You have a passion for writing and you want to make money writing from home? Am I right?
This is an amazing stay at home job that has proven to be very lucrative.
I won’t tell you it will be so easy that you’ll start making $2k next week.
It requires hard work but with the right amount of effort, hardwork, consistency and high-quality writing, reaping $2k and even more is more than possible.
In this day and age, freelance writing is becoming more and more popular.
Nowadays, almost every business has a blog corner on its website and this is where businesses seek a writer’s help because they know that ranking high on Google is possible only through articles.
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Some Perks of Freelancing Writing
- You can work remotely, wherever you are in this world.
- The workload is managed by you
- You work at your own pace
- Fees decisions are in your hands
- You can write for a few or many industries at a time (while niching down is recommended)
Without any further ado, let’s see how you can build your own home-based business and make money writing from home.
How Much Money Can You Make With Freelance Writing?
I know this is a burning question as a beginner.
Like any other business, there’s no exact number but generally, you can make anywhere between $300 – $1000 as a beginner.
More seasoned writers can make up to $15k per month and huge writers can charge $1000 – $2500 for a single article.
I have worked with businesses that would pay me $0.23 per word and they would require a 1500-word article.
So, as a beginner in freelance writing where I had only 10 articles on my blog, I could get $375 for a single piece of work.
The effort and hard work are on you to build up your income. Of course, you don’t want to set impossible goals.
Start with a little goal like “after setting everything up, I will work my ass off for my first $300”.
If you managed to get your first gig, this will encourage you to dream a little bigger this time and that’s how you build your business goals.
Make Money Writing From Home In A Few Steps
Launch Your Blog/Website
First of all, you will need a blog or a website. Consider a blog/website like a local shop.
In order for potential customers or clients to see what you have to offer, it’s mandatory for you to have your own “shop”.
And in the digital world, it’s represented by a website or a blog.
Your online presence is a crucial tool for the growth of your freelance business.
With your website, you’ll be able to not only attract your ideal customers but you can use this platform of yours to create other income streams, which I will cover in the next section of this article.
Required Tools For A Blog/Website
Taking this first step is crucial for your future success online and I will make sure to guide you step by step.
Below are the 4 essential tools you will need in order to make money writing from home.
- Domain + Hosting Plan
- WordPress
- WordPress Theme
- Yoast SEO
Domain + Hosting Plan
A domain is basically the address name of your blog (www.thatwowlifestyle.com, www.cnn.com and so on) and the hosting is where this domain will live.
In a few words, your hosting company will support and protect your domain through SSL (Security Socket Layer)
I’ve been in online business for almost 8 years and I’ve been with Hostgator without any issues. They’ve been there for me since day 1, where support is top-notch.
I will never ever recommend a product I don’t have any experience with. So, I highly recommend you purchase your domain at Hostgator.
You can sign-up directly from my affiliate link here. You’ll pay as low as $2.75 per month and there are different plans available to suit your needs.
You surely know that there are a lot of companies that offer both hosting and website builders but I strongly discourage you to resort to these services.
If you really want to take your freelance writing business to the next level, I will show you different ways to make money writing from home and with these platforms, making this kind of money is impossible.
I’ll give a few reasons why sites like Wix, Weebly, Squarespace aren’t the professional web or blogging platforms you need to make money:
- They may be very cheap or free but not enough customizable if your goal is to make money writing from home.
- Google has become very smart and sophisticated over the years and they regularly update their ranking factors.
- Free site builders like the ones I’ve mentioned above are very slow to react to these changes. As a result, your website won’t get ranked and no one will ever see your amazing content and hire you for projects.
- While you may find it very easy and quick to set up, you won’t ever have full control over your website.
- Most importantly, if you want to make money with different streams like working with ads, including affiliate links, or selling ad spots will be impossible.
I hope you understand the importance of getting a self-hosted blog/website.
This platform is called WordPress and is the best and most recommend open-source platform for bloggers, writers and other kinds of websites.
Don’t forget to purchase your hosting plan with Hostgator so you can get one year of free domain.
WordPress + Theme
After purchasing your domain + hosting plan, you will have to get hold of WordPress. It’s where everything will sit in; from your domain, blog/web theme to your daily posts.
- “Remember it’s WordPress.org, not wordpress.com“
At first, WordPress may seem overwhelming but as you get used to its environment, you will see how simple and user-friendly it is.
How To Add Your WordPress To Your Hosting Plan
It’s time to install WordPress on your hosting and later on upload your WordPress theme for customization. See steps below
- Login to your hosting account
- Go to your dashboard and click on cPanel
- Search for “QuickInstall”
- Click on “WordPress”
- Choose your new domain in the drop-down menu
- Add a few details and then click “Install”
Choosing A WordPress Theme
Next step is to purchase a beautiful WordPress Theme. Your theme is the template that will display your writing content.
You will customize it to your personal taste or branding needs by adjusting different things like the homepage, adding your content, choosing colors and more.
As a Creative Director, I’m a great advocate for visual beauty. But I also recommend not to set your focus on beautiful themes only.
Your blog has to guide your audience to a specific purpose and if you focus on the visual aspect only, you might end up losing sight of that initial purpose.
You might choose a beautiful blog that you love but it might not convert as well as you’d expect.
I’m not saying that you should choose an ugly one either. At this stage, you should be able to balance things before taking the right decision.
With that being said, most themes are pretty easy to customize because they offer the drag & drop feature. But there are also professional themes that have some level of difficulty.
What I can do is redirect you to the best marketplace where you can grab a good theme.
The best marketplace to buy professional WordPress blog themes is Creative Market.
Recommendation
The main reason why I don’t recommend free themes if you’re a beginner is because of support.
Let’s say you’ve already spent 3-4 days perfecting your theme and got stuck somewhere, chances are the developer might not respond to your query.
Most developers offer support to paid members only.
As a result, you’re losing your precious time waiting for their reply and if they never respond, you have no choice than to start over again with another theme.
Moreover, free themes are very basic and don’t offer many customization options and they may not be compatible with the essential backend tools you will need to install.
If you don’t know where to find amazing blog themes, just head over to Creative Market. They have the most beautiful and professional blog themes for only $39-$59.
Now that you’ve purchased your amazing theme, it’s time to give it the look and feel you want. Don’t forget to keep in focus the purpose of your blog!
How To Upload Your Theme Into WordPress
You’re now ready to customize your theme!
Don’t panic when you see the WordPress dashboard. The theme developer always includes tutorials and help guides inside of WordPress itself to help you out.
Yoast SEO
If you want to succeed in your career and make money writing from home, you will have to write SEO optimized articles.
Blogging sites, companies and other businesses that will want to hire will always require you to write content with SEO in mind because SEO friendly articles are what will help their business rank in SERPs (search engine results pages).
For this purpose, Yoast SEO is the best on the market. As a beginner, you only need the free version.
Showcase Your Work
The next step in your freelance writing journey is to build a portfolio of content. I know it seems odd to hear especially if you’ve never written for anyone. Don’t freak out!
I have two solutions to approach this:
- Write fictitious pieces of content
- Guest Posting
These two ways will help you gather a small library of content to showcase on your blog or website.
You don’t have to write hundreds of articles to be able to get out there, promoting your work or looking to get hired by someone.
Just keep in mind that your visitors will search for some style in your writing.
So make sure to display your best ones on your blog/website.
A potential customer just has to see your language, style and other characters in your writing to decide if you’re a fit for him/her.
You can choose to write and publish only 10 articles but pour your soul in the writing so that they reflect your knowledge and passion for the subject.
This is what will make you stand out from the pack.
Guest Post For Free
Sorry if that seems disappointing but see this as an extreme opportunity for exposure.
As a beginner, if you don’t have anything to show to your prospects, let me tell you it can be hard to set off, let alone land quality projects.
Again, if you don’t have a portfolio of writing samples, getting hired on the job boards I’ll mention below will be very hard.
So the best way to kick your freelancing journey is to seek exposure first.
Let’s say, you managed to get a spot to publish a post on a large blog that received millions of monthly pageviews, there’s a high percentage of this blog’s visitors that will see your post and guess what can happen?
Someone might get super captivated by your writing and might contact you for a collab.
Also, a small percentage of this blog’s traffic might check your own website or blog.
In return, you can monetize this traffic with ads on your blog or putting affiliate products in front of them.
We’ll cover this in another article.
Here’s a simple way to find sites that offer guest posting. Simply go the Google, type in the search bar “your niche + write for us”.
Let’s say you have a blog where you write about fitness, just type “fitness blog + write for us”.
Google will show up some websites that actually offer guest posting opportunities.
Check what I mean:
Start On Freelancing Sites
If you’ve never worked online, you might not know how to get yourself in front of your targeted audience. How can they see your website? How will ask for work?
The easier way to get exposed to potential clients and find writing jobs is to get yourself up onto the freelance writing sites.
This is where the hard work begins. There are tons of writing jobs on these sites but you won’t be making $100 every day just like that.
With time, it’s very possible to achieve this kind of figure but as a starter, you’ll have to make your way through and that where your amazing portfolio comes into play.
Below are the best freelance sites with amazing gigs that will definitely help you make money writing from home.
Solidgigs – Start with their $2/mo trial and then it’s $19/mo.
- Hand-picked freelance jobs updated nearly every single day
- 100+ course lessons from experts in freelancing & business
- Instant access to long-form interviews with six-figure freelancers
- Downloadable scripts, templates, tools and spreadsheets
- Immediate access to new features & content at no extra cost
- Fixed subscription price that will never change
Flexjobs – $14.95/mo
- Unlimited access to every job we find.
- Free skills testing to clearly establish and market your skills to employers.
- Expert job search tips, resources, and offers at FlexJobs or by e-mail that help to make your search more effective.
- An easy, quick profile process that enables you to be found by hiring employers.
- Email alerts when new jobs are posted.
- A personalized portfolio where you can upload resumes and work samples so you make a great impression on employers.
ProBlogger Jobs – Need to apply for posted jobs
Freelance Writer’s Den – Need to apply and join the waiting list
BloggingPro – Need to apply for jobs
Contena – Actually closed for new members. You can reserve your spot though.
UpWork – Create an account and apply to jobs
Cold Pitching
Another way to approach the world of freelancing writing is to actually go find the work. And this is best known as cold pitching, through phone or email.
For freelance writers, the most common way is through the cold emailing strategy.
You can find small businesses or blogging sites you want to work with, find someone to contact and pitch them with an irresistible offer.
They might accept or refuse. But don’t give up. You cannot send 10 emails and expect to get hired.
At my digital agency, we still get client projects through cold emailing and we send 200- 400 cold emails every day.
I’m not saying you should cold email that much but I suggest a good starting point for a beginner is 50-100 emails every day until you get a 10% reply rate. And then it’ll be up to you close the deal.
Networking – #1 Opportunity To Make Money Freelance Writing
One of the scariest things that might happen to you when freelancing is becoming a lonely soul.
Sometimes it’s good and sometimes not.
Networking is proven have a positive impact on someone’s business. So don’t be afraid to connect with other freelance writers like you.
There are a few benefits you can reap from networking:
- You can learn from more seasoned writers
- They can pass on to you a project if they are too busy
- Your mind is refreshed and can see opportunities from a new perspective
One of the ways to network with other writers is to join Facebook groups or just search on Google if there’s any event near you for writers, bloggers, etc…
Recap
Ok, let’s make a recap of everything you will need to make money writing from home:
- Choose the niche you will write about
- Purchase a hosting plan + domain with Hostgator
- Download WordPress and install on your hosting
- Buy & customize your WordPress theme
- Create your content library (10-30 articles to start)
- Guest post for exposure and potential projects
- Start applying to job boards
- Join other freelancers via networking
Now that you have a starting point on the career of your choice, get to work!
Hope this helps you lay that first stone in your online writing business.
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