Time to face an important truth: in order to continue doing what you love, you need to earn money from freelance writing. When I first started out in this field, I was hoping that I would be writing a lot of articles on political events, humorous stories about my kids, opinion pieces, the really fun and interesting stuff. At this point in my career, I have realized that having opportunities to write about these things are few and far between. In order to earn money from freelance writing, I have to (often!) write on topics that don’t exactly stimulate my brain or bring joy to my heart.

Don’t give up your dream - and don’t work for slave wages

There are a couple of things that freelance writers, especially those in the beginning stages of their careers, are prone to. The first is to hang on to their pretension, believing that their art is far more important than making a living. What they don’t realize is that they can retain the parts of writing that they love without writing off, so to speak, the mundane tasks that put food on the table for the kids. You don’t have to give up your dream, you just have to realize that if you ever are going to “make it” in the way that you want, you are going to have to pay your dues.

The second mistake that freelance writers make is to devalue their services, to the point where they are basically working for slave wages. This is a chronic problem for writers both online and off, but I think that it is really exacerbated when someone starts a career by writing online. The amount of competition can make it very difficult to compete, and the temptation to earn money from freelance writing by being the lowest bid on the board can be hard to overcome.

How I started out

Before I go much further, I would like to say that in the beginning stages of my career, I took the lowball approach. I did this for a couple of reasons.

1. I knew I could still make a decent wage, comparatively speaking. I type fast, I process fast, and three 400 word, $5 pieces an hour meant $15 an hour, not a bad wage particularly from home.
2. I wanted to bulk up my feedback. In order to get the higher paying jobs, I needed to get some street cred, and in order to do that I needed some feedback. At the same time I could earn money from freelance writing.

I am not ashamed of taking this approach because it worked very well, but sometimes I wonder if I might have been able to bid at the prices I do now even though I was just starting out. If any of you are gutsy enough to try it, let me know because I would love to write about that.

Higher prices lead to more work

Even with this lowball approach, though, I found that I was able to raise my prices without too much time passing by. It was at that point that I made the conscious decision to make my proposals and bids based on quality, rather than the knowledge that if pressed I could pump out three to six articles in an hour. To my surprise and relief, business didn’t fall off at all; in fact, it increased! Not only was I making more money per article, but I was landing more jobs than I had previously.

The best example I can equate this to is in the world of real estate. Years ago, the parents of my best friend were trying to sell their house within a certain price bracket, and getting very few visits. Their natural reaction was to lower the asking price, but a friend suggested raising it instead. They took the advice somewhat skeptically, and put their house in the next price bracket up. To their surprise, the house had serious offers within a week and had sold within two. The buyers had been out there all the time, but obviously there was the perception that a low price meant low quality.

I get the impression from a few of the clients that I have talked to that it is much the same way in the world of freelance writing. Some pass over cheap bids because of the belief that a low price is hiding poor quality.

That’s good news for anyone who wants to earn money from freelance writing, because it means that if you deliver a quality product, people are willing to compensate you well for it.

Higher prices bring better clients

In addition, I have found that the clients who are willing to pay more for better quality work also tend to send more work my way. A year or so ago, I decided to try raising my prices yet again, just to see if I could make $20 for an article.

I was delighted when selected. And even more so when he sent me 10 more articles to do.

Since that time, I handle ten articles each week for that buyer; he is not interested in looking for someone who offers a lower price, he wants to stay with the writer who charges fairly and offers quality work in return.

If you want to earn money from freelance writing, you can’t be timid when it comes to charging what you are worth. The mentality of buyers and your own work will both support your decision to charge fairly, and you will probably find that your yearly earnings are equal to that of the average magazine and newspaper freelance writer in no time.

To have success as a freelance writer, you have to find the right freelance projects and know how to win the contracts for them.

My freelance writing business is largely built around using bidding sites to gain clients, but getting those clients to award me the freelance writing contracts they post is certainly not a straightforward process.

How to win a bid

There are a lot of steps involved in winning a bid, or in negotiating your way into a freelance contract. You have to be able to discern which freelance writing work will provide the best results according to your set criteria, if you are indeed capable of writing freelance as your sole means of income, and above all you have to make sure that you can make money writing online, not just breaking even or worse going in the hole.

Compete without sacrificing your bottom line

In this section of our site, we are going to look at a lot of the dirty details of freelance writing for the Internet. Bidding sites in particular are great for finding freelance writer jobs, but they are very competitive. In one article we take a look at how you can compete against the writers and the writing companies that you will be bidding against, without sacrificing your bottom line.

Evaluate projects to your advantage

It’s also important to understand that you can earn money from freelance writing online, and you can earn GOOD money from it, but you have got to be able to evaluate a project correctly and come up with a proposal that justifies your price. Remember that the key to success when you are using business sites to find freelance projects is in knowing how to work the system, and in this section we will go through the process from start to finish.

Tying it all together

As you read through the information in these articles, keep in mind that everything you write, from your profile to the messages you send to current or potential clients, will be factored in when it comes time to decide whether or not you get those all important freelance projects.

The offline writers market is the alternative to what a lot of the pages on this site talk about: how to win jobs and freelance writing assignments by bidding on the Internet. This section is all about landing freelance jobs without going through the bidding process.

Some people may find this is easier because you don’t have to worry about setting your prices too competitively. Others like to cut out the time it takes to place all those bids. Wherever you look, though, you are sure to find one thing: competition.

In fact the writers market is very competitive both on and offline, and it takes a good “hook” to get a potential client to use you for their writing needs. Here are a few things I have found that work really well when it comes to standing out among the crowd of wanna be writers, particularly on the Internet.

1. Spell checking!
   It should be common sense, but any time you approach a potential source of freelance writing work you need to be sure that you come across as an intelligent writer. I have had some ridiculous proposals float my way when looking to hire writers to help out when I am over loaded. Too many people rely on the spelling and grammar checks in their writing, and this can lead to some very embarrassing mistakes.
2. Good samples
   (If you are looking to land offline writing assignments, these are called “clips”.) Another important aspect of landing a freelance writing job is demonstrating that you can deliver the goods. Putting together a few good samples of articles which you have done in the past will do wonders for your presentation. The more relevant the samples, the better! I also like to include a bit of a summary of what the articles are about, and of course ALWAYS make sure that you proofread before you send those samples in!
3. References
   Even great samples can’t compare to some glowing references from clients with whom you have worked in the past. Make sure that every time you complete an assignment, you ask your client or the editor of the print publication for their name and contact information so you can use them as references when trying to land future jobs. When you approach a potential client, make sure to direct him or her to the website or publication that your reference had you work on; there are lots of ways to fake a reference, particularly on the Internet, and you want to make sure that a potential client knows you are 100% legitimate.
4. Meet all your obligations!
   It is a lot easier to keep an existing client than to look for a new one. For this reason, and of course for those handy references, it’s very important to fulfill all of the promises you make on every freelance writing assignment. This can be hard, particularly when you have a lot of work or when life plays one of its little mystery weeks (or months) when everything seems to fall wrong, but at least stay in communication and let your clients know what is going on.

Breaking into the writers market can be tough, because it is just so competitive. The way to succeed is to grab the attention of potential clients through your presentation, and then making sure that you keep that new client satisfied!

One of the main arguments that some writers will pose against landing freelance writing assignments on a bid site is that the competition is simply too steep. I have to say that part of the reason why I disagree with this theory is that really, competition is fierce in the freelance writing world in general, whether we are talking brick and mortar or online writing opportunities. In this article, I am going to use some information from clients past and present and sketch a bit of an outline on what people with freelance writing jobs are looking for in the writer that they hire.

Disclaimer: If you’ve read a few articles on this site you know that I hate ambiguity, unfortunately ghost writing assignments mean that most of the time you have to keep everything confidential, so I can’t give the names of the clients who provided this information to me.

Good Feedback

Almost every bidding site will have a feedback section where your former clients will rate your services. This is yet another complaint that many writers who claim to shun these sites have against the whole process, and again their point is accurate, but only carried so far. The bidding sites are notoriously unhelpful when you get a difficult client, who may actually be a competitor looking to screw over a better business. Still, if you are reliable, most of your feedback will be positive.

And that’s important, because 9 times out of 10 the feedback is the first thing that your potential clients will be looking at.

Samples

It is always a good idea to attach samples to your bid, even when they are not asked for. Make sure that they are as relevant as possible, and go over them two or ten times to get rid of any spelling or grammar errors; they can be hard to pick up but they will make a difference!

Price

Price will often make a difference in whether or not you get picked for a freelance writing assignment, but not always in the way a person who hasn’t used a bidding site expects. Some buyer – and most of mine are in this group – see a bid that is too low as reflecting poor quality, and they won’t pick that kind of bidder.

Portfolio

Finally, the way your portfolio is presented will also make a difference in whether or not your bid is picked. All bidding sites provide the opportunity for you to create a portfolio, and you need to take advantage of it and create the most straightforward profile that you possibly can.

I received a phone call from the United Kingdom a while ago, from a web site developer who had seen my portfolio on a site and had shortlisted me for his freelance writing assignments. One of the specific things that stood out about me in his mind was that I didn’t bother with some of the “sap” that many writers think will sell “writing is my life”, and so on. Remember, you’re setting up a business, and you need to think professionally not artistically!

Part of the reason for the existence of this website is to show you how to write successfully online, help you to know what kind of freelance jobs are available, and where those freelance jobs are available. After all, it can be pretty hard to make any money at a freelance writing career without any writing assignments!

Finding Online Writing Jobs

In this section, we will talk about where you can find an online writing job, or many freelance jobs writing on the Internet. If you have just started out you may find it hard to believe how many freelance writers are wanted, but in fact freelance writing jobs are available all over the web, you just need to know where to look for them.

Writing Fees

Another important aspect in learning how to write for the Internet, and how to make decent money through freelance writing assignments, is understanding how to establish your writing fees.

The main source of my income is through bidding sites, and that means I walk a fine line between bidding low enough to get the job, and high enough to make the job worthwhile. Setting writing fees will depend on how fast you are as a writer, how much you want to get (or think you will enjoy) a specific online writing job, and whether or not you have worked with a certain client before.

What are Clients looking for?

One of the exciting parts of this section that I am really looking forward to is sharing with you some in depth details of what it is that different companies on the Internet are looking for when they have freelance writing jobs available.

I have worked with dozens of different clients in the two years I have been writing for the Internet, most of them very steady, and am planning on interviewing them to see what exactly it is they are looking for when they choose a bidder.

It’s not always expertise within a certain area either; that’s part of what makes an online writing job so much fun. I’ve written on an incredibly diverse range of topics, from weddings to real estate to recreational vehicles, and in the process I have attained a level of knowledge that allows me to place higher bids on similar topics in the future.

The Bottom Line: Nurturing Relationships

Above all, making money through freelance writing assignments online is about establishing and retaining a great relationship with the people who hire you for freelance job writing. In this section we will be stressing the relationship with the client; how to deal with them, making sure that all the requirements of the job are understood, and keeping the lines of communication clear.

I have made my fair share of mistakes in the area, mistakes that have cost me money both in the short and long term. I think that anyone could benefit from both my positive and negative experiences in this area!

Right off the bat, I want to tell you that I have little experience when it comes to blogging for money. Actually a more accurate statement would be to tell you that I have little experience in blogging, and none at all in blogging for money.

The truth is I find blogging a little bit tedious, mainly because it involves committing myself to creating at least a post today. I don’t know what it is in my brain that rebels at the thought of being locked into something, but apart from being a husband and a father I tend to run the other direction when it comes to commitments.

Still, there are a lot of people out there making money by blogging, and one thing I am good at is understanding what they are saying when they outline how to do it. In fact I have a pretty good idea of what makes blogging so appealing, and how it is that some people enjoy good success at it.

I am going to provide a summary of my thoughts – garnered from research, mind you, not from experience – in this article, but for those of you who are interested in adding a blogging option to your writing repertoire I HIGHLY recommend stevepavlina.com.

This guy is trying to do for bloggers on his site what I am attempting to do for freelance writers on this one, namely providing solid information based on realism and in your face figures to help you determine if you have what it takes to succeed at blogging and then how to go about doing so (actually he is trying to do this for everyone who is smart, but it’s kind of embarrassing for me to write that).

Here’s a link to one of his best articles on Blogging for Money (though as he points out, at 7300 words it is hardly a quick read!).

So based on what my second favourite regular contributor to his own web site has to say as well as what I have garnered from lesser sources, here is what I can tell you about blogging for money.

1. It is going to take time! Far, far too many writers think that the second they post something up on the Internet people will come flocking to see what they say.
   Really successful blogs are blogs which have been up for a while. This is my main problem with the whole idea, as I mentioned: I like to see results, particularly in my bank account. I don’t like writing pieces every day in the hopes that one day I will earn $50,000 in a year.
   My preference is obviously to make that kind of money much more quickly by writing for other people, but that does mean I have to tackle a lot of meaningless subjects.
2. It is going to take talent! One thing I love about Steve is that he really lays it all out there. If you are not a very good writer, you are not going to make money on your blog. He puts it even more bluntly when discussing what constitutes talent, and makes it clear that the clay he is providing can’t be moulded by deficient hands.
3. It is going to take tactical thinking! (I am pretty proud of finding a T term to fit for this one.) Tactical thinking is what Steve, and most other developers, call web savvy. You have to know what options are available to you on the Internet when it comes to monetizing your site, generating traffic, and keeping those numbers high.

So when it comes to blogging for money, these are the basic steps you are going to need to follow. Blogging can actually be quite a bit easier than developing a web site, because you don’t necessarily have to define and stick to one theme. You can fire off random blogs every day, of varying shapes and sizes.

The key is to engage people through your writing style or through the information you provide, and of course we can’t stress patience enough. Those who consider a two month relationship a commitment should probably cross blogging for money off the list of possible career options.

Writing for money on the Internet often means that there aren’t a lot of secrets between my clients and myself (as far as the professional side of things of course). Every time I respond to an invitation to bid or place a bid on one of the sites I use, I check to see how much the client has shelled out on previous projects. This is partly to see how reliable these clients are when it comes to pay, and partly to see just how much they do spend in order to get content on their site.

I have been absolutely amazed by some of the figures I have seen. One client on Elance.com (one of the very best clients I have ever had, too) has paid an amazing amount of money for their content development; something to the tune of $100,000 in six months. They pay a flat rate that is higher than most other clients I have come across and do so week after week.

When I first started seeing these staggering numbers, I was struck by a question: If this is the kind of money these sites are willing to pay in order to have content created, then how much money must they actually be making?

Since that question first occurred to me, I have entertained the idea of starting my own web site so I could start writing for money on topics that interested me. The problem is that basically when it comes to computers and the Internet, I tend to shut down. I just can’t see myself spending the time learning all the ins and outs there are to establishing a web site, although I do understand the process in theory.

So you can imagine that I was pretty happy when I found a client who not only wanted to pay me for writing, but would set up a website where that writing would be posted.

So that worked out great for me, but what about for you? I can absolutely understand the majority of writers who do not want to spend their time writing away on a bunch of topics they find boring and want to start writing for money based on topics that they are interested in.

I think that the best way to do so is to start your own website; pick a topic and do some research, and if you find that it is interesting to enough people, it might well be worth trying. The trick is in knowing how to get that money coming in, and there are a few basic steps.

• Find your niche. Do you love to write about the naked mole rat? That’s great, but there aren’t enough people looking for information on that topic to make it worth your while, let alone build a career. Instead, try broadening the scope. More people may be interested in little known animals of Africa, and you could make the naked mole rat a part of the information on a site based around that.
• Deliver great content. Once you find your niche, you have to make your content engaging to your readers. Original research and a casual tone will do wonders!
• Build traffic. You won’t be writing for money by creating a web site that no one visits. Advertisements are probably the biggest source of revenue for web sites, and sites that attract a lot of traffic stand to have the highest paying ads.
• Monetize. Sell information, sell advertising space, just sell. We will look a closer look at some of the options in another article.

Obviously this is a topic on which books could be written. Creating your own web site is about much more than just writing the content, although it is the writing that will earn you the money in the end.

Wouldn’t it be great if we could all get paid to write exactly what we wanted. Most writers will have a few areas and topics that they like to write about more than others. I know that when I land a job that is on subjects that I am interested in, I am much less likely to encounter the usual problems such as writer’s block or an unwillingness just to sit down and tackle the work.

Writing Business Reality

If you have read some of the other articles on this site, you know that I am hardly an advocate of holding out for the ideal job. In fact, I don’t think there is anything worse for a freelance writing business than that kind of writing snobbery. The fact is that if you want to get started writing for money, and want to earn money writing so that you can quit working for someone else, you are probably going to end up writing about subjects that don’t interest you about three-quarters of the time.

Writing Alternatives

That being said, there are several ways in which you can find ways to get paid to write on topics that are of interest to you. In this section, we are going to look at some topics that cover this type of writing. Let’s take a brief look at what you can find in more detail on this part of the site.

First of all, I will point out that I am not the biggest innovator when it comes to writing for money, particularly on the Internet.

For example, I am going to talk about the possibility of setting up your own content website on the Internet, but I have never done this on my own; the site you are on right now is entirely the brain child of my partner Alex who I have never met in person but who liked the idea I pitched to him on Elance.com.

He is the guy responsible for monetizing and developing the site, I just provide the content. Still, with the information he has given me so far and some information I have garnered through other projects I have a pretty good idea about how you can make money as a web content provider.

Blogging for Money

Another way to earn money writing on the Internet is by blogging for money. You have to be pretty sharp to stay ahead of the rest of the writers out there, and you have to be willing to commit.

I have very limited experience when it comes to the chance to make money with an online blog, but I do know a few writers who have done so and have given me some tips. Blogging for money is quite an involved process so if you are thinking about doing so, we can give you some tips to get started.

Content Sites

We are also going to look at some ways you can earn money writing about your interests by using sites that are already set up. Internet giants such as About.com employ hundreds of different writers who work on hundreds of different topics, and you actually get paid to write on their site. We will do a bit of a round up of these sites and offer an opinion as to who has the best deals for writers.