How I Started Freelance Writing & Editing

It’s the ultimate dream: work from home and get to spend all day with your family and pets. The dogs lay underneath my feet while I work, and the cat sometimes lies across my keyboard. It’s both frustrating and extremely beautiful. Due to COVID, the majority of us are now working from home. However, I’ve been freelancing from home in some capacity or another since before the birth of my first daughter, Kenna.

How I Started Freelancing

At the end of 2017, a few months after I became a mom, I wanted something to work on in my spare time. Naturally, I started a mommy blog. However, soon after, I realized that I needed to get into a different market if I wanted to start paying myself for the time I spent typing away on my keyboard. I enjoy the content creation and brainstorming processes, but I wanted to have more than a hobby.

After I had about a year of blog-writing experience under my belt, I purchased a domain and began to develop my skills. I learned about blog monetization and SEO, but quickly realized that I didn’t have the energy to keep up with social media engagement. In the mom blog scene, this is a must. So, I began racking my brains for a way to change things up.

Enter Fiverr

I discovered an amazing platform called Fiverr (Upwork is very similar) at the end of 2018. Over the past five years, the popularity of freelancing work has exploded, giving rise to trusted platforms like the one I discovered and created my profile on. Believe it or not, my first gig was actually logo creation. I started out with this because, on a Facebook page I was part of, logo design was always a huge question mark for bloggers.

Next, I started to expand my gig offerings on Fiverr, and my blog writing gig quickly gained lots of traction. One of the unfortunate things about Fiverr is that you really have to price your services low until you have great reviews. Once I had several five-star reviews and some repeat clients, I raised my prices; then I raised them again. You’ll find that the type of client that you obtain depends on your pricing – higher prices will attract clients who expect a bit more involvement from their hired writer or editor.

This, although seemingly a downside, is actually a huge benefit! Clients who enjoy your work are likely to come back – time and time again.

My Tips for Building a Freelancing Business

Choose your platform wisely. Depending on your niche, you may want to pick a seedling platform, since it has the potential to bring in a different demographic – keep your eyes open and take your business wherever the exposure will be best. Fiverr just happened to be a good choice for me at the time, but now the market for Fiverr freelancers might be saturated.

Develop your gigs with engagement in mind. Take a look at some call-to-action and exciting words that will resonate with your audience. For example, take a look at this post by Econsultancy. My personal favorite is “kickass”. I used this adjective in a couple of my Fiverr gigs and I’m almost 100% certain it helped me capture the millennial portion of the Fiverr market I was aiming for.

Respond as quickly as humanly possible to any inquiries you receive on your chosen platform. Clients will often message multiple sellers that fit their budget and purchase a gig package from whoever gets back to them with fervor.

Don’t rush your services – if you have to, add two days onto each delivery schedule. Give yourself time to figure out how to work on your own; it’ll take some time to get a rhythm down, trust me. Your job at first is to get those five-star reviews that will, in turn, bring in more clients.

In Summary

Above all, keep your workload light so that you can both enjoy your job and keep pushing out high-quality content. Don’t compromise on your deliveries just to make more money at this business-building stage. The time will come soon when you can increase your prices and start earning proper wages. Enjoy the ride, put in the time, and you’ll be on top of the freelancing game in no time!

Interested in starting a career in freelance writing? Let’s work together! I can refer any extra work to you, edit it, then pass it along to my clients. We’ll both get paid, and more work will get done! Contact me if you’re interested.