How to start a freelance blogging business

Starting a freelance blogging business is a dream for many people. But how do you actually make that happen?

Where do you start? How do you make more money through blogging?

We spoke to one freelance blogger who has successfully built their freelance blogging business to the point where it’s now they’re main source of income.

This is a massive post with lots of questions put to our mystery freelance blogger, so use the table of contents below to skip to the questions that stand out for you.

Ready to learn what it takes to start a successful a freelance blogging business?

Let’s dive right in and see how this freelance blogger makes their money.

How much support you initially received when starting freelancing and growing your business?

That is a really great question and it’s something I’ve seen a lot of people struggling with. Really the only support I felt like I had was kind of the moral support of my husband he’s always been a big supporter of me and all the crazy random stuff that I decided that I want to do, so I felt very lucky to have them by my side.

As a lot of you might know I started freelancing when I got fired from my full-time job. It was like a really difficult time mentally and I’m really not the kind of person who has ever relied on parents or mentors or anything like that for the kind of support that I’ve wanted.

I’m very self motivated but at the same time it’s still hard because no matter how self-motivated you are it is helpful to have people around you who are supporting you and who really believe that you can do what you you are capable of.

I think for me personally not having support especially financially really just kind of gave me the kick in the ass I needed because it wasn’t like “Oh like, I can just sit around on my laptop and get on Facebook all day today because my mom or my dad is gonna like pay my bills for me.”

If I can’t pay my bills I was not in that kind of situation at all I had to make money so I kind of tried to think about that negative as more of a positive.

Whereas if I had had someone financially supporting me and willing to pay my rent that I may not have been as driven to grow my freelance business. So I try to see that as a positive now.

Any tips for people who don’t get that support and are in this entirely on their own?

For people who don’t receive support from friends and family, I would just say one big tip is to remember that it is your life it is not theirs.

If you want to start freelancing if you want to start a blog if you want to start youtube if you want to start being a painter, it doesn’t matter.

If you want to pursue something creative and you are willing to put in the work and treat it like a business then bust your ass and do it and just focus on proving them wrong right focus on what you are doing and don’t focus on the negativity.

I would even say, if you have people in your life who are always negative when you bring up the things you’re passionate about, just don’t bring the things you’re passionate about up as much around those people, because they’re just gonna be dragging you down.

And you do not need that mentally especially when you’re first starting out.

I know for me when I first started out I kept a lot of what I was doing to myself I wasn’t super vocal about it with like friends and family members .

Just because I didn’t want to hear what people had to say I already knew a lot of it was gonna be discouraging and I knew a lot of people were gonna be like well maybe you should go try to find a real job.

Just keep your head down and focus on what you can do and what you are doing and putting the hard work to grow your business.

Don’t worry about what those people say because at the end of the day it is your life and your career and not theirs.

What the average length of your blogs are? Is it all long-form and how many of these do you usually do per week?

When blogging was a big priority in my business as far as writing blog posts regularly I tried to write a blog posts it was between 2,000 and 3,000 words at least once per week.

That gave me plenty of time to promote the post on Pinterest, Twitter and wherever.

It also gave me time to create a lead magnet for each of my blog posts and do all the technical work that you have to do to set up lead magnets.

When you are first starting your blog especially so that is definitely a good starting point.

Just remember quality over quantity: you really want to create those long-form in depth pieces that are like the badass resource for whatever you are teaching your audience.

That way they don’t feel like when they read your blog post they have to go to another blog to kind of fill in the gaps of information that you may have left out.

For me that is something that I always remind myself when I’m writing blog posts, that I really want the person who is reading about this topic I’ve created a blog post on to find everything they need right there.

This typically just naturally results in a long blog post, so it’s good for my audience and good for me.

Would you recommend working for a company before becoming an entrepreneur, just to get that experience? Or does it depend what worked for you?

This really just depends on you and your mindset and what you feel like you need to get to the point where you can be an entrepreneur.

So many entrepreneurs don’t go to college, don’t get a full-time job. They just start out doing whatever they want to do and it just grows because they already have the mindset, the strategy, the work ethic and all that.

There can be benefits to both ways the job that I worked at before I became self-employed the job that I got fired from really really did not help me at all as far as learning about marketing or writing or thing like that, even though it was a marketing agency.

I always try to see the silver lining in these kinds of situations and the one thing it did help me realize is how not to run a business what not to do how not to treat your employees and how not to treat your clients.

Was that worth me working there for about a year and a half in getting fired?

Absolutely not.

That’s something I probably would have rather figured out on my own and spent that time maybe that year-and-a-half building up my own business.

But for some people working at a full-time job can be beneficial.

Again it’s really hard to give a straightforward advice on stuff like that because it really just depends on you.

If you feel like you’re ready to start your business you have a product or service and you know who the target audience is for it and you are confident in your abilities, then go ahead and get started. It can’t hurt.

For me I know I wish I would have just taken the leap and became self-employed way sooner.

The bottom line there: no, I don’t think you absolutely need to work in a full-time job but in some ways it can benefit yo.

It’s just going to end up being a personal decision.

How did you start feeling confident about your work?

I’ve only recently realised how intentional I want to be about pursuing a positive mindset that’s gonna allow me to grow my freelance business and my career to the point that I want.

When I started out though I think a lot of it was just natural for me I’ve always been someone who has like a very go-getter personality and I’ve always been the kind of person who just believes that if I really really want something then I better work my ass off and go make it happen.

I just had that belief in myself.

Now that’s something I’ve had to work on over time as my goals have gotten bigger and bigger and bigger as my feelance business has grown but again that is why I have recently gotten into learning even more about mindset and I’ve been reading books on it and all this kind of stuff.

It’s definitely a good thing to invest in learning more about I recommend reading "How to be a Bawse" by Lilly Singh.

As far as being confident in my work, I had just spent so much time researching like when I was in my full-time job.

All I did was read blogs about how to write amazing copy, how to write amazing blog post.

I studied what the best bloggers and copywriters were doing and honestly I still wasn’t even that confident at first.

It’s not like I was like “oh, this is the most confident point I’ve ever been at in my entire life”. I just knew I had to work through that and it was part of the process.

I also knew that I was not gonna be perfect at first. No matter what, nothing I created at first was gonna be as good as I wanted it to be.

I think you just have to start out working with what you know and what you have and just grow as your skills grow as your skills grow.

You’ll be able to get better higher paying clients who want more from you, so don’t think that you have to start out being the world’s number one copywriter or blogger.

You can start where you are now and just work your way up from there and you will build confidence over time as you start getting positive feedback from clients.

If you’re a blogger, if you start building your audience what all those things happen your confidence will develop naturally.

Would you recommend having a blog on your website if part of your niche is marketing?

As far as your freelancer website foes, it is absolutely not necessary for you to have a blog on that site.

Yes, it is good for SEO. But it really just depends on your overall marketing strategy.

If you don’t want to keep up a blog and write posts every week and things like that you don’t have to.

What I might recommend doing instead is just creating a portfolio where you have a lot of really good pieces about marketing.

For example, you could write a guest blog post on a really big marketing blog like HubSpot or KISSmetrics or something like that and then that would show off your expertise to clients in the same way that blog posts about marketing would.

On top of that, having a byline on a site that a lot of people in the marketing industry know about and really respect is gonna be really good for helping you build trust with clients and build your credibility.

It’s totally not necessary to have a blog can be good but not something you have to do to win clients.

How do you overcome the negative days when you feel like you are crashing

For me, this had a lot to do with goal-setting and then just being relentless about pursuing those goals.

I just knew for me I had to block out any and all negativity after I set my goal as a freelance writer of making £5,000 by month number four.

That was all I was thinking about. I did not care what anybody said. I did not care what anybody thought about it,

All I knew was that no matter what I was going to make things happen, I was gonna get out there and work my ass off, until I had that £5,000 a month exactly what I wanted to have it.

I think a lot of it just has to do with staying really focused on your goal.

When you create a SMART goal the way I recommend doing it is adding a so I can statement to the end of it which I talked about in that video too so you would have a SMART goal.

Something like I want to make £3,000 per month freelance writing by month 4 so I can stay at home with my new son or so I can focus on my freelance blogging business the country full-time.

I think staying focused on that so I can statement and the reason behind your goal and why you want to do what you want to do just makes the negative stuff that happens to you so much less stressful because it’s just like when you’re that focused on your goal.

When you’re that relentless about pursuing it, the kind of day-to-day freelance challenges really don’t affect you as much now there are still gonna be tough days no matter what and when that happens.

I just recommend taking some time out for self-care whatever that means for you but still make sure you’re keeping yourself on deadlines still make sure you’re working really hard still.

Make sure you are doing everything you can to achieve your goal as far as being new and not having positive experiences to reinforce my value.

I just kind of told myself that part of the process is feeling weird and feeling uncomfortable and not knowing what you’re doing at first. It’s just part of hurting anything new starting a business starting a new hobby or whatever.

I guess I just kind of gave myself permission to start where I was and I told myself this is where I am now.

I’m gonna learn and grow and improve over time and eventually work my way up to where I know and I am confident in the value that I can offer clients.

Just remember that it’s a process even the best copywriters today do not always feel confident in their work.

We all struggle with a little bit of imposter syndrome and self-doubt and all these kinds of negative feelings sometimes.

You just have to kind of accept it as part of the process and keep pushing through it and remember that it does happen to everybody.

How do you find high-paying clients?

Many want links to things that have been published but if you’re just starting you can’t really provide that.

I have a blog post that covers how to create a freelance writing portfolio.

I also have a free course in video training on how to land freelance clients so for that practical kind of step-by-step strategy you can check out those resources there.

How can I make sure I profit from my blog?

If you’re gonna start a website for her freelance and you are also going to have a blog page on her site so right now I am in the process of creating an entire series on how to make money blogging.

It talks about basically how when you want to make money blogging, you create a product or a service for the audience who is going to read your blog and you create sales funnels and you use email marketing to build relationships with those people over time.

Honestly it’s something that I could do an entire like 3-hour video on and I should probably save that for another video but do check out that other video that I have on how to make money blogging because I think that will really really be helpful for the business you’re trying to create,

I’m wondering where there is a profitable niche for in a writing career?

There are so many possibilities here.

You could help online course creators create their content using their education experience you could probably write curriculum you could look into the writing jobs.

One time I literally use the fact that my mom as a teacher and my bit of knowledge that I gained from that tool and an blog post writing job so there are a lot of possibilities now

One thing I recommend doing here is looking up other freelance writers online so just do a google search look up the ones who specialize in writing about something happen to do with education.

Then you can kind of see what kinds of clients they’re getting if you creep on their portfolios a little bit.

Obviously you don’t want to steal those exact same clients, but it’ll just give you a good idea of the kind of work you do and potentially the kinds of clients you could target.

Have you found more success money writing for businesses with blogs, or for full time bloggers?

I will tell you from my experience, it has definitely been businesses.

Full time bloggers don’t have a huge marketing budget whereas a bigger business.

For example, it does have a big marketing budget and they may even have a full copywriting team and a book of freelancers that they use to write their blog posts and articles.

You really have to think about exactly who you want to target when you pick your niche and when you market yourself because you want to go after clients so one value the kind of work you do and to have the budget to pay you well for your work.

Both businesses and bloggers in this case would value the kind of work you do depending on the kind of business you target.

But bloggers may not have the bigger budget that a lot of bigger businesses have so just keep that in mind and when you see a blogger or a business you want to write for.

Regardless of which one you choose really think about their marketing budget and how much do they have to spend on hiring a freelance writer.