4 Ways to Increase Your Freelance Writing Rates by Creating Clients Out of Buyers

When you are a new freelance writer trolling Craigslist and forums for work, you quickly learn that there is a big difference between Buyers and Clients. Basically, buyers are short term, gimme-the-generic-article-and-then-run types. They don't pay as much as clients and working with them doesn't make you feel like you've done something amazing.

As freelance writers, we don't just want to string words together on a page and sell them. We want someone to appreciate the effort we put into our articles, blog posts, and content. Clients do that, buyers don't.

That doesn't mean that you can't change a buyer into a client. Some buyers are clients on the inside-they just don't know it yet.

1. Tailor your services to that buyer. Your buyer puts keyword lists together for his or her niche and asks you to write about them. Then, he or she posts your article onto his WP template and Tweets about it. How many of those actions could you take off his or her hands? How about all of them? This allows you to become an important partner, charge more for your work-and they'll really only take you an extra 15 minutes to do.

2. Follow up after you've finished an article. Now, don't follow up obsessively or too quickly after you complete the work, but after a couple of weeks shoot the buyer an email and ask how traffic is and if they need any additional articles. You may be surprised at how few freelance writers do this-and how much additional business they miss out on.

3. Offer to edit the article again in 6 months as part of your service. Google loves fresh content and keyword popularity can change. When you show buyers that you are in it for the long haul and offer services like future editing to freshen and update keywords, they can quickly become repeat clients. Just be sure to state your guidelines clearly-an edit in six months does not mean an entirely new article.

4. Know about resources that would be valuable to them. Did they mention that they need a new graphic? Are they complaining about their coder? Do they need a writer for another website with a subject you don't cover? You should know good people that you can suggest for each of these positions. This makes your buyer's life easier and helps you look like a valuable resource.