Transcripts
1. Introduction: Become a Freelance Writer: the night I wrote my first ever article as a freelance writer. I was about 12 years ago now. I wrote a sports article about hockey, and I earned a whopping $2.50 for two hours of hard work and write a bit not been a really profitable first gig, but it started me on this journey, and after all, it's not all about money. Today. I own a small business where I'm able to earn a nice living solely on my writing. I followed well over 2000 articles written website content for over 500 companies writing for Forbes Fortune Entrepreneur Magazine created over 500 business taglines Mission statements, business names you name again. It's headaches talk, ghost written books contributed to $5 books and much more. Everyone has to start somewhere. Are you ready to be a near journey as a writer? Well, if so, then let's get started. This course is for you. If you want to write about things that you're already interested in and ready to make, start earning from them and I will be your guide. My name is Michael Lucchese anima, founder of Trip Up and a teacher here on skill share, and I love guiding others on how to get started writing online. So this course is become a freelance writer. Eight steps to get started today is a detailed and powerful beginners. Love, of course, although I would call it Beginner's Level Course does include some tips and tricks that even some more advanced courses and block posts don't cover. So even if you have written articles in the past, even if you got paid as a writer in the past, I welcome you to join this course. I think you can learn a lot from it. That's what I created this four. So I believe you'll get everything you need to get started writing from knowing what to write about to finding those first few clients. There'll be a couple of simple projects, including publishing your first block post and setting up a profile on a freelancing Web site so you can start landing jobs for pay. I've also provided a resource is sheet with helpful tips, websites that are mentioned in the course and much more, and also I'm available to help you as a student. In my course, you're gonna reach me on lengthen. Just search for Michael Lucchese. You can also email me at lucchese dot michael at gmail dot com. So what are you waiting for? Let's get started.
2. Choosing Your Niche: choosing what you will write about is one of the most important and difficult decisions you have to make one setting out to get paid as a writer. And don't worry, I'll guide you through making this decision. Also, while I really believe that this is a very important decision to make, even if you can't decide or you change your mind later, you can still find work as a writer. The key thing to keep in mind is that if you don't have a niche which also means a specialty, a special focus that you're going to write about, you'll be competing with a much larger pool of writers. And this forces you to be a much better writer than everyone else in charge. Less than what they dio, which is probably not something you want to try to do, especially not at the start. This is definitely not ideal. You want to know more about a subject than anyone else and to have the luxury of charging more than everyone else. I don't consider myself to be a great writer, and I don't have to be. My true passion is small business and entrepreneurship. I love learning and writing about entrepreneurs and businesses, and that's what drives my business. Businesses work with me because I can quickly understand their business and translate the messages they want to get across to their customers in writing. Now you need to find your niche subject your specialty, and we're gonna go through an exercise I created to help you choose your niche and what types of writing us specializing. So take out your choosing your niche worksheet or a spare piece of paper pause. If you need Teoh, I'll give you a second. We will go through this worksheet together, as I mentioned. Be prepared to pause the video so you can give this exercise the time and effort needed. I can assure you that this will help you understand what you want to write about and give you a place in the market instead of starting out without any idea or direction, which is one of the reasons so many people fail or give up before they give themselves a real chance at making it as a writer. So go ahead and pull up that sheet, pause here, pull up the worksheet, and then we'll will jump in right there hope you have your choosing your niche work sheet ready. We are going to go through. This is gonna be fun. You're going to figure out your niche and the types of writing that you're in a focus on. So go ahead and click on the subject list. It is geared towards school subjects, but it's a really good list of Okay, countless subjects. Um, so just scroll through, see what stands out. You might already know what subjects you. You want to focus on some of the common ones Air travel, sports, business, technology, politics. I like to focus on entrepreneurship. I also do some sports, so go ahead and pick three for this part. So choose three subjects that you like the most. Now, these may change later on, based on your interests or the market may be a lot more people want you to write. You know your number two rather than your number one. But right now, right, those three topics, and then in step two, we're gonna go to levels deeper than just picking a subject is not going deep enough, so we need to go deeper here. So our example here. Let's say you pick sports to go to levels deeper. Answer the question. What topic do you love or want to talk about the most within sports. So if you said baseball for the topic, answer the question. What topic do you love or want to talk about the most within baseball. So from sports, we got a baseball. Then we go a level deeper. So what? Within baseball, it could be free agency history of the game playoffs Draft World Series, really their endless possibilities. So I want you to choose three for each of those three topics. So example. Sports Baseball history playoffs, Detroit Tigers If you pick travel than maybe you, uh, really love travel hacks you could do saving money, getting sleep, giving work done while traveling. So in this section, you're gonna put in your main subject. And then what topic do you love or want to talk about the most within that subject as the first level deeper. And then you're gonna go one more deeper. What do you love or want to talk about the most within that mentioned topic, And then I want you to write three of those lingo subject to subject three. That s so then you have really nine strong topic ideas based from the original three topics . So from those nine, you're going to want to pick one that you're going to focus on, and that's gonna be your specific niche at this point. Now you should definitely keep this list. Keep this worksheet when you're done. Do not get rid of it because you might change. Just like I said earlier, the market might prefer one of the others you might find, you know, a better customer, Better client. You might enjoy one of the ones more, Um, but this is a great step to take, so I'd say Go ahead and pause this here. Fill out this sheet. Now it's time to choose your type off writing, So choosing a topic is a great first step. But you want to choose the type of writing that you want to specialize in one rating on your topic of choice. So there are lots of types of writing. I really like to focus on blogging website content and then some other creative writing like to do taglines, mission statements, business names. So go ahead and look this list off options figure out which you want to do, and these might change as well. But I would pick three to focus on right now. There are also some that are gonna be more profitable than others. So you do want to let that play a small part of this, But really passion. A lot of times drives your success. So what I'm getting paid the most for right now are probably e mails. Sequence e mails for businesses you create between usually between three and seven emails that are sent automatically a customer's toe used as lee generators. Website content is also paid pretty well right now, but it all depends. You could make decent money from ads, videos, guys. It all depends on finding the right market. But pick three right now to focus on people care that you know your stuff that you know how to do it. So you pick three. You work hard on them on, and then people will begin to realize that recognize that especially if you're marketing around those three you don't need necessarily need to do paid ads at this point. Just get good at them, put out blow post about them, connect with your network. Just learn all you can about the three types of writing that you're focusing on. And ghostwriting is another one that I really like to focus on. Aziz. Well, there's a lot of people that want to write a book or one of articles. They just haven't made the time to do them yet. So then I want you for this. I want you to pick three rated down the sheet here, keep has less. You can also make notes of other ones that you might be interested in the future. Then I recommend spending the majority of your time. It's a 60% of your time on your specialties, and this will help you master your focus. Topic the types of writing you choose and help you demand a higher rate of pay while attracting the attention of individuals and businesses that you want to work with. So go ahead and finish the sheet jack down your three preferred types of writing, and even with this as well, please do contact me if you have any questions at all, it can be really hard to find your place to feel comfortable with with a specific topic and with types of writing. You know, it can take years to perfect them, but it doesn't take a lot of time to get good enough at them that people are gonna pay you to do these. Especially if you pick things like blog's or website contact. You can pick those up pretty well. All they are difficult to master, but feel free to email me. Lukey, stop michael at gmail dot com. One last thing you had to take me years to spread out past three. I do a lot of different types of content now, but I started out with just doing block posts, then went toe website content and a few others. But go ahead and fill this sheet and we'll move on to the next section.
3. Conduct Your Quick Research: Now that you have a niche in a type of writing or three that you'll specialize in, you need to do the following. You have to discover what exists in your new space. Find out who's writing and why Learn who was paying for this type of writing and how much. If that's available, usually it's not and begin to create a network of writers and potential clients, and we're gonna take four steps to do that. We're going to search and find, collect, read and connect. And I recommend opening up a Google Dax file, no document or word file so you can keep track of and organized this information. So let's go ahead and get started with the search and find. All right. So for search and find, we're simply going to do just that. We're going to use training puppies or dogs as our topic, and we're going to search to try to find different blood posts, websites, companies, organizations that are writing and promoting this type of content. What we really want to do here is start a list of resource is these could be anything from writers that you can network with two organizations and companies that eventually you could reach out to try to see if they'd be interested in hiring you toe work. All right, so, surging dog training, you're gonna get a lot of local results. Also, feel free to do this in a incognito. I could never say work incognito Web browser. So you don't get some of the hyper localized results of local, you know, kennels or training facilities. So what we got here? Tell a kennel, dog club dog and puppy training I would also check out the videos, See what titles they're coming up with. Four things that will train end up 80% faster. That's very specific, but obviously pretty popular for shows up in the top. Few results here, Um, and eventually, in when you are marketing your services, I would recommend doing some videos. I did one on Lincoln Publishing how to publish a post on LinkedIn and believe it got around 40,000 views top 10 best dog trainers. So we have some organization, some websites that just aggregate different companies and information. You also make sure to look at the bottom of the page and Google to it shows other similar searches toe what you're searching. So a lot of times this can reveal information on what you should, um, right about dog training cost you could do. Yeah, articles based on how much average session on training cost, how much you should pay, the value you get returns. A lot of ideas there. Dog obedience training are the different types of training. What are those types of training? What you can expect in each of those who is really going to speak to people who are searching for dog training at at at at looking all these ads. Obviously, there's a lot of people and companies paying to advertise in this space. That means there's definitely a market. Maybe you in a market to write ads for some of those companies that are promoting ads here in Google. Dog training puppy in adult dog training classes. Home dog training. Um, so those are two big sectors right there training at a facility and then how to train at home. More ads. Canine Country Club, Happy home puppy training facility. Always faithful dog training. Want to become a dog trainer? That's another route you could take how to become a dog trainer so you collect some of these articles, pull out a word document or Google doc list these articles. Some of the writers take note of the organizations, the companies that are publishing these posts and that our advertising to because, you know, they're spending money if they're advertising on Google so that they could be spending money on the article creation or website writing. I mean, just go back to that list of all the different types of writing and see where you think you could fill a need for these companies. The companies that are that are writing here that are promoting ads, and you could also reach out to the writers to figure out how there wouldn't write these pieces or how they got in with these companies. They may be a little hesitant to share that information, but you never know unless you try to reach out to connect. Now, connect might be the most important step here. You never know what it can lead to. This has led to several clients for myself and new in this. You want to connect with writers in your niche on social media and through email. If that's available here is just a quick example of a way you could reach out to them. Hello, my name is Michael. I'm just getting started writing on dog training related topics. I just followed you on Twitter and linked in and recently read. Then you put in the title of the article you read on the website. You read it on and then give some specific detail that show that you actually have read it thin. You could make a small request that could be a short phone call. I'd probably recommend going with. I was wondering if I could ask you 2 to 3 questions. Would you mind? Most are going to say yes to this, and something just this simple can help you make connections in your new niche and leader really beneficial relationships. There's another aspect to the connect step in this quick research person portion of the course, and that's making connections with publishers and companies. I would wait on that now because you haven't got started yet, and you could receive a know before you really even give yourself a chance to succeed. So let's wait on connecting with those outlets and publishers until we finish. Creating are many portfolio, which will be next. See there
4. Create Your Mini Portfolio: can I see an example of your work? Why did you send me some clips and I'll get back to you? You're writing Will do a lot of the talking when trying to land clients. Although you want to start getting paid for your work right now is a freelance writer. It will be hard to convince anyone to hire you without proof of your passion and capabilities. Even a simple block post can be the start of a portfolio that you can present to prospective clients. So in this session, we're going to talk about creating a mini portfolio. So what is a mini portfolio? It is kind of just exactly what it says. A portfolio is basically a collection of samples of your work that you can show as a as an example. Obviously, this course is all about giving started as a freelance writer, so you might not have a lot of that proof of your work yet. So this is where you're going to create some of that proof. Those examples that are gonna really while perspective clients, so many portfolio is just a small version of that. You might just have three or four examples of your work, but it can really play an important role in helping you start as a freelance writer. So parts of a many writing portfolio. Ah, personal bog. If applicability you have a personal block that you've been working on for some time, you can use that as an example. I would definitely go back through. Make sure to tighten up some of your old posts, take down in the controversial topics that you would want perspective clients and look at. But a personal blawg could be relevant in your many portfolio. Ah, one example of each of your three types of writing. Since we created three different specific types of writing that you'll be working none, you want to show an example of each of those eso, regardless of what it is you need to come up with. Examples have that as a part of your many portfolio guest blogged post. Whatever you did pick for your niche, there's likely blog's already in that specific focus. Reach out to them, figure out how to get a guest blogged post published. You can also do this through other mediums. There are ways to easily get a block Post published on a guest blawg. Sometimes people offer paid opportunities where you could pay 5 10 $15. I tried not to do that perspective. Clients are gonna look at that and know that you probably paid for that opportunity. Don't do that. I would definitely eventually reach out to those perspective blog's that you want to get published on and ask them if they're offering any guest opportunities. You don't get paid for that. But that's okay. Right now we're just building your profile as a new freelance writer. Also relevant Social Media Post. I would start posting topics posting posts about your specific topics. So whether on Twitter, Facebook or instagram, start creating post about your topic. See if you can get people interested in whatever you're talking about. Even if it's something a little different, you can then use these polls, especially if they've gotten engagement. If people have like them or re shared them or commented on them, this is gonna be proved that you can get engagement through that type of post to your perspective. Clients who really want to see that So we're going to create a mini portfolio, one of things I would recommend is create a Google drive or a folder on your computer to keep each file off your many portfolio. So if you have published versions of your articles, you can just send the links to those articles, or you can provide the hard copy, create a word document, have that full article in the word document on. Then when somebody asks, Hey, let me see your portfolio. You been to send them that full file from your computer so you can use Google docks to give them a version in the cloud so you don't have to send the whole thing an email. Or you could just create the heart folder that you could send them, which will probably be a rather large file that could take some time to load. But either of those you can dio and my tip for You Here is published on Medium Arlington as , ah, block post for your many portfolio. It's really an important step, something that's really benefited me, publishing on both of those linked in links to your professional profile, too. So you might even attract people within your niche right on Lincoln. So that's ah, really good step here
5. Pricing as a New Writer : one of the hardest things about freelance, especially when you're first getting started, is knowing how much to charge. That's probably the most common question I get. People really struggle with pricing. They want to know. Should they price it out per hour? Should they price it out per article? What what do you do and how do you price it? Um, and even after six years of being in business, it's still fluctuates. It's different for each client. It's different for each job. So really, getting experience is going to help you be able to price. But there's still a good way to get started on, and that's really to come up with a basic minimum of what you're okay with taking. And what I would do is think about in your life what you're OK with making per hour what you need to live on. So think about that number, whether it's $10 or $25 really, really think about that. Maybe even look at your bills. If you create a monthly budget, look at that. Figure out what you need to earn per hour and then double it for writing. Um, and that is really important for writing because ah, lot of what you're going to do. You can't charge for some of the research, the quoting, going back and forth on price networking. All of that you can't charge for. You need to charge mawr than if you were just gonna go work at a local restaurant or in a local office. You need to charge more, because there you get paid for all that stuff. You paid for everything. Whether they they're making money off their clients or not here, you don't. You will get paid for what? You're actually charging the client four. And a lot of that's gonna be unpaid. So you needed charge. Double eso at a minimum. That should be, I don't know, 2025 30 $40. And you don't need to get to that right away. Maybe set that goal for a month or two down the line. Right now, you need to get some experience, but you should still have that number in your mind. Still shoot for that number right away, if you can. In all of this, based on is based on how much time it's going to take you. So if somebody asked you how much you gonna charge me for an article? You need to figure out how much time you think that would take you. Now an article, let's say 4 to 500 words. A lot of it depends on the topic. How well you know the topic. If you're going to need a lot of sources, it could take anywhere from 1 to 4 hours, which is gonna make a huge difference. That could be anywhere from if you're charging $25 an hour, I'll could be between 25 $100. Just make sure that you factor in your the time it takes you to communicate with the client on the research, the writing, the editing, all of that. Some clients are gonna want a couple rounds of editing. Some are just gonna take what you write and then make final edits. So you should work that into your quotas. Well, say I'll go through your edits and create a final draft that's included in this and then make sure you work that in with the price and let me know if you have any questions about pricing. Like I said, it is very difficult I might do in a future course. Just on this e mail me Lucchese that Michael at gmail dot Come, if you have specific questions on pricing, um, but yeah, that's what I would recommend for pricing when you're getting started.
6. Blogging Platforms: Let's talk about blogging platforms, which is great first place to get some experience as a freelance writer. Ah, first, just in case you're not sure of what a blogging platform is. Ah, blogging platform is a service that allows you to publish your content on the Web there almost all free. And anyone can access your content there as long as you want it to be widely accessible. It's important to note that blog's aren't quite what they used to be using a tired phrase blog's are a dime a dozen May specializing in a specific topic. Mawr important than ever. The more specific your topic, the better the chances that you're gonna attract people to your blog's. You shouldn't expect to make a lot of money or even any money, probably from your blog's. But that's OK. You can use it to build a small audience, gain experience and increased credibility, which we talked about some in the mini portfolio section. So some of the more common blogging platforms include medium linked in your personal website or blawg or tumbler, and I would definitely recommend medium or linked in medium. You just create a simple profile and you published posts right on their platform. They do actually have a partnership program where you can get paid for your posts. Don't expect to make much there at all. It is very hard. I think I average maybe a couple cents a month, but it's a really good place to get exposure. Linked in is my favorite place to publish. I'm just cause it's tied to your your ah you know, public corporate profile, your business profile and all the things that you're working on. So people that are interested in whatever it is that you do for a living will also run into some of your articles on. And if they're focused on that, if you create a new, you know, job on your linked in profile that says you're a writer and then you're writing articles about your specific topic and within your, uh, the types of writing that you're gonna focus on which we talked about earlier, that can you can really lead to additional clients. I've just recently landed a $1200 client from a post I made on lengthen, so it's definitely a really good place to start, and I would go ahead and publish on Lincoln. So our project for this section is to publish a block post and go to the course materials for a worksheet on exactly how to do that. But it's pretty simple. I give you some additional tips, including how to free right, which is, Ah, great school, Great way to build your expertise, really get experienced as a writer. That's one of the things that really have to grow my writing and also can lead you to some ideas to write about. Because, let's face it, you just picked the Knicks. You just picked writing types of writing that you want to focus on. You might not have any idea on what to write about, and this is really gonna help you with that.
7. Freelancing Platforms: step Number six is gonna be checking out and signing up for a free lancing platform. Let's talk about him. They often get a bad rap because they are very competitive. The platforms charge fees, and they tend to become place where the emphasis is placed on price instead of quality. However, that is not always the case, and they can become an amazing resource and source of revenue for you now. I started offering short block posts for just $5 each on the gig website five for about a decade ago. I soon had over 100 jobs, and through this process I gained a lot of experience. While I no longer would write basically anything for $5 I still accept jobs on freelancing platforms. They're a great way to find occasional work and create new connections. In fact, in the past three months I've earned over $1900 on Fiverr alone. Ah, today I've completed over 800 orders and almost all have been from new customers, meaning I've gotten to work with nearly 1000 different businesses just from freelancing. I mean, it's it's really cool. Get to work for businesses all around the world and basically any industry you can possibly imagine. I have named a restaurant. Ah, hotel business Naming is one of the one of my specialties that I really, really enjoy. Also, around six years ago, I found a client on five or they actually didn't even order, um, one of my services on fiber. But I met them through fiber and that client was worth over. You know, if you're putting it just in terms of dollars over $150,000 or the course of five years, While you might not have the same success, I wouldn't expect you to. There's a lot to gain from freelancing platforms, and it really is the perfect place to find your first paying customer, too. So there are few platforms to consider their many platforms. Overall, I would consider just a few probably just sign up for one or two to start unless you have a lot of time, cause sometimes it can take a long time, a decent amount of effort to really get established on a platform. The ones I would consider include fiver dot com e lands up work freelancer dot com Free up , which is a really great place, but they there's a lot of testing. It's difficult to get approved unless you're a little bit more experience, so I would look at that a little further down the line. Now I want to quickly explain fiver because it will help you see the differences between platforms. There are some differences now. Most freelancing platforms list specific tasks in the amount of business or individual is willing to pay for it. So just think of even like Craigslist, where people put an ad. Hey, I need you to write an article for 400 words on paying to 20 bucks who's who's going to take it and then service providers. You, the writer, have to spend time and effort submitting a bid explaining why would be the best fit for the job on then. Usually, the person who offers the lowest rate wins the bid, and then they can do the work. It's really kind of a broken system, and it's it's really annoying, but it's one of the hoops that you kind of have to go through at the start. Now, one thing I really like about five or all the people do bash it quite a bit and you'll get that a few selling fire, but one of things I like about fibers. You create gigs, you create the offerings of your services and business owners searched through them and hire you to complete this service for their business. Under your rate for your rate, whatever you determined. So there's not really negotiating. Some people still try to do that. But you set the rate. You explain exactly what you're gonna provide, the information you need and how much you're gonna charge on. Then the business owner can accept that, provide you with the information, and then you go ahead and do your work. That's one of things I really love about it. So let's go ahead and take a quick look at my fiver profile. I'm just so you can see what it's all about. And just so you know, there is no I'm not earning any referrals. Nothing from that I have No. If anything, I'm creating more competition by showing you fiver, and that's fine because it has been, ah, good resource for me overall over the years. Now let's take a look at fiber, which is my favorite freelancing website. It's a place where people can sell and buy services made by different service providers, So there's a lot of really specific and targeted gigs. There's really bland and wide open gigs. I'll create a clever tagline slogan. Armato. While that's not specific to an industry, it is a specific type of writing eso. Once again, the types of writing that we go over are important to focus on. And if you can master, then you can do really well on a place like fiber. For example, my business name creation gig has gotten think around 350 reviews that are we sold over 400 of those. So I've gotten known four creating business names for all different types of businesses and start ups websites. So that's where that can be really important, really work for you. And even if you do decide to go after a specific focus a subject whether that's dog training or baseball, you could also find people on freelancing websites that are looking for that type of services. Well, see, I will write you an expert letter, email or documents, little bland. Bring your voice and vision toe life. There's a lot of podcast focused gigs, and here is, well, it's kind of all over the board. I would recommend checking it out, doing a few searches around your types of topics. Um, the tapas you're choosing. Let's go to my profile. Switch to selling. Click on my gigs here right now. I think I'll for about 14 different services, and that will change. Sometimes I delete them. Sometimes you create new ones. I just recently created one about, um, for creating vision statements. I had about three requests in my inbox and mission statements, so I decided to create a few just for vision statements, and that's already starting to get some traction. Go ahead and click on one to show you what they look like. This is my creating three options for a business name, my most popular one by far. It's the 330 reviews so far, so you create the basic offering what it is. I would recommend a video. You do not have to do a video. You do have to add at least an image, even then create packages basic standard premium that gives you a chance to charge a lot more than you would for something really simple. I also offer revisions for the more expensive packages and do have a lot of people that do pay the extra amount for revisions, even though sometimes that knock it out of the park right away. And they don't even need the revision. So it's a good way to earn extra revenue without doing extra work. In some cases, obviously you want to really focus on getting your ratings up. It also helps if you deliver on time, you don't cancel orders. All that plays into what level seller you'll be. I'm level two. I believe you have toe to get to the next level. Life, all the criteria except for earning over $20,000 fiber think minds around 12 there's a profile about the cell. You have 4.9 overall with 600 reviews and feel free to contact me with any questions about five or whether that's here on five or I'd recommend my email. Looky stop Michael at gmail dot com to take a look at my earnings here, so I wouldn't expect to earn anything like this right off the bat. This is over a long period of time ever and over $12,000. But let's look a little past three months, which was have probably been my best three months in quite a while. Have 100 night orders for all in the last three months have earned over $2000 now in the last three months. So when you really get things moving on and you build up a decent profile, you can earn decent money. I mean, that's over $600 a month spread out over last three months. That's a nice you know, nice part time job and ice side hustle. And this is just on one freelancing platform. You can obviously create multiple freelance platform profiles. Um, another thing you want to do is also look at the course materials and look at the resource is list. There's an article that provides 12 different freelance platforms that you can try out. It doesn't list five or on that one, but there lots of other options would definitely check that out. Do your research, find the one that you think best fits you
8. Create Your Plan: If you fail to plan, you plan to fail. I'm sure you've heard it before. Planning is important regardless of what you want to achieve. Your taking this course for a reason, right? You want to become a freelance writer? Well, what do you want to accomplish? What do you really want to be? What is even being a freelance writer mean? It could be earning, you know, some extra side revenue per month. It could be becoming a full time writer and quitting your current job. Whatever you want accomplished, you should create a short plan of how you want to accomplish that. I recommend creating a short term meaning the next month and a long term plan to outline what you want to accomplish. Its a paid writer. There's will help keep you on the right track and make sure you're working towards something that you really want. You can always adjust your workload of prices as you go along to make sure you're getting closer to your goals. So go ahead and create your plan, using the mapping out your plan worksheet
9. Wrapping it All Up!: thank you for taking this course. I really appreciate your time. We're gonna finish with some advice from fellow writers who have come to known over the last few years. I asked them for their tips for new writers. So we're gonna end with that once again. I want to offer my help here. If you need any help, you can email me Lucchese that michael at gmail dot com Also follow me on social media channels at Michael Lucchese. I also want to know if you think I should create a follow. Of course, please let me know. Send me a message if you like, um, or intermediate version of this course, which will include how to create recurring clients, how to create packages for your writing clients. We'll go into more pricing in that course to on. I'll just share with you more what I've done over the last 56 years to create, you know, a reasonably sustainable business turned this new skill into a career which, if you really love writing and you love the topic you're writing about, that's what you want to do. You want to create it into a career. Although it's not all about money you want to create to a career so you can do it more. And that's what I really enjoyed for the past few years. To Orlando hates author and director of business development of periodic says find and focus on the problem people have to solve. Now, when you're getting started out writing a lot of times you're not looking at what people want your thinking about what you want to write, which is which is great. I mean, you want to get MAWR interested in experience in writing, but you also want to solve a problem, and that's if you focus on a specific niche. You do the research, which we talked about earlier. In this course, you're probably gonna find out exactly what people are searching for and you're gonna be able to find a problem and solve that problem through your writing. And that's really where companies are going to be willing to hire you. Um, is if you're you're writing to help people. If you're finding problems and you're fixing those problems with writing, that's where you become really valuable as a writer. Dr Kate Brown, brand strategist and content consultant. I know She's also done the Ted X talk as well. I really respect a doctor Kate Brown built, she says. Build relationships with small business owners and entrepreneurs who hire writers. Since you prop already probably know a few people in the space is it will be an easier start to get referrals in portfolio building projects in Yeah, that's great advice. It's very hard to go the old route of publishing for magazines and websites. A lot of websites don't pay anything at all. Um, for entrepreneur, entrepreneur Forbes Fortune magazine. I did not get paid a cent, but what's against that all about the money? It was a really good experience, and I did get a couple of leads from those experiences. Now let's hear from Ryan Mark Court when I went to school with when I was pursuing My Bachelors in entrepreneurship from Bradley University, he's multi disciplinary communications consultant, he says. I find brands often want copy and editorial content. More often than media outlets need extra contributors. We were just kind of talking about It's a salad way to build portfolio work. If getting into publications is your ultimate goal, and you're struggling to make inroads in that world. And in general, I think freelance writing for brands tends to pay more than traditional media outlets do. If money is the main focus and he's absolutely right there. That's what I found. That's why mainly focused on writing for entrepreneurs and small brands. Create connections with those businesses within your niche. And I think you're gonna find success. Our last piece of advice here is from next Tamara, who says websites for your writing Our big legitimize er's show off. The work you've done show that you've been doing it over time. When you have a website, people think you're a lot more legitimate than you are. He likes to tell it like it is. He has a hold back. Have you linked in, Say you're a writer? So others in your network? No, you're a writer. I think most of my jobs have come from here. People sing. I'm a writer I linked in, though maybe I only write for money 10 to 20 hours a week does much more. Basically, saying does much more than saying he's a bartender on LinkedIn, which will help him get any writing gigs. So what Nick is saying here is to commit. If you're you know, if you really want to become a freelance writer, tell people that you're freelance writer, which we talked about earlier in the course put on for unlinked in your freelance writer, people start to contact you about your writing. Once again, I really want to thank you for taking its course. Feel free to contact me again and let me know if you would like a follow. Of course. Thanks again for two skill share for giving me the platform to share this information as well. Thank you.