You’ve read the articles, you’ve seen the proof, and you’ve listened to the hour-long podcasts on how to get started as a freelance writer.

Haven’t you?

But deep down you know you’re trapped in the frustrating cycle of taking steps to start your business as a real professional freelance writer. And make a living from it. I get it, you’re wondering….

I don’t know if I can ACTUALLY do this.

Where am I supposed to find clients to write for?

I don’t even have a degree, how can I win high paying clients with more experienced writers getting all the great opportunities?

You know what, the truth is that almost every freelance writer starts out thinking in the same way. But let me tell you this, it is possible. And you CAN do this.

The good news is that this is an excellent market to get into and there is no shortage of work. If you’re willing to put in the work and the effort to move forward because you have made up your mind that you’re in this for the long haul, then read on. I want to share with you 7 tips that will help you to start your freelance writing career, and get you positive results quickly.

1- PICK A NICHE

The first thing you want to do is pick a niche. This is one (among many) important things to do as a new writer. Picking a niche means that you’ll want to choose what industry you would like to write for as well as define who your target clients are. What will you specialize in? Ask yourself these questions:

1. What type of work will I do (blogging, website content, white papers, video content script writing, articles)?
2. What industry will I write for (healthcare, education, technology, retail, etc..)?
3. Who are my target clients ( B2B, B2C, solopreneurs, bloggers, small businesses, and so on)?

When I first started out I had absolutely no clue where to begin. But I eventually decided to go into the digital marketing niche (which I love!). But it’s funny that I would have never thought of myself writing about digital marketing trends.

A great place to start is, to begin with something you love already. Or you can write for an industry in which you have a good amount of experience. And no, I’m not referring to a degree you obtained in college (although that can be extremely helpful). Think more broadly.

For instance, if you spent several years in the hospitality industry like I did, maybe consider using the skills and knowledge you acquired to write in that industry.

Were you a teacher? Think about how you can use that experience to educate others and offer meaningful help. Every person has some background they can leverage to break in. What’s yours?

Becoming a freelance writer is a step by step process. Read these steps if you are new freelance writer.

2- CREATE YOUR WEBSITE

Many new writers usually end up asking the question, “Do I have to have a website?”

I’ll give you the simple answer first. No.

You don’t have to. But let me tell you this, it will be very hard for professional clients to take you and your freelance services seriously. And you can’t blame them, can you? I mean, where are they supposed to find you online?

A website is like your landing page that tells clients more about who you are, the services you provide, and is supposed to actually serve you well as you establish yourself. Not create more stress.

Here’s a complete step by step process to help you create your own website.

So before you decide to skip putting one up, give a chance to share why it can be beneficial to your business growth and productivity.

• It serves as a great place where you can direct prospects to learn more about you and your services.
• It can help you appear more professional, credible and capable (prospects want to be able to know they can trust you). Saying you’re a professional writer is one thing, but declaring it to the world and actively marketing yourself online can tell prospects this is not just some part-time hobby.
• A website serves as a great all-in-one-place to house your portfolio, client testimonials, is the unique way (I have found) the allows you to really brand yourself.
• It saves you the time of going in detail to each inquiring prospect about your services, pricing figures, and other questions they may have about you.
• It’s more effective to send prospects there quickly.
• It’s more effective when prospects and clients can refer back to your website on their own time and not some random piece of paper they may have lost with all your information on it.
• If a client like your services and wants to refer you to a colleague, they can easily email that prospect a quick link to your website.

If you’re one of those people whose stomach turns when attempting to do anything technical, there are some options for you that I think will put a smile back on your face. Let me explain.

Hire Someone

You can choose to hire someone to build your website for you. And it doesn’t have to cost you your rent money either. If you don’t have much to spend now, that’s fine.

Check out Fiverr. There are people who offer a multitude of services including website creation, and the prices are as low as $5. Make sure that you look into the ratings before you hire anyone and give them a detailed description of what you want to be done.

Do It Yourself

Lastly, you can try to do it yourself.

This is what I did. At first, I doubted my ability to create one that looked even halfway decent. Especially when I looked at other professional sites from other freelance writers.

This is a great skill to have because what I have found is that many clients actually enjoy working with writers who can do a little more than just writing. For instance: knowing how to publish a client’s content in the back-end of their website, having knowledge of good SEO tactics (not keyword stuffing), knowledge of different themes and at least the basic plugins is more valuable to clients than you might think.

This is essential if you are trying to land work rewriting the content on the different pages of your client’s website. Professional clients aren’t interested in holding your hand in order for you to get the job done. They are looking for someone that has a ‘Get it done’ attitude.

Make sure to include basic pages (Home, Services, Hire Me, Portfolio).

The stronger your skill set, the better you will look to prospects. This will also help when it comes to pitching (as we’ll cover later on).

3- CREATE GREAT SAMPLES

Having samples will make you appear more credible and help you gain your prospect’s trust. And the main things that any prospect wants to see is how you write. They’re looking to find out if based on what they see, you’d be a good fit to write for them. When it comes to creating samples, there are several options.

You can also try Udemy For Learning New Skills and get the master at freelance writing. There are a number of free and paid courses to help you.

Are you using Grammarly? It’s an online free tool to handle the basic grammar and notifies you for any spelling mistakes too. It’s one of the finest grammar checkers. Check out the tool here and sign up using the free version.

If you love using it, enjoy the best premium version. Undoubtedly, premium version covers all essentials including grammar, word usage, sentence structure etc.

Helpful: Top 21 Freelance Job Sites For Beginners Who Want To Work From Home

Used Old Samples

Using past samples is a great option to get started quickly. If you have any old pieces of writing from college, your school newspaper, work you may have done at your previous place of work, or any other piece you feel is your best work, use it! Put it into your portfolio.

But keep in mind, if it doesn’t demonstrate your best writing ability, it may not be worth it to showcase it for prospects to hire you.

If it’s not the best, that’s okay. Go along with the next option…

Create Your Own

In my opinion, creating your own samples is an even better option than using older samples.

Why? …Because you have the opportunity to tailor it to clearly reflect the type of writing you’re getting into.

But on the other hand, creating your own from scratch means you have more power to present clips that will shine, simply because they’re relevant.

So how do you create your own?

After you have identified your niche, that’ll help a lot. But let me use an example.

If your specialty is B2B (Business to Business) writing for industrial manufacturing companies, you could create a sample on something your target client would be likely to publish on their blog.

You could pick a specific product and help your readers by explaining more about it (How does it work? Who is best suited to use it? Does using it save you time and money in any way…).

Do some research into the type of content that is already being published in your niche to get a good feel of what you can write about. Make sure, you produce quality content to be used as a sample. Here’s a guide on creating perfect content to get maximum shares.

Then write up a blog on it and publish it as a sample. If you don’t have a blog, you can use LinkedIn Pulse and/or Medium (which are platforms that will publish your articles instantly for free).

Then you have a fresh clean sample that will be more attractive to potential clients and also, will help in building your freelance writing career.

4- LEVERAGE SOCIAL MEDIA

Whether or not you already have social media accounts already set up, what I am about to tell you is critical.

The reason I suggest creating a social media account is that research is showing that more and more people are spending their time on these platforms (Facebook in particular).

Thing is, you’ll succeed if you go about this the right way. Here is what you need to do.

• Set up the social platform you want to use to promote yourself and your services online ( Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest…).
• Next, customize your profile to make your services clear based on who you are (freelance writer) and for what niche you specialize. This will make it super easy for prospects to identify who you are.
• Make sure to add a picture of yourself so it’s easier to connect with you and you come across as personable.
• Make sure to put For Hire or Currently taking on new clients. Otherwise, prospects will not know.
• Also, make sure to put a link to your website on all of your social media profiles. When you make it extremely easy for clients to contact you, you have a better chance of that happening.

The more specific you are, the better.

Being specific makes it easier for clients to know at a glance that writing is not just a hobby, but you’re a professional.

So be very specific. If you remember one thing, keep this in mind, Every point of contact a prospect has with you needs to confirm more in their minds that you are a professional.

Your message needs to be clear across ALL of your social media platforms and on your website.

Required Reading: 40 Plus Free Online Courses To Grow Your Online Blog And Business

5- START PITCHING

Once you have your website platform up complete with your portfolio samples and you’ve set up your social media accounts, you can go ahead and start approaching your target clients to offer your services.

There are several approaches you can take:

• Apply at job boards. There are some that pay pretty decent for a new writer. Grab the ultimate guide to create a profile on job board sites like Upwork.
• Cold calling
• Paid guest posting (this helps with getting you more exposure and with income)

This link has a list of places to get you started finding work.

You’ll have the best advantage of landing a writing gig if you personalize your pitches. It’s tempting to think that if you send you 50 applications each day that you’ll likely land a gig soon, right?

But your chances are actually lower if they aren’t personal, and you send out the exact same pitch to each publication…trust me they will be able to tell. And they won’t be able to connect with you because you’ll be in the same pool as all the other writers who drew up a generic pitch in 2 minutes and rushed to send it out.

Rather, you want to take the time to look at the company, review the details of the position, and sell yourself well.

Here are some key things to remember:

• Address the person receiving your pitch by name (NOT dear editor or blog owner). It shows carelessness and a deep disconnect.
• Explain where you came across their ad.
• Explain why you would be a good fit. What makes you stand out from other writers?
• Include why you’re the most valuable writer to take on the position and how you will benefit the company.

Related ==> 5 most simple tips to get new freelance clients

6- MARKET YOUR SERVICES

Once you’ve built your website and started marketing yourself on social media, there are some additional things you need to keep doing to keep your business afloat.

Even if you’ve managed to land a few gigs, avoid making the mistake of becoming so excited that you neglect to continue your marketing efforts. This is a HUGE no-no. Trust me. Marketing yourself is something you will always have to do as long as you’re in business.

Can you imagine the CEO of a large Corporation like Target of Best Buy telling their marketing team, “Just quit marketing, we have enough customers to last us awhile? Our marketing efforts can die down for a while”? Okay, I know it sounds funny, but only because you and I both know that will never happen, right?

No matter what your profession is, you have to be willing to put in lots of work to market your business.

I’ve heard of freelance writers who lost most of their clients all around the same time. Clients that were supposed to be long term, and she didn’t see it coming. It’s not to say that this happens often but you have to understand that the workload is often unpredictable.

For writers, it’s no different. One of the best habits to develop early on is to stay productive when you have no clients. And in the same way, try to be just as productive when you have several projects booked.

Related ==> 27 Best Freelance Services To Offer From Home

7- SETTING GOALS THAT LEAD TO SUCCESS

What motivates you? During what times of the day are you most productive? Find out, and make it a goal to establish a working schedule that fits well for you. When you set clear goals for your business it truly helps you to stay more productive.

What I do is I have a daily “quota” that I want to hit every single day. It includes:

• Number of pitches to send out for guest posts
• My goals for my own blog (ideas, publishing schedule, and sharing)
• How and when to follow up with prospects
• How much time I will spend on job boards ( job boards take up about 5% of my marketing time).
• When I will go on social media
• Reminders to share my new posts on social media across all platforms
• And many other tiny details that would drive me crazy if I kept them in my head.

Like any company, you need to have set goals and a clear marketing plan. I’m sure by now you’re still in shock at how incredibly challenging it is to get your blog content noticed.

Trello is a great tool for helping stay organized (and it’s what I use). If you’re a visual learner, this will probably be your go-to tool.

When you write down your goals, all you have to do then each day is focus on doing (not thinking about what needs to be done).

TO SUM UP

So we’ve discussed the ways that you can get started on your journey as a professional freelance writer. You should have a good sense of direction so that you can move. Once you take action, you will begin to see results and find it easier to keep going because you’ll see all the progress you’ve made. So don’t give up!

Even new freelance writers can have success quickly. Just be persistent, goal oriented, and market your services a lot.

As you keep learning and growing in your niche expertise and landing more work, you’ll get further and further ahead in your career.

And please share your thoughts, comments, and questions down below. I’d love to hear how what progress you’re making.