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In a crowded industry, making yourself stand out as a freelance writer is crucial. Here are some easy tips for building a reputation, boosting traffic, and growing your business.

Increase your online presence

If you want to get on potential clients' radars, building up a solid online portfolio is crucial. Here’s what it can do for you:

Instant credibility spike: You stand out from freelancers who have no portfolio.

Personal touch: You show your skills in action. Copy and visuals say more than just a description of your skills.

Traffic boost: Organic search and recommendations bring you visitors, who get an instant feel of your writing range & abilities.

If you are just starting out, don’t worry if you don’t have many articles to show off. Everyone has to start somewhere, so write 3-5 pieces and publish them on free platforms like LinkedIn Pulse or Medium.

Make sure to take care of visuals, fonts, and readability. All of these are the critical elements of miscellaneous copy. If you want to seriously improve your writing and optimize the working process in general, these tools may help you out.

Crello: Provides a wide range of ready-made templates — from IG posts to blog, animation, video, and ebook templates — for free. This is an opportunity to create engaging visuals for your texts, incentivizing more people to hire you.

Typetura: Embed code into your website to stand out from the rest of writers who use standard formatting.

Hemingway App: Corrects common errors and increases overall readability.

Keep improving

There isn’t a single person in the world who did nothing to succeed in their craft. It’s all about practice.

So, start by publishing one article per month. Then keep multiplying this number by two, month by month until you are writing up to 8 articles per month. The important thing is to polish your writing, not perfect it.

Track your growth

If you usea publishing platform like Medium, you can easily analyze the performance of your posts there. Medium provides you with comprehensive metric details which allow you to take your writing seriously.

Another efficient way to analyze your articles without building a website is to use UTM tags throughout the post. If a user has clicked one of your tracking links, you’ll know about it. This provides you with in-depth insights into what resonates with your readers and sparks their curiosity.

Come up with KPIs

For some people, success comes with an ability to write texts that sell. For others, it means being able to create coherent texts readers can get inspired about. Success may be different, depending on the terms used to define it.

Be specific when you define your KPIs. Before you dive deep in the process, take a look at the criteria below.

Money: If being successful means earning $10,000 a year — go for it. But if you want to make $100,000 — try! Reach for what you truly want.

Name recognition: If your writing career is something you’d like to be recognized for, then research the market and come up with the ways to earn your place in writing history.

Community support: Some people measure recognition by the number of likes and shares. Others do it by the number of souls their copy touches. Whatever path is yours, remember: many shades of success are out there. Find your version

Connect with the community

If you want to make your writing even better, then follow other talented writers. Here are some inspiring websites.

ReallyGoodEmails (some of the world’s most creative emails)

HeyNishi (a daily portion of website inspiration)

ILoveTypography (typography education and inspiration)

Enjoy your freelance writing journey!

Mary Atamaniuk is an experienced copywriter, content manager, and marketing professional who is passionate about storytelling.