5 Crucial Things to Focus on as a New Freelance Writer

If you’re just starting out as a new freelance writer online you may feel your lack of experience, contacts and recent clips is a serious drawback.

But that doesn't have to be the case.

The trick as a new freelance writer is to leverage what you have, while building what you need, and to do this you’ll need to focus on a few specific areas.

1. Your non-writing experience

Whether you’re a student entrepreneur, a parent with an autistic child or a teacher in an inner city school, you are the best person to write about your situation, the issues and challenges you face, and the solutions you’ve found.

You can write a more authentic and detailed piece than an experienced freelance writer who has to research it from scratch.

Emphasise your personal experiences when pitching ideas for articles. Find a niche market that covers your topic and pitch them with a unique story only you can tell. Put the focus on your life experience, not your (lack of) writing experience.

2. Learning your craft

If you’re not a fan of lifelong learning, freelance writing online is probably not for you. Things change rapidly in the online world and we writers have to keep stretching ourselves and adapting to keep up.

Dedicate time to learning the craft of writing for an online market, focusing on both developing your writing style and understanding technicalities such as SEO techniques.

A mixture of formal and informal study will help you learn quickly and efficiently. The best way to study the craft of writing online is to read lots of online articles and get a feel for what works and what doesn’t. If you can afford a freelance writing course to accelerate the learning curve, that’s even better.

3. Getting feedback

Feedback is your friend. We can’t improve when we don’t know what we’re doing wrong. In writing, as in everything else, we simply don’t know what we don’t know.

You can get feedback on your writing from writing instructors, from a critique group, or by writing a blog (your readers will soon let you know which posts they like by sharing and commenting).

You should also embrace feedback from every editor or blogger who rejects you and is kind enough to give you a reason. Most won’t. If they do, they may have taken the time to do so because they love your writing but want to warn you that you’re making easy-to-fix, rookie mistakes. Read their feedback, thank them for it, and incorporate it into future work.

4. Building a portfolio

A body of work you can link to when pitching ideas is a great asset. Make building a portfolio a high priority when you start out.  It’s not a good idea to work for rock-bottom rates long-term, but sometimes it’s worth taking a few gigs that pay a little less if they give you high quality clips on professional looking websites.

You can start building a portfolio from day one as a freelancer, even if you don’t have your own website set up yet. Download this free eBook to learn how.

5. Making connections

When it comes to freelancing it’s a mixture of what you know, who you know, who knows you – and what they think of you. It’s never too early to set up social media profiles or attend offline events to start making connections in the industries you want to work in.

Use social media platforms and other online forums to build relationships with potential clients and publications that use freelance writers. Get your name known at the websites you want to write for by sharing and commenting on their articles.

By choosing to focus on these few areas you’ll be putting your energies into activities that will reap the biggest benefits as you build your freelance writing business.

Perhaps you’ve been doing this a while now. What did you focus on when you first started freelance writing online? What would you tell new freelance writers? Feel free to share your experiences and thoughts in the comments section below.