samwoods94

Social media marketing seems to be the best bet, as near as I can tell...building an audience, establishing credibility and offering your services. Marketing is all about defining your target audience (for me, low-income writers looking to outsource proofreading and editing on a budget.) and finding the spaces they're likely to be in. It isn't about shoving links in people's faces like clowns throwing pies, but it's about having your links available and tailoring your social media to funnel people in. I make posts about what I'm doing at work, what kind of editing I do, and I try to make myself relatable to my target audience. If people like you, they're more likely to want to hire you- assuming you're offering a gig that lines up with their needs.

Painfully true. I'm brand new to Fiverr and still figuring out how exactly to construct my gig in a way that's appealing to buyers. There's a lot of trial and error and a lot of learning that goes into building any kind of online business. You don't hit the ground running and make it to the finish line without putting in solid groundwork first. Freelancing is a different beast from long time salaried work, too. I think a lot of people who come into this just aren't prepared for the reality because they're used to regular paychecks.

I'm actually not that scared. I write and edit a lot of work that's partially AI generated in my day job, and to be honest a lot of it just isn't up to snuff without a lot of revision. It tends to be stilted, repetitive, and lacks any sort of creativity or flow. A huge part of writing engaging stories and articles has to do with expressing emotions brought on from personal experience and the bots just don't have that. On top of that, the key to deeply emotional writing comes from knowing which rules need to be broken. If you follow every grammar rule rigidly and never step outside of the box, you're going to wind up with something dry and generic and lacking in originality. Not great for your clients. Those instincts come from practice and experience, not programming!

Oh, super excited! I've only had one so far, but I had this gigantic grin on my face as I got the notification. And then the nerves struck and I was internally panicking about doing a good job. Which is funny, because I'm essentially just offering what I do for my day job anyway. Freelancing hits different, I guess...thankfully I was worried for nothing. Did the work quickly, got paid, got a good review and even a tip!