Start your own business as a freelance writer
A guide to the basics for those just starting a career as a freelance writer.
How to create great content as a freelance writer
For you to start freelance writing and creating great articles you will need quality content that is relevant to your readers.
Even as a new freelance writer you can create tons of articles. You can write short or long-form content, and make it as detailed as you like.
Studies show that content that includes data tables, graphs, and charts ranks well in search results.
Articles around 1000 words have proven effective and can keep your audience engaged, but many of the posts in the number 1 spot are much longer.
Make sure that whatever you write it is tailored towards solving a problem for your audience.
This way, you can create interest and have your website visitors coming back for more.
Creating compelling headlines
Make sure this is short, catchy, and relevant to your piece. Readers do not want to start reading your article to discover that it is about something different from what they thought.
A good freelance writer will put some thought into their titles or use a title headline analyzer like Sharethrough.
This free tool will give you a headline quality score, engagement score, and an impression score. You can change and tweak your headline until you are happy with the score and the nice thing about this tool is that it is completely free.
Give it a try HERE.
Format your articles for maximum readability
Some simple formatting can make your content into a neat, readable article that’s simple to navigate, instead of a solid mass of block text. This is a great tip for new freelance writers
Readers typically scan down the page so it is important to make your text as easy to read as possible.
Use sections, bullet points, titles, subtitles, and eye-catching images. Make sure that everything is laid out and formatted in a visually appealing manner. It’s a simple thing but it can make a huge difference to your content design and readability.
Limit your paragraphs to 2 or 3 sentences max so articles are easier to read on a mobile phone.
Most people will access your site using mobile devices, around 80% of them in total so it’s important that freelance writers optimize content for the cell phone or tablet user.
Breaking text into short paragraphs helps with the readability as users scroll down the page on their device.
