Tag: freelance writing

How to Become a Writer

How do you become a writer? Write. Every day. Build the habit of writing. Soon, you’ll make millions. These are my thoughts on how I can earn more than a living writing.

How do you become a writer? Simple. Keep writing. Write every day.

Whatever topic; whatever style; just keep writing.

It doesn’t have to be perfect. It doesn’t even have to be optimized. The purpose is to get in the habit of writing. Writers write. First and foremost.

Of course, in our modern day, writers do more than write. They research. They learn. They optimize. They analyze data.

A writer’s role has expanded. That is if you want to own and run your own business – and earn millions along the way.

How to Become a Profitable Writer

So I guess the question really is, how do I become a profitable writer?

Continue reading “How to Become a Writer”

The Vast World of Article Writing and Rewriting

 

Since I am fairly new to this business, I know I haven’t explored or seen the most of it. Since I am an independent person foraging into this freelance writing world, I know I have so much to learn and only myself to depend upon.

 

One of the early things I learned was that there are certain styles necessary to make an article readable. Most of my clients are those asking me to write contents for their websites. The websites are mostly business ones that needs to come up first in search engines. For this to happen articles must be keyword rich or their language SEO ready. SEO stands for search engine optimized. Also, articles must be easy to read. That means, it must contain simple words and simple sentences. I admit I had to bend my writing style a bit just to comply with these guidelines.

 

Another thing I recently discovered was that most of the time they ask or they warn me not to use any software or machine to spin or make the articles. I thought to myself, who would do that? Apparently, there are softwares out there, generally called spinners, who automatically rewrites an article for you. The thought was that you create or write an article then submit it to article directories. For you to earn more, there must be a great number of views to your articles. And for that to happen, it must be at the top of search engine results. Also, it would be best if you can submit the article to hundreds of article directories.

 

Now of course, I don’t know half of what all of those means. What are article directories exactly? I think they are sites where you submit an article and they pay you a dollar per like a thousand views or something. Yes you put your own by-line but then the pay is really low for my tastes. Besides, you need to make sure your article generates like a thousand views or something for that to work. Again, these are all hypothetical in a sense. I am not that well-versed on the entire matter.

 

Still, after taking a glimpse at the vast world of freelancing, and realizing that I am not even a fraction of a hundredth close to it, I must say it all overwhelmed me. I cannot even begin to describe the enormous possibilities in this blog. For me to be really familiar or engrossed with all of this – you know write articles and spin it like a hundred times to be submitted to like a hundred article directories so that I can earn – would make me an anti-social person for all eternity. I will be as pale as any bloodsucker and as clumsy as their beloved pet.

 

So when all is said and done, I am still a writer at heart but not a hung-up writer to go that far. I like to write but not push myself too much so I can earn from my writing. For now I will continue writing for the clients I have – which are dwindling in numbers because I refuse to simply accept new ones; write some original articles for those article directories of which I am already a member of and then look for some employment out there that would enable me to meet new people and have a teeming social life – one that is real and not virtual.

breather

Finally I can breathe. Finally I can write for myself. Yes I am a selfish writer – writing for myself but this is how I vent out, how I cope with stress.

I still can’t believe I was able to survive the weekend. I can hardly believe I made it out alive.

I was buried, literally, on tons of work! Freelancing work. Not academic writing since my principles won’t allow me to take such kind of work but instead I was buried doing tons of content writing.

It all started when an avalanche of projects poured in last Friday. First, the company who introduced me to freelance writing gave an assignment for 20 political articles that I needed to rewrite. Almost at the same time, I won 2 projects I bid on at GetAFreelancer.com thus adding another 10 articles that I had to rewrite. Apart from that, there were other clients who were interested in hiring me and were asking me to submit sample articles.

I was shocked. Petrified even. Can I do all these in so short a time. They were all due before the weekend was over. But God willing I was able to accomplish them.

After working non-stop, and looking even worse than when I was working in a call center – shrunken eyes with black circles from lack of sleep, pale skin from lack of sunlight, dizziness from lack of hemoglobin, muscle spasms from excessive stress – I made it. I survived.

And how I love the feeling that I am, or at least I can say, that I am a writer. It may not be the kind of writing I had imagined but still I can now take on officially the title of “Writer” as a profession. How much I earn and if I get paid is another discussion.

Even after the thousands of words I’ve cranked out over the past couple of hours, words are still flowing from my mind right now. I still can’t stop writing as evidenced by what I’m blogging about. And if I thought writing professionally would ebb the flow of original ideas, I was wrong. Ideas for topics of what I would want to write here are flowing nonstop just like before.

breather

Finally I can breathe. Finally I can write for myself. Yes I am a

selfish writer – writing for myself but this is how I vent out,

how I cope with stress.

I still can’t believe I was able to survive the weekend. I can

hardly believe I made it out alive.

I was buried, literally, on tons of work! Freelancing work. Not

academic writing since my principles won’t allow me to take such

kind of work but instead I was buried doing tons of content

writing.

It all started when an avalanche of projects poured in last

Friday. First, the company who introduced me to freelance writing

gave an assignment for 20 political articles that I needed to

rewrite. Almost at the same time, I won 2 projects I bid on at

GetAFreelancer.com thus adding another 10 articles that I had to

rewrite. Apart from that, there were other clients who were

interested in hiring me and were asking me to submit sample

articles.

I was shocked. Petrified even. Can I do all these in so short a

time. They were all due before the weekend was over. But God

willing I was able to accomplish them.

After working non-stop, and looking even worse than when I was

working in a call center – shrunken eyes with black circles from

lack of sleep, pale skin from lack of sunlight, dizziness from

lack of hemoglobin, muscle spasms from excessive stress – I made

it. I survived.

And how I love the feeling that I am, or at least I can say, that

I am a writer. It may not be the kind of writing I had imagined

but still I can now take on officially the title of “Writer” as a

profession. How much I earn and if I get paid is another

discussion.

Even after the thousands of words I’ve cranked out over the past

couple of hours, words are still flowing from my mind right now.

I still can’t stop writing as evidenced by what I’m blogging

about. And if I thought writing professionally would ebb the flow

of original ideas, I was wrong. Ideas for topics of what I would

want to write here are flowing nonstop just like before.

Pitfalls of Freelance Writing

Although freelance writing has a lot of benefits and opportunities available, I realized that one has to be careful in choosing the projects one partakes of. Not so much because of issues of getting paid or not but more so on issues about what the project really is about.

I was aghast to find out that there are legitimate companies who really hire professional and good writers to write papers for their clients who are, sad to say, students trying to get someone to do their school papers for them. I knew that somehow there are first world country students who are thick enough to avail the services of a writer, most probably from a third world country, for their school term papers and projects but what I was  not prepared for was that there are valid companies – professional looking ones at that – who can handle such things.

This company that I have recently applied for was what showed me such. I was impressed by the professional look of their website and I took pains in accomplishing their application form, which asked me about my knowledge of citation styles and my experiences with academic writing. Then their examination was equally strenuous since I was given 15 minutes to write a composition whose outline and topic they have dictated. When I got in, I spent a day learning their system – the writing guidelines as well as how I can take job orders and submit them. The company was very professional, all right. They even had an online chat support. Best of all, they were really big on plagiarism and how sternly it is punished.

But when I began looking at the orders, I was gravely disappointed. I was so disappointed to find that most of them were term papers of students, undergraduate and masters alike. I was expecting companies looking for writers to write contents for their websites or brochures, or perhaps something like Wikipedia looking for people to check their contents or something like that. I looked at order by order, trying to find something that I could write. I had no issues whether I could write the content or not even when it involved research on my part. I knew I could. I had issues with my conscience though for I can never seem to get away the bothersome feeling that I was doing someone else’s work and my work would be passed off as someone else’s.

I am not trying to sound self-righteous. Nor am I saying I am better than anyone else. I am not. But I do adhere deeply to the value of integrity – integrity even in one’s study. I am not saying that the company condones such practices. It’s just that they don’t censor what clients they get. I even saw an order wherein the client appealed to whoever would take her order to make a good job because the last time she asked the company to create a job for her, her professor gave her an F. Imagine that! I bet the professor knew she asked someone else to do the work for her.

The pay is good alright. Three dollars is the minimum I saw for one page of a paper and a paper usually has a minimum of 2 pages. Mostly the pay is $20-$30 dollars per project. Not bad really. In fact, it’s one of the highest paying freelance writing job I saw. But then the downside is, someone else get to pass your work as his or her. It is not plagiarism per se but it is a violation of intellectual rights not to mention sheer integrity.

Disappointed, I had to leave that company. I realized that it is better to earn $0.01 per ad clicked on those PTC sites than to earn $30 on a “term paper”.

Next: Various Ways of Earning through the Internet