Freelance writing jobs: how to know what SELLS

How do you know what sells in freelance writing?

You find out by researching, and because you’re working in the online world, research is blissfully easy. No need to climb off the couch and change out of your jammies, even.

Get into the habit of haunting Elance, oDesk and similar outsourcing sites. When you’re a constant reader, you’ll soon get a sense of what’s selling, right now.

If you’re a new writer, get your hands dirty and make bids on one of the sites. You’ll find it tough, because you’re unknown on the site. You need feedback to be taken seriously, and until you have that, buyers will be wary of you, and rightfully so. Anyone can claim to be a “writer” online. Even writing samples are no guarantee that the writer is who he says he is — samples are often stolen.

You set your own rates and terms of service

Once you see patterns — what people buy over and over again on the outsourcing sites — you can offer these kinds of products and services yourself. You know that these offerings sell, because people have asked for them.

In Sell Your Writing Online NOW (SYWON) web writing training, I like subscribers to get extremely comfortable on the outsourcing sites, because research and knowing what sells, right now, is so vital.

Unfortunately, many writers (both new and established) get all hung up on the low prices they see some writers bidding.

Please get over it. Realize that the writing market is global. People buy what they buy. No one is asking you to write for a pittance.

Experience on the outsourcing sites lets you POSITION yourself, so you attract those clients who not only cheerfully pay what you ask, but are great fun to work with too.

By the way, there’s no point in arguing with prospects, ever. Why would you waste good writing time on someone who hasn’t paid you?

Read this article, it’s delightful. How to Lose a $7,000 Freelance Writing Gig Without Even Trying | All Freelance Writing:

“I’m not going to share his response with you because I don’t think that it’s appropriate, but I will tell you it involved this: ?????

Now, I could have assumed he had peanut butter in his question mark key so it got stuck and that’s why there were all kinds of question marks in his response, but instead I assumed that he was curious about my decision to pull myself out of the running. So I responded to ???? with:”

But please don’t do that — don’t argue. It’s a big wide world out there, and buyers come in many, many forms. Some buyers are totally clueless, so just ignore them. Ignoring them is easy when they won’t meet your terms.

For example, I advise you always to get at least 50 per cent of the fee as a retainer, up front. Some prospects won’t do that, but so what? They’re not people you want to work with — the benefits of interacting with prospects is that you get a chance to find out what works. It’s research — when you sell your writing, the more you know about the market, the better.

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Tagged as: Elance, freelance writing, Make money writing, writing, writing jobs