When I first started out as a writer I looked online at various forums, boards, Free Ad sites and numerous other websites which invariably ‘pitched’ ways of becoming a freelance writer. I became instantly frustrated. I just wanted to write. No, that’s not true. I wanted to write and be paid for it. I wanted my skills to be recognised as worthy of payment and to find clients who valued the time and effort I put into my work. That’s not asking too much, right ?
Apparently it is! With a saturated market of people claiming to write for every platform, in every genre, and every style, there is some stiff competition out there. The key to understanding the competition is to look at quality. A client who wants simple SEO driven content is likely to want to pay minimum rates, they are looking for quantity rather than quality. Keywords and longtails galore. The client who understands that 'quality of content' rules, that by reaching out to engage with an audience is key to capturing attention, is the client who just may understand the value of what you do. These are the clients I wanted to work with. Finding them is a whole other story (actually it’s a whole load of stories but they are yet to come).
In those first few days my web search turned out a plethora of forums / message boards of well intentioned advice; there were two messages, submit submit submit, and hope to win the numbers game, or start out in low paid freelance projects sourced from the Free Ad sites. The websites I found were often a sales pitch, with opportunities to sign up for courses or register (for a fee) into communities where there was a very feint glimmer of hope of bagging the odd low paid job. Courses usually concentrated on cold marketing. Neither of these were strategies which appealed to me. I foresaw a cycle of frustration, would either of these methods really help me succeed? Although I have a background in marketing, I am no cold seller, and by now I am old enough and wise enough to know that if I work long term for incredibly low rates, I will soon feel undervalued, stressed by working long hours for very little return, and sadly demotivated.
Always one to find another way, I chose to work hard on my inbound marketing strategy and work to define my own journey as a writer. The Magnificent Biro is a blog in part outlining that journey, alongside other articles about writing and marketing. Here you will find no sales pitches for courses, no fees for sign ups, just me, waxing lyrical about my writing and my work.
J x
