I’ve had my share of ups and downs during my freelance writing career. There are many factors that influence your success as a writer. Some of these factors are how strong your networking or marketing skills are, your ability to properly utilize SEO, or even your editing skills.
I’ve gathered 3 major mistakes that most new writers make when they first start their careers and I’ll be teaching you how to avoid them. Follow my advice, and you can save yourself some growing pains as you learn how to be a better freelance writer.
Number one: your portfolio sucks
Your writing portfolio is one of the most critical factors that determine if a client wants to hire you or not. Not only will you be showcasing your writing skills to clients, but you are also giving them a glimpse of what your work will look like on their website.
Most clients probably won’t spend too much time looking over your writing; many of the people I’ve worked for hire me to save them time, which means they don’t have the time to read thousands of words across several portfolio snippets. Keep your portfolio sweet and simple, while showcasing at least 3 of your strongest and most relevant pieces of work.
Alongside that, you’ll want to show your clients that you aren’t an amateur. Google Drive portfolios are better than nothing, but a personal website can elevate your portfolio significantly. There are many free template website makers available to choose from, like Wix or Wordpress.org. I personally use Strikingly, since the pro features made it cheaper to host my domain than most other options.
Having a personal website will let your potential clients know that you are very serious about your craft and it gives you even more creative freedom to market yourself and your brand via the style and design of your site. If you spend some time working on how you and your brand are presented to clients, you’ll increase your odds of getting hired.
Number two: your pitch frequency and quality are lacking
You’ll most likely be spending most of your time pitching to editors or clients to land a gig. This is where you’ll really need to slow down just a bit and flex your sales skills. Yep, you heard that right; freelance writing has more to do with marketing yourself than it does with actually writing.
You need to constantly be working on your marketing skills to actually sell your services. Your writing must be strong, but even if your writing is on par with Stephen King, you need to be able to convince others that your words are worth money.
When you find a client that you are interested in writing for, spend some time researching their brand. Read a few articles on their blog (nearly every brand has a blog, it's great for traffic), read their ‘about me’ page, and absorb everything you can about the person who will be reading your pitch.
This allows you to personalize your pitch, which will significantly increase the odds of you getting hired. Show that you respect the person or company that you wish to write for by comparing a portfolio piece with one of theirs; you can say something like: ‘I feel like my writing would align with your brand as my work and the work on ‘X brand’ accomplish similar goals’.
Editors get slammed with many emails from other writers just like yourself who all want to get hired. Showing that you actually care about their brand allows you to stand out. This won’t guarantee success, but you’ll leave an impression on your client. I’ll be writing a future post on how to pitch to clients since this is a very critical part of a freelance writer’s career. Make sure you sign up for email notifications below (don’t worry, I won’t spam you).
Now for the hard news. You are going to be rejected. A lot. If you are only sending five pitches a week, that’s way too small of a net to be casting. I personally spend quite a bit of time pitching to hundreds of clients every day; it's a necessary part of being a freelancer.
Just like trying to get a book published, you have to be constantly shoving your work down any potential lead’s throat (in a less aggressive way, of course). For every one hundred pitches you send, expect to only get a small handful of actual responses, and even less for interested clients.
For now, focus on improving the frequency and quality of your pitches, and you’ll start to see some better results. Stay tuned for a future post on how to send the perfect pitch.
Number three: your writing needs improvement
Let's face it, in a market chock full of millions of writers, you’ll be competing with many other professionals who have more experience and skill than yourself. You’ll need to be constantly on your A game and that's no easy feat to accomplish in a creative art such as writing.
You need to CONSTANTLY be reading and writing if you ever want to make money through freelance writing. If you are the type of writer who can only create when you feel like it, then you’ll struggle to make a living through writing. You must be able to consistently create content as a writer, and the more you do it, the better you become.
This doesn’t mean just sit down and mash out 5k words every day (definitely don’t do that). You also need to be putting yourself out there to other writers to get valuable feedback. Word count doesn’t mean anything if all of your words don’t accomplish a goal.
To improve your writing, find other creators in your niche and study those that are successful. Don’t be afraid to reach out or ask the occasional question to someone that you are studying, you might get lucky and get some free advice and make a friend in the process. Constantly workshop and network with other writers to keep your skills sharp.
Outside of that, you need to also be reading and researching the hell out of your niche. There are days when I have no clue what I’m going to write until I read a handful of articles across different websites to see what is trending and what other authors are doing to make money. Sure, don’t steal content word for word, but put your own spin on it. Hell, this entire article is something I felt like writing after reading a few ‘freelance writer advice’ posts.
Did all of the above and your writing is still coming up short? It’s probably due to your editing skills. Part of the art of freelance writing comes from how well at editing you are. I’ll use myself as an example. My biggest weakness is overwriting, especially when a client is asking for a short piece and I don’t know how to shut up about a topic that I'm interested in.
I learned early on in my career what I needed to cut out of my first drafts. This is what is referred to as ‘filler’. Most clients charge by word count, so you have to make it worth their money to provide as much information as you can with as few words as possible. It’s like a puzzle, but the stakes are a bit higher; if you write too much, it's not good and if you write too little, you’ll be sent back to revise your piece.
I can ramble about what makes writing ‘good’ for hours, so I’ll probably make another separate post just for that. You get the gist of it though. If you aren’t landing gigs, make sure that the work in your portfolio is properly edited and get feedback as much as you possibly can.
Fix those mistakes and you might get lucky
As I've said previously, there are many things that can influence your success rate with getting work from clients. If you take the time to improve your portfolio, your pitch skills, and your writing itself, you’ll most likely start to land more clients here and there.
Freelance writing isn’t easy when you are first starting out. I’ll be creating several writing-related posts to help out freelance writers in the future, so if you want to stay in touch, make sure you are notified via email updates! Some of the posts that I'll be making are full of information that I wish that I had when I first started out, so save yourself some time and money by checking them out on my website.
If these posts do well, I’ll create a newsletter that will offer free weekly advice to help keep your skills and spirits up during your freelance writing journey. Thanks for taking the time to listen to my rant, and I’ll catch you in my next post.
Always be writing, my friends,
~Greysyns