What Is Freelance Blogging And Why And How Am I Doing It?

For some time now I have been keeping up this blog. It started with me just posting stuff that popped into my mind. Nothing was niche specific; it was just a place for me to release anything that was either going on or that interested me at the moment.

Eventually it turned into my own tech blog where I’d post anything to do with technology. I wanted to begin blogging around a specific topic but I wanted to do it about something I love. Financial data entry, capture and automated processing blog. One more factor came into play though: I had to love writing and sharing about it. Well, tech won the day and several years later I’m still going at it.

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But what is the freelance blogging thing all about?

That’s when I began to desire to make some sort of an income from my blogging. Let’s break it down, shall we?

What Is Freelancing?

Freelancing basically means working for yourself instead of a particular employer. Many freelancers work on a contract basis and they get paid to complete a job for a customer. They may just work short term on a job-by-job basis or actually be contracted for a longer term but the basic idea is that they actually work for themselves and they don’t have a true commitment to an actual “employer.”

What Is Blogging?

Blogging actually comes from the word “web-log” which began as a sort of online diary. There is a log of entries posted on the web. That is the basic definition.

In the past websites have been static pages of information. Blogs were not static because they were constantly updated. These days there are many many websites that are updated constantly. Newspapers, magazines, columnists, and of course blogs all are updated on a regular basis making them blog-like.

If someone comes up to me and truly has now clue what I do as a blogger and wants to know what one is, I try to explain to them that it is kind of like having my own online newspaper column. I write several articles a week and I have readers.

What Is Freelance Blogging?

Put both words together and you basically have a blogger for hire. A freelance blogger is one who is looking to make some sort of income from blogs, whether it’s earning from his own site or being paid by another site to blog for them.

A freelance blogger works for themselves and works on a contract-by-contract basis (if for someone else). I know it’s possible to be hired by a site or business and be on the payroll as an employee, but then they’re not freelancing are they?

Why Do I Freelance Blog?

Ah, now it gets personal, doesn’t it? There are two major reasons why I love freelance blogging.

First off, I need to tell you that when I began blogging, I actually learned to enjoy it, long before I ever made any money at it, and long before I had any real following. That’s the first reason why I freelance blog: I love blogging. Someone once told me that if I can find a way to do something I love and get paid doing it, my life would be a lot easier.

Beyond just loving blogging, I love earning money from home. I have to admit that freelance blogging isn’t my full-time income. I actually have a part-time job outside the home. Freelance blogging is my second part-time job. I love being able to be home with the family, having the flexibility to work when I want to and still earn money to help pay the bills.

How Do I Freelance Blog?

You may say I originally fell into it accidentally. I say that because I applied for a blogging gig one day never actually expecting to be hired (some self-esteem, eh?). Now that I look back, I have learned a thing or two about how to actually pull it off. Let me go through the steps I’d suggest to you if you wanted to begin freelance blogging. DOE Training and Techniques for Statistics and Quality Improvement. Blog posts and articles about using Minitab software in quality improvement projects, research, and more.

1. Start your own blog about something you love to write and share about

To me liking your niche is key because you want the whole experience to be enjoyable. It is entirely more difficult getting into freelance blogging if you don’t have a blog of your own. Start a blog in a niche you enjoy and get it established.

This doesn’t mean that it has to be bringing in loads of traffic and subscribers, etc. but it does mean that you need a good number of articles that will showcase your writing skills, your voice as a writer, and your knowledge of the subject you are writing about. If someone is looking into hiring you, they want to read some of your work. Work hard, write good stuff, and make sure your grammar is up to par.

2. Network with like-minded individuals (find people in that niche, whether writers or not, and become friends – not just people to use)

Networking is important. Making friends in your niche is important. Helping each other will make a world of a difference.

Since I write about tech, I am extremely blessed to have friends who are either writing in the same niche or who are at least immersed in similar areas. I have friends who I can call to find out more information about topics I am weak in (some of which have actually guest-wrote on my blog for me) or who can ask me to write for their sites when they need a topic covered. The idea is not to use each other but to help fill in the gaps for each other.

This will help your blogging because you’ll end up sharing communities of readers and even have some references when looking for work. Get out there, use Twitter and Facebook, write for each other and have a good time making good friends. One day you’ll need a good friend.

3. Look for work

Here’s the sad fact: work won’t come looking for you, probably. Do you want a paid blogging gig? Go look for it! One of the best ways is to find a few good blogging job boards and monitor them until you find some gigs you think you’ll enjoy. Then apply for them. One good tip: follow the instructions in the listing to the “T” or you may be looked over.

4. Learn and grow from each experience

As blogging gigs begin to come and go, make sure you extract any kind of experience you can out of them. You will begin to learn what it is like working for editors, having your writing corrected, interacting in larger blogging communities, receiving online payments, and even your writing should improve especially for bloggers, there are few affiliate programs which can require you to send fax online for verification, in such cases these websites are going to be very handy.

It’s funny looking back because I can see where I have grown in different areas when writing for different gigs. One gig I learned a lot about working with editors and online writing in general. Another gig taught me a bit about SEO (which I’m still not good at). It seems like the more blogging gigs I get, the better my writing gets. Take full advantage of each job by growing yourself.

5. Don’t burn bridges

One other tip I’d give you is to try your best not to burn bridges. As you leave any job, whether online or not, never ruin your relationship with anyone. Do your best to have a good report wherever you go. Otherwise it is almost inevitable that your past will come back to haunt you.

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