Speaker 1: All right, let's have some fun with today's video, shall we? Because this is an important video. This might be the most important video I make all year, and that is how to become a freelance writer. Plain and simple, freelance writing is the easiest way for most people to make sustainable long-term money on the internet. And in today's video, I'm gonna show you exactly why that is, but more importantly, I'm going to show you exactly how to get started. Step-by-step over the course of the next 15 or so minutes, I'm going to give you everything you need to know to build a successful freelance writing business that you can get started with right now, and then over the course of just a couple weeks, you can actually start bringing in money on the internet. That sounds good to you, then let's do this. Okay, so before we go into the how-to, you may be like, you know what, I'm not sold on freelance writing. That's not for me. I don't think. Well, let me give you three reasons why I think you should consider freelance writing. The first, it's a skill you've already got. If you're watching this video, you know how to write. On some level. You might be a good writer, you might not be such a good writer, but you can write. And there's all sorts of different types of freelance writing out there, so whether you're a great writer or just an okay writer, there's going to be a type for you, and we're gonna cover those here in just a second. All right, second reason I think you should consider freelance writing is because it's the best bridge business that I know of. Yes, so that's a bridge, and you might be thinking, Sean, what the hell is a bridge business? Bridge business is the thing that's gonna get you from point A to point B. If you're watching this, chances are you're not totally stoked on your life. You may need more money, you may want to quit your job, you may just want more free time to spend with your family or kids or on hobbies or whatever it is, so you're looking to make a change. Well, freelance writing's the best way to get to that kind of dream life down the road. Why is that? Because it's gonna help you build the skills you need to be successful with any online business. You can start making money quickly, and you can start building momentum. Finally, the third reason I think you should consider freelance writing is because there has never been a greater demand for freelancers. There are all sorts of reasons why this is. First off, let's look at search traffic. Everybody's trying to get free traffic these days. When ads are starting to become less effective due to algorithm changes and laws, people aren't seeing the results they were seeing with ads. So how are they going to get search traffic? By creating more content. And so businesses need content writers to continue churning out a steady stream of new content so that they can get search traffic to their website and get new customers and make more money. So that's one example. Another example is think about all of the content creators out there, people that are full-time content creators, whether it's bloggers, YouTubers, influencers, TikTokers, whatever it is. All of these people that are now trying to treat that as their livelihood, they're going to need more content as well. And so who are they going to turn to to help them grow that content? Freelancers. All right, now you might be saying, well, okay, freelance writing. Great. That's cool. What's freelance writing? What types of freelance writing are out there? Well, I'm glad you asked. So there's basic freelance content writing. A business or a person needs a blog post written about a certain topic. They can hire a freelance writer to do that. There's also B2B writing. That's where you're writing content specifically for businesses that market to other businesses. There's copywriting. This is kind of like the pinnacle of freelance writing. Copywriting is any time you're trying to be persuasive with your words. And if you know how to be persuasive with your words, you're never going to hurt for money ever again. That's why copywriting is probably the most highly paid type of freelance writing because that's where all the selling happens. And so if you can create content that is going to make other people money, they're going to pay you well for that. There's also technical writing. So let's say you're in a field where you've got some knowledge that other people don't necessarily have around a technical topic. There's an opportunity for you to go freelance within that field and make a bunch of money in the process. So my point with all this was just to say that regardless of what your skill set is and where you're at in your own writing journey, there is a type of freelance writing out there for you. And before we get into the step-by-steps, I want to talk about mindset. Most freelance writers think, cool, I'm going to be a freelance writer. I'm going to throw up a website. I'm going to get on Upwork and all of a sudden, jobs are just going to start coming my way. I'm going to be rolling in freelance writing jobs. And you know what? That's not how it works. You have to have the right mindset if you want to be a successful freelance writer. And in order to do that, you have to take consistent action. You have to be the one that's going to reach out to build relationships with those people that are going to hire you. And we're going to talk about exactly how to do that. But if you're not in the right mindset and you're not prepared for that, you're going to get frustrated, you're going to give up, and you're not going to have any success. So one of the best pieces of advice I can give you is to take consistent action every single day and also prepare yourself for a lot of no's. At first, you are going to get a lot of people that say no, you're going to get a lot of people that say leave me alone. You're going to get a lot of people that are just not even going to respond to your outreach in the first place. And you know what? That's all part of the process because every no gets you that much closer to a yes. All right, step number one for building your freelance writing business. Take stock of your current skills and interests. So sit down, take 10 or 15 minutes, and just write out a list of all of the unique knowledge you've got, all of the unique skills you've got, the hobbies, the interests, all of the stuff that you know something about and maybe you've got an interest in. So for me, I know I have really unique knowledge when it comes to golf. I have unique knowledge when it comes to teaching people how to freelance write. Back when I was working as a portfolio analyst, there was a piece of software called Portfolio Center that I became a whiz in, and that's not something that most people know about. So I add that to my list. I know a lot about travel. I know a lot about electronics. I know a lot about whatever it is. So what you wanna do is you wanna create that list, and we're using that as a starting point. We're trying to figure out what your unique angle is that might be different from the freelance writer down the street because all of those unique skills that you've got and that unique knowledge, that is all going to give you a little bit of a leg up over other people that might be vying for the same jobs. All right, so there you go. Make a list of all the things you know. How hard can that be? That takes us to step number two, which is choose a niche. I like to say niche, but over the years of making these videos, everybody yelled at me when I said niche. I like to say niche, and I sound like I'm trying to pretend to be European or something by saying niche. I'm like French. I digress. You choose a niche. Real quick, one note on that. You might not have a niche. You might not have a specific set of knowledge that you think you can build a whole freelance writing career around. No problem. You can become a freelance writing generalist. That's where you basically say, you know what? I can write about anything. I'm gonna look for different clients, and honestly you can look at being a generalist as a little bit of a niche within itself. So let's say somebody comes to you. You find a potential client. They're like, I need you to write 10 articles about Pelotons, and you may say, I know nothing about Peloton. I don't have a Peloton. I don't wanna have a Peloton. I don't even own a bicycle. But if you are able to hop on the internet, spend half an hour, do a little bit of research, learn a bunch of things about Peloton, and then write a cohesive article about that, or in this case 10, then that is a skill that is in demand. If you can take a topic, learn about that topic, and then write a good quality piece of content around it, then that is going to give you a huge leg up over other people. And as a generalist, that's kind of a niche within itself, like I said. But let's say that's not you. Let's say you do have a specific set of knowledge that you think there's going to be a market for that other people don't have. So examples of this might be, do you have a healthcare background? Do you have a technology background? Do you have a finance background? Do you have a legal background? Is there a specific hobby that you know something about that a lot of people don't? So for me, I have a background in finance and I have a background in golf. I know that I can write better, more in-depth content about certain finance topics as well as certain golf topics when compared to the average writer. So for me, I decided to niche down my freelance writing into golf because I travel for golf, I know golf, and I know direct response marketing, which makes me a really unique person within that world. So if you have a unique background, you might consider choosing that as a niche and really narrowing in to go for clients within that industry. So just to bring this whole concept of niching down home a little bit, let's give you an example. Let's say you work for a medical device company and you're in charge of creating content to try and get more search traffic, to try and build the stature of your brand in the industry. You've got two writers you found that both seem equally competent. They're both equally good writers, but one used to be a salesperson for a medical device company. So they know all the ins and outs of the different products of the industry and how to go about that and navigate it. And then you've got another person who they're a great writer and they're really good at research, but they don't necessarily know a whole lot about medical devices. They'll probably learn, but they don't know about it right off the bat. Who are you going to hire? You're going to hire the person that has that background. So that's why niching down can be so beneficial. You want to become the no brainer hire for all of those people within your industry. Now don't get me wrong. That's not to say you can't have success as a generalist because so often a lot of these marketing agencies and businesses, they're not so niched down that they need someone with that level of technical expertise. So don't let that discourage you if you're starting as a generalist, but know that if you are going to niche down, there's probably going to be a big opportunity for you. All right, let's take just a quick stretch break. This is a, this is a meaty video, but if you're getting value out of it, maybe consider thumbs up. Also, if you go to locationrebel.com slash FWG, we have a whole freelance writers guide we have put together. So if you want a little bit more handholding, if you want some more details about everything that we're covering here, go sign up for that. We'll send it to you right away. I think you're going to find it really, really, really helpful. All right, so the third step when it comes to building a successful freelance writing business is one that a lot of people tend to skip and that's spend a little bit of time researching your niche because what you want to do is you want to figure out where are the opportunities for writing within this industry. So a great place to start is industry freelance writer. See what comes up. So for instance, I just recently Googled freelance golf writer and you know what came up? The PGA tour is looking for freelance golf writers. I wouldn't have even thought to write for the PGA tour, but here they are with one search. I can see that that's exactly what they're looking for and that can be a great opportunity. So by doing a quick search that's just freelance writer in whatever your industry is, you're going to start to get a sense of who is out there looking for freelance writers. But then I want you to go a little bit beyond that. I want you to figure out what are all the blogs, what are the businesses, what are the magazines, what are the trade publications, what are all of the outlets within your industry that you might be able to write for and start making a huge list of all of those different places because those are going to be the people you're going to start building relationships with to try and get your first jobs. The more you know about the industry, the more you know about the players, the more you know about the landscape, the more knowledge you just have about that particular topic, the easier it's going to be to communicate with people and to prove that you know what you're talking about and get the job. So if you're not totally confident in your niche, maybe like I said, you've got some sort of unique background, but you still need to do a little bit of research, spend a little bit of time doing it because it's truly, truly going to pay off. Okay, step number four, you're going to need a portfolio. Because what's going to happen? You're going to start reaching out to all these people that you just made a list of and we're going to talk about how to do that outreach here in just a second, but what's the first thing they're going to do? They're going to look you up. They're going to be like, Sean Ogle, golf writer, does this guy actually know what he's talking about? And what do you want them to find? You want them to find your portfolio website where you make yourself look like a badass and someone who is very confident and has personality and knows what they're talking about because that's what people do. They look up other people because they want to make sure that you are reputable and you are who you say you are. So LinkedIn can do that a little bit. You want to have a good LinkedIn profile if you're going to become a freelance writer, but having the website can give you a leg up. So what I recommend is if you can't come up with like a clever domain name, don't worry about it. Do a version of it. Your name writes. I recommend you go to Bluehost. You get a hosting account. It's going to be less than like 50 bucks for the first year. You install WordPress. They have one click WordPress install. WordPress is called a content management system, a CMS. All it is is an easy way for you to create a website and manage the back end of it. You can go get a premium theme. I'll list some of my favorites below. You click that. You click install. You add some words. You add some images. Away you go. All right. So step number five, five, high five. Step number five is you're going to go start signing up for some sites that are looking to hire freelance writers. So the first one that's going to come to your mind is going to be Upwork. And you know what you're going to do? You're not going to sign up for Upwork because it's actually not a great place for freelance writers, especially people that are just starting out. There are so many people on the website that for one, it's hard to get approved as a freelancer on that site, but it's also a race to the bottom. People that are there are usually trying to find the cheapest person for low quality work. And that's just not a game that we need to play. So what I would look at is Contently, Skyward, Clear Voice, Endash. I'll link to all those below, but those are all really, really good places to get started with when it comes to your freelance writing career. That being said, are any of those places the best places to get freelance work and the places that you're probably going to get the majority of your work? No, they're not. And that's what step six is for that we're getting to in about 20 seconds. But first, there's a link below. We've got a link to a hundred different places to get freelance writing work, a hundred different sites that are hiring freelancers. So if you're looking for more sites like the ones I just mentioned, go take a look at that. I think the ones I just mentioned are the best starting points, but there's a lot of places that hire freelance writers because there's a huge demand. So go check out that list. All right, we made it. Step number six. This is the step that I've been touting that is the most important part of the process. All of those sites we just mentioned, they're great. You should sign up. You should try and get work on them. But those are probably not the places you're going to get all the work. How are you going to get all the work? Through cold outreach. And step number six is all about creating your system for cold outreach. That is how you are going to find clients. You're going to build relationships with people and you are going to make money by learning how to reach out to people that might be needing freelance writing work and positioning yourself as the perfect person for that freelance writing work. Okay, that makes sense. I think that made sense. So how do you do it? You got to create a spreadsheet. So we're going to create a list of as many people as possible that might be good people to reach out to. A good starting point is when you were doing your research on your niche and you started creating a list of all the different publications and blogs and businesses and people. Create a spreadsheet with the name of the publication, their website, the contact person. So you might be looking for editor, editor-in-chief, content manager, different titles like that. Find their email address and their name if possible and maybe have a note section. And so what you want to do is you want to make as big of a list as possible. If you're starting with the generalist, no problem. You can start reaching out to agencies. So literally I would start with your hometown, Portland Digital Agency, Portland Marketing Agency because it's all those agencies that are going to have clients that are going to need content. And the great thing is there is literally an unlimited amount of agencies, websites, businesses out there that need help with this stuff. So create your list. It's not fun. It's not sexy. It's going to take some time. But sit down, plow through it, and get to the point where you have a few hundred people. And then what are you going to do? You're going to start sending emails. A lot of people call this the cold pitch. The best way to start is not to actually pitch. You want to send what's called a letter of introduction. So this is just saying, hey, how's it going? My name's Sean. I really love the work you do at blah, blah, blah, blah. I've been following it for a while. I'm a freelance content writer. And I just wanted to reach out and introduce myself to see if there might be an opportunity to have more of a conversation, see if I might be able to help you out. If not, totally no big deal. I love what you're doing. I'll keep following along. Hope to talk to you soon. Goodbye. That's a very cursory example of this. We've got a whole video that goes into some more of the details about it. But what you're doing is you're just trying to open up the door. You're just trying to build a relationship with people. You're not trying to force the hard sale on them. You're just trying to say, hey, I think that we might be a good fit. I've got the service. You may need it. If not, no big deal. But if so, then let's talk and let's see where we can take this. So if you wanna get real serious and go beyond just using a spreadsheet, I recommend Streak for Gmail. Basically, Streak is a service that turns your Gmail into a full-on CRM, Customer Relationship Manager. So it enables you to enter all your potential leads in there, track when you last reached out to them, track what their responses were, and they've got a free version, which works really well. I personally use Streak for a lot of my sales stuff when I'm doing it with like 80 Club and things like that. So it's one that's definitely worth checking out and looking into. Doing this outreach is the single most important part to building your freelance business. This is where most people fail. So when I get people that come to me and they're like, ah, I'm not getting any clients. Freelance writing just isn't working. It's not possible. The first thing I say is, how many outreach emails did you send last week? And normally they'll be like, well, most of the time they'll say I didn't send any. And then maybe they'll be like, well, I sent like, I don't know, three on one day and then one on Thursday and that was it. You should be sending five to 10 personalized letters of introduction every single day. If you do that, within weeks you will have leads, you will have prospects, and chances are you're gonna have some clients as well. One very, one very important thing to remember when you're doing this is you wanna make this as personalized as possible. What most people are gonna do is they're gonna create a template, they're gonna take their spreadsheet and they're gonna take all those email addresses, they're gonna hit mail merge, and they're gonna send it out and send the exact same thing to everybody. And you know what? People can see through that. There's real, there are real people that are reading these pitches. They're reading these letters of introduction, these emails. And so if they can tell that this thing was mail merged, they're just gonna be like, nope, you're wasting my time. But if you send a thoughtful, personalized pitch that shows you're a real person, that makes an opportunity to potentially build some rapport with the person that you're emailing, at the very least you're more likely to get a response. It might be a, hey, thanks for reaching out, we're not interested right now, but it's at least a response and that opens the door for a future collaboration or future communication. So be personal. This is the thing that will set you apart. If you don't believe me, I suggest you go watch the video about my worst pitches ever, where I show you just how bad these pitches are and I show you my reaction and how I completely dismiss them and mock them out of hand without ever giving them the chance to pitch for me again. There you go. So just to summarize step number six real quick, because if you take one thing from this video, take step number six, you could not do everything else and still build a successful business if you start doing these things right here. So build a spreadsheet of people you can potentially write for, send five to 10 personalized pitches a day, follow up with those pitches every few days until you get a response and be as authentic as possible. Do not use mail merge ever. Do that every day for the next month and you will start getting leads and you will start getting clients. It's as simple as that. There you go. That was a lot, but I truly believe that if you're looking to build a freelance writing business, all you have to do is do the stuff we just talked about and within weeks you are going to start seeing things happen. You are going to have a real freelance writing business. You're going to get clients that are going to pay you money to write for them, which is then going to open up all kinds of doors and all kinds of opportunities. If you're looking for more help, if you're looking for a little more support, go to location rubble.com slash FWG, grab that freelance writing guide. You're also going to get our free six day course that starts walking you through all of the essentials for how to do this. I think you're going to get a ton of value out of it and if you did get value out of this video, you know, do the things, give it the thumbs up, hit the subscribe button below. If you're looking to make a living with your words on the internet, that's what we do here at Location Rebel and we've spent over a decade doing it. So with that, I'll see you later. If you're looking for another video to watch, I recommend you go check out this one right here and we'll see you on the next one. Have a great day. Peace. Pow.