When I ran my webinar "The Confident Writer" a couple of weeks ago, one attendee asked a great question, along these lines:
There's so much advice out there for freelancer writers and so many things I could be doing. Where should I start?
There IS a huge amount of (good!) advice out there: blogs, books,
podcasts, courses, seminars...
It can be really daunting, especially if you feel like you need to get EVERYTHING in place before you begin. A business plan. A logo. A "brand". A great-looking website. A social media strategy...
To be honest, I think a lot of this can be a bit of a distraction from actually getting started as a freelancer. While I'm all for planning, you may find that once you start freelancing, your ideas change rapidly: there's no point spending hours and hours coming up with a complex business plan before you begin.
Here's the ONE thing I think you should do first:
Get some examples of your published writing.
This could be online or offline. It might be in a small local publication – it doesn't need to be anything super-impressive. It could even be on your own blog or website.
What matters here is that
you have samples for prospective clients to look at. You don't need a lot (I'd suggest 2 or 3 is enough, to begin with) but you do need something. After all, would you hire a logo designer without seeing a single logo they'd created?
To get these initial samples, it's fine to work for free. A couple
of good options here are to:
- Write a guest post for a large-ish blog. Whatever you'd like to write about, there'll be a blog out there that'll be interested! A few blogs pay for guest posts though many don't. I'd suggest starting with blogs you already read and enjoy – you'll know how to hit the right sort of tone for them already.
- Write something for a charity or non-profit. That might mean helping them put together a website, or editing something they've already written. Many small charities would be hugely grateful for this kind of help (I did the content and techy side of a website for one, when I was just starting out – they wrote me a glowing testimonial!) Send out an email to friends and family or ask around on Facebook to see if anyone
knows of a good cause who could use a hand.
Once you've got those samples in hand, everything else becomes a little easier. For instance:
- You can ask for testimonials: most people won't think to offer one,
but they'll almost always be happy to write you a short testimonial if you've worked with them (whether for free or paid).
- You'll then have some materials to put on your website – a "portfolio" or "writing samples" page can include links to and screenshots of your samples, if they're online, or a .pdf of samples if they were published offline.
- You'll have gained some real-world experience of freelancing (even if you didn't get paid) – and this can help you come up with sensible processes for doing your work and for liaising with clients.
If you want to freelance and haven't yet got any published samples, what's holding you back ... and what could you do to get past that obstacle and create your first piece of published work?
