I have been writing as an amateur freelancer for close to three months. I have written hundreds of articles, worked with dozens of clients, and still make no claims of success, or of "expert" status. I am an amateur, and am writing this methodological guide for fellow souls who may want to become fellow writers.
The guide is called methodological because I just like the sound of that word. And because it reminds you that despite the madness of Google results when you search for "freelance writing", there are tried and tested methods using which amateurs, armed nothing but their computer and their wits, can get writing jobs that pay close to $10-15 per hour.
Method One – BST Section of the Digital Point Forum
Digital Points forums is one of the most active internet forums, where you will find webmasters, email-marketers aka spammers, writers and others. Their BST ( Buy, Sell and Trade) section is where you buy or sell stuff. You will be selling your writing skills here. Don't do anything, just look around.
You will find people offering to do 500 word articles for $2. Advise One Don't ever work at that rate. The minimum you should work at is $1 per 100 words. For example, look at this job, it offers $5 for a single 500 word article. If you have any clue about WoW, you can definitely write 500 words in half an hour. That's $10 an hour.
The trick is landing that job. That single job will get about 20-40 replies. But most of the replies will not be quality writers. You do not need to have perfect English to write these articles, as long as you can write at the level of an A-level high-schoolers, you are among the top 5% of the writers there.
So what you now need are samples. Go to Ezinearticles.com, make an account, and write two to four 500 word articles about anything of your choice. These will serve as your samples. Here is my Ezine account, for reference's sake.
Now when you reply to the forum poster, include your samples, either as links, or as text (preferably, quote 100-200 words from your article, and provide a link to it in there). Also mention that you are an Ezine Expert Writer (at Ezine, everybody starts at Expert!).
Stress that you are just starting at DP, but you other experience in writing in English (which is not a lie as long as you don't stretch it).
You may reduce your rate to $0.8 per 100 words, but only if you are bored, and only when the job involves writing 1-2 articles.
Protip One You need a Paypal account to receive your payments. Making an account is easy enough, but sometimes, after 2-3 weeks, they will block it. To resolve that they will ask you to scan your telephone or bank account statement and send the scans to Paypal to prove your identity. After which Paypal will unblock your account. It is advisable for you to check that your account is working before you accept any jobs. Paypal is complicated, and you do not want to do a $100 job and later find that paypal won't accept money in your account.
Advise Two Be careful about clients that do not pay. Usually, you should keep $10-20 as the unit of transaction. Work for $10, and then ask for payment. Once a client has proven his or her trustworthiness, go up to $50-100, as you please. Note, as an amateur writer with no resume or record, you will not be in a position to ask for upfront payments.
Protip Two The copywriting has a lot of informative posts about the art of copywriting and writing in general.
Let me know if this method worked for you or not. If you have your four sample articles on Ezine, or even without it if you can sell yourself in the PM's to potential clients, and a functional paypal account, and have perfect grasp of the English language, I would be surprised if you do not get a reply from one out of five potential clients you may contact.
Drop me a word anytime, I am vishals on DP forums!
