Entrepreneurs-Journey.com

by Chris Bibey

It is easy to show people how to make money through freelance writing. After all, once you have clients, the writing part usually comes a bit easier. In fact, many freelance writers will openly admit that they have a more difficult time marketing their services than the actual writing process. If you are going to be successful, you need to learn how to find freelance writing clients. From there, your writing ability will take over, and you can do your thing.

Every freelance writer finds clients in their own way. I have my own strategy for doing so, and it is safe to say that it is much different than that of many others. With that being said, there are basic steps and details that will allow you to get a good start. Let’s take a look at a few now.

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by Chris Bibey

There are many obstacles that new freelance writers run into. But when it comes down to it, none are bigger than trying to put together a pricing schedule or rate sheet. No matter what you call it, you need to know what prices you are going to charge potential clients. This can be a tricky proposition because charging too much will scare away potential buyers, but selling yourself short will result in leaving a lot of money on the table.

When I began my freelance writing career, I must admit that my pricing schedule was a bit out of kilter. I was spending so much time on other tasks that throughout my first month I never really had a solid pricing schedule in place. Instead, I did what I thought was right at the time. While this ended up working out in the end, looking back I can see that I lost several clients and that I probably worked for too little when I did not have to.

Here are three tips to follow when putting together a pricing schedule.

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Chris Bibey has joined the Entrepreneurs-Journey.com feature writing team and he’s beginning by covering his specialty - How to start a freelance writing career. Chris is very qualified to teach the topic because he’s walked the talk. He left his 9 to 5 job, become a full time freelance writer and within three months was earning $5,000 per month. In October of this year he topped $7,000, not bad!

Chris is going to teach you how you can do the same by telling his story and offering tips to budding freelancers in a new weekly column on a trial basis. If you like what he writers, you can expect to see Chris as a regular at this blog, so please be generous with your feedback comments.

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Five Steps to Starting a Freelance Writing Career

The number of people who aspire to become freelance writers is astonishing. Unfortunately, most of these people never take the time to chase their dream. Instead, they work their 9 to 5 office job, take orders from a crabby boss, and get paid less than what they are worth. If you want to be a freelance writer and are tired of any of the issues above, it is time to make a move. The more you procrastinate the more time you are losing.

Even though it will take time to build a successful freelance writing career, the steps to actually getting started are simple. No, these steps do not guarantee loads of money, but they will put you on the right path to earning a solid income sometime in the future.

Here are five steps to starting a freelance writing career.

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I just completed a great podcast interview with Collis Ta’eed from the NorthxEast blog, although the focus was not on that blog, it was on his newer blog, Freelance Switch. Freelance Switch is all about freelancing and skyrocketed in popularity in a matter of weeks, nearing 4000 RSS readers at one point - not bad for a three week old blog!

We talked about how he managed to grow the traffic to his blog so quickly and it turned out to be a very good interview with lots of cutting edge blog traffic tips. I’m only releasing the podcast to my Blog Mastermind members (sorry readers - I do have to have something premium for my members), so if you want to hear the full interview you better be on the early notification list to get into the mentoring program.

After talking with Collis and his success with a blog about freelancing I started thinking more about the whole freelance industry. I suspect there are quite a few freelancers who read Entrepreneurs-Journey.com given that working as a freelancer is often considered running a business. Personally I have never wanted to be a freelancer, although I have certainly worked from time to time on freelance projects, especially during the days when I ran a web hosting company.

What Is A Freelancer?

Freelancers, as far as I understand it, are individuals - talented creative types usually - who chose not to seek permanent employment with a single company but instead take on contract projects working for many different businesses.

The idea is that by not committing to a full time job you gain some semblance of freedom and more control over your working lifestyle and income. You take on only as many projects as you need/want to, you can work from home and you don’t have any boss telling you what to do.

That all sounds good, but is freelancing really the best option if you are looking to improve your working lifestyle?

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