Once all of the above are in place, you also want to make sure to highlight important testimonials and social proof on key pages of your website; this includes on your homepage, on your about page, and on your services page.
9. Cold pitch potential clients
Cold pitching is my all-time favorite method for getting freelance writing jobs. I’m particularly in love with cold pitching for the following reasons:
- Anybody can do it. You can send cold pitches and get your services in front of potential clients regardless of your freelance writing experience or how authoritative your website is.
- You get results really fast. While some methods of getting clients (like blogging) can take months, cold pitching can yield results super fast. In fact, during a cold pitching campaign I once closed a freelance writing deal worth $625 in just two hours.
- It is scalable; during my most recent cold pitching campaign I closed deals worth five figures with minimal effort. If I wanted to, and if I had the ability to do the work, I could close deals worth six figures in months. To achieve this same result through blogging, investing in ads, or other means will require a much greater deal of effort and resources.
With the above benefits outlined, how then do you go about cold pitching effectively. There are a few key things to put in place:
Set up your website and online presence
When you send cold pitches to potential clients, you should realize that you are a stranger to practically all of the people you’re cold pitching. You’ve had no interactions with them before and they probably haven’t heard about you. So guess what they do first when they see your email? If it isn’t trite enough to be ignored, they do a background check on you by searching for your name on Google. If they find a website and an established online presence you’ll be at an advantage.
Ensure your cold pitches are sent from your professional email address
While many freelance writers looking for job opportunities send cold pitches using free email addresses like Gmail and Yahoo Mail, this is something I strongly advocate against for a key reason: spammers abuse free emails a lot, and as a result most people ignore them or even have filters against them. A professional email address associated with your website (e.g. yourname[AT]yourwebsite.com) stands out on the other hand and ensures you’re more likely to be taken seriously.
Keep your cold pitch simple and to the point
Remember, you’re a stranger in this person’s inbox so he/she doesn’t have the time to read an epistle from you. Assume that you’ve wasted the opportunity you have if a prospect needs to spend more than a minute to read your cold email. All the better if you can keep it under 30 seconds.
Do your homework
Take a few minutes to do your work. Know the name of the person you’re cold pitching and the name of the person at the organization you’re pitching, then ensure you address the person by name.
Specify what you can do in the email
Mention what service you’re offering and how it can help the person reading the email. Don’t ask the recipient of your message to click a link to read more about your services. That’s a mistake. Most people won’t click a link in an email from a stranger.
Highlight social proof you have in your email
If there’s anything significant you’ve done with your writing, be sure to highlight it in your email. This includes having a popular blog, having been featured in popular publications, having won an award, having published a book, and or having helped clients achieve certain key results with your writing.
Be ready to follow up
You’ll often have to follow up a few times before getting a response to some of your cold pitches. It is important to also learn how to craft a good follow up email.
To give you an idea of what a good cold pitch looks like, below is the screenshot of the exact cold pitch that I used to close a writing deal worth $625 in two hours (which eventually led to five figures from the same client over time):
10. Optimize your LinkedIn profile
LinkedIn is undoubtedly the biggest social network for professionals and, if used the right way, it can serve as a great platform to promote your freelance writing services.
I’ve had many potential clients (like the one below) reach out to me with freelance writing opportunities on LinkedIn:
There are several ways to use LinkedIn to get freelance writing jobs. Below are some tips to help you maximize the platform:
- Use a clear and professional headshot.
- Make sure your LinkedIn profile clearly highlights your experience and organizations you’ve worked.
- Make sure relevant terms and keywords are present in your profile to ensure your profile comes up when people search for these terms. Examples: “b2b freelance writer,” “Seattle freelance writer,” etc.
- Ensure your LinkedIn profile highlights your portfolio and strong pieces of content you’ve helped create.
The following screenshot, of freelance writer Elna Cain’s LinkedIn profile, is a good example of a well-optimized LinkedIn profile. Besides using a clear and professional headshot, it is clearly descriptive and uses relevant keywords that make it easy for potential clients to discover Cain when using the LinkedIn search feature.
11. Tap Into Quora’s increasing popularity with decision makers
While many are familiar with Quora as a leading question and answer website where you can get insights on pretty much any topic, very few realize that Quora can also serve as a good source of freelance writing jobs.
With over 300 million monthly users, 54 percent of whom report an annual household income of more than $100,000, and 37 percent of whom are likely to be in management positions, there is an abundance of writing job opportunities on Quora – if you know how to use it.
Below is a response to a particular Quora thread that was made by a freelance writer looking for jobs:
There are a few key steps to get freelance writing jobs on Quora:
- Make sure your Quora profile is properly set up. The same rule always applies: use a professional headshot and clear profile description with relevant keywords and that highlights your expertise.
- Ensure you are highly active on Quora, particularly in sections related to your niche and the services you offer; for example, you should be active where content and writing as related to your industry is being discussed.
- You should regularly contribute relevant and in-depth articles to questions relevant to your industry and, if possible, highlight the fact that you are a freelance writer for hire (directly or indirectly).
12. Use SEO to build a long-term stream of clients
SEO is something I strongly believe every freelance writer should know and take advantage of; besides the fact that a lot of potential clients expect you to have at least a basic knowledge of SEO, it can also help you rank your website for relevant keywords that potential clients are searching for.
SEO can help you get freelance writing opportunities directly and indirectly. Here’s how you can use both the direct and indirect approach to SEO to get writing jobs:
Using the direct approach:
This approach aims to rank your freelance writer website for relevant freelance writer terms so that when clients search for these terms they come across your website.
For example, your website could be optimized for the term “b2b freelance writer,” or “Whitepaper writer,” or “Maryland freelance writer.” You then focus on gradually building relevant backlinks and creating relevant content aimed at helping your website get to the top results where you become the first website that potential clients see when they search for those terms.
The advantage to this approach is that, if done right and your website starts ranking well, you will keep getting client inquiries and new clients for months and years for as long as you maintain your rankings. The disadvantage is that, depending on how competitive the term is, you stop getting new freelance writing inquiries as soon as your rankings begin to drop.
Using the indirect approach:
I once published an ultimate guide to guest blogging, built some quality backlinks to it, and watched it slowly climb up in the search engines until it was on page one for several guest blogging related terms. During this period, I kept getting a lot of inquiries from people who wanted me to do both guest blogging and other freelance writing work for them.
This is just one piece of content that has brought in a great deal of freelance writing work for me; I have others, too.
These pieces of content rely on the indirect SEO approach to getting clients; where you create a solid piece of content that promotes your freelance writing services and then try to get that content to rank well in search engines.
If you have a blog, or a freelance writer website, then it might be a good idea to publish a few of these in-depth guides and resources, optimize them to lead clients to your services page, and promote them with link building efforts such as guest blogging and outreach. Over time, these articles will start to rank for relevant keywords and result in potential clients who are interested in your services reaching out to you.
13. Start guest blogging the smart way
Guest blogging is one of my favorite methods for getting freelance writing jobs and it has been responsible for six figures in freelance writing income for me over the years.
There are two ways you can use guest blogging to get freelance writing jobs:
Directly:
The aim of this approach is to get potential clients to reach out to you directly as a result of your guest post. Often, this is done by writing a solid and relevant guest post on a highly authoritative publication and including a link to your services in your guest post bio.
Here’s an example bio from a guest post on Problogger:
As you can see, the bio clearly shows that the author of the guest post is a professional guest blogger and links to a page where the author can be hired.
When using the direct approach to guest blogging, there are a few things you should focus on:
- Select a highly authoritative blog that has a lot of traffic; since you are hoping that people will reach out to you after reading your guest post it is important that people read it. You don’t want to guest blog on a publication that has no readers.
- Ensure that the publication you are writing for has your target audience and that your guest post is highly relevant to both your target audience and the services you’re offering.
- Ensure your guest post bio clearly shows that you are a freelance writer that can be hired (as demonstrated in the above example with the Problogger guest blogger).
Indirectly:
Another way to get freelance writing jobs by guest blogging is through the indirect approach. The focus of this approach is on using guest blogging as a means to build relevant links to your writer website or other pages on your website.
When you use this approach, the links in your guest posts can be contextual (relevant and in-content) or in your bio. There are a few ways you can go about it:
- Ensure your guest posts are relevant to your website/services/page you desire to link to, or that there is a section of your guest post that is relevant, and then link to this page in that relevant section.
- You can link directly to your homepage, especially if you’re trying to rank for key terms that potential clients are looking for e.g. “b2b content writer,” “Seattle freelance writer,” etc.
- You can also link to key content on your website that is designed to qualify potential clients and get them to reach out to you. This could be an ultimate guide, a case study, or some other relevant piece of content aimed at directing people to your freelance writing services.
Both of the above approaches can be used with great success to get freelance writing jobs, and both have been responsible for generating six figures in freelance writing income for me over the years.
14. Pitch new services to existing clients
Oftentimes our focus is on getting new clients when trying to get freelance writing jobs. We seldom think about our existing clients as a source of new jobs and lose out on a lot of income in the process.
In my experience over the years, it is a lot easier to get high-paying freelance writing gigs by focusing on existing clients instead of new ones. These clients know you and have a feel for what you can do, so you don’t have to do much to convince them to give you work.
Earlier on in this article, I had listed 20+ different services you can offer to potential clients; if you’re offering just one or two of these services to a client, then you have an opportunity to earn a lot more – by offering additional services to the same client. Doing this has easily added six figures to my bottom line over the years.
I initially realized the power of offering additional service to existing clients when a client in the CPA education niche that I had been working on guest posts for asked me if I can write landing page content for their website.
I accepted the offer and would eventually earn five figures just creating landing page content for this client within a few short months; earning significantly more than I was earning doing what I was initially hired for. I kept thinking about how I could have lost this opportunity due to thinking I only had to work on what I was initially hired to do.
Ever since, I’ve relied on pitching existing clients with new services to get more jobs and increase my earnings.
For example, one of my major clients is a leading comparison site in the web hosting niche; while the client initially hired me to help with ghostwriting guest posts, I noticed they kept publishing new content on their blog that I didn’t help create. I simply pitched them my blog content services, was commissioned to write about 27 reviews for five figures and have since been given other writing-related projects (including a tutorial-style blog post for mid four figures). This is despite the fact that this wasn’t what I was initially hired to do.
15. Take advantage of website flipping marketplaces like Flippa
You’ve probably heard of Flippa before.
If not, it is the leading online marketplace for buying and selling websites. While you sometimes see sites being sold for low and mid five figures, a good portion of websites on Flippa are sold for hundreds of thousands of dollars and even millions.
So what does buying and selling websites on Flippa have to do with getting freelance writing jobs? A lot. Majority of the people buying and selling websites on these platforms often do so as a business model; they buy an authoritative website, update it with lots of quality content, build more links to it, and sell it for multiples of what they bought it for.
Or, in some instances, they build up websites from scratch, update it with relevant content and build backlinks to it and then sell it for five or six figures.
In both of these instances, you can come in by positioning yourself as the freelance writer who helps them with the content they publish on these websites.
Here’s an example:
Take a look at the above Flippa ad and a few facts instantly stand out:
- $17.6k monthly profit
- 16k email subscribers
- 283.4k monthly unique visits
- More importantly: a content site
The above Flippa listing is an ad for a site looking for a buyer; when you look at the nature of the site and the business model, there is clearly a need for a writer for this site. There are many more ads like this on Flippa and related websites, and they present an opportunity for you.
Simply visit the Flippa category relevant to your niche, identify sites that might need the kind of content you create, and pitch your services to BOTH buyers and sellers of websites in these categories.
⚡ Pro tip: Freelance writing job boards and online writing jobs listings
Finally, you can also get freelance writing jobs by taking advantage of freelance job boards and listings of paid writing jobs.
16. Freelance Writing Gigs Jobs Board
The Freelance Writing Gigs Job Board is one of the top job boards for freelance writers looking for blogging and general freelance writing jobs. The job board is updated multiple times a week and sometimes several times daily. You can find copywriting jobs, blogging jobs, editing jobs, and other content writing jobs in practically any niche.
A careful analysis of the jobs that get featured on this job board shows that the majority of the jobs posted pay at least $50 per article.
17. All Freelance Writing Jobs Board
The All Freelance Writing Job Board is one of my all-time favorite job boards due to their advanced classification system.
Jobs posted to this job board are classed into four main categories:
- Pro rate (for writing jobs that pay above $100 per article)
- Semi-Pro rate (for writing jobs that pay $50 to $100 per article)
- Low pay (for writing jobs that pay $25 to $50 per article)
- Very low pay (for writing jobs that pay $1 to $25 per article)
This classification system, possibly influenced by the fact that the job board was created by a freelance writer who understands the value of writers and who wants them to get paid well, makes it very easy to filter out freelance writing gigs you don’t want thereby making it easy for you to only work on the opportunities you want.
18. BloggingPro Jobs Board
As the name implies, the BloggingPro Job board specifically features blogging related jobs for freelance writers. This includes both writing and editing jobs. While other writing related jobs are featured as well, the emphasis here tends to be on blogging jobs.
19. Problogger Jobs Board
Like the other job boards featured, the Problogger Job Board features both writing and blogging jobs. It is quite advanced and allows you to filter jobs based on location, whether they are contract or freelance in nature, or whether they are part time or full time.
You can also subscribe via RSS or set up specific job alerts so as to be notified once new jobs are available.
20. Contena
There is also the Contena job board, which generally features more jobs than the other job boards on this list. Writing jobs featured are generally well-paying and in a variety of niches.
The only limitation with Contena, however, is that, unlike is the case with the other job boards, you need to sign up before you can view information about their job listings.
21. The FreelanceWriting.com Jobs Board
The FreelanceWriting.com job board is the oldest and most comprehensive of all the job boards here. It is also quite advanced due to the features it provides to allow you to filter and sort available writing jobs.
It features freelance jobs for any type of writing opportunity you can think of. These jobs are collated from a number of sources that include Indeed, Ed2010, and Craigslist. You can filter available jobs by source, by date, by keyword, by location, and by skill required.
22. Freelance Writing Gigs
The entire Freelance Writing Gigs site is dedicated to posting about freelance writing jobs and opportunities from across the web. Lists of writing jobs are posted practically every day.
23. Editorial lists on Writers in Charge
Writers in Charge has a number of lists of websites and publications that pay writers. Some of the more popular ones include:
24. Editorial lists on Make a Living Writing
Make a Living Writing has also published quite a number of lists of blogs and publications that pay writers. Some of its more popular lists include:
25. Editorial lists on ElnaCain.com
Top freelance writer Elna Cain has published quite a number of lists of websites and publications that cover writing jobs for freelance writers:
? Getting freelance writing jobs shouldn’t be complicated
Of course, that is if you know what you’re doing.
The above is a combination of 25 different methods, resources, and sites that you can take advantage of to get freelance writing jobs and opportunities. These methods and resources are all proven to work provided you take action.
What other methods can be used to get freelance writing jobs? Please share in the comments below.
Keep reading the article at CodeinWP. The article was originally written by Bamidele Onibalusi on 2020-03-11 09:17:08.
The article was hand-picked and curated for you by the Editorial Team of WP Archives.