The task of becoming a freelance writer can often become a hard task in a busy world of responsibility and obligations. Most people in society have careers, families, friends, and a social life outside of their passion for writing. However, once you’ve made the dedication to become a freelance writer, it’s time to make a list of items you need in order to be successful. 

First, decide on your market you’re going to sell your writing to in order to bring in money. This could be a blog, where you are blogging twice a day, 5 times a week, and each are pay-per-post or Google Adsense. You could market to newspapers or magazines in your metropolitan area, or even magazines that appear online. There’s even such sites as Helium, ehow, Associated Content, and Triond who pay writers for their contributing works. It makes a difference how often you write, the quality of your writing, and the topics of your articles. Choose your market, and know how to pitch your ideas in a query letter–editors love this!

Next, build up your library. Get a dictionary and thesaurus. Then, get the AP Stylebook. This is a book journalists use in order to check grammar, punctuation, dates, numerals, and so on. It shows if you abbreviate addresses with or without numbers, which street names get abbreviated, has every state in the U.S., and most of the countries. It’s a valuable investment to any writer. The fourth book I would have close to my computer is Simon & Schuster’s Handbook for Writers. This is a great grammar reference that covers everything from pronouns, modifiers, sentence structure and comma splices. It also includes sections in business writing, writing on the web, and writing using sources. I have used all these books in my Journalism classes, and I would be lost without all of them.

You’re going to want to have a set amount of hours in which you just write. You can write anywhere and whatever length you see fit for that amount of time. Set yourself a goal for a week; mine is 5 articles just recently. In order to achieve this, I set aside 7p to 10p at least 3 times a week to write–anything. If it’s just looking for an idea, and I find it at 9:59, I start on it next time. The point is to reach your goal by the time-frame in which you have set it. If you’re adventurous and want 60 articles this month, good for you and go for it. Set your time each day to complete two a day. You’re your own boss, and if the goal doesn’t get achieved, then you have to set a smaller one.

If you’re writing for a blog, go comment on other blogs. If you’re writing on a site like Triond, go comment on others’ works. This is extremely important in getting your work noticed online. If you don’t do this, how will people know that your work is there? Maybe comment is too vague, though. Don’t put on their page, ‘Your work sucks!’, because I guarentee, they will not comment back. Instead, leave a supportive, constructive criticism, in the fact that if you follow their blog, they’ll follow yours. 

Next, and maybe most important, write about what you know. If you’re a movie review critic, then post entertainment stories, versus a chef who would enjoy writing about food. It’d be hard for a chef to write about anthropology without having  to spend hours doing extensive research. If you have research that much, it makes writing a chore. This almost takes the fun out of writing, and doesn’t really make it worth it anymore.

If you’re looking to do this professionally, a degree in Communications, Journalism, English, or any other related field is almost really necessary. There’s a blog worth checking out for any serious freelancer entitled “The Freelance Writing Jobs Network.” It gives you job hunting tips and writing advice, and is just one of the many designed like this. If you’re a professional copy editor, journalist, broadcaster, blogger, or whatever and hold a BA or BS in it, then you’re more likely to find freelance work online. 

If you’re serious about freelancing, which I hope you are, have some sort of website to display your published work. Sites like Triond allow you to link to Blogger, so you can place your articles right on your blog. It may be different if you get published through a magazine or newspaper, however. You may have to dig in their archives to find a link to your story, or you could put it in a PDF file and upload it. There’s many options when creating a website, so don’t feel as if you have limitations. I would suggest putting your resume on it, though, if there’s somewhere for it to go. 

Keep in mind, too, that you don’t have to write for a single website. You just can’t submit the same article to several websites. With this thought in mind, write for as many as you’re able to keep up in a reasonable amount of time. If you have a blog, use Google AdSense or another paying ad service to bring in revenue. If you’re this dedicated, and keep up the hard work, you will make serious money…slowly, mind you, but you will make money. 

Finally, if you are a freelance blogger, get your blog noticed. After all, you are a freelancer to make money, aren’t you? There’s sites such as BlogCatalog.com and Technorati that will let you submit your blog. People frequent these websites and will often see your blog. If you’re a regular poster, they’ll come, read your posts, subscribe to your blog, and follow you with their blogs. In the end, hopefully you’re making the decent amount of money you were hoping to bring in.