In-Depth Articles About ... Freelancing

A couple of weeks ago, my guest post went up on Buffer, titled How I Increased My Freelance Writing Income By 79% Percent in a Single Year (and How You Could Too). It goes through some specific techniques I used to grow my freelancing income…

As a freelancer, you’ll occasionally have a dry spell without much client work. This doesn’t happen to me often these days – for a good 90% of 2023, I had all the work as I could handle! – but inevitably there’ll be times when a client…

When you’re writing lots of different articles, blog posts, sales copy, or any other type of piece for your clients, there are a couple of ways you can approach this: Pick a piece and go through each stage of the writing process…

If you’re a freelancer, you’re not going to see the success you want until you start tracking your income. I should know … I’m embarrassed to admit this, but I didn’t keep track of my income for years. Sure, I added it all up at tax time…

One common problem for freelancers is not making enough money. Maybe you’ve landed a bunch of gigs – but they’re all low-paying ones, and although you’re working long hours, you’re not making nearly as much money as you want. Or maybe you’ve got some gigs that pay...

How do you know if you’re going to make it as a freelancer? I’ve been freelancing for fifteen years now, and to be honest, there were times early on when I thought maybe I wasn’t cut out for…

Many types of writing come with deadlines … and missing a deadline has consequences. If you’re at school, handing in a homework assignment late could mean detention. If you’re at…

If you’ve been looking for freelance work online at any time in the last decade or so, you’ve probably found plenty of companies looking for “content writers.” But what exactly is content writing? Although content writing can…

If you freelance – whether that’s writing, editing, mentoring, or offering any other type of writing service to clients – there will come a time when you want to raise your rates. This is a normal…

This post was first published in July 2014 and updated in May 2022. Have you ever thought about – or daydreamed about – turning your writing into a career? Perhaps you’ve already made some progress or perhaps you're feeling stuck, not sure where to begin. The good...

Perhaps you want to be a freelance writer … but you’re just not sure where to begin. There are lots of different types of freelance writing out there: writing articles for magazines, technical writing, copywriting (advertisements), and lots more. But one great market...

Whether you’re just getting started freelancing or you’ve been a freelancer for years, it’s pretty likely that you’re going to hit the occasional dry spell. You’ll have time on your hands – and no freelance assignment to work on. This…

If you’ve been freelancing for any length of time, you’ve probably come across sites that sell essays to university students. These are “essay mills”. Briefly, in about 2008, I ran a blog about student life, and I was constantly approached by this type of site, wanting to advertise…

One question that I see from a lot of writers is how to get writing experience. It’s a particular issue for freelance writers, but it applies to pretty much all types of writing – in the recent Aliventures survey, one reader asked for a post on: “How to get ‘writing experience’ so publishers will take you seriously without…

Are you looking into freelance writing … or hoping to pick up more gigs, find better-paying clients, or make the most of your hours you spend freelancing? There are so many great freelance writing websites out there that it was hard to pick my favourites! But I...

There are several different ways to get paid for your writing … but one of the most straightforward is to become a freelance writer. I’ve written quite a bit about freelancing before, but today, I wanted to cover the basics of how to actually get started with freelancing. And if you’re not sure…

Do you sometimes feel like you’ll never make any money (or enough money) from your writing? Perhaps the money isn’t your main goal – like most writers, you probably write because you love it. However, you might also want the opportunity to do what you love for a living. In my early years as a writer, as a teenager and…

Are you thinking about freelancing? I’ve known a lot of writers who spent quite a while in the “thinking” stage without moving forward. It’s very understandable. Launching a freelancing career can feel…

If you love writing, then you might well be looking for ways to make writing pay. After all, there’s a limit to how much time you can realistically spend writing if you need to earn money separately. When you think about “writing jobs”, what…

This is the fourth post in our series on freelancing, following on from our posts on reasons to give freelancing a try, mistakes to avoid when starting out and where to find freelance writing jobs. As a freelance writer, you’re going to need some tools – and having...

This is the third post in our series on freelancing, following on from our posts on reasons to give freelancing a try and mistakes to avoid when starting out. Whether you’re just starting out with freelancing or whether you’re in a position where you want to take on...

When you start freelancing, it’s very easy to make mistakes that end up costing you time or money. This isn’t a reason to put off starting until you’re sure you’ll get everything 100% right first time round. There will always be some things that you don’t do...

I got into freelancing by accident. Almost eleven years ago now, I started a blog (not this one – it took me a couple of attempts to settle on a homebase online). To try to get more readers, I submitted a “guest post” to a much bigger blog…

I had a great question in from a reader last week. He explained that he was in a full-time job and asked if it was possible to freelance just on the weekends. I’ll give you the good news first: Yes, it absolutely is. Many freelancers start out working...

If you've been around freelance writing world, you’ve probably heard the phrase “content mills”. So what the heck is a content mill? It’s a large website that offers lots of low-paid writing gigs – either writing for the website itself or with third-party...

This post was first published in 2010, and rewritten/updated in 2016. This is the guide which I wish I’d had when I was getting interested in freelance writing. It's a step by step walk-through for the adventure that lies ahead of you. You'll find tips for each stage...

How many different sources of writing income do you have, right now? Maybe you’ve got a novel up for sale on Amazon. Maybe you’ve got a blog that brings in a little bit of advertising or affiliate revenue. Maybe you write occasional articles for a...

Do you ever feel swamped by way too many different things to do ... and to keep track of until you can actually do them? Do you find yourself forgetting important commitments or struggling to make progress on the projects that really matter to you?...

Ali: This is a guest post from Karol K. of Writers in Charge, who got in touch and offered to share these great tips with us. Like Karol, I started freelancing without really noticing. In fact, it was almost an accident: at the start of 2008, I got in...