How I kickstarted my writing career and how you can, too
How do you get potential clients or employers to notice you when you don’t have written work to show them yet? You want to write and you want to make some money, so how is it all possible?
First, there are a ton of ways to build a strong portfolio with little to no professional writing experience. And I made a free guide about it just for you! You won’t want to miss out on this.
Now let’s get to the bottom of starting as a freelancer. Or one way, at least.
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The joys of the internet
First, I would absolutely recommend creating a blog so you can have a jackpot of writing samples for your potential clients to check out. To learn how to start a blog, check out my post here about it.
Now for my freelance story. Basically, I was a broke college graduate and needed to supplement my full-time income. I scoured the internet for what I could do. I was desperate. And then I landed on a site called oDesk that later became UpWork.
This is truly where my writing career began. As soon as I discovered oDesk, I was sold. If you are unfamiliar, today’s UpWork is a website where people who want to hire freelancers for anything (data entry, virtual assistant, language translator, and yes—writing!) post jobs and freelancers apply to them. So, with my draining bank account haunting my dreams, I went to town applying for any writing job that looked remotely interesting or was within my skill set. And within a short amount of time, I was hired to write two short e-books, blog posts, articles, and even short fiction (just to jazz things up a little bit)!
UpWork worked for me since I didn’t have a ton of professional experience and there were some low paying jobs to get me started. I was also lucky to have found a couple good first clients that were great at communicating and we worked really well together. From there, I started to build my portfolio not only to show other potential clients on UpWork, but for my own portfolio for full-time writing jobs.
Freelance websites you can use
While I really only have experience with UpWork, there are a few similar websites today that you may want to check out like:
A quick internet search will show you so many options, so it’s just a matter of trying them out to see what you like best. While there isn’t one right way to get your start, this is definitely something that worked for me, so it might work for you, too!
Build that portfolio
I have to say it again because I believe in this SO much! You don’t have to get paid to write in order to write. You can build a rockin’ portfolio all on your own before you are even hired for anything. And my free guide will show you exactly what you can do to create a portfolio that you can be proud of. Check it out!
You can do this. Keep writing!
