An Introduction To Freelance Content-Writing for Beginners

What exactly is Freelance Content Writing?

I know, things can get a bit confusing in the beginning. You might have a ton of questions. Which indeed have the potential of giving you a brain haemorrhage. At this very moment, you might be asking yourself a lot of other questions like:

What will I be doing as a freelance content writer?

Where would my writings go?

Would I be able to show my written work to my grandchildren and show it off?

Why am I even doing this?

First of all, relax. We got this! Once you have read this post whole-heartedly, without skipping even a single alphabet, You’ll know all about freelance content writing. You can get an unbreakable vow from me!

Second of all, let’s get familiar with freelance content writing!

Defining Freelance Content Writing

In the simplest language, Freelance Content Writing is the pursuit of writing for money anywhere, anytime and for anybody(who wants your services).

In freelance content writing, we as writers provide all the written content our clients require. The content could be an article, a blog, web content, reviews, newsletters, sales copies, business mails etc.

As a Freelance Content Writer, you aren’t tied up by any company or organisation.

You are your boss! You can work on as many projects as you wish.

You can take up several small projects or a single long-term project with a lot of ongoing work(long-term writing projects are comparatively better as it saves all the pitching time).

You can also choose your working hours. If you’re a morning bird, write when the sun is out there and vice versa. Additionally, you can pursue your job anywhere you want. It could be your bed, your office, your kitchen or your dining table.

Any place you are comfortable with! The exceptions to these factors are rare, really rare.

As for what exactly will you be writing about. Let’s move to the next section.

The whole spectrum of freelance content writing(the major roles you can play). You might have sensed until now that the spectrum of freelance content writing is pretty substantial. You could specialise in one of these or know it all.

Freelance Blogger

As a freelance blogger, your main focus is on blogging (like me). You might have your blog or you are blogging for someone else under your name of course.

Ghostwriter

Nope! You need not die and become a ghost and occupy someone else’s body and then write to be a ghostwriter. All you do is write under someone else’s name for money. You write e-books, blogs, articles and more.

SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) content writer

This service occupies most of the writing business. Every website/blog needs an SEO writer. As an SEO writer, you focus on providing optimized content for several search engines.

Mostly google, so that the websites/blogs could rank on google and gain traffic hence money. (even this blog on freelance content writing is search engine optimized).

Freelance web content writer

You have strong communication skills. You once convinced your science teacher that earth is flat. Yup, you did! You write the about pages of the leading brands’ websites. You are a web content writer/copywriter.

Content planner

You’re a planning expert. You decide what, when and how. You do your research and draw out a whole month’s/ year’s content plan.

The primary objective of the job is to develop a strategic plan based on the business goals of a company or client and the needs of a customer or end user.

Professional writer

You’re at the epitome of your writing career. You’re done with all the pitching struggle. Currently, clients find you and not the other way round.

You earn enough from freelance content writing that you can call yourself a pro. You got experience, a shining portfolio that tells your worth and a reputed position in the freelance market.

Services freelance content writing include

That’s enough of ‘you’ now. The person you are is defined by the work you do. So, let’s talk about your work.

A freelance content writer can do the following jobs so can you!

Ghostwriting

Everything a ghostwriter does is ghostwriting (Whoever coined this term was/is a legend I swear!). Imagine a client asks you to write a blog under his name, pays a good sum of money for that, you willingly accept the offer and now you’re writing a blog. That’s ghostwriting for you.

Editing

When you are sick of content writing. You feel like, now is the time to point out mistakes of others’ writing and correct them. Here’s a job which pays for doing so. You can even get paid more than a writer.

Managing blogs

What’s there to do in a blog? Blogging. Right? Not completely. A blog needs blogs, which need writers, a lot of them. If it’s a hefty blog. Those writers need to be paid. And the content those writers provide needs to be updated regularly.

So, as a blog manager, your job is to manage all the stuff that happens in the back-end of a blog.

Copywriting

You do everything a copywriter does. Maybe, you write copy for the web, press releases, sales pages or use your word power to update the landing pages of a website.

Managing social media

The title makes it pretty clear. You manage the social media of people. Your job here is to post and update relevant content on your client’s account.

Conclusion

Being familiar with all this terminology has its perks apart from building knowledge. You’ll realise moving further in your freelancing career. That was everything about freelance content writing. Now it's up to you how you will use your time, you still can claim back your lost time. You need to diversify your income, and it's up to you how you do that.

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Note: This article (An Introduction To Freelance Content-Writing for Beginners) is originally published on Medium by us. You can check our blog, Onblog.