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If you’re a professional writer, you’ll want to create a professional online space. You can create a website or a blog to showcase your abilities and attract clients. But just because you build it, that doesn’t mean that you’ll automatically get found by potential clients. It’s not like Field of Dreams 
Here are some tips to help you in the area of freelancer marketing strategies.
Your Professional Website
First things first. You don’t need to pay someone to make a site for you. Web hosting companies such as Hostgator, GoDaddy, and others all offer templates that you can use to build a professional looking website. And if you prefer to go the blog route, you can do that, too.
Attracting Traffic
Once you’ve created a website, you’ll want targeted traffic. Not all traffic is going to be valuable so you’ll want to strategise to help you attract potential clients.
Here are several ways to get it:
- Social bookmarking. Bookmark every page you write. Go to sites, such as: Digg, Mixx, StumbleUpon, Reddit, and others and bookmark your articles and blog posts. Be sure you tag them appropriately and where possible, start a conversation. It takes time to set your profiles up but they will benefit you. You’ll find multiple pinging services that will help you update those sites as well so that you don’t have to take hours to update each one. (I suggest http://Ping.fm and http://www.Onlywire.com)
- Social networking. Network with others. They’ll link to you. Comment on blogs, linking back to your site, link to other people’s sites. Join writing discussion forums and add your URL to your signature. Join microblogging tools and sharing sites (such as Facebook and Twitter) and create a profile and post often. Many networking activities will draw traffic to your site both through people clicking and through search engine indexing.
- Content marketing through creation and syndication. You need to optimize your website on the site itself (so learn all you can about effective website optimization tactics) but you’ll also need to do some off-page optimization, too. Create articles and web 2.0 pages that link back to various pages on your website. These will draw traffic and search engines and many of these activities could also create passive income opportunities for you as well. Create content often. The more high quality content you create, the more you’re building an online portfolio that can get you traffic and demonstrate your writing abilities to potential customers.
- Organic SEO. If you’re an online web content writer, you’ve probably learned a thing or two about SEO Writing. Use it to the advantage of your own marketing activities! Choose some words and phrases that potential clients might opt to search on if they were looking for a writer in your specialty area. Sprinkle those phrases into your meta information and throughout your on-page and off-page content. If you were someone who specialized in press releases, imagine how great it’d be to rank top in Google for the term “press release writer”? Of course, someone has already worked hard to get to that spot so it wouldn’t be easy for someone new to dethrone them and the sites already ranking for the first several pages of those search terms but there are plenty of other highly searched or specialty terms and phrases you could rank well for. (Or hey…you could challenge yourself to attain a top ranking on a coveted phrase if you’re so inclined…)
Analytics
Once you start to do some marketing and self promotion activities, the best thing you can do is analyze for results. As you start to do these activities, check your website statistics often. You’ll start to see where your traffic is coming from and you’ll see what people do when they arrive on your pages. Examine these traffic reports carefully as they can help you strategize and plan your marketing strategy going forward.
The more you market, the more effective your website could be. It’s a minimal investment of money to start that site and networking and self-promotion only costs you your time. And, as you market your website, you’ll also learn valuable skills that can help you be a valuable writer, consultant, and service provider to your customers.A win-win!
Tags: content marketing, content writing, freelance writing, getting traffic, self-promotion, seo writer
I wrote a post for Get Paid to Write Online today. The post was inspired by Sharon Hurley Hall who posted that she’d had a great review from a resume client. I use testimonials to my advantage in terms of marketing and self promotion and thanks to Sharon, I’m now going to use them even further by redesigning the way I post testimonials on my SEO Blog. Check out the post to find out why you should Toot Your Own Horn – Use Testimonials
Tags: get paid to write, marketing, self-promotion, Sharon Hurley Hall, testimonials
I’ve made no secret of the fact that when I started freelance writing back in 2006 I was thrilled to make a penny per word. It didn’t take long before the rates started to climb and instead of making $10-15 an hour, these days I’m often making $50-$100+ and I continue to work to find ways to up my rates. I won’t ever stop. Here’s how I’ve gone about raising my rates in the last 4+ years. Maybe it will help some of you. And if some of you have tips you’d like to share, great… please do!
- Apply for higher paying gigs. You may think you’re not qualified but wouldn’t you like to be wrong?
- Market yourself. If clients find you and are interested enough to ask for a quote, you can set your own pricing. I continually update my price list rates because I’m currently busy enough that if someone new comes along and I don’t need the gig, I’d be crazy not to try to quote higher. If I win the business, this could offer me an opportunity to drop or outsource a lower-paying client.
- Outsource. I’ve had ups and downs with subbing out work but I currently have a few people that are working out great. By managing projects, in some cases, rather than writing, I up my earnings because I’m not turning down work, I’m making a commission for facilitating something. Sometimes it works out well in that I have to do very little to add to my income. (Sometimes, not so much but I continue to work to streamline the writing team and the process)
- Set rates with your clients but put an expiry date on that rate. Tell your clients that send regular work that you review pricing every, say, six months (or whatever you choose). Small increases every few months aren’t going to startle your client as much as one big rate spike and will help you continue to increase your rates.
- Sell value-added services. Beyond writing articles, you can consult, manage their content, handle their comments, social media, and article or press release distribution. This helps you raise your writing rates and offer additional services.
- Create passive income streams. I choose to blog because I love it but it also does several things for me. My dozen or so niche blogs serve as online writing samples when I’m applying for a job in a specific niche, I use niche blogs to post for clients on occasion (another value added service that has won business for me as a unique selling point on more than one occasion), and they earn me income through affiliate marketing, advertising, and contextual ads.
- Learn new skills and charge accordingly. A one-page press release can net me 3 or 4x the fee I charge for a 1-page article because of the value perception. Sales pages are something I charge more for than standard articles. Article directory articles that I submit are also seen as more valuable than certain other writing pieces and therefore many clients are willing to pay more for them. Many of these things take just a bit more time than an SEO article but I can raise my profile and make more money doing them. Once I started focusing more on the jobs that paid better but didn’t cost me double the time, I started to earn more on an hourly basis.
The great thing about freelance writing for the web is that it can encompass many subjects, types of writing, and you can learn new skills as you earn. Setting some writing earning goals is a smart thing. Look at how much you earned this month last year, this month right now, and then analyse. Decide how much you’d like to earn this month next year, and how you think you’ll get there.
Happy Writing & Happy Goal Setting!
Tags: freelance writing rates, outsourcing writing, passive writing income, value-added services, writing rates, writing rates. marketing
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