I want to branch out from affiliate marketing and MLM. I'm doing OK with it, but it's not bringing in as much income as I would like. I feel my biggest strength lies in writing blogs, articles and E-Mails. I have read a bit about freelancing and copywriting sites(guru.com, elance.com etc) on here and elsewhere but I'm extremely new to both areas, so I'd really appreciate some more info. As a complete newbie, what steps would you advise me to take? I really want to do this without spending any money, if possible. I have a hosted Wordpress blog at the moment, it gets a reasonable amount of traffic but is far from being well placed in Alexa and such, so applying for review jobs might not yield many results at the moment. How does the 'bid' aspect of these sites work? Do you actually pay the company the money if you 'win' the job, or do they take it out of your fee? I've always enjoyed writing, I'm wiling to put in the work if I know I can earn some good money. Whether it be articles, blogs or reviews - I'm open to it so I'd really appreciate it if you guys could recommend some companies, sites and explain the steps I need to take. Many thanks
It's great to hear that you're looking into freelance writing. I've been a freelance writer/designer for the past five years, and I started out by contacting local publications with my ideas. The first gig that I landed was for a glossy magazine in my city, which was a great launching point for other local work. It allowed me to begin writing a column for the newspaper (going on four years now) and it's opened up doors to other national publications. But the best advice I can give you is to build up your portfolio. For awhile, I wrote for anyone and everyone, whether they would pay me or not. Any editor or employer is going to ask you for clips, and doing the grunt work will pay off big time at that point. Good luck!