Introduction to Becoming a Professional Freelance Writer

Series Summary

The world of a freelance writer is fraught with dangers and dead ends. But, when a freelance artist works hard, networks her fingers to the bone, and negotiates pay like a tenacious wolverine, she just might make a nice-sized place of herself in the world of professional writing. Some of the oldest names in literature were freelance writers: Shakespeare had a job writing copy for the local middle school gazette, Moses ghostwrote five books before making a name for himself, and Salman Rushdie wrote greeting cards and birthday cake taglines before becoming the famous author he is today. So, whether you are young and foolhardy or just looking for a career that will let you work from home, I hope freelance writing works for you.

In this free video series, expert freelance writer Rebecca Sato gives you ALL the tips for being a freelance writer. She teaches you how to find jobs, how to get gigs on the internet, how to negotiate pay, how to advance to the next level, how to market yourself, and much much more! You will also learn the importance of research, a professional website, being consistent with high quality, and other factors. Rebecca helps you get into the market of freelance writing with query letters, ghostwriting, networking, scheduling, and more. Check this out.

Video Transcript

"REBECCA SATO: Hi. I'm Rebecca Sato at RebeccaSato.com with ExpertVillage.com. And today, we're going to talk about how to start a freelance writing career. And it's a lot of fun. Freelance writing is a great market. There's a lot of work out there. You're going to hear people say, "Oh, you can't be a writer. It's so competitive." Well, like any other field, yeah, there's competition, but there's a huge market for it. If you think about who needs a writer, it's pretty much every company in the world needs a writer to do their pamphlets, their media, even if it's online they need someone who's writing that copy. There's a huge market for writers. There's a big need for writers, so there's definitely enough work out there for everyone who wants to write if they're good. So first of all though, that's kind of the question now, "Are you good?" And I think anyone who wants to be a writer needs to be honest with where their current abilities are. That doesn't mean if you're not good right now that you can't be a freelance writer, but it means you need to be realistic about how good you are and what you need to do to get better. So start with that. If you want to be a freelance writer, don't worry about getting jobs or getting a portfolio, figure out what you need to improve on first. And one way to do that is to ask friends and family to read some of the things you've written and let you know what they about it. So that's a good start. And now, we're going to find out some of the more technical things that you need to worry about as you embark on a career of freelance writing."