Before freelance writers establish a name for themselves and enjoy regular orders for jobs, they spend huge amounts of time looking for new business. It doesn’t help that many of the popular freelance writing sites are full of people looking to pay low rates for content.
Wading through job ads and writing proposals that will get noticed can take up a huge chunk of their time. Granted, it has to be done if they want to eat next week, but it’s a difficult way to grow a quality freelance writing business.
This article contains tips on how to stop wasting time looking for jobs that pay badly, and how to get people to come to you instead.
Tips to get better-paying jobs
Focus on quality and the unspoken needs of clients
The best way to attract clients is by word of mouth. It’s the most powerful form of advertising by far. But to be spoken about, the clients you already have need to have something to speak about.
So be excellent. You’ll only attract the best-paying clients when you provide quality and never compromise.
Added to that, your clients may not realize what makes exceptional content, but give it to them anyway. The results of your writing may speak for itself and may prompt them to give you more business.
Get a showcase website and blog
Where better to add your portfolio than on your website? You should have one place to where all your work and marketing efforts point. Prospective clients are likely to be more impressed if you direct them to your website than if you attach samples in your proposals – just like everyone else does.
SEO optimize it
But there’s another reason to start your own website. When set up properly and optimized for search engines (more on that in the next section), you’ll be more easily found by prospective clients.
An example is the website of well-known freelance writer, Kristi Hines. When doing a search for “freelance writer” on Google, hers is the only freelance writer website to show on the first page of the search results:
Because she has no competitors on the front page of Google search results, you can be sure she’s getting 92% of the business generated via searches for freelance writers.
Many entrepreneurs have set up a website, which becomes inactive after a few months when they see nothing happening on it. Owning your own website means nothing in terms of getting more traffic if you don’t add regular, search engine optimized content to it.
Blog regularly
A major reason Kristi Hines is listed on the front page of Google results is because she regularly adds SEO optimized content to her website by blogging.
Blogging for your freelance writing business can be considered an investment for the future because it can be complex and you won’t reap immediate rewards. Blogging for SEO is not just about adding content to your website. Optimizing websites is most certainly time-consuming but it is a sustainable way to attract good quality clients so that you don’t have to keep writing job proposals for cheap freelance writing websites.
By blogging, your goal is to get your website rank on the first page of search results, and to do that, you need to:
- Blog regularly
- Write about what your audience wants to know about
- Optimize your blog posts for search engines
Get step-by-step details about how to set up a blog that works to attract new clients.
Actively promote your website
Especially in the early stages of owning a website, you’ll need to spend time promoting it. This has multiple benefits, in that not only are you helping prospective clients hear about your services, but by promoting your website on other sites, your search engine ranking will improve. This is because search engines have algorithms that determine the relevancy of your website based on various factors, one of which is with whom you associate by linking.
So you want to make sure you link to solid, value-add websites, and that they in turn link to yours. Some ways to get them to link to yours is by:
- Promoting your blog posts, together with links, on social media sites
- Joining forums and adding helpful content on those websites, that link back to the content on your website
- Adding quality comments to other relevant blogs
- Guest writing for other relevant blogs
Key notes
Freelance writers waste too much time looking for jobs from bad paying clients.
To get better quality clients, and attract them without looking for them, follow these tips:
- Always provide quality work
- Set up an SEO optimized website and blog regularly
- Promote your website
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