Important Skills and Tools – Freelance Writer

You may have heard everyone saying that you can start freelance writing from scratch. This is certainly true, but if you aspire for a more solid possibility of succeeding, it’s reasonably good to acquire a few art and crafts and the knowledge of how to use the required tools properly and efficiently.

Required Crafts/Skills for Freelance Writing

Hi. I am going to share the tools I personally use and also the skills that I've learned in my journey. I am sure that this would be helpful to you too.

Organization Craft – Management

You need to keep track of all your schemes, billing data, customer data, offerings posted, and content calendar for your blog, and seldom for your client’s blog. You’ll also need to improve a writing routine to organize your articles or blog posts.

What are the measures to accumulate analysis for your articles?

How do you draft your blog post? Having conformity in point for your plans is key to improving your business. You don’t want to make a blunder or omit to do something which is important. For me, I have a few journals to note down content concepts for my blogs and a task list of what needs to be done immediately.

Blogging Craft

I essentially write blog posts or digital marketing kinds of stuff – like a hook post or for a lead magnet.

Firstly, when I started, I had no hint of how to blog. I read various blog posts but never looked at the structure the writers were following. It wasn’t until I started my own blog that I really gave consideration to subheadings and utilizing the white space as the plus point.

Writing for online readers is different than writing a session-paper for your college professor. You need to know how to fascinate a reader with just your title and the coping introduction. You also need to back up your assertions and facts with legitimate references. And you need to incorporate subheadings, lists and above all, you should provide actionable advice which is immediately applicable.

Content Marketing Craft

Content marketing is one of the most important aspects when we talk about the online content creation business.

A beginner freelance writer requires to understand clearly what content marketing really is. This expects learning how a business uses the content to sell its products or services.

They may use a lead magnet, case studies, income proofs, customer reviews, literal white papers, and an email list to aid them to obtain leads that can essentially convert into a long-term customer.

Knowing this marketing policy, you mature a freelance writer, it can help you settle on writing schemes like white paper writing for corporations, which are scored more valuable than general or personal blogs.

Confidence Craft

Being confident is unmistakably a craft successful people know very well. Putting yourself beyond the unknown and seeking to settle directly on the writing jobs is hard. You’ll get discarded, disappointed, or you may have a client who will blow you out of the water.

To be a successful freelance writer you truly need good confidence and don't be afraid of pitching sales. That's ok if you do not possess that confidence right away at the start but it is required that you exert the important actions.

This surely means that you have to apply to jobs even if you are not that qualified for it or you shall send a sales pitch that is not at all perfect. You need to do this as an exercise and practice from which you will gradually learn how to manage important aspects.

Simply watching YouTube videos, enrolling in various courses, or reading a ton of blog articles won't help you a lot in the long-term until you don't take action and practice along. So, taking appropriate actions is very much important.

Do not fall in the trap of overthinking as it slowly leads you to sink in the "Analysis-Paralysis" state which is, most of the time, very hard to suppress or overcome.

Now that you have gone through the basic crafts and skills necessitated, you also need to know the importance and the use of the basic business tools.

Required Tools for Freelance Writing

Management Tools

Since you are the only business runner, you need to handle every aspect of it on your own. You need to keep track of them. I personally use Microsoft Excel and Google Sheets and some of my clients also use software like Productivity Planner so to keep track of all the projects and incomes. Asana or Trello are also good to track your to-do list or in place of Microsoft Excel. Try different programs, select the best fit for you, and start creating basic systems for your business, finances, projects, blog ideas, sales pitches, etc.

I personally use most of the free programs and only if there is no free program to carry out some specific tasks, I use paid one.

I recommend you to start with the free ones, otherwise, probably, you would waste your money. When it gets really necessary to upgrade your system, you can go for the paid ones, as they obviously offer more features than free programs.

Editing Software

If you are using Microsoft Word or Google Docs or any other writing program, you might be familiar with the in-built feature for grammar and spelling checking. That in-built feature can be helpful to some extent but when you want to use a different word for the same meaning which might be appropriate in the given scenario, then you need to use some third-party app or add-on or an extension.

I personally use Grammarly paid version, although the free version is also good enough. You should try the free version first and then if you think that it is helpful to you and, obviously, the paid version has a lot more features and capability that can really enhance your written piece and take it to a whole new level. Hemingway is also a good one to use.

The editing process should be done in-depth before you can publish or submit your work because it is the core of your work. The paid plan is good and worth for your freelance writing business as it makes your work considerably fast and a bit easy too.

Image Editor

Being a freelance writer is just a writing job. But if you want to become a successful freelance writer, you should have the basic understanding and sense of images, colors, and videos.

Sometimes your clients may have some images to be placed in the content or you can also offer that part free along with your writing service. Knowledge of adding content to blog images is necessary as a freelance writer.

It shows that you are a quality blog writer who not only can write good but also knows how to edit images. This is important because most of all the blogs you will be writing will contain some images and you as a writer should know a bit about editing it correctly.

You can use free programs like Photoshop, Gimp, Canva, or PicMonkey. I use Photoshop and sometimes Canva for my images.

One of the great things about learning Image Designing and Editing is that you can also offer this service as a stand-alone. I do that. I have a specific package that offers image designing and editing. For some very good topics, I provide exceptions and do not charge for the Images or Videos. But that’s my way to do work, you can follow this.

Conclusion

The skills and the tools mentioned above are recommended by all most every successful freelance writer all over the globe. I hope this post will help you a lot as a beginner in a freelance writing environment.

Which tools and skills you think I missed and is necessary or that you would like to use? Mention in the comments. Also, feel free to give your valuable feedback.

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