Freelance Writers – Why You Should Have Your Own Blog as Well as a Portfolio

Writing content for the web can be a great way to make a living if you have the talent to write good pieces at a good pace, and enjoy researching a lot of different topics.

For many people, it is a great way to use their skills as a way to make money from home, working on their own terms. Most people starting out as freelance writers either work for a writing company who assign work to them, or look for their own clients. In either case, they need to have good examples of their work readily available.

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Blogging

Most writers build up a portfolio of work fairly quickly that demonstrates their technical ability and how well they write for different niches and in different styles, however what many writers don’t do, is have a personal blog they update all the time. This can be because they don’t feel like managing this on top of their paid work, or because they don’t feel it is as good a way to represent what they can do as their portfolio and therefore not worth doing. However, there are some very good reasons to learn how to start a blog and start posting on a regular schedule if you are aiming to be a successful freelance writer:

Showing Off Your Preferred Style and Voice

When you are writing copy for clients, you usually work in a very professional way, and have to be versatile enough to cover all different kinds of styles. You may almost never get to write in your ‘real’ writing voice, and you may feel that when you tell people your real talents are in writing insightful opinion pieces, fantastic short stories, or hilarious comedy, nobody will believe you because you have no evidence of this in your professional portfolio. On your own blog you can be unique, rather than mainstream, and write things that may help you become recognized for writing skills other than those demanded for your bread and butter content work.

Customers

If you want other people to find you when they are searching for a writer, having a blog as well as a static website is really important. If you can draw traffic just by having great content on whatever topics you choose to write about and make it clear when people reach your site that you are available for hire, then your blog can win you business from unexpected sources – genuine fans of your writing who’d like to see it on their own sites or promoting their own products.

Income

By having your own blog, you may also get opportunities to promote products or review things on your site, once you have gained good readership statistics. This can make your blog a source of income and writing work in its own right!

There are lots of reasons why, as a writer, you should be writing content for your own interesting, unique personal blog!