Investigating Freelance Writing Opportunities
Posted 01-14-2011 at 05:39 PM by Ouroboros
Today I'm going to outline my research up until now and what I'm doing to move forward with my strategy.
As I mentioned before, I've decided that writing is going to be a large part of the strategy so I'll concentrate on that first. Writing is just plain hard work if you let it be, but there is also a lot to be learned from writing for others.
You learn organizational skills because without them you'll never be able to research topics and write fast enough to make a decent wage. You learn to express yourself in print and break problems(the article) down into logical steps(the body of your article), followed by making conclusions based on your research(the introduction and closing paragraph).
You also learn important time management skills as well. If you have a hard time concentrating and getting started on projects, writing for others will break you of that pretty quickly!
Getting Down to Business - The Research
So one of the first questions I asked myself was "Who am I'm going to write for?", followed closely by "How am I going to get paid?".
Some research in google for terms like 'get paid to write', 'freelance writing jobs' and 'how do i become a freelance writer' turned up the usual suspects such as guru, odesk, freelancer and the like, but also some that I was totally unfamiliar with. I also noticed that a lot of the sites giveaway books and tips in return for your email address(imagine that!).
My next step was to copy all the URL's of all the interesting sites I found into a spreadsheet and sign-up for a free booklet from the more interesting sites. I then sat down with a cold beer and began reading.
Several beers and a lot of research later I found some interesting facts. I determined that there are basically 5 categories of opportunities for people aspiring to write for payment. Each has it advantages and disadvantages so I broke them down further and researched each in more detail.
1) Freelance Writing sites - Sites where you bid against others and try to draw attention to yourself (guru.com, elance.com, ifreelancer etc.)
2) Blogging sites - Dozens of sites that allow you to host a free blog that you can monetize in various ways.
3) Revenue Sharing sites - These are mostly article directories where you can post articles and receive a percentage of the adsense revenue. These pay anywhere from 20-100%
4) Upfront Payment sites - These sites basically either provide content for their own 'authority' sites or take work from others and assign it to a pool or writers for direct payment.
5) Writing for Others Directly - You find and contact clients and work for them one-to-one. You're responsible for finding customers and making sure you get paid.
I'll go over the pros and cons of each of these in a separate post...
Stay Tuned...
[Homework: You ARE still working on getting a paypal account aren't you? Might want to look into an adsense account as well. If we publish any of our own stuff online we're going to need to monetize it somehow...]
As I mentioned before, I've decided that writing is going to be a large part of the strategy so I'll concentrate on that first. Writing is just plain hard work if you let it be, but there is also a lot to be learned from writing for others.
You learn organizational skills because without them you'll never be able to research topics and write fast enough to make a decent wage. You learn to express yourself in print and break problems(the article) down into logical steps(the body of your article), followed by making conclusions based on your research(the introduction and closing paragraph).
You also learn important time management skills as well. If you have a hard time concentrating and getting started on projects, writing for others will break you of that pretty quickly!
Getting Down to Business - The Research
So one of the first questions I asked myself was "Who am I'm going to write for?", followed closely by "How am I going to get paid?".
Some research in google for terms like 'get paid to write', 'freelance writing jobs' and 'how do i become a freelance writer' turned up the usual suspects such as guru, odesk, freelancer and the like, but also some that I was totally unfamiliar with. I also noticed that a lot of the sites giveaway books and tips in return for your email address(imagine that!).
Quote:
So the first thing I did after my initial research was to open a new email account at gmail.com. It's really easy to do and the free tools they make available are going to be really handy later on.
It's vitally important that you have a separate account for your writing 'business' vs. your personal email for several reasons. It's also important that you use a professional sounding name for the account.
This unique account allows you to filter all your business related emails into one place so you don't have to filter through all your personal stuff to find it. The professional sounding email name lends some credence to your efforts and gives people a good first impression. Would you rather deal with QualityContent@gmail.com or CloudDancer69@aol?
It's vitally important that you have a separate account for your writing 'business' vs. your personal email for several reasons. It's also important that you use a professional sounding name for the account.
This unique account allows you to filter all your business related emails into one place so you don't have to filter through all your personal stuff to find it. The professional sounding email name lends some credence to your efforts and gives people a good first impression. Would you rather deal with QualityContent@gmail.com or CloudDancer69@aol?
My next step was to copy all the URL's of all the interesting sites I found into a spreadsheet and sign-up for a free booklet from the more interesting sites. I then sat down with a cold beer and began reading.
Several beers and a lot of research later I found some interesting facts. I determined that there are basically 5 categories of opportunities for people aspiring to write for payment. Each has it advantages and disadvantages so I broke them down further and researched each in more detail.
1) Freelance Writing sites - Sites where you bid against others and try to draw attention to yourself (guru.com, elance.com, ifreelancer etc.)
2) Blogging sites - Dozens of sites that allow you to host a free blog that you can monetize in various ways.
3) Revenue Sharing sites - These are mostly article directories where you can post articles and receive a percentage of the adsense revenue. These pay anywhere from 20-100%
4) Upfront Payment sites - These sites basically either provide content for their own 'authority' sites or take work from others and assign it to a pool or writers for direct payment.
5) Writing for Others Directly - You find and contact clients and work for them one-to-one. You're responsible for finding customers and making sure you get paid.
I'll go over the pros and cons of each of these in a separate post...
Stay Tuned...
[Homework: You ARE still working on getting a paypal account aren't you? Might want to look into an adsense account as well. If we publish any of our own stuff online we're going to need to monetize it somehow...]
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