A Guide For Freelance Blog Writers: How To Advance Your Career

If you’re a talented writer, then you should know that you can actually write blogs for a living. Freelance blog writing is a rewarding, interesting, and potentially lucrative career for people who have a talent for the written word. The growing importance of well-written, high quality content for business websites has created a surprisingly large market for skilled writers who can create interesting, informative articles about a wide variety of topics. Whatever you’re interested in, you can probably find someone who will pay you to write about it. If you’re interested in natural health, renewable energy, cars, fashion, or almost anything else, chances are that companies dealing in those areas need writers to fill up their company blogs with good content.

If you’ve already gotten your feet wet in the content writing world, you might find yourself looking for something more. Maybe the jobs you’ve been taking aren’t paying enough to support yourself on writing alone, or maybe you’ve grown bored with writing about subjects you have little interest in. Here are some tips for how you can advance your freelance writing career and move forward into a more profitable and rewarding future.

• Move away from content mills. Many freelance writers get their start with websites that hire writers to create content, acting as a middleman for various clients. These are generally known as “content mills.” Although their relatively low barrier to entry makes them a great place to start out, the pay usually isn’t quite enough for you to make writing your full-time job. If you’ve been doing content mill work, it’s worth it to start looking for clients elsewhere. Instead of going through content mills, try looking for your own clients directly, without anyone else acting as a middleman. You can find clients on bidding websites like Elance, as well as classified sites like Craigslist. You could even try cold emailing companies whose websites look like they could use a copywriting expert.


• Try looking at full-time positions. Although there’s quite a bit of value in freelancing and finding your own clients, finding a full time position with a content marketing agency can also be a good move for your career. You could look at in-office positions, or for jobs where you can work remotely on a full-time basis. Working for a company that isn’t a “content mill”-- companies that generally offer services other than copywriting and content writing, like website design and social media marketing-- can help you build valuable networking contacts by working with other professionals.


• Write some things in your own name, on your own time, to build your online reputation. When you write for other people as a freelancer, it’s actually relatively rare that you’ll get any credit for it. You can publish articles about whatever you’d like, in your own name, to further solidify your reputation as a top-flight content writer. You can keep a blog of your own, or try using platforms like Medium and LinkedIn to reach a wider audience.