A Guide to Freelance Writing

If you love to write and have a passion for it freelance writing can be a good career option for you to earn some extra money. If you take it seriously, you can even make it your full time career. Here are some useful tips to get started with this rewarding career.

What investment do I need?

Well, the only investment you need is to write original quality articles on any topics under the sun. If you are a good cook share your recipes, if you are techno freak write about the latest gadgets, or just let your heart speak.

Where to get article ideas?

There are plenty of ways to get original article ideas. Write on topics of your expertise. For example, you can write about gardening if that is your hobby, or how to train dogs, and so on. You can also get article ideas from Google Trends, blogs, discussion forums, emails. Refer this link to learn more on this topic.

Where to publish?

Okay, so let us say you have written a couple of good original articles. Now the question is where to publish them? Well there are lots of websites who accept original articles and pay you for it. Triond is one such place. Some other popular websites paying for articles include Bukisa, Hubpages, Associated Content, Factoidz. This list is not comprehensive, there are many such websites that help freelance writers to publish their content.

How to get traffic to my articles?

The next important question is how to get traffic to your articles or attract readers to read your articles so that you get paid for it. Writing good quality content is essential but not just enough to increase traffic to your article. Here are some quick tips that you can follow:

An attractive title: The most important thing to attract readers is an attractive title. An interesting title grabs the attention of readers immediately and compels them to read your article. While a dull title will not grab the attention and readers will just by pass in spite of a good article inside.

Write in small paragraphs: Most readers glance through articles and don’t read minutely. So break down your content in small paragraphs possible with sub headings. Readers lose interest while reading long boring paragraphs.

Bulleted points: Bulleted points helps in easy reading. Try to use bullets rather than writing a long paragraph.

Share your article links with friends: Once your article gets published share the URL with your friends.

Post on social networking/bookmarking site: I get most of my traffic to my articles from social networking sites like facebook, orkut, twitter, stumble upon, reddit, delicious, my space, and so on.

Visit other authors’ profiles, read their articles, and leave a comment: Check out what other people is writing. Read their work and post genuine comments. Most likely, these people will check out your articles too and you can get a good traffic to your articles.

Link articles: Link your new articles with relevant old articles. This will help you to pull traffic to your old articles and you can recycle it this way.

Research for articles to be viewed more: It is most likely that some articles get more views while some gets less. Target your articles for a global audience and not a selected few readers. You can take help of Google Trend to find out what are the most popular topics people are reading on the web.

Have patience: To make a steady income from your articles requires lot of patience. If you are expecting to earn $$$ just after publishing a couple of articles then you are in the wrong track. Enjoy your writing and write quality articles regularly. Follow these guidelines and you can expect to have a good traffic to your articles after a few months.

Happy writing and good luck!