Do you feel anxious when work is slow and bills are flying in fast?
Every freelancer knows the feeling. In the freelance world, nothing is certain.
A client may suddenly drop you, leaving a gaping hole in your income.
I’m not a numbers person. So the first time I had to complete my tax return as a freelancer, I was stumped.
It was a lot more complicated than when I was a salaried employee.
“A good writer will always find it very hard to fill a single page. A bad writer will always find it easy.”- Aubrey Kalitera
You’ve pitched story after story to newspapers and magazines. You’ve sold your soul to try and land clients.
You’ve pushed out countless query letters and letters of introduction… and nothing. No feature article in Forbes magazine. No Op-Ed piece in The New York Times. And little or no clients beating down your door.
Hindsight is 20/20 they say. Experience comes with time.
We make mistakes, we learn, and hopefully, we do better next time.
Stepping out to run a freelance business is going to take some trial and error. Just about all freelancers can list the mistakes they made when first starting out.
This is the second of a two-part series where I chat to two freelancers who have had great success on Upwork – the largest online freelance marketplace.
In 2015 Elance and oDesk merged and relaunched as Upwork. Most freelancers who’ve been in this game for a while know of these platforms and/or have looked for freelance work on them.
But, can you really make a living by taking gigs on this platform? For many seasoned freelancers, Upwork doesn’t always yield high-paying work.
But there are people that are using Upwork successfully.
In the past, traditional copywriting involved mostly sales, marketing and advertising messages from cute jingles, cleverly-worded ads, direct mail, catchy headlines for posters, billboards, flyers to radio and TV scriptwriting, and continuity writing. While all of that still applies today, with the advent of the internet the scope of copywriting has evolved to include all the new platforms that words are required for.
You have probably heard the saying, “People do business with people they like.”
Have you ever noticed how you keep going back to a particular service provider or business that may not necessarily be the best in their field, yet you return time after time?
