Write More and Write Faster
Increasing income from freelance writing can usually only happen one of two ways. You can get paid more for the writing that you are doing or you can do more writing in the time that you currently use for your freelance writing career.
Not everyone is comfortable about asking for more money. Even those that are willing to ask may run the risk of pricing themselves right out of the market. You have to be flexible when it comes to making money as a freelance writer and you have to negotiate the pay.
The one thing that you have complete control over is the amount of writing that you do in any given hour. The more articles that you can complete then the more your “hourly wage” will be.
Tips for Writing Faster
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• Write what you know – the less research that is required for an article then the easier it will be for you to get that article on paper. Choose subjects that you are comfortable and experienced writing about and you will be able to zip right through them.
• Write more than one article – once you do the research use it as much as you can. Write a long article, a short article and a blog post all from the same material. Be sure that each piece is unique in wording even if some of the thoughts are the same.
• Create an outline – having five to ten points that you want to cover will help you get your word count, write faster and make it easier to create additional pieces from the same material.
• Edit AFTER the piece is completed – trying to edit while you write will hinder the writing process. Let the writing pour out uncensored and then go back and fix the grammar and the spelling. Be sure to take the time to read the article out loud because the grammar programs do NOT catch it all.
• Remove the distractions – turn off your phones, the IM programs, the email notices and anything else that might cause you to look away from your writing. Focus in on just the words in front of you for specific period of time (like one hour) and you may be shocked at how much writing you actually get done when you are focused.
Making money as a freelance writer can be easy if you write what you know and you write it fast. The goal is to build up your freelance writing income to a sustainable per hour amount. You can do that by increasing your pay per article but you can also do it by increasing the number of articles you complete per hour.
When I have big projects, I find that if I write a VERY rough draft first with my thoughts and tidbits of research, going back and writing the book/report or even long article is much easier. The rough draft also takes the pressure off and I find I can write a 30-50 page book in a matter of days.
Hey Annette – I have found that outlines can be a big benefit for any size project. I usually jot them down when I’m waiting in line or sitting at the ball field. Having an outline of my thoughts gives me a direction for my article. I use to just write down title ideas but when I would stumble over them a month later I would have NO CLUE what I was going to write about.
Research is also a nice tool to have sitting around. I recently had to do a large number of wedding and event planning articles. I had an entire folder of information about wedding planning that I held on to AFTER my own wedding. It has helped plan other weddings and definitely made writing the articles a breeze.
This is one of the first problems I had as a freelance writer. With a background in fiction and academic writing I had allowed myself to become a slow writer. The funny thing is, once I started just writing first and editing later, I ended up with pieces that seemed to flow more organically. I’m sure this is because I edited the whole piece at the same time instead of tweaking and tweaking and tweaking as I wrote.
Hey Jennifer – I find that there are days when my articles write themselves. Those are usually the days when I am writing fast and furious. If I could find a program that would actually edit grammar then I would be good to go!