If you love writing as much as I do,
then maybe you've considered trying to get paid to do it. And you can,
but when you're new to the game and your experience with writing has been
mostly, you know, for fun or as a hobby,
it can feel really overwhelming trying to even get started.
How do you even go about making money writing? That's the goal of this video.
The goal is to give you a few simple,
concrete tips that you can use to go out and start getting paid to
write. So let's jump right in.
Tip number one is get specific about the services that you plan to offer
and write them down.
If you approach potential clients and you tell them that you're a writer,
that is such a broad label. It can mean a million different things.
Being more specific about what exactly you want to do is going to help connect
you with the right people. It's going to make for more meaningful conversations.
And ultimately, it's going to help you get more paid work. Here's an example.
Instead of saying, "My name is Megan and I'm a writer," I would say,
"My name is Megan,
and I'm a fitness writer." I work with a ton of fitness-related companies.
This is something that I love. I'm very passionate about it.
I know a lot about it. So that's what I do.
But we can take this one step further.
What kind of content are you interested in writing? Blogs? Email content?
White papers? Case studies? Again,
the word "writing" is very broad. So let's add another layer to our example.
"My name is Megan and I write blog content for fitness companies." Do this
exercise, write down this statement,
and put it somewhere that you can see it every single day.
I'll help you get clear on who you are and what you want to do and who you want
to work with. Just saying "I want to write" is a bit too abstract,
and it's going to make it really hard for you to start tracking down people to
work with.
And a lot of people are hesitant to do this because they think it's going to
narrow their opportunities. It's going to limit their opportunities.
I'm telling you, I promise you, it is the exact opposite.
I've done this both ways.
I started off my career as a professional writer way too broad,
trying to do everything, trying to write everything for everyone.
And it backfired horribly.
As soon as I did this and got a little more specific, no joke,
the change was overnight. So go write your statement. If you want to share it,
drop it in the comments. I'd love to hear it.
If you need help figuring out what kinds of companies you want to work with,
then you should go check out this video where I talk about how you can start to
pick a freelance writing niche. Tip number two is set your rates,
because you can't get paid to write if you don't know what you want to get paid.
Now a few things will go into your rates:
the time you think it will take you to do that work, the word count,
and the value that you bring. So let's talk about these things a little bit.
Of course, if something takes you five hours to do,
or if you estimate that it's going to take you five hours,
you're going to charge more than if you estimate something is going to take you
one hour. That one's simple.
If you are writing a piece of content that needs to be 3,000 words,
you're going to charge more for that than a thousand words.
But a lot of writers make the mistake of stopping here.
They either charge per word or per hour. That's not enough.
Do not reduce your rates to an hour or to a word count,
because you also want to factor in the value that you bring, the expertise.
Let's say, as an example, that I'm a brand new writer.
I have no professional experience,
but I do have a ton of experience with fitness.
That is going to be a factor in my rates.
Because even though I've never been paid to write,
I know a ton about fitness.
That's value that I can bring that other writers can't because they don't have
that experience.
So I strongly encourage you to look at those three factors - time,
word count, and value/expertise, is how I refer to it.
If you need a more extreme example, let's make it way more extreme.
If you have a college student and you have someone with a PhD
in the same field that the college student is studying to go into,
who's going to get paid more? The college student or the PhD? Like I said,
it's an extreme example. Most of us don't have PhDs,
but this is the difference that I'm talking about.
If you know what you're writing about really well, that's important.
That's worth something. So you are going to figure out your rates.
You can come up with a rate per piece of content, like per blog,
or what I recommend is that you have a flat monthly rate so that when you start
working with clients, you'll have a set workload every month.
And then every month, they pay you the same amount.
So figure out what that workload looks like and what you would charge for it.
Once you do that, what do you think you're going to do?
You're going to write it down.
If you need more help setting your freelance writing rates,
I've got a video on that. I am putting the link in the description below.
Bear in mind that when we write down details like what you plan on charging,
it's not always going to be perfect.
It's not always going to be black and white.
There are going to be times when you have to kind of color outside the lines
because not every client is going to fit perfectly in the parameters that you
set. So you might come up with, you know, a potential monthly plan,
a monthly package for your clients, where you are producing four blogs a month,
a thousand words each, for I don't know, a thousand dollars.
You might have a client come to you and say, "Well,
we only want three blogs a month." Or,
"We want six blogs a month." And then you'll have to adjust it.
But the point of this exercise is to help you figure out those numbers,
so regardless of how you have to adjust that workload,
you'll have a good idea of what you're going to charge for it.
Tip number three is create three samples of your work.
If you're brand new to freelance writing,
then there's a good chance that you don't yet have samples that reflect the
services you have decided to offer. And that's okay.
We're going to make this really easy on ourselves.
And you are going to go and create your own samples.
Do not feel like you have to go take a job for free
just to get the samples. You don't. I don't recommend you ever work for free.
Whatever service you're offering, whether it's blog writing, or email copy,
you're going to go and create three samples of that type of work.
And this is like your portfolio. You want to showcase your very best work,
because this is going to be, for now,
what you send to potential clients when they ask to see samples of your work.
If you have a professional website up,
then you can just publish these on your blog or under your portfolio page,
if you have one. If you don't yet have a website, it's okay. Don't panic.
Don't worry about it. Just put these samples in Google Drive and moving forward,
if a potential client asks to see samples of your work,
you just send them a link to the Google Drive document.
Don't stress if you're not yet published anywhere else yet. It's okay.
Overwhelmingly, potential clients just want to know that you know how
to write.
They're paying less attention to where the work was published and more attention
to the work itself.
So if you can demonstrate that you know how to write,
they're not going to care that it was just a Google Drive doc that you sent.
Tip number four, we got to get you clients. Please, for the love of God,
I beg you, skip the job boards and bidding sites.
If you don't know what I'm talking about yet, go check out this video.
And I will explain why these make me salty AF.
Instead find companies that you want to work with and connect with one of their
employees on LinkedIn. LinkedIn was built for businesses.
It's there to help professionals form new relationships and start
new conversations potentially about working together.
So it's a great place to reach out to people that you think you might want to
offer your services to. Here's an example of what this might look like.
Let's say you've decided that you want to be a food writer,
and you found a local bakery online with a blog,
and you would like to write for them.
What you're going to do is track down one of their employees on LinkedIn.
You're going to send them an invitation to connect,
and then you're going to message them.
And you're going to very briefly introduce yourself and say that you're reaching
out because you're interested in possibly working together.
This process of finding clients gives you so much more control and
freedom,
as opposed to putting you at the mercy of job boards and bidding sites,
where the clients are awful and the rates are even worse.
If you need help finding potential clients on LinkedIn,
I've got a video on that and I've dropped the link below.
Remember that to make money writing, you really need two things.
At the end of the day,
you have to know how to create content that delivers results.
And you have to know how to land clients.
Landing clients brings the business in.
Knowing how to write keeps the business. Because I've spent, at this point,
11 years doing this,
that's what the majority of videos and my blogs cover.
This is what I teach people to do. If you want to learn more about how to write,
check out my course, How to Blog Like a Pro,
where I share my process for creating blog content that gets more organic
traffic and ranks higher in Google. This is the method that I've used,
not only for myself, but for all of my clients.
And it's gotten all of us really good results.
Also take a look at The 7-Day Secret,
which is a mini-course based off of my full program, Revenue Spark,
where I teach professionals my method of client acquisition.
They're open for enrollment so you can join any time. Before you go,
please support my channel by giving this video a thumbs up and help my content
rise to the top of YouTube. If you have any questions, drop them in a comment.
Don't forget to subscribe if you haven't already,
and I'll see you guys next time.