Day 8 of my goal to write every day, document my freelance writing journey, and share the knowledge with others who want to become freelance writers. I provide writing tips, tactics, and strategies to help you earn well. I share everything I’ve learned to date, together with hacks and tricks that have helped me.
Day 2 – I mentioned I’d share a strategy to help you earn your first $1000 as a freelance writer.
Day 5 – I summarised the strategy and provided links to help you get started. Remember this isn’t my strategy. I never created it. I copied it from Bamidele Onibalusi, CEO of Writers in Charge. It helped me earn my first $1000, and because it works, I want to share it with you.
Day 6 – I wrote about the importance of your foundation (positioning, website, and social media presence). I touched on positioning.
Day 7 – I looked at creating your freelance writer’s website (website name, hosting provider and email address).
Today I’ll finish off the section on your freelance writer’s website (by touching on your content platform, theme, and creation of key pages) and highlight the importance of creating social media profiles.
Your Content Platform
You need a platform to manage your content. I’ll make thing’s easy for you.Go with WordPress.org. They’re the industry standard and many websites use them. By going to WordPress.org you can assign your own custom domain and use a host of your choice.
Your Theme
The theme is the skeleton, from which you will design your site. If you have coding knowledge, by all means, code! But if you’re like me and the many of people, you cannot code. That’s why using a ready made layout/theme is the way to go. You have the choice between paid or free themes.
While there are free themes that can do the job, paid themes generally offer you more customisation options. So, if you have the money, I’d recommend going for a paid theme. If you don’t, go with the Maskito Light Theme. It’s simple, minimalistic, and does the job. This is the exact theme Bamidele used for his site.
I chose The Divi Builder, which is a drag and drop website builder that gives you access to several ready-made layouts. By dragging and dropping sections and rows you can make your design unique.
Whatever theme you choose, make sure your final design is simple and clean with a lot of white space. Let your content shine through! The next step is to start creating key pages.
Creating Key Pages
Every writer’s website will be different. But one thing I guarantee: they’ll have certain key pages on their site. So it’s imperative that your site, at the least, has these. Over time you can add things like testimonials, a blog (like I’ve done), but for now, you want to get up and running quickly.
The pages you’ll need are:
- About Page where you include information about yourself, the services you offer and the value you provide clients.
- Contact Page where you make it easy for people to contact you.
- Hire-Me/Services Page where you provide more details on your services, and links to a contact form.
Initially, I created a one-page website that included an About, Contact, Hire Me and Services section. My site has changed a lot, with the inclusion of a blog and separate pages. I also decided to move away from a one-page website.
A few pointers:
- Make it about them not you. When I launched, I made it clear what value I offer: “I create engaging content that will drive traffic and positively improve ROI”.
- Include your email address (make sure it’s not a Gmails Address), together with a submission form.
- Establish connection by including a photo of yourself.
- Also as a writer, I don’t need to tell you that your site should be free of grammatical errors. So once completed either step away from it and re-read it at a later stage, or let friends, work colleagues – or if you can afford it – a copywriter give it a read.
- Avoid perfection. As you customise your site and include relevant information be wary of perfection. Perfection doesn’t exist! While you don’t want to put something on the market, that is, well, terrible, you need to develop a “this is good enough” mindset. Remember: you can change it over time.
Your Social Media Presence
Create social media profiles if you don’t have them. Focus on Linkedin, Twitter, and Facebook to start. Not only does this increase your visibility in search engines, but clients also look favourably toward it. Often they’ll ask you to share the content you’ve written for them on your social media channels. That’s extra value you can provide!
If you already have social media profiles, make sure that you update them to reflect that you’re a freelance writer.
To recap, the focus of Day 6, 7 and 8 (today) was to build your foundation for freelance writing success. This included:
- Deciding on how to position yourself.
- Creating your writer’s website (website name, host, custom email address, content platform – WordPress -, theme, and key pages)
- Creating your social media profiles.
Click here for part 5 where I show you how to bolster your credibility with guest posting.
If you enjoy writing and are serious about improving your writing skills, becoming a freelance writer, and want to earn more, I can help! Feel free to email me at nick@nickdarlington.com.
P.S. No, I’m not selling you anything. I’m not going to ask you to buy my book or even sign up for my course (I don’t have one) or weekly newsletter, I’m simply offering you help.
But remember while I can offer you assistance and support, you have to put in the work. No action = No results.
Cheers
Nick D