How to Decide Which Freelance Writing Services to Offer

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By Yuwanda Black
eHow Community Member

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This article discusses five things you should look at when deciding which freelance writing services to offer. Knowing this will help you garner more clients and increase your freelance writing income.

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

Computer
Internet Connection

Step 1

Assess Your Life

When deciding which freelance writing services to offer, the first thing you should do is decide how you want to run your freelance writing business.

This means deciding how you want to run your life. If you try to offer to much, you can become overwhelmed. The whole point of freelancing is to gain more control over your time; to spend more time with friends and family.

So, assess your life and how you want it to run. What is it you want from this “freelance thing?” Make it work for, not against you.
Step 2

Assess Your Experience

Getting more practical, one thing that will determine which freelance writing services to offer will be your experience.

Unless you’re willing to take classes, you will be limited to a large degree by what you can actually do. In the beginning, to make money, many freelance writers try to offer services outside of their experience. For example, they may have designed their own website and will think, “I can do this for other freelancers.”

But, if you’re not an expert in web design, there will be bells and whistles others will ask for that you can’t provide. So, stick with what you know and what you know well, especially in the beginning.
Step 3

Assess Your Niche

When trying to decide which freelance writing services to offer, go with niches you know well and develop services around those.

For example, if you are an expert and setting up WordPress blogs, this is an ancillary service you might want to add to your writing services. Or if you’re a whiz at writing headlines that go viral, add that.
Step 4

Assess What Others Are Offering

If you’re really stuck on trying to decide which freelance writing services to offer, visit the freelance writing website of other freelance writers.

See what they’re offering and choose services that appeal to you. Another benefit of this is you’ll start to see trends as to which sectors and services are hot in freelance writing. You may be able to jump ahead of a trend by setting yourself apart from others.

You can never go wrong by peeping in on what others are doing.
Step 5

List What You Feel Confident Offering

After peeping in on others, researching niches and assessing your own skills, compile a list of services you’re confident offering.

When I first started, I wasn’t comfortable with sales letters and brochure writing. It took me years to comfortably list these as a service offering. Hence, don’t be afraid if your list of services is small compared to others.

The point is to be confident with the services that you do offer so that you can do a good job. One good job leads to others. This is the way you build a freelance writing portfolio, and a freelance writing business. One client and one project at a time.

There are many subheadings that fall under the heading of “Freelance Writer.” Cultivating just a few can really skyrocket your income, but, don’t try to do too much, or you’ll find your income going in the opposite direction.

Comments

jaheekin said

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on 11/3/2008 Definitely a great topic, and insightful article. Good job.

laurie1979 said

on 10/2/2008 I love this article as well. I started knowing about you this year and you sure know your stuff. I knew aboout you since from AssociatedContent.com site.
Since I am a newbie myself, I love reading some writing advices that you have.I'm planning to combo writing with translations which will skyrocket mine as well. Wish me luck.