Becoming A Freelance Writer With No Experience – How To Make A Good Start


Being a freelance writing is an attractive career if you would prefer to set your own timetables, be your own boss, select your own workload and work to the beat of your own drum. However, if you have no experience and have never done anything like this before, it can be difficult to know where to start. Here I outline the best way to make a good start towards becoming a professional freelance writer.

  • Work for free for a while
  • It sounds discouraging not to be receiving money straight away, but without doing any work, you will not be able to create an incredible portfolio or C.V. that you will need if you want to succeed in this field. You need to be finding jobs and offering to work for free in order to practice your writing skills in many different areas. You can find these sorts of jobs anywhere, and most people will be willing to give you a try if you are doing it for free. This way you will also build a reputation and, hopefully, get some great feedback that will then help recommend you for later jobs.

  • Build your portfolio!
  • Once you have created some pieces of free, you will be able to start compiling your work to build your portfolio and your C.V. If at all possible, include in your portfolio all sorts of different styles, academic, technical, fiction, and non-fiction. Anything you can get your hands on, go for it and put it in your portfolio. Remember also to include work of varying lengths. Anything you can include put it in there so that potential employers can see exactly what you’re capable of.

  • Apply, apply, and apply!

In order to get jobs, you need to apply to everything and anything you think you’d be capable of doing to a good quality. A lot of freelance writing jobs are not, unfortunately, advertised publicly. This means looks for jobs on freelance sites and also messaging companies asking whether they need any work. They will be impressed with your attitude and, even if they do not have any work at that particular moment, they will hopefully bear you in mind the next time they need anything is done for them or their company. This is also a really good way to network and to get your name out there as a fantastic freelance writer. Soon the jobs will be flooding in!

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