Freelance writing is a great path. If you have the skills and clients you need to support it, working for yourself as a writer offers a lot of benefits.
You get the flexibility to work whenever and wherever you want, no boss, and great pay. So if that path has been calling to you, even just a little bit in the back of your mind, don’t ignore it. It might just be the path to financial and personal freedom you’ve been looking for.
As someone who has built a career out of freelance writing, I’m here to talk about how I did it. Here’s how to become a freelance writer with no experience.
What is Freelance Writing and How Much Does it Pay?
Let’s start with the basics: what is freelance writing? Freelance writing is, at its most basic, any kind of contracted writing work.
You can call yourself a freelance writer if your contracted work is text-based writing work. Things like blog posts, white papers, ad copy, email marketing, etc.
How much does freelance writing pay?
Freelance writing pay scales vary drastically depending on your niche, experience, and skillset. For most writers, you can expect to start in the $20 per hour range (for example, $100 for ~1,000 polished words, assuming it takes 5 hours to research, write, edit, and revise that 1,000-word piece.
Your pay scale can go up drastically with added skills (like SEO) and topical expertise.
Who Needs Freelance Writers? Picking an Industry to Tackle
If you’re hoping to make freelance writing a career, you need to find people who will pay you for it. Thankfully, in this regard, the possibilities are pretty wide open.
Most freelance writers offer a B2B service (unless you’re an author, for example). There aren’t a lot of consumers out there looking for consistent writing help, which means your most likely target client will be other businesses. Businesses that need help boosting their:
- Blogs
- Social media
- Email marketing
- Website copy
- Product descriptions
- Ads
- Or another piece in the marketing puzzle.
Finding Your Niche (A Rough Guide)
To find your ideal client sectors, take a moment and jot down 3–5 ideas of industries that tick the following boxes for you (this is a personal assessment, so your results will be different from anyone else, ideally):
- A profitable industry that has a lot of players/companies in it
- An industry whose primary topics and customers you know well (or are willing to learn well)
- Something non-regulated/low stakes
Let’s go through some examples.
Freelance Writing for Law Firms
You may have an interest in family law, for example. In this case, it may tick the first two boxes for you.
But any sort of law is highly regulated/high stakes.
By writing for a family law blog, you effectively speak on behalf of the law firm. As such, it will take a lot of knowledge, signoff, and oversight to complete each post—which is not usually an ideal client or freelancer experience.
Freelance Writing for Software
If you’ve worked in tech and want to transition into a more self-directed career within that field, the software industry may tick all boxes for you.
(Note: I would recommend picking a type of software, like graphic design, CRMs, FinTech, HR, accounting, etc. to narrow it down further)
It’s an industry with a lot of profitable players in it, you may have (or be willing to get) specific knowledge about the product, industry, and customer archetypes, and it’s relatively low stakes (not a lot of regulation outside of avoiding false advertising for most software players).
From my perspective and experience, this is a great choice.
How to Get Started: The Step-By-Step Guide to Freelance Writing with No Experience
Now that you know who you’re selling to, here’s the guide to finding your first paying client, and adjacent skills you’ll want to have to position yourself well in the freelance writing industry. Let’s dive in.
Step 1: Get to Know Your Clients
Now that you’ve identified your niche, it’s time to get to know your prospective clients. Search for answers to these questions:
- What do they need from you most? Is it a large company with a big marketing department that needs supplemental assignment help (with things like blog posts, for example), or a small company with no marketing department that needs more direction and leadership with the writing?
- Who at the company is looking for you? Even though you’re a B2B service, you’re not pitching the whole company. Who should you reach out to at that company? For example, a marketing director, the business owner, a content specialist.
- Where are they looking for you, if they are? For example, LinkedIn, Medium, Quora, Google, etc.
- How can you reach them, if they’re not looking for you? For example, LinkedIn, Medium, Quora, cold emailing, etc.
- What’s the greatest solution/value proposition you offer? If you have SEO skills, for example, you can offer more targeted website traffic and leads. If you have proven ad copy skills, on the other hand, you can offer higher conversion rates. Etc.
Step 2: Write Some Samples
Before signing a contract with you, any prospective customer will want to see some samples of your writing. What, exactly, they’re looking for will vary, but they usually want to ensure you:
- Have topic expertise — unless they’ve offered to train you, they hope you come with a semblance of understanding of their industry and customers.
- Have a compatible/digestible writing style — can your style fit within their brand guidelines and/or with other content they’ve written? Do you have an understanding of flow? Is your writing interesting? Etc.
- And possess general writing skills — basic things like grammar and spelling.
So I suggest you prepare some content to show them.
I get it — it’s not fun to do free work — but think of this as an investment. An investment of your time instead of money. No one will agree to pay you for your work without proof you can do it to the standard your price commands (unless you have a refund policy, which may cause you do free work anyway if your styles don’t align).
Side note: It’s also a great way to make sure you’ll stick with freelance writing long term, since it’s a taste of the work you’re committing to. If you don’t like writing on topics of your choosing, you definitely won’t like writing by assignment.
Step 3: Put Yourself Out There
Now it’s time to put yourself out there.
I have a guide to pitching and landing your first client here:
How to Land Your First Freelance Writing Client
Step 4: Upskill
One of the things a lot of freelance writers overlook is the value of their work beyond the writing.
Businesses looking for writing skills, as you may have noticed as themes in this article, are generally also looking for supplemental skills, like SEO and marketing. Each blog post you write for a client offers value. It’s content they can use and repurpose across social platforms and beyond.
There’s a lot of value, however, that you overlook in your own work without upskilling:
- Making your content search engine friendly so it ranks well and gets them traffic, leads, and sales
- Thinking outside of the box with your topics and keywords to drive results directly from your work
- Not requiring additional work from them to make your content realize its maximum value
- And more
Closing Thoughts: Building a Freelance Writing Career with No Experience
As you may have noticed, starting a freelance writing business isn’t as easy as “overnight success stories” online may claim. But if you take this strategic approach, you can absolutely build a sustainable career as a freelance writer with no experience.
Upskill Today: If you want to turn your freelance writing dreams into a full-scale career that clients are actually looking for and happy to pay you for, join the waitlist for our Build-a-Business Workshop: Building a Business with SEO.
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