Apart from blogging I actually used to do (and am starting again) to do a fair bit of freelance writing. There a lot of things you can do for yourself that enables you to work better, get better work and to organize yourself better. Let me share some tips I’ve accumulated to make your job easier.

Find work

I used to rely solely on one site to get work and that is Elance. Since then I am doing a lot of guest blogging, which I attained through relations with other bloggers, but even if you’re new to blogging you could apply, many blogs are searching for good writers. If you do want to become a guest writer I really suggest not pushing the envelope. If you’re an all round nice guy and offer to write a guest post or two for them (without mentioning employment or money) they will probably take you on anyway if they need the writers and you do a good job. I suggest being polite friendly and sincerely helpful.

Elance is a great site for finding many types of work, not just writing. There are web design projects, administrative projects, legal work and a whole lot more. Application is simple, although you will have to pay for a subscription later on. The basic one for writing is around $9 and I can vouch for this site, they are not ripping you off. In addition to the $9 you will have to pay a fee which is based on your earnings, so that’s “just” a deduction. Anyways, it’s a great site, if you’re thinking of signing up and giving it a try, I would be grateful if you could send me your email address and I could refer you, it would mean $50 for me after each $1000 you earn (or spend on someone else’s services).

Organization will be a key feature for finding good work on elance, since with a solid and well managed portfolio you are much more likely to find work than someone who has a messed up one, or none at all.

Organization and productivity

I have about 4-5 projects running simultaneously and I could manage it without organization, but I have a few good reasons to spend the extra time. I use a database to follow my projects right down to the actual stuff I write. My database goes along with folders which contain all the articles, blog posts, e-books I have ever written. This allows me to quickly find anything for a past client, or to construct the best possible portfolio for prospective clients to view.

The work database contains tables for projects, clients and so on, but I also have a table named “items”, which contains all the detail for each project. A typical entry (say a blog post I wrote for someone) )will contain the ID of the item, the project it belongs to, the date it was written, the date it was published, an attachment that leads to an Office document of the text in question and a hyperlink which leads to the post itself. If you’re just using an Excel sheet that’s fine too, in this case you might want to add the client name and email too, in my database this is in a separate table.

My folder structure contains folders named after projects (not clients). I have many repeating projects (like guest blogging), in this case I advise sub folders with month names. In my database the project entry for my gHacks guest blogging is “gHacks blog posts May” for example and the folder structure is “gHacks” -> “May”. I then create doc files for all the separate posts. Nothing fancy, they just contain the title, the body of the post and the URL. This is helpful for me because I can search through the whole body of my life’s work very easily, but I can also send any one of them to clients, and they can also navigate to the post itself.

I manage these files using Vista because it gives me the advantage of tagging and categorizing doc files. I usually use the following categories: “Project name”, “Type of text”, “Project type”. For gHacks posts this would translate into: “gHacks”, “blog post”, “work”. I distinguish between blog posts for my own sites, which are not work, they are categorized as “blog”. This ads a level of complexity to it, but I want to be able to separate work which other people pay me for, since an error there means a dent in my reputation.

I use tags to describe the contents of individual posts, but I need to explain my method a bit further. I use two levels of depth here. For posts which are similar to the content found on Hack Your Day my level of tagging is much deeper. I would tag with “Remember the Milk” and “Tomboy” for example. I am writing a few posts on auto parts right now, but that is outside my normal writing field, so I just label all of them as “automotive”. My reason for this is that I want to use tags mainly to build custom portfolios. So if I see a job that pays $10.000 for auto articles I just zip those up and send. For productivity and geek oriented posts I do want to sort sometimes to find stuff by tag, so I need the extra level of detail.

Creating an image

A good tip for freelancers is to create an image. Create a color scheme, a specific design that becomes your staple, something that can be found anywhere in your work. It doesn’t matter if you can’t design a logo, or have no Photoshop skills at all, this can be as simple as using the same font regularly, always using green as the title and always underlining the last paragraph so it can be followed by a resource box. The point here is to create something by which you and your work can easily e recognized.

This comes in handy because it both looks good, and once people will get to know you, they will associate you with your style. People might not remember your name, but they might remember the awesome writer they once worked with with the green color scheme.

Here are a few things you can work on that could all be customized to the same look:

• Email design (headers, footers)
• Returned article/assignment formating
• A creative tagline
• Company logo
• Website for yourself
• Profiles on other sites
• Business card (vCard too)

Remember to customize many things which are not assignment or task specific. The reason is that many clients prefer a specific format which will most likely not allow for your customizations.

Manners and work moral

Always, always, always be nice. This is a universal rule, and I don’t just mean this when you start earning $100 a month and you rely on people to give you work. Being nice will pay off hugely in the long run, and you will get a lot of unexpected job offers or job prospects in the future.

I have had countless cases where I did a good job and the same client offered me other stuff too. If my quality is good but I’m a horrible person, this wouldn’t really happen. Also, try not to assume the worst, if a person doesn’t send an email response to you for a week, he may be sick, or have other things on his mind, just be patient.

Productivity as a freelancer

Overall, the moral of the story is that in my opinion there are four factors that go into being a good and successful freelancer. Number one is quality, which rules all. I also mean punctuality and other traits which add to the quality of specific jobs. Number two is manners, and disposition, which can get you more work than you think, and can get you out of pretty bad situations too. Number three is organization and management which will make your life much easier and help you create your portfolio and stay on top of things. Number four is image which is not a requirement for people who want to earn a few bucks on the side, but if you want to boost your income, it’s an easy and smart thing to try. Good luck freelancing!