The Road to Success of Freelance Writing

So you have decided you want to be a freelancer because you love to write. Well, there is a lot more to freelancing than just writing, and this article will show you the steps you can take to become a successful freelance writer. Writing is only part of your career as a freelancer the other half is doing research,marketing yourself, and staying ahead of publishing trends.Not to mention the pressuring competition against thousands of other freelance writers trying to "make" it as well.

Number one rule: You think you are a good writer, but be honest with yourself on how good you really are. Publishers hate to see alot of grammatical errors or unfinished thoughts and instead of the publisher reading the whole article they usually stop midway and toss it in the trash.

Rule number two: If you already don't have a journalism or English degree take a writing course. It will help you in more then one way. It will give you an honest view on your writing from professional writing instructors/professors. You will learn what your flaws are and what your strong points are along with getting used to the idea of writing with deadlines.

Rule number three: Learn how to write a query letter to an editor. What does it consist of you might ask, simple it a letter proposing an idea you have thought of for an article. State your qualifications and make it sound like one of the best ideas that has come across the editors desk.( Hence marketing yourself).

Rule number four: Get yourself on a search engine and do a search on words such as "writing", "writers". This will help bring up sites where you can get some practice in on developing your writing skills, not to mention you can use snippets of the articles submitted to this site in your portfolio.

Rule number five: Be bold, contact the local newspaper and magazines. Ask them if you can submit an article "on spec". which basically means that they will be under no obligation to pay you for your work, and will take the time out to read your article.

Rule number six: Build up a portfolio. In order to get a job or to be considered for freelance work you need to have clips of your previous work. A bad situation if you have never written professionally, which is why rule number four will help you out here. Take the clips of writing you have done for writing sites and build up your portfolio with that.

Ruler number seven: Stop wasting your time chatting with other wannabe writers instead get out there and research,write,market yourself and send out query letters.

Rule number eight: One of the most important rules, never feel rejected. Yes you will be rejected quite a few times but that does not mean quit, develop a thick skin and keep on following rule seven.