Hello everyone, Has anyone built a six-figure freelance business, specifically writing? I am very interested in building from the ground up by writing SEO content. I am a native speaker of English and I have an excellent command of the language, and a working knowledge of SEO, but where do I begin? I assume I need some sort of portfolio, but I have no idea where I would even start. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!
Welcome! You want to post this in the Copywriting forum. That's where most of the writers post. If you do a search of the forum, you'll find some discussion on making six-figure salaries. I believe one poster, KeywordsAndCopy, is making six-figures freelancing. If not he's pretty close to it based on his monthly earnings. Yes, an online portfolio is good. If you look in some writers' signatures, you'll find links to their online portofolio. This will help you get an idea of how you can format your portfolio. It basically should talk about your experience, services your provide, why your clients should hire you, and maybe the rates you charge (there's some debate around this).
Yes, you can make it. First, you will need a portfolio. You have a number of choices here: 1) Write an article on a topic of your choice. 2) Offer cheap articles on the agreement you can use them in your portfolio. 3) Offer free articles on the agreement you can use them in your portfolio. Number One is probably the most common, but I personally find it hard to think of ideas for topics, so I opted for option three, purely because I thought I'd be able to get more interest and generate some portfolio pieces quicker, and it worked. Option two might be your choice though, whichever you think is best for you. OK, so you have your portfolio built up, now you need to figure out your price. The standard rate here on DP is around $1 per 100 words, but you'll never make a six figure salary with that. I sell my services at around $0.04 per word, so $1 per 25 words, but offer discounts in bulk. Now, I doubt I'll ever make a six figure salary with this, and in my opinion you should be looking at around $1 per 10 words if you're really going to make a decent amount, but your work has to be real quality if you're to generate interest at this price. So, figure out your price. Now look for some jobs. Remember to advertise yourself as much as possible, but a very successful writer on here has always told me that the majority of their work comes to them, not the other way round, so it is probably best to build a website for your services and advertise that, then wait for the clients. If you target companies then you should make more than you can online, but this is not true all the time, you should always look around for work just incase you stumble into your perfect job. Either way, good luck, and I hope that you're making your first six figure salary in no time
The portfolio is key, and willing to do some jobs at the beginning for less than you might want to charge in order to build a portfolio as well.
Yeah, but make sure you have the buyer's permission before using the work they paid for in your portfolio...
So would a good compromise be doing free work in exchange for the design of a portfolio website/blog? Or is that just stupid?
Do you mean as in you write them articles and they make you a website? Or you give them free articles and they let you use the articles in your portfolio? If it's the first, then it really depends how many articles you write and how much their design is worth. If you want a design and you have no other way of paying for it, then, yeah, write! If it's the second, I did this, and it worked beautifully.
kiteguy, I meant the first. Any idea if this would work? Have you ever heard of anyone doing this? Thanks for all the replies!
If you find a designer that needs articles, then sure, it could work, but I've never seen a job like this, and unless you already have something like this lined up, then I would recommend you selling articles now and then buying a website with the money you earn