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Been a professional writer since 2010...but new to freelancing


akulha56

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I’ve always had steady work, but recently due to some cutbacks at my previous company I’ve had to hit the freelance market.

Few questions for all you freelancers. I’ve been able to string together a handful of decent freelance writing gigs thanks to contacts I’ve had in the industry and I think I’ll be find, but it’s definitely much harder knowing that there’s not really a set agenda every day. How do you deal with budgeting your time and coming up with a weekly game plan?

Also, I’m new to Fiverr so I’m wondering if someone with the experience I’ve had can actually succeed on this network. I’ve written for Bleacher Report, Forbes, 247Sports and others and have had my work on MSN.com and the LA Times online, among others. Wondering if this place will be worth my time?

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I’ve always had steady work, but recently due to some cutbacks at my previous company I’ve had to hit the freelance market.

Few questions for all you freelancers. I’ve been able to string together a handful of decent freelance writing gigs thanks to contacts I’ve had in the industry and I think I’ll be find, but it’s definitely much harder knowing that there’s not really a set agenda every day. How do you deal with budgeting your time and coming up with a weekly game plan?

Also, I’m new to Fiverr so I’m wondering if someone with the experience I’ve had can actually succeed on this network. I’ve written for Bleacher Report, Forbes, 247Sports and others and have had my work on MSN.com and the LA Times online, among others. Wondering if this place will be worth my time?

Wondering if this place will be worth my time?

You will fit right in. Create a portfolio and wait for the work to start flowing in 🙂

Freelancing is good supplementary income to augment one’s other sources of income. Full time freelancing, especially the kind of freelancing where we are at the mercy of the platform’s TOS and search rankings is very risky. It’s different if you set up a writing agency of your own where you can send traffic through paid adverts etc and have some control over your business. Don’t ‘rely’ only on freelance sites for freelance work. Use it as an extra source of untapped leads to augment your present leads.

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The weekly game plan also depends on the sort of stuff you are going to write. If you churn out articles at $5 a piece then you have a different schedule then when you are going to write e-books that take two weeks to complete.

That makes sense. I’ve been doing online writing since 2010 and have worked with some major publications. Most, if not all of them have had set hours or set articles per day I was supposed to write, so that made it pretty easy.

Now I’m freelancing for about 3 different websites, and though the pay is good the work can be somewhat sporadic.

I’m thinking as a way to get going on here I’d take as many of the smaller paying jobs as possible to hopefully build a good reputation as well as a portfolio on this site.

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Wondering if this place will be worth my time?

You will fit right in. Create a portfolio and wait for the work to start flowing in 🙂

Freelancing is good supplementary income to augment one’s other sources of income. Full time freelancing, especially the kind of freelancing where we are at the mercy of the platform’s TOS and search rankings is very risky. It’s different if you set up a writing agency of your own where you can send traffic through paid adverts etc and have some control over your business. Don’t ‘rely’ only on freelance sites for freelance work. Use it as an extra source of untapped leads to augment your present leads.

Thankfully, I have a few set freelance things off sites like this that I’ve been able to get thanks to connections/industry experience. I’d be very afraid to rely solely on freelance sites for income, though apparently you can make some pretty good money doing it.

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Thankfully, I have a few set freelance things off sites like this that I’ve been able to get thanks to connections/industry experience. I’d be very afraid to rely solely on freelance sites for income, though apparently you can make some pretty good money doing it.

@akulha56 You have an impressive amount of top sites you wrote for. You should be good here if you mention that in your description. I am curious, as others may be, how did you come to be able to get published on such big name sites?

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@akulha56 You have an impressive amount of top sites you wrote for. You should be good here if you mention that in your description. I am curious, as others may be, how did you come to be able to get published on such big name sites?

I started as an intern with Bleacher Report in 2010 when they were a small site. As they grew I grew with them to the point that I became a lead writer in about two years. I did good work and really was active on social media, and that allowed me to be noticed by others. Some of the sites I’ve worked for have had content partnerships with others, which is how my work has been syndicated – specially with the LA Times and MSN.

After about 3-4 years of steady online content I was able to build a good enough resume to be able to feel confident writing for some of these bigger sites and being a managing editor for others.

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I started as an intern with Bleacher Report in 2010 when they were a small site. As they grew I grew with them to the point that I became a lead writer in about two years. I did good work and really was active on social media, and that allowed me to be noticed by others. Some of the sites I’ve worked for have had content partnerships with others, which is how my work has been syndicated – specially with the LA Times and MSN.

After about 3-4 years of steady online content I was able to build a good enough resume to be able to feel confident writing for some of these bigger sites and being a managing editor for others.

@akulha56 That is really a great and exciting story. I read the Bleacher Report daily. Very cool how you kept at it, and they found you eventually. I draw inspiration from this to keep on plugging away.

Charles

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@akulha56 That is really a great and exciting story. I read the Bleacher Report daily. Very cool how you kept at it, and they found you eventually. I draw inspiration from this to keep on plugging away.

Charles

Charles,

Just keep at it, man. The biggest thing you can do is write daily. Never stop writing and never stop reading/researching. Even just create your own personal blog where you can get your own words out there.

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