Hi guys, I normally do affiliate marketing but I want to supplement my income by freelancing. So I look around the BST forum and pretty much all I can do is write articles. Yet I cannot think of anything more mundane! Does anyone here freelance fulltime (not programming) that can maybe help me here. I am a native English speaker with an excellent level of English - is there some other freelancing niche that I could try my hand at? Especially interested to hear from any full-time freelancers. thanks
Tough one, you say it's all you can do, but don't want to do it. What about getting more involved and writing e-books on subjects that interest you. If it is unique, then you can sell it to a clickbank producer. If you take assignments on subjects you don't already know, it might keep you from getting bored.
There is great money in writing articles but not so much here on DP. Trying to compete with people from other countries is hard unless you can write for almost nothing. Most buyers on DP claim to want quality but willing to pick the person who will write for $.01 or less. There are good jobs but you need to build a reputation and search around for good free lance forums and market yourself both online and with local companies. Of course, unless you have an extreme interest in writing, it can get boring quite quickly. However, if you really enjoy writing, you could pound out a full time living. I did it full time for one summer and I earned quite a large amount of money between articles and some forum posting. However, I did not work for the peanuts that many are willing to pay on here and I was burned out on writing when the summer was over. Number one key to get repeat buyers, promise less and deliver more. Good Luck!
What are your skills? "freelancer" is a broad term. I've been doing consulting for years but it depends on what you're good at.
You can "freelance" doing whatever you're skilled in - writing, programming, research, computer repair, planting flowers.
go to elance.com or some other freelance website and pick up a few jobs. There are thousands of freelance jobs available
A few good websites that I have found useful is Constant-content.com and AssociatedContent.com - Constant Content lets you put up your articles for sale and Associated Content pay you for any articles they publish. I have also written several articles and submitted them to niche-content-packages.com
hey thanks guys. Sadly, AC don't pay anyone if you don't live in the US Otherwise, it would really help me. I can write on a variety of topics but it gets quite brain numbing after a while. I'd love to do forum posting but I hear that it pays really badly. Something like 10 cents per post? I'd have to post 500 times a day to earn 50 bucks!!!
Forum posting is a good opportunity, but as you say doesn't pay very well. Some services charge $0.15 per post, but this is still not good pay, and as forum owners want the posts to be spread out over a period of time, the pay per hour is often not very good at all, and especially with the competition from other countries offering cheap prices, you'll really have to make some incredible posts for anything above $0.15 per post. Article writing is a good bet, and something I do myself. If your English is really good, then why not charge more? Sure, you'll get less orders, but you'll still be paid a decent amount, and as you don't really like article writing you wont be able to get too bored from it Try charging $0.03 or $0.04 per word: people do pay for quality, trust me, I know.
Hmm freelancing eh? Not really a fan of it since I'm lazy and all but I'll give you some tips to start off. 1. Have a website or a profile in a social network where you can show off your work. Since you're on to writing, try blogging. 2. Market yourself. Go to freelancing website so employers may find you. 3. Find the work yourself. Go to websites in need of writers or forums where there are people looking for forum posters. 4. Contribute your skills for free at first. Contribute to a well known blog or a newspaper. It is a nice way for you to gauge your skill. You may also work for some employers for free so you can build your reputation. 5. Flaunt your past works and the satisfied you have worked with. Hope that helps.
Great suggestions from airabongco there! I would suggest that you diversify your thinking. What else are you good at besides writing? As many people here have suggested you might get tired of writing pretty fast, so you need other avenues to keep yourself motivates. Maybe you can offer proof reading services, editing, doc formatting, data entry, etc. Also, think of other things you may be good at or enjoy doing. Think outside the box, it doesn't all have to be online. You can freelance offline too. Look at websites like Craigslist or similar in your area to see what services people need and then see what you can provide. Also check out websites like http://freelancingtips.com and http://freelanceswitch.com/ for general motivation and productivity resources and tips. Good luck to you!
The problem with it is there is a lot of competition out there... there's a lot of programmers, a lot of writers etc, and what you have to do is bring your personality to it. Find something that makes you different to the rest, and use it as your UNIQUE SELLING POINT, cos if you don't have one, why shouldn't they just hire somebody cheaper. It's a dog eat dog world freelancing
Some very good feedback on this thread. Anyone know the average amount people make off areticle writing? The writers that take it serious that is.
Well there's a thread in the Copywriting section about a guy who makes $9k-$10k per month from writing, although I think he is writing sales copies and the similar, not just articles. When I first started writing I made about $200 in a week working at $0.01 to $0.02 per word, but that really tired me out. I was spending all my free time writing for crap pay. I now work for $0.04 per word (or around that), and although I don't get as many orders, I actually enjoy writing again, which was the reason that I started in the first place.
I agree. I would think a good unique selling point would be to create good content. There's a lot of cheap freelancers but the good ones are worth their asking price. You might start cheap to build up a portfolio and then raise your prices when you begin to get returning customers.
Yes if you don't have programming skill,you can write article/directory submission/ect Other than dp,you can try your luck at guru.com
People generally pay $5 for a 500-word article. Check out the conversations in the private message boards of freelancing sites and you'll get an idea.