Freelance blogging involves writing blog posts for other bloggers. You will be helping other bloggers keep their blogs supplied with fresh, well-written content while doing work you enjoy for decent pay. Adding freelance blogging to your portfolio can be an effective way to keep a more steady flow of work coming your way while adding more variety to your work life.
Freelance writers enjoy an enviable lifestyle that affords them the ability to work where and when they choose, and for clients that they choose doing work that they enjoy. One of the downsides is that there tends to be a bit of a ‘feast or famine’ cycle of being swamped with work, and then sometimes, work is difficult to find. Adding more skills to your service offerings gives you more opportunities to serve a more diverse client base.
Aside from a love and passion for the craft of writing, you’ll also need a solid foundation in Internet marketing, effective website design and some knowledge of basic SEO practices to become a freelance blogger. Knowledge of how to manage the popular blogging platform, WordPress, is also important. Your clients may want you to write the posts and then publish them to the blog as well.
Because basically anyone who can write a sentence, and who has Internet access can slap up a blog, you’ll have to differentiate yourself from the teeming masses by providing excellent, well-written content that’s beyond what the average person would be able to find upon doing a cursory online search.
Here are five tips for getting started with freelance blogging:
1. Start your own blog.
Your first step is going to be to demonstrate that you can create some results with your content. Create a blog on a topic that you are passionate about and work towards getting it ranked high in the search engines for your keywords. Cultivate an audience and engage with them on your blog. Demonstrate best practices and show potential clients that you know how to build and maintain an effective blog.
2. Create a page for your blogging services
Decide on what price you will charge per word, giving a price for a range of word counts from 350-400, 500-600, and 1,000 word posts. Although blog posts tend to be more effective when they are shorter and to the point.
Post your resume and a way for potential clients to request references.
Provide sample blog posts and consider sharing traffic data for particular posts.
Include testimonials that describe the results your blog posts have helped other blogs achieve.
3. Create relationships with potential clients by guest posting.
You can begin by offering to guest post for bloggers that you’d eventually like to write for. If they like your work they may consider hiring you in the future.
4. Comment regularly on blogs that you’d like to work with.
Leave thoughtful comments that add value rather than trying to show how nifty and smart you are. Join in the conversation and keep coming back to blogs that you like so that you can establish a reputation and credibility.
5. Utilize social media to gain exposure.
Use your Facebook profile, create a fan page for your blog and use the Networked Blogs app to connect your blog with the millions of other blogs on Facebook. Use Twitter to get traffic by tweeting when you publish a post. You
can also tweet about your topic and what’s happening with you.
If your blog is on a more serious business topic you’ll want to create a LinkedIn profile, add lots of relevant connections, and join participate in and start groups on your topic.
Visit the following forums to find blogging gigs:
- forum.freelanceswitch.com
- forum.freelancevenue.com
- jobs.problogger.net
- bloggerjobs.biz
You can also find blogging gigs on the regular freelancing sites such as oDesk, Elance and Guru.com.
If you’re an online freelance writer looking to expand your reach, freelance blogging can be a fun way to branch out , attract more clients and increase your bottom line.
Resources:
http://www.bloggingteacher.com/how-to-become-a-freelance-blogger
