Freelance writing is the number of writers making money.
Writing books is also great, but the income may not be steady enough to live on or may not be enough.
That’s why many writers turn to freelance writing to ensure that they can earn a full-time income from their writing.
The “trick” to working this way is to make sure you have a lot of projects to work on and that means finding enough writing markets.
And to help you out, I’m going to tell you about three types of freelance writing you can start doing right away, and where to find them.
- Writing for trade magazines and newspapers. This is probably the easiest type of freelance writing to do. You check trade magazines and newspapers, look up their submission processes online to see if they accept freelance work and what their rates are, and then submit a pitch. You can also find these kinds of writing marketplaces online by doing a quick Google search for “journal writing submissions” or “guidelines for writers” or “write for us” or something similar. Alternatively, sign up to write newsletters from bloggers who share current writing market lists with their subscribers.
- Write regular blog posts. Once you start looking, you’ll probably also find regular work writing for blogs and other websites. There are millions of sites online and many of them are looking for regular writers. If you can find a few of these, they can provide you with a steady income.
- Writing contests. Many writing contests are very well paid. And even if you don’t win, you still have unpublished work that you can tip back for another submission elsewhere at a later date. I recently told my subscribers about a scriptwriting competition for a 60 minute play where the winner would receive £3,000 plus an advance of £3,000 against 8% of the takings. box office. Not bad for a 60-page play (one page = one minute approx.).
So even if you’ve never thought about freelance writing before, don’t discount it because it’s a great way to earn an income because as I showed you, even writing contests can pay well.
And not only is freelancing a great way to earn money, but writing regularly and meeting deadlines really helps you create a daily writing habit that can help you for the rest of your writing career.
