Becoming a content writer

Ronnie55

Ronnie55

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Mar 12, 2013
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Thinking of trying to become a freelance web content writer. Articles, blog posts, etc. I'm curious if people here think it's worth it to try.

It's probably the part of website creation that comes the most naturally to me.

I would do 2 things to separate myself from all the people undercutting each other on odesk and other sites:

1. premium writing. I won't under cut people. I won't lower my price. But I'll provide high quality for a high price. I am a college graduate with good work experience in a few specific industries and I'm a native english speaker.

2. i'd only write about topics I know and am comfortable with. I will turn down business if I don't feel comfortable writing about it. I think this would give me legitimacy and maintain the quality of my work, and will also help me get repeat business from those in my niche.


Right now the money probably isn't worth it to me. I assume I could get an absolute maximum of like 10-20 dollars for an article of 500 words, and that might be optimistic. Not worth my time compared with my current 9-5 job or side projects that are actually scalable and could make me rich (this obviously never would..)

But in the future I might travel and stop working 9-5, and that extra income could help a lot especially if it only occupied 1-2 hours a day.
 


The guy above me knows what he's talking about.

My business is (in a nutshell) selling content + copy.

My prices start at $50/500 words. $250+ for copy.

Don't sell yourself short. You don't want to deal with clients that want to spend $5 per article.
 
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Yeah, you are right mate.

I also work at $20-25 per 500 word and i don't take any work from client who give cheap rate.
 
I would start by building a portfolio, even if the pay sucks.

That's my plan, once I build a portfolio and improve my skills I'm going to charge more premium rates.
 
Good luck M8. My friend did copy-writing before he got fed up and started out-sourcing. Why? He never built his portfolio past bottom feeder tier and was always scraping for projects on Elance and what not.

If you can stick around long enough to get over newb canyon and past shits creek, then you can be comfy writing short, expensive copy for video producers or something.
 
One popular route seems to be:

1. Write for peanuts to build your cred
2. Become a god among writers, charge insanely high rates to a small amount of clients
3. To stay busy and maximize revenue, take on projects you are passionate about, accepting a lower pay.
 
My advice would be to learn AP (Associated Press) style and use that as your standard for web content writing. The stylebook is like $25 at basically any bookstore. If you know it well, then you can start on TextBroker and be at the top tier level making $0.05/word within a few months.
 
JagerManJensen said:
Good luck M8. My friend did copy-writing before he got fed up and started out-sourcing. Why? He never built his portfolio past bottom feeder tier and was always scraping for projects on Elance and what not.

If you can stick around long enough to get over newb canyon and past shits creek, then you can be comfy writing short, expensive copy for video producers or something.
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what is copy-writing?

Let me say one more thing, when you position yourself correctly, when you become the ace-in-the-hole, top-gun copywriter that knows how to bring home the bacon...or even sell your craft, you don't need to worry about scraping for projects, most of them will come right to you.

There is a major difference between a content writing business and having a copywriting business.

However, if you can write effective copy, you should have all of the tools to write effective content, too bad it doesn't work the other way around.
 
If you know it well, then you can start on TextBroker and be at the top tier level making $0.05/word within a few months.
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In my experience, Textbroker demands impeccable grammar and spelling. Style does not seem to be too important for them. That being said, i once tried to write for them in my native language, spent like 30 mins to use every spell and grammar checker available and still got only 2 stars. At 2 stars, you're basically working for 2$ an hour.
 
kryaa said:
In my experience, Textbroker demands impeccable grammar and spelling. Style does not seem to be too important for them. That being said, i once tried to write for them in my native language, spent like 30 mins to use every spell and grammar checker available and still got only 2 stars. At 2 stars, you're basically working for 2$ an hour.
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It seems like you have a misunderstanding of what "style" means in this context since it's a collection of rules for grammar and word usage. You need to know Associated Press style (as opposed to MLA, APA, etc.) and be able to use the AP stylebook to get accepted to level 5 where you will be working for $0.05/word. A "grammar checker" will only cause you problems since it can't do this for you. In a lot of cases, it will actually make changes that are incorrect (example: including the Oxford comma).

From: AP Stylebook - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Reporters, editors and others use the AP Stylebook as a guide for grammar, punctuation and principles and practices of reporting. Although some publications use a different style guide, the AP Stylebook is considered a newspaper industry standard and is also used by broadcasters, magazines and public relations firms, in part because its style guidelines offer short-form advantages over other style manuals designed to save scarce print space, such as dropping the Oxford comma and using figures for all numbers above nine. It includes an A-to-Z listing of guides to capitalization, abbreviation, spelling, numerals and usage.
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It's just 25 bucks.
 
kryaa said:
In my experience, Textbroker demands impeccable grammar and spelling. Style does not seem to be too important for them. That being said, i once tried to write for them in my native language, spent like 30 mins to use every spell and grammar checker available and still got only 2 stars. At 2 stars, you're basically working for 2$ an hour.
Click to expand...

To think most successful copywriters, who have controls that have been running for years, with grammar and spelling mistakes, make 100x more money than any textbroker writer does, (this includes royalties), you can quickly why I'm a big supporter of salesmanship in the written word.

Hell, my grammar sucks, my spelling is at best junior level, I'd never make it as a textbroker writer. Most of the shit would probably get rejected too, because not a lot of people understand the craft.
 
Go for it!!! While a relative noob at internet marketing my writing skills are pretty good having done a ton of it already! Learning or becoming a good copywriter is a great skill!! I've used a couple of freelance writers for something like 5cents a word, gave them a tight brief and got crap back - Should have gone with the guys who had people stacked up waiting. My point is that once you've pumped out quality content - focused and to the point - error free - grammatically sound - folks are going to start queuing and your rate can start stacking. Start small think big.
 
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