instead of juggling dozens of contacts.
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One year ago, on January 15th 2013, I published this blog post — the first post on Be a Freelance Blogger.
Most of the universe paid no attention. But my life changed completely.
That blog post’s received 222 comments. Some of those were from me and Lauren replying to your comments, but that’s still about 200 comments more than I was used to getting anywhere else.
People were talking to me. I mean really talking — not “Great post!” but long, thoughtful comments. People emailed to thank me. And I felt kinda stupid, because Jon Morrow and Danny Iny told me this would happen, and I secretly didn’t believe them. I couldn’t imagine a life where more than 10,000 readers visit this blog in a month, and 5,700 people subscribe to read my emails.
Now I can’t imagine it without you.
I spent 2013 meeting so many new people with brilliant minds, heartfelt passions and genuine ethics. I’ve chatted with freelance bloggers and entrepreneurs around the world. I’ve taken beach holidays while I created online training programs, just like those spammy ads on the internet keep saying everyone can do… except that this isn’t an infomercial. It’s my life. It’s really happened.
It’s happened because you read, and think, and talk to me. Because you tell me when I’ve helped (and when I’ve screwed up).
It’s my blogiversary, and I’m happy you found me.
As a writer, it pains me to admit I haven’t got the right words — there aren’t enough words in existence — to tell you how much I appreciate you.
Well, either there aren’t enough, or there are only two that will do it.
Now go sit over there and read some birthday messages from the blogosphere while I pretend I’m not crying, dammit. There’s a big fancy prize to win at the end.
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