From day one of starting my freelance writing career, I have had a plan. In fact, this has been a way of life for me for quite some time. No matter what I am doing, whether it is my career or anything else, I like to have a plan in place. When it comes to your freelance writing plan, you need to make sure that you include the right details. After all, this is more or less the roadmap that you will follow as you move forward with your career.
First and foremost, your freelance writing plan should clearly outline your goals. I have both short and long term goals in mind at all times. For instance, your short term goal may be to earn a certain amount of income by the end of July. Since you only have a few weeks to reach your goals, you will be forced to deal with them right now. On the other side of things, a long term goal, such as an annual income number, takes devotion over several months. As you can imagine, it can be difficult to stay on pace with your freelance writing plan month after month. But if you are to succeed at this career, you need to do so.
Your freelance writing plan should also include detailed information on the markets that you want to break into, as well as how you plan on achieving this. It is one thing to say that you want to begin to write sales letter, but another entirely to have a marketing plan for achieving this goal.
Perhaps most important is the fact that your freelance writing plan can change over time. This does not mean that you should change things around everyday of the week. But you should feel free to tweak your plan if you feel that it is necessary. Even with a lot of experience, I find my plan changing from time to time; this is something that I have become used to.
If you do not have a freelance writing plan how do you know where your career is headed? To stay on track and ensure that you reach all your goals, you need a concrete plan that will outline future moves. Â
There are many potential freelance writing mistakes that can be made time after time. As you can imagine, avoiding these mistakes will give you a better chance of all around success. One dumb yet common mistake that I see often is when a writer forgets to market his services because he has a lot of work lined up. This may not sound like a big deal, but what happens when the project ends and there is no more work?
There is no denying that this can be a difficult situation to deal with. After all, this requires that you manage your time with a high degree of efficiency and success. In other words, you will have to complete all of the work that you have accepted while also finding time throughout the day to market your services. Can this be time consuming? It sure can. But unless you want to run into issues in the near future you need to be willing to put in the time to avoid this.
This is not to say that you should take on more work than you can handle. Often times, a freelance writer will become afraid of running out of work so they will collect as many jobs as they can find. While a lot of work is good, make sure that you limit yourself to what you can comfortably handle. If you don’t, you could find yourself working seven days per week which is not always fun.Â
The good thing about this common freelance writing mistake is that it is easily avoidable. Now that you are aware of this issue, you can continue to market your services even when you have a solid flow of work. This will help to ensure that when one project ends, another is in line.
I receive many questions about blogging and how it corresponds with a career as a freelance writer. More specifically, many want to know if blogging is necessary. In other words, do you have to maintain a personal blog in order to be an effective freelance writer? The short answer to this question is absolutely not. I have only been running this blog for a bit more than a year. But well before that, I was having success as a freelance writer.
Of course, there are benefits of blogging if you are a freelance writer. First and foremost, potential clients can contact you via your blog. A couple times per week I receive inquiries from webmasters who read my blog and are in the market for content, or know of somebody who is. As you can imagine, this is a great way to increase business without having to do too much marketing.
Another benefit of blogging is that you can show samples without having to deal with attachments or “copy and paste.†In many cases, potential clients who have never heard of my blog ask to see any work that I have personally published online. And of course, this is where I send them.
Remember, you are not going to begin to receive inquiries until your blog takes off. Even though I get some work through this blog, it is far from what it could be. This is one of the reasons why I am thinking of expanding this site in the near future.
All in all, as a freelance writer I love blogging. It is a form of writing, and a great way to express my feelings and opinions. When writing for a client, I do what they say so that they get what they want. But with my blog, I can call all the shots. Even if I was not receiving traffic and work inquiries I would still post on a daily basis!
