Freelance writing in itself is a business. If you've seen companies that manufacture goods then you'll know that they have stuff like ads, websites, etc. set up for their company. Why? To promote them! Unless and until you promote your business in one way or another it will NEVER be a success. So that brings us down to today's question: Why do freelance writers need a website?
The same reason all those other companies have a website. To promote themselves. When a freelance writer creates a website they put on things like testimonials, their portfolio, a "Contact Us" page and much much more! So the reasons you would need a website for your freelance writing career would be:
Promotion. To promote yourself through various different methods. There are infact various methods to promote your business. The first and most important one is to have a website. This one is cumpolsary and there is absolutely no way that you can EVER become a freelance writer without one. If you decide to quit on the idea of freelance writing simply because you can't afford a website (which usually isn't the case) then you can get a freelance writing website hosted for free from some online services. You might be saying "PFFT! That looks unprofessional!!!". Well, you are right on that point but think of it as more of a temporary solution. When you earn enough money, you can register for a .com website from places such as http://www.netfirms.com/ and when you're registering, instead of creating a new domain you can transfer your free-hosted domain to a netfirms hosted .com website.
Anyways, among other methods of promotion, you could put up ads for your website. Of course, you'll need to sum of money to keep your ads up and running. You can register ads for your website at http://www.bidvertiser.com/. There, you can sign up, transfer money to your BidVertiser account and use that money to register ads. You can also customize the ads yourself by choosing text color, background colour, choosing the text in the ad, linking it to your website, etc. Now we can go onto the next point of having a website which would be...
Impressions. Yeah, creating positive impressions on potential clients about yourself is one of the many reasons why a freelance writer needs a website. If you can make a strong impression on someone then they're more likely to hire you for your freelancing services. That's why on every freelance writer's site, you'll notice that in their portfolio page they'll show you a bunch of successful works they've produced along with testimonials from customers who are extremely happy with their services. When someone reads things like that about a person, it give them the impression that this writer would be capable of a lot of high quality work. This eventually leads to someone hiring a freelance writer (in this case, you).
Contacting Clients. Aside from showing off your achievements to the world you're going to need to be able to contact your clients for details about their job offers for you. They'll find it more convenient to use a "Contact Us" page on your website which should have an e-mail form from which they can send you messages. Not everyone in the world will prefer to send you a letter and it's more convenient with e-mails because there's no chance they can get lost in the mail.
Updates. With a website you can keep potential clients updated with your latest works, projects, etc. If you do something like eBook writing and you have a good amount of fans then the chances are that if you put an update on your website telling everything that you're working on something big, they'll start up a little commotion about it and more commotion means more visitors, more visitors means more readers, clients and/or fans. More fans means...well, more commotion next time and more clients mean...well, I think you can guess that bit pretty accurately.
So as you can see, having a freelance website to promote your work is quite a good idea. Aside from the fact that it's compulsory, it's still a good idea. I mean, you can also make yourself famous on forums and stuff but if you can't even spend a few bucks to support your website each month then you'll be doing bad things to your image. As a freelance writer, it's necessary that you should keep up a good image with the people. You shouldn't try to make it seem to them that you're just some greedy guy with a knack for writing who won't let go of a few dollars for business purposes.
So with all that being said, I'd like to (finally) conclude this little article. As always, I hope the information proves valuable to you.
The same reason all those other companies have a website. To promote themselves. When a freelance writer creates a website they put on things like testimonials, their portfolio, a "Contact Us" page and much much more! So the reasons you would need a website for your freelance writing career would be:
Promotion. To promote yourself through various different methods. There are infact various methods to promote your business. The first and most important one is to have a website. This one is cumpolsary and there is absolutely no way that you can EVER become a freelance writer without one. If you decide to quit on the idea of freelance writing simply because you can't afford a website (which usually isn't the case) then you can get a freelance writing website hosted for free from some online services. You might be saying "PFFT! That looks unprofessional!!!". Well, you are right on that point but think of it as more of a temporary solution. When you earn enough money, you can register for a .com website from places such as http://www.netfirms.com/ and when you're registering, instead of creating a new domain you can transfer your free-hosted domain to a netfirms hosted .com website.
Anyways, among other methods of promotion, you could put up ads for your website. Of course, you'll need to sum of money to keep your ads up and running. You can register ads for your website at http://www.bidvertiser.com/. There, you can sign up, transfer money to your BidVertiser account and use that money to register ads. You can also customize the ads yourself by choosing text color, background colour, choosing the text in the ad, linking it to your website, etc. Now we can go onto the next point of having a website which would be...
Impressions. Yeah, creating positive impressions on potential clients about yourself is one of the many reasons why a freelance writer needs a website. If you can make a strong impression on someone then they're more likely to hire you for your freelancing services. That's why on every freelance writer's site, you'll notice that in their portfolio page they'll show you a bunch of successful works they've produced along with testimonials from customers who are extremely happy with their services. When someone reads things like that about a person, it give them the impression that this writer would be capable of a lot of high quality work. This eventually leads to someone hiring a freelance writer (in this case, you).
Contacting Clients. Aside from showing off your achievements to the world you're going to need to be able to contact your clients for details about their job offers for you. They'll find it more convenient to use a "Contact Us" page on your website which should have an e-mail form from which they can send you messages. Not everyone in the world will prefer to send you a letter and it's more convenient with e-mails because there's no chance they can get lost in the mail.
Updates. With a website you can keep potential clients updated with your latest works, projects, etc. If you do something like eBook writing and you have a good amount of fans then the chances are that if you put an update on your website telling everything that you're working on something big, they'll start up a little commotion about it and more commotion means more visitors, more visitors means more readers, clients and/or fans. More fans means...well, more commotion next time and more clients mean...well, I think you can guess that bit pretty accurately.
So as you can see, having a freelance website to promote your work is quite a good idea. Aside from the fact that it's compulsory, it's still a good idea. I mean, you can also make yourself famous on forums and stuff but if you can't even spend a few bucks to support your website each month then you'll be doing bad things to your image. As a freelance writer, it's necessary that you should keep up a good image with the people. You shouldn't try to make it seem to them that you're just some greedy guy with a knack for writing who won't let go of a few dollars for business purposes.
So with all that being said, I'd like to (finally) conclude this little article. As always, I hope the information proves valuable to you.
No comments:
Post a Comment