Freelance Writing for Money: A Guide to the Freelance Writing World

By Dr. David Tee

A guide for those people who want to enter the freelance writing world and earn money. This book is written from experience and is partly autobiographical

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dr. David Tee
• Release date: Jan 16, 2024
• ISBN: 9798224122233

Book preview

Freelance Writing for Money:

A Guide to the Freelance Writing World

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Table of Contents

Introduction

The Ridiculous Amount of Scammers

It is a Battle to Get Started

Discover the Reasons to be a Freelance Writer

The Treacherous Freelance Writing Pay

Facing Freelance Writing Problems

Enduring Freelance Writing Challenges, Part 1

Enduring Freelance Writing Challenges, Part 2

The Devastating Impact of AI

The Ins and Outs of Working with Clients

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Introduction

Writing for money

It has been just over 8 years since Haley James cheated us out of $2000. He was our first client when we entered the freelance writing industry. He was searching the ‘halls’ of Upwork, that popular freelance writing website, to find his next victim.

Unfortunately, we ended up being his next victim. He provided a lot of work that would keep us writing from 8 or 9 in the morning to well after 6 at night. Being new to the industry we did not know that we were supposed to be paid after each assignment was completed.

We also did not know that we were not supposed to go off-site to do work. It was an expensive lesson and we paid dearly for it as we were not only cheated out of the aforementioned $2000 but banned from Upwork as well.

That was just one of the lessons we learned as we continued to pursue a career in freelance writing. Part of the ‘we’ in we is our wife who has helped throughout the years by finding new writing platforms to work with.

Even though this was a setback, our joint efforts have allowed us to live a fairly decent lifestyle for 8 years. Dealing with bad clients who refuse to pay is one of the challenges any writer has to cope with and learn how to handle.

Once you get a grip on how to do that as well as learn how to treat all clients well then chances are you can become a success in freelance writing. Another challenge will be to be prepared for the slow seasons.

There are both peak and slow seasons and the former provides you with more than enough work. There will be days when you could be spending up to 14 hours on the keyboard trying to get assignments done and meet your deadlines.

We had to do that often as 10 to 14-hour days were the norm when there were clients with lots of content waiting to be written. Those boom times are very enjoyable. You may not see the outside of your home office till late at night, but the financial reward was worth it.

The drawback to this career choice is that the slow periods can have you not working for days on end. You get to see a lot of nature or the inside of malls while you wait to connect with another client.

These times are not as much fun and can cause a lot of strain on relations with your spouse and children. If you are not prepared for these slow times, then you may not make it in the freelance writing profession.

Learn to write well is essential

Writing does not always come easy for some people. We were fortunate as we started writing in elementary school and tried our first novel when we were in our teens.

For us, all we needed to be more successful in freelance writing was to have the right amount of information. If the information was there, we could write the topic. We also wrote many articles and product descriptions when the information was not there.

A certain amount of talent is needed to be a good freelance writer. It is possible for just about anyone to learn how to write content and write it well. But it takes a long time to develop that talent and make a living at it.

The freelance writing world can be very unforgiving especially if you are caught plagiarizing other people’s work, Copyscape can either be your friend or enemy depending on who sets its parameters.

Bad grammar is another big no-no that will end your career very quickly and using Grammarly is not always a sure thing as it makes mistakes also. Another error that lands you in hot water would be turning in assignments late.

Going past the deadline on some platforms means you lose that payment as well as that client. We were late only once and the loss of the paycheck stung a little. Freelance writing is not just sitting down at a keyboard and tapping away at the keys.

You need to know what you are doing before you pick up an assignment because bad work is easily spotted. We have made that mistake before, fortunately, we were with the writing platform long enough to be able to revise the paper we were writing and get it up to proper quality levels.

There are other little issues you have to be watchful for and not lose your cool when turning in an assignment.

Dealing with clients properly is priceless

There are clients who are very nit-picky and they will return the paper for a revision, even though it was a mistake they could easily correct themselves.

The client’s thinking is that they are paying money, sometimes a lot of money, for their research paper or content thus they expect the writer to do all the work. They expect perfection no matter what and even minor, mistakes are offensive to them and they will demand that you fix the problems.

In some cases the client is right, and in other cases, this situation can be a very big waste of time. The freelance writer has little spare time to spend on minute corrections.

But it must be done, so you do it without complaining for you know if you do complain, you could lose both the client and the money you earned. Clients vary and it is a joy to be a freelance writer when you work with a good client.

We had one