Writing Professionally

BHW,

After some good sleep and a couple cigarettes, I've decided that my writing skills are really what I need to focus on. I signed up for iWriter, and although I have a little knowledge of SEO, I've never really had success with it like some others have. What I do know how to do though, is write. I just put my fingers to the keys and the words come naturally.

For an aspiring SEO writer, what is your advice?

As someone who's had a copywriting business, I'd say discipline over motivation. Always overdeliver.

It's hard when English is not your first language.

When you send samples, people see it, so it's hard to get orders.

I see. I was hoping to work with others who English is not their first language. I speak English as my first language and am American. I live in Mississippi.

pocketttt,

thanks man i'm checking it out right now.

I found out you can do nothing the whole month and churn a ton of content on the last day of the month and still get paid. The only task is to deliver. That means if you work everyday, you will be able to afford some investments in the future.

You just need to find the right clients who don't whine and don't judge your work.
The only judgment you can let is when you break all of the requirements provided by your client.
Just correct mistakes. If it takes a lot of time to correct them, consider what's happened and how you can improve the process.

Never do something you weren't asked to do because you will end up broke. This is not a regular job where you get paid no matter what.
Just do what they say and be as quick as you can. But don't drink too much coffee cause it won't help. In this case working smart and not hard is the key.

And remember to start this business with money in mind. I wouldn't go below $5 per 100 words. If you have English skills, going below $10 per 100 words might not make much sense.
Don't work with people who have low marketing budgets and are sceptical towards SEO or content marketing.

A client is able to pay 10 cents per word if they are running real, profitable business. If you ask for 13 cents they won't mind it. You can't let someone outsmart you. Negotiation and rejection of people and companies that don't fit is important. So work with real companies and not underground SEO businesses where it's only about churning as much words as possible.

Charging twice or three as much as other people really isn't the issue. You will be glad that you got paid $90 instead of $30 for a 1000 word long article written in 2 or 3 hours. Writing more everyday is out of question in the beginning. You really don't want to spend 8 or 10 hours writing everyday, so charge accordingly. Yes, you can make $900 in a day with the proper setup, but you won't have many such days. For instance, imagine you can sometimes get 10k words in a day. That'd get you $900 at $90 per 1000 word article.

You can also go for quantity over quality. This type of writing is mainly for SEO and linking purposes. Just visit marketplace and see how many people are selling cheap, semi auto-generated content at $2 per 100 words. Writing this type of articles is a breeze and can be an easy way to gain exposure.

reaaski,

I feel like you hit the nail on the head. How am I going to charge that much? I found a site about sites that pay writers and really think I should contact each of the potential clients there, but the thing is, I also signed up for iWriter. I want to charge a decent amount for my labor, I know that this is SKILLED labor, and I feel like my going rate should be like you said, between $5 and $10 per 100 words.

Regards,

ZJP

zachjonespro said:

reaaski,

I feel like you hit the nail on the head. How am I going to charge that much? I found a site about sites that pay writers and really think I should contact each of the potential clients there, but the thing is, I also signed up for iWriter. I want to charge a decent amount for my labor, I know that this is SKILLED labor, and I feel like my going rate should be like you said, between $5 and $10 per 100 words.

Regards,

ZJP

Click to expand...

Search until you find. Focus on a niche. You can send a resume and say that you are a freelancer with these and such rates. You can advertise on facebook and google through ads. There are many forums outside of BlackHatWorld. Reddit worked too. Following companies and making connections with them in social media is a good idea too. I found a few people with whom I have a retainer, without too much effort.

zachjonespro said:

BHW,

After some good sleep and a couple cigarettes, I've decided that my writing skills are really what I need to focus on. I signed up for iWriter, and although I have a little knowledge of SEO, I've never really had success with it like some others have. What I do know how to do though, is write. I just put my fingers to the keys and the words come naturally.

For an aspiring SEO writer, what is your advice?

Click to expand...

If you want to dedicate yourself to SEO copywriting then you need to pay attention to some SEO elements and primarily analyze keywords, find the most popular and relevant keywords related to the topic you are writing about, and implement them into your content. You will also have to take care of the structure of the article, headings (h1, h2...), images inside of the text, optimizing text for both users and algorithms, which can be somewhat demanding.

I started as a freelance writer and have spent well into 5-figures this year hiring other freelance writers so here are my 2-cents.

zachjonespro said:

I see. I was hoping to work with others who English is not their first language. I speak English as my first language and am American. I live in Mississippi.

Click to expand...

Don't do this. Sure, it might happen but the majority of people likely to hire you at a good rate are probably native English speakers who could write the content themselves but they want to scale their content production. Work with others who can pay you a good rate. As simple as that.

My advice is to do some shitwork until you build up some reviews and then chase some clients who can give you consistent work. It won't happen immediately but if you find the right clients you get a better rate and don't need to spend the time chasing around work.

Firstly, iWriter will get you some practice but wouldn't be where I'd go for a good hourly return. It'll pick up if you deliver well and get invited back for more work but in general most of the work there is going to be lower paid. You can get away with mind-numbing content that nobody actually wants to read but you're not going to get paid a great rate for it.

If you start somewhere like UpWork it's going to take you some time to build up some reviews and find good clients. I really don't agree with the advice you're getting above about focusing on a specific niche. You can do that further down the line but I'd begin by getting yourself some reviews to show your proposal is worth looking at. Yes, you'll probably have to take a crap rate to start with and put up with some shitty clients.

Once your account has some reviews, start chasing the higher price job listings. Look for clients with some history of constantly hiring and lowball if you have to to get your foot in the door. Deliver the quality they want and then negotiate for a higher rate.

You might also consider looking at some of the AI writing tools out there. Don't try and get it to generate all of the content for you (you'll get blasted with bad reviews) but with a little practice they can speed up your content production. They'll produce garbage 99% of the time but sometimes that sentence is enough to get you on the right track when you're not sure what to write. It takes some manual editing but with a little practice it means you can churn out good content faster, so either take more jobs in less time or charge less than your competition because you can write faster.

reaaski said:

You just need to find the right clients who don't whine and don't judge your work.

Click to expand...

Also, I wouldn't do this.

Clients who aren't able to judge your work won't be around for the long term. You don't want the $5 cheapskates expecting the world but you do want someone who can see the value your content adds to their business.

reaaski - So far I created a WordPress and linked my domain to it. ZachJonesPRO.com and I plan to host some sample articles there. I'm trying to concentrate my forces instead of being registered on a bunch of websites with no credibility on any of them, which is why I'm focused on BHW for the time being. Thanks for mentioning to charge a decent rate.

VortexAlpha - Good to hear from you. I signed up to advertise a Canadian offer on your site, I didn't see any US offers, and to be honest I don't know that I'll be producing content related to gambling like I had been thinking of. I more so see my English writing skills as something to make money with right now. I would love to use some passive income methods, but I think I will use my writing skills for the time being. I got kicked off Google My Business for fraudulently leaving reviews from five duck accounts I made. Doing greaaat.

SEOMadHatter - AI writing tools huh. I haven't thought of that. At the end of the day this stuff is for SEO. I'll check out that UpWork site you recommended. I'm pretty versatile at writing. I'll hone that. Did I understand correctly that you hire writers?