How to Become a Freelance Writer: Guides to Beginner Freelance Writing Jobs

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Updated: 23/06/2023

Freelance content writing is one of the lucrative online jobs for students to earn money at home due to the fact that they can offer a freelance service ( work as a contractor) to different kinds of clients and businesses.

According to ZipRecruiter, the average annual salary for a freelance writer would be around $51,000, and earning power may be higher as it depends on knowledge and skill levels, work experience, and location.

If you are curious about how to become a freelance writer with no experience, then the first thing is to have naturally good writing skills. But, this skill can be learned and improved over time, as long as you keep putting your effort and commitment into becoming a professional freelance writer.

It doesn’t matter if you have a special skill, talent, or bachelor’s degree. Anyone can get started with a freelance writing career.

In this article, you will learn how to become a freelance writer online by giving a step-by-step on how to get started and how to continue to improve the skill from time to time.

Key Takeaways

• Anyone can get started with a freelance writing job as long as they have the self-discipline and commitment to get into it for the long term.
• Some people are already good at writing, but this skill can be learned and improved over time.
• Here is a list of step-by-step guides on how to become a freelance writer with no experience.
• Continuing to network and expand the relationship with other freelancers is considered the best ingredient for a successful beginner freelance writing job.

Here are additional links that are relevant to freelancing business and side hustles. You should continue to read if you missed it.

> 6 Must-have Tools To Support Freelance Writers

> 8+ Proven Ways to Find Freelance Writing Jobs Online For Beginners

What is a Freelance writer?

A freelance writer is someone who is running a business or is self-employed. They work as a freelancer to offer professional writing services to media, businesses, and clients as a contractor.

As mentioned earlier, freelance writing is one of the most lucrative remote jobs to earn money online.

In the beginning, you can get started as a side hustle to see how you can fit in this career and if it works well, then you can make it a full-time career.

How to become a freelance writer with no experience

Anyone can get started with a freelance writing career, but you need to apply the right step on where to start and how to scale up your online business.

The following are step-by-step guides that show you how to become a freelance writer online. It is based on my experience and research, you may have an alternative way that can be best applicable to your personal situation.

1. Identify your freelance writing niche

The first and foremost important step is to highlight your skill and passion before you get started to become a freelance content writer.

By becoming an expert in a particular freelance writing niche, you can narrow down your writing topic and offers better writing services to clients and corporate customers.

You may take some time to reflect on the skill and knowledge you are good at. It could be what you have studied at University or through work experience.

For instance, if you are particularly interested in traveling and keep expanding your knowledge horizon about cuisine and travel guides, then you may consider becoming a freelance content writer in travel and food guides.

By making a list of interests such as business, investing, marketing, etc, you will have the opportunity to pay more attention to a particular topic as it is the starting point to becoming a professional freelance content writer.

2. Build your portfolio 

Like many small businesses, they need to get started at the beginning, which expects they may not have too many writing orders or may not receive orders at all.

The only thing that can help you to build a great business reputation is to offer professional and high-quality writing services at a competitive price.

It could be done by offering free writing services for a few clients in order that they can give you better reviews. To get started, you should consider online earning sites like Fiverr and Flexjobs to slowly build up your writing portfolio.

Alternatively, freelancers can write and post on social media like Media and Linkedin. It is one of the effective ways to build your reputation and get paid to write. It’s because Media has a program that allows members to monetize their content if they have more than 100 subscribers.

The more you write, the better writing skill you have. Thus, the less mistake you will make in the end. 

3. Start a blog

Launching a blog is considered another brilliant solution to not only improve your professional content writing skills but also help to earn money online by creating different revenue streams from the blog.

In particular, your first job is to search and find the relevant domain name associated with your niche, which you could consider using some popular domain registrars like Hostinger to build an online presence for your business.

Many bloggers have built successful blogs and scaled up to make money to 6 or even 6-figure income annually. They normally have several income streams that include affiliate marketing, advertising, and directly sponsored posts.

By constantly writing up several articles per week, you can use your blog as evidence to prove to potential clients that you can contribute and deliver value to their businesses.

One thing to keep in mind is that it’s a not get-rich-quick scheme due to the fact bloggers must have a proper plan and self-discipline to slowly deliver value for readers, which can help them to capture the number of loyal readers.

For this reason, SEO optimization is an important aspect to grow your blog traffic by identifying and choosing numerous short and long-tail keywords. 

In addition, make you get familiar with basic SEO like on-page SEO and how to use the keyword search tool properly. In particular, if you have a blog with a low traffic and low authority page, then the best way to drive more traffic is to find low-competition keywords.

Blogging is by far the most useful practice that helps to master your skill as well as build your great business portfolio.

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4. Network with Other Freelancers

Continuing to network and expand the relationship with other freelancers is considered the best ingredient for a successful beginner freelance writing job.

It’s because your networking friends may prefer or introduce you to other potential clients or businesses if they found you are a capable or talented freelance content writer.

Here are several ways that you should consider enhancing your circle of networking friends:

1. Get active on social media like Reddit and Linkedin:

• You should consider joining in subreddit site called Freelance Writer or any site that can help to expand your skill, knowledge, and network with others. In this case, you will learn some useful tips and advice from other experienced freelancers in this subreddit, which can help you to build your great portfolio in the future.
• Linkedin is also a good option to network with other professional freelancers and gets noticed with content writing job opportunities from potential clients.

2. Make an effort to contribute to the overall value of the social group: by answering questions and interacting with other freelancers, which will make you a sense of belonging. Thus, others may be willing to connect with you and share their thoughts or opinions about the job prospects in the future.

3. Keep in touch and connect with other freelancers on social media: the more you participate in the social group, the more others will get to know you. Thus, it will foster a better relationship with them on a personal level.

4. Once you successfully delivered the writing service to your clients, ask them to do your favor by writing a review. You could build a great portfolio in terms of capturing several quality clients and thus they may refer you to others who need your work.

5. Search for content writing jobs 

One of the best ways how to become a freelance writer and get paid is to search for different places that offer content writing jobs. If you don’t mind working full-time- part-time remote jobs, you should consider Flexjobs to land a content writing job.

This platform is one of the popular sites for a freelancer writer to look for professional remote work. If you prefer to work from home rather than take the time to commute, then it’s definitely an ideal option to look for part-time and full-time work as a content writer.

With over 33,000 job listings available in 50 job categories, the platform has become one of the popular freelancing websites for both freelancers and companies.

Read next: Flexjobs Review: Is It a Legitimate Remote Jobs Site?

According to Flexjobs claims, they have an effective scam-free system in place that allows users to find legitimate jobs. In other words, they will double-check each remote job before posting on their platform to ensure you find quality and great job opportunities.

Alternatively, you should get in touch with media businesses and web design companies due to the fact that they have a connection with website owners, and thus if there is a need for a content writer job, they may refer you to those business owners to help them out.

Guest post for free:

Last but certainly not least is to consider taking a free guest post as it may yield a big return on your investment. It’s because potential clients and businesses may see your writing skill once you successfully guest post on magazines and other popular sites.

So how do you find a site that offers guest posts? you just simply jump to Google search and type ” free guest posting sites list 2022“, then you will see a ton of quality and popular websites.

For this reason, this is one of the effective ways to not only build your client portfolio but also can help to drive more traffic to your blog.

How do you search for a freelance writing job?

By actively participating on several job sites, freelancers may find some content writing job opportunities and apply to any that is relevant to their work experience, writing niche, and skill.

As mentioned earlier, you may get a lot of rejections at the beginning of your freelance career, but believe me, hard work and commitment will prevail to better results.

Read next: 

> How To Start Freelancing for Beginners of 2023

> Top 10 Freelancing Websites Offer Online Writing Jobs

Final Words of talking about freelance writing jobs

Content writing jobs are getting more and more popular in the age of advanced information technology. If you have self-discipline and long-term commitment, then it’s not impossible to break into a freelance writing career.

This skill can be learned and improved from time to time. One of the best ways to prove to your potential clients that you have unique and advanced writing skills is to have your own blog and create different side hustles.

It’s because clients may get to know you more by checking your blog posts. With a good portfolio, it’s not hard to make money online as a side hustle, which helps to cover part of your living expenses.

Therefore, if you can scale up this online business into full-time work, the chance you may earn a decent income is highly likely.

Don’t forget to share with others if you find this article valuable.

By Jiro Nguyen. 

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