You have probably thought of being a freelance writer as a bit of a dream career, free of the mundane hassles that can plague the office worker. While it is true that as a writer you will have more variety in your life than at most jobs, you don’t always get to skip the less exciting aspects of a career.

And you certainly have to develop a specific mindset to succeed in the freelance writing job.

Most of the time you probably won’t make money writing about topics you particularly love or enjoy learning about, and many times a large part of your income won’t come from writing at all! And of course, there is always the money side of things; as a freelancer you are in charge of your own finances, from setting your budget month to month to calculating your own taxes.

For love AND money

In this section of the site, we are going to take a look at some areas you are going to have to concentrate on beyond writing in your career as a freelance writer. I have found a lot of these areas particularly troublesome.

I am not by any means a number cruncher, and I find that as I sit “filling out the books” I am not only calculating the money I’ve made and spent on the business, but also the hours I am using up making no money when I could be using the time finding more writing opportunities, checking out a new online writing contest, or just making money through writing. Still, it is a side of the business that has to get done.

Supplementing the writing side of the business

As my business has grown, I have realized that writing isn’t the only way to make money dealing with the written word on the Internet, even for a freelance writer. There are lots of different ways to add to your bottom line if you know what to look for, and some of them can be quite lucrative. We will be taking a look at finding proofreading jobs, editing jobs, and copywriting jobs on the Internet.

I have found that proofreading jobs and editing jobs in particular can be great for boosting up the end of the month money coming in for any writer, and you might even find you make more money per hour with this type of job than you do writing articles! Getting a few freelance editing jobs will not only get you some extra money, I have found that they usually lead to further writing opportunities as well.

Although writing is the defining part of a freelance writer’s life, writing careers are never about just writing. If you want to write for a living, particularly on the Internet, you need to be constantly on the lookout for supplemental income in the way of proofreading jobs, editing jobs, and copywriting jobs. You also need to understand the bookkeeping and mental side of the business, and we can help you out!

If you are one of the people who have dreamed about carving out a career in the world of freelance writing, you are certainly not alone.
In February 2005 I found myself at a bit of a cross roads in my life; my wife had a great job as a Registered Nurse and we had two children. I had just wrapped up a temporary job with a government agency, and had no idea what to do next.

I wanted to be my own boss

What I knew I certainly did not want to do was return to a five day a week job. I had had some very bad experiences at mills, restaurants, and so on, and was coming to a conclusion about myself that many people had told me before: it was very unlikely that I would ever be happy working under the direction of someone else (I prefer to think that is because I am brilliant and could do better and tell people so, but my wife says it has more to do with me being difficult).

My interest: writing

I did know that I was interested in writing for a living. Writing is something that I have always been skilled at, right from my days in elementary school. I had won a few cash prizes with some stories, and I definitely entertained thoughts of becoming a writer.

Feeling that it really was now or never, I began searching the Internet for writing opportunities and buying up any book I could find about how to start a freelance writing career.

The first month: figuring out how to start

Within the first month, I found out two things very quickly. The most important, and the reason why I feel that this site is important, is that those books did very little in the way of helping me understand how to start a freelance writer’s career.

Worse, there is an incredible dearth of information out there on how to make a career of freelance writing on the Internet. Imagine, millions and millions of web pages all over the world, and the only books to be found want to talk about breaking into the magazine and newspaper markets!

In addition, these books were pretty vague when it came to where to find jobs, or what one could expect to make. I assume this is because many writers are jealous of their revenue sources (and rightly so) and maybe even a little shy about disclosing what they actually make.

Getting the first writing jobs

The second thing I found out was that once you get on the right trail on the Internet, making money through freelance writing is a lot easier than any of those authors made it sound.

I entered my first bidding site very cautiously (and without telling my wife) because I did have to pay a fee for the rights to bid on jobs. I figured that if I at least broke even, then it would be justified. Well, I did more than break even, I actually made ten times what the initial fee was for the right to bid!

Being realistic

Now, before you go rushing off to reap the benefits of Internet writing, let me combine my two discoveries and my solution to them in order to put everything into perspective.
Writers, and particularly those who write for the Internet, don’t always make huge sums of money. I did make a lot more than I invested, but in the first month of my business on that particular site, that only amounted to $800 US. I made an additional $200 off another site I had found, but $1000 is hardly enough to feed a family and pay the mortgage for a month (fortunately my wife had a great job, did I mention that already?).

If you are looking for a site that promises you a surefire way to make millions, I should point out that today, a year and a half later, I am making a respectable $50,000 a year, with less than two years in business.

The key was in knowing where to look for jobs, how to pitch myself as the right choice for a writer, and retaining my good clients. I was also able to learn how to bid much more effectively in a competitive market place, and how to avoid jobs that ended up costing me money.

Honest sharing

The upshot is that I would like to share this information with other writers who are looking to start their own freelance writing careers. The pages on this site will be diverse, but my main strength and source of knowledge is in making money by writing for Internet sites, as well as proof reading for those sites and so on.

This site is not about hiding my secrets because I am scared of competition; there is more than enough work for every competent writer out there, and I am of the belief that if we all hold the same standards, it can only benefit us as a group.

Of course, you are probably wondering why this guy would share these secrets for free. Well, once you start writing for the Internet successfully, you will see the kind of revenue that can be made without having to charge site visitors a dime for reading.

This part remains a mystery for me, my partner Alexander (he’s the guy whose picture you don’t see, which is too bad because he is an Aussie and is no doubt much better looking than I am) handles that side of it.

You can succeed in your own writing career

What I am here to do is provide you with information on starting your own freelance writing career, right from your mindset and where to look for jobs to an outline of what most Internet clients are looking for.

In these pages you will find stories of what I’ve done wrong and what I’ve done right, and hopefully you will be able to avoid some of the mistakes I made and benefit from the times I’ve hit the target. You’ll find out where to look for work, how to come across in such a way that potential clients can’t say no, and how to protect yourself.

If you have always dreamed of becoming a freelance writer, the Internet Age beckons. There’s money to be made all from the comfort of your own home, and I would like to help you to succeed with your dream.