How to Start a Freelance Writing Side Hustle

How to Supplement Your Income and Make Money as a Freelance Writer

Novice and veteran writers alike will tell you there’s a formula to start a freelance writing side hustle. 

If you don’t have writing experience ––– learning to write, hone the craft, and make money for your writing isn’t as intimidating as it sounds. Plus, it’s an AWESOME way to supplement your income. 

It may even be the gateway to leaving your miserable day job. 

Just in case you don’t have time to read the entire post, feel free to skim the headers, or check out the bulleted breakdown below for how to start a freelance writing side hustle: 

1. Identify why you want to start a side hustle. 
2. What are your monetary goals with your freelance writing side hustle?
3. Choose your niche, area of expertise, strengths that you are writing in. 
4. Describe your target audience. Be as specific as possible. 
5. Put together a website and/or portfolio. 
6. Do your keyword research: High traffic and low competition. 
7. Start writing based on your keyword research findings. 
8. Put the word out that you are a freelance writer: Facebook, Twitter, Linked In, etc. 
9. Join, participate, and provide value in freelance and freelance writing groups on Facebook. 
10. Build perfect profiles on job boards and freelance websites: Indeed, Upwork, LinkedIn, PeoplePerHour, Fiverr, Zip Recruiter, Toptal, FlexJobs, Simply Hired. 
11. Start reaching out to companies for freelance writing work. 
12. Rinse, and repeat.

If you have time and need more detail, follow the rabbit hole this way… 

Why Do You Want to Start a Freelance Writing Side Hustle?

There are many reasons why you might start a freelance writing side hustle. Maybe the idea of making money from your work and being able to make time for other things that matter to you is appealing? 

Or maybe you’re looking for new opportunities in life with more flexibility, which could be one way to start creating them? It’s not as scary as it seems and can start with something small.

Goals for Your Freelance Writing Side Hustle

List out the goals for your side hustle and what you want to gain from it. 

It might be an extra $500 or $1,000 per month. It might be supporting your family, saving for a vacation, paying off a car, or building a college fund for your kids. You may want to use freelance writing to launch a new career or give you more flexibility in your life.

Whatever your goal is, it has to be specific and time-bound. 

Goals without deadlines are just dreams. 

Choose Your Freelance Writing Niche

Where do you start with freelance writing?

First, you have to choose your niche and category. Start by understanding what topics are most relevant to you based on your strengths, skills, hobbies, or expertise in the field.

Do some reflection and research on:

• What do you know? Ex: Career expertise, skills, work history. 
• What are you interested in? Ex: Hobbies, books, entertainment, activities, gear, products, services. 
• What topics would you enjoy writing about?
• What do you spend your free time doing?
• What do people come to you for when they need advice or help?

Take an inventory of your hard skills, soft skills, interests, and hobbies. When in doubt, choose something that you love or that really interests you. Liking, loving, and enjoying something is the fuel that keeps you going. 

Ideally, you want to pick a niche, industry, or style of writing that you’re interested in and pays really well. Before settling on a niche, I recommend doing some research on what all kinds of writers are making in any industry you’re interested in. For that, you can use:

• ZipRecruiter’s Salary Tool
• Indeed or Glassdoor to investigate pay rates
• Or just run Google searches for “How much does [type of writer: “content, copy, blog writer, etc.] make in [insert industry]?”

Do some research into what content is the most popular in your niche. Then start brainstorming ideas! Brain-vomit as many different topics or keyword ideas as possible. Start writing down Frequently Asked Questions about your interest, niche, hobby, or work skill.

Choose Your Target Audience

Who’s going to read your writing?

Who are you writing to?

You need to paint as clear a picture as possible of your audience. It’s hard to get too specific. 

You may start with a broad audience, such as women ages 35-44. Then start breaking down your audience further by getting more specific into the sociology and psychology of your reader:

• What are their interests?
• Where do they live?
• What are they struggling with?
• What are their goals?
• What products and services do they use?
• What brands do they like?
• Where do they spend their time and their money?

Once again, be as specific as possible. 

Create a Website and Portfolio

Once you’ve decided what your topic is and who your audience is, it’s time to start writing! 

Don’t worry! It’ll be easier than you think.

The first step is creating your own website and/or starting your own online portfolio for your published and/or sample work.

The easiest website builders for building, hosting, and designing your freelance side hustle are:

• Bluehost + WordPress
• Wix
• Squarespace
• Journo Portfolio

You start by making a great website that will represent the quality of your work. Make it catchy and easy to navigate, with clear categories for what you’re writing about and samples of published articles or content pieces. You might want to include:

• A brief bio on who you are, including your skills, interests, and a nice elevator pitch.
• What your writing niche, interests, and topics of expertise are.
• Links to your published articles and/or portfolio.
• A simple “Contact Me” page that offers an email, phone number, or social media contact options for potential clients to start working with.

For skilled or experienced writers, you may want to include pricing options as well.

Start Researching: Top FAQs and Keywords for Your Niche

Now that you have a list of Frequently Asked Questions and a keyword brain dump for your niche or field of expertise, it’s time to start putting together your keyword research.

First, use Google to validate your keywords and questions. 

How do you validate great writing topics using Google?

• Search your keywords, phrases, and questions on Google. Example: “How to take care of succulents?” 
• See how many total search results are generated for your search query. When you’re starting, the more, the better! That means a ton of people are searching for information on that specific topic.

• Check out the top five results, start reading through them to get an idea of how you can write about them. Pay close attention to their outline and the H1s, H2s, and H3s they use throughout their posts.

Congrats on completing an introduction to keyword research for SEO! Repeat this process for all of your FAQs and keywords, taking note of:

• The total number of search listings.
• The top five search engine results for each of your search queries.
• The structure of those articles: Title, Headers, Use of Images, Outline, Introduction, Closing, etc.
• Copy and paste the headers, titles, and links to the top listings into a Google Doc or spreadsheet so you can review them later.

You can also use free SEO tools to gather better data and help expedite the process. After doing your research, ask yourself this: 

• What are these top search results missing or leaving out? 
• What could you include, improve upon, or even eliminate to make them better?

Next, you’ll need to assess the competition of these keywords and phrases. This will give you an idea of how easy or difficult it is to rank for them.

Use Google Keyword Planner to assess competition for keywords and phrases. Google Keyword planner helps with: 

• Checking search volume for keywords and phrases.
• Identifying how difficult or easy it is to rank in the top five results (high, medium, low).

You can also use SEO tools like SEMrush or Ahrefs to do your keyword research, analyze search volume, evaluate the competition, get other keyword suggestions, and more. 

My Personal Favorite is to check out SEO tools that pop up on AppSumo. Right now, I’m using Screpy, BiQ, WriterZen, and Neural Text for my keyword research. These are invaluable when doing keyword research for your blog, blog posts, and overall website content.

Pick Your Topics and Start Writing

After putting your keyword research together, it’s time to pick your topics and start writing. If you have trouble with where to start, I typically pick the topic, keyword, question, or search phrase with the highest search volume and the lowest competition.

High search volume, high competition keywords can be difficult or impossible to rank for.

Go for the low-hanging fruit. Choosing keywords with decent search volume and low competition is easier to rank and get quick wins for. The best way to stay motivated in the beginning is to get those quick wins by ranking quickly.

Repeat this process until you’ve written and published 5-10 pieces on your website, blog, or portfolio.

Put the Word Out that You are a Freelance Writer

Now that you have all of your materials together and you’ve written some great content ––– it’s time to start putting the word out that you’re a freelance writer! The more places you start advertising your services, the higher chance you have of getting clients.

Here are some ways to promote and market yourself as a freelance writer…

Post About It On Social Media

The first step to start promoting yourself is by posting about it on social media. Make a post on Facebook, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and anywhere else that you’re active that you are a freelance writer and are now taking on work. Add a link to your portfolio so people can check out your work.

Share your blog posts, articles you like, what you’re reading, and anything else that inspires you online with your social network.

Spoiler Alert: Most friends in your social network either despise writing, don’t know how to do it well, or both. So chances are, there are at least a few people in your social network who would love to hire a writer.

Get Involved in Writing Groups on Facebook

Some more great news: There are tons of Facebook groups for writers and freelancers. Join a few, start commenting on posts, start asking questions when you don’t know the answer to something, or respond to questions you know the answers to.

I can think of a dozen examples of freelance writers who pull 100% of their paying clients from Facebook groups ––– just from engaging, contributing, asking questions, being helpful, and offering their expertise and advice when they can.

Don’t be too salesy. If you show enough value in the group and become a power member/contributor, other members will likely reach out to you for work or hire you.

Join Job Boards and Freelancing Websites and Communities

Indeed, Upwork, PeoplePerHour, Fiverr, Zip Recruiter, Toptal, FlexJobs, Simply Hired, and Glassdoor help connect freelancers and writers with employers in specific industries. Build out compelling profiles on a few of these platforms to start dipping your lines in the water.

Personal Note: I put a TON of time into buffing my resume and Indeed Profile in Pre-pandemic 2020. I was also in the process of final interviews for my dream job when news broke about COVID-19.

Big shock…I didn’t get the job. What’s worse is that the company subsequently laid off their entire team… and oh yeah, 60% of their company. The same fate a LOT of companies suffered in the wake of COVID.

Surprisingly, by summer, companies, and recruiters started reaching out to ME for writing work.

I also started getting a ton of responses back from other companies/clients I applied to. So, during interviews, I started asking them, “Why me? Why now?”

The vast majority of clients and companies got back to me. I sold them on:

• My Resume: Colorful, detail-oriented, direct evidence of success in my field, and highlighted the exact keywords/phrases they were looking for. (SEO writer, content writer, copywriter, local SEO). I used Zety to build out an incredible-looking resume. They have gorgeous templates, AI recommendations, and even a keyword and copy grading system.
• My Indeed Profile and Skills: I filled out EVERY aspect and section of my Indeed profile, particularly my work skills. I have 50+ work skills listed on my Indeed profile, all with years of experience in each.
• Indeed Skill Assessments: I took what felt like 2 hours a day for an entire month, just to knock out different assessments on Indeed. Besides my resume and my listed skills, this was the next biggest company, and recruiters cited that they liked seeing. So I took (and nailed) virtually all of my marketing and writing-oriented assessments. I even took assessments for soft skills like time management and attention to detail.
• My Bio: I wrote a fun, introductory bio to make myself more real to the people and companies that checked out my profile. I added a fun bit of my history of how I sucked at writing and how ironic it is that now I do that for a living. I also added in some hobbies and what I enjoy doing in my spare time to make me as relatable as possible. I also took this opportunity to keyword-plug my industries of expertise.

Stay tuned! I’m working on a full-blown guide to build and optimize the perfect freelancer job profile that will attract and close freelance clients for you. 

How to Get Your First Freelance Writing Gigs and Clients

It’s time to get your first client! 

Many writers I follow will find their first clients just by getting active in the writing/industry Facebook groups they joined. As I mentioned, there are a ton of individuals and companies that need skilled writers. 

Great news for you, there are writing jobs in every industry on the planet.

Start chatting it up with people in the Facebook groups you joined. Ask questions to other writers in the group to get their advice and feedback. Jump in and answer questions or provide value anytime you get the chance. You’ll be shocked at how many connections you make and the reputation you’ll build by just participating in these communities.

Suppose people ask for writers (paid or free) to jump in and get some experience. In the beginning, it’s not a bad idea to offer initial pieces to clients for free. Free work can be the gateway to long-term, high-paying, and even lifetime clients.

How to Price Yourself as a New Freelance Writer?

Pricing can be tough, especially when you are just starting out. 

Start by looking at what and how other writers are charging, and use that as a baseline. You can also pole other writers in your freelance and/or writing groups to get their opinion.

Do some research on the job and freelance sites we discussed earlier See what writers are charging in your niche or industry. See what companies are willing to pay for new freelance writers and how they structure their pay (project, hour, word, etc.).

ALWAYS Over-Deliver

One recommendation you’ll hear from a lot of good writers is that you should always over-deliver. The idea is that you start with the content they requested but then continue to add value beyond what they asked for. This will lead to great referrals, better reviews, more clients, and higher pay in the future.

Manage Your Time

Starting a freelance writing side hustle is something that you should ease into, especially if you already work a full-time job. 

Don’t take on more clients and more work than you can handle.

I typically like to give myself 60-90 days to work with a new client (depending on my workload) before taking on new work or more work. This gives you time to get used to their needs, expectations, and the time it takes you to do your research and writing for them.

Important Note: In the beginning, you may spend up to double or triple the time with a new client as you do with an existing one. As they get more comfortable with you, you get more comfortable writing for them, and you put together your workflows for each client ––– that total work time will go down.

Plan for new clients to take 2-3x the amount of time that your existing clients require, for at least the first 30-60 days.

In Closing

Some businesses can be expensive to get into. Luckily for you, all you need is a computer, internet connection, and a few bucks for a website or portfolio to start your freelance writing side hustle. Stick to this plan, and after you put your digital assets and profiles together, you can have your first client in as little as a few weeks.