How to Become a Freelance Writer and Make More Money

Anyone can write, but not anyone can write well. Even those who can write well may not succeed working as freelance writers unless they take the necessary steps to monetize and find clients.

To help you kickstart your journey, here are some steps to help you establish your career as a freelance writer.

1. Choose a writing niche

Freelance writing offers a variety of topics to choose from, as many industries require online content to boost relevance and sales. This can be done by either writing it themselves or hiring freelancers. Consequently, it’s usually easy to find a writing job in almost any niche.

You can write about cryptocurrency, gardening, home mortgages, online gaming, banking, design software, coffee, insurance… you name it! All you need is to find the right company or employer to work with.

So, start by choosing a niche you’re interested in and comfortable writing about. Once you have some experience under your belt, you can explore other niches as well.

2. Research your chosen industry or niche

To navigate the freelance writing industry, you should understand how it works. There are various writing styles, and writing conventions may differ from publisher to publisher. To increase your chances of success in a writing role, you should learn as much as possible about the industry, like its terminology, trends, fads, key players, and more.

Knowing your potential client’s industry will make you feel more comfortable when interviewing for a freelance writing position. It’ll make your writing fit in seamlessly with the content the client has published before.

3. Build a writing portfolio

Your portfolio is a list of your best-written articles showcasing your writing skills and the quality and depth of the research behind each piece.

While a portfolio usually contains previously written content, you can include non-published work if you don’t have any proven experience as a writer. Just choose a few topics within your niche and write one or two good articles to send as examples to potential clients.

4. Search for freelance writing jobs online

With your portfolio ready, it’s time to look for paid freelance writing gigs online. There are several ways to do this, but the easiest by far is to look for jobs on popular online job boards.

When it comes to these job boards, you can go one of two ways:

• General freelance job boards like Upwork, Freelancer.com, and Workana, or,
• A platform entirely devoted to online writing jobs, like WritersWork, Fiverr, ProBlogger, and iWriter, to name a few.

Once you choose your platform, create a freelancer profile and start looking for writing jobs you like.

5. Put yourself out there by pitching

The freelance writing industry is competitive and job boards will only take you so far. Another way to find writing jobs is by contacting companies directly. By pitching to different publications and marketing yourself, you’re bound to find someone interested in your writing. You could still get rejected, but once you get the hang of it, pitching can go a long way in earning money as a freelance writer.

Pitching your work to someone you don’t know can seem daunting at first, but it’s not hard.

Find the right person to pitch to

Try to find the website’s editor, content manager, or someone in a similar position. You can search “editor” or “content manager” along with the company name to find that person’s contact information and LinkedIn profile.

Write your pitch

Once you have the right person’s contact info, you should write your pitch. I find that using a general template is an excellent way to pitch to many sites in a short amount of time. Here’s a sample of a simple pitch template you can use and tweak to fit your writing style:

Hi “editor_name“,

My name’s “your_name_here“, and I’ve been a “state your past relevant experience here” for the last ## years. I’d love to contribute to “company_name_here“.

Here are links to some relevant samples of my work:

1. Sample 1
2. Sample 2
3. Sample 3

I have some ideas of topics that I think would do well on your blog/website. Can I send them to you so you can take a look?

Thanks for your time.

Send out as many pitches as possible

Getting your first assignment as a writer through pitching usually takes time since many editors might ignore your message. To increase your chances of a reply, pitch to as many people as possible.

Once you have all these bases covered, you can start monetizing your writing skills and receive your first payout.