Freelance Writing: Simple Tips on Complicated TopicsWriters’ Market: Best Practices and Recommendations

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“Writing services! Who wants writing services?” If this is how you imagine a writers’ marketplace, you are mistaken. Nobody screams out loud there. Still, the classical principles of supply and demand apply to a writers’ market just as they do to any market.

Writers’ market: an overview

Even though nobody screams out loud in this market, some writers’ profiles can speak louder than words. Though it can look like espionage, the investigation of your labor market can be truly helpful. Find a website with resumes of freelance writers and look through them. It will help you critically evaluate your own strengths and weaknesses. These are the main aspects you might want to pay special attention to:

• working experience;
• requested payment (per page or per 100 words);
• sample works.

Surely, these profiles are only other writers’ self-presentations. Therefore, the information in some of them can be only half true. Like in any other market, advertizing is the engine of commerce and customers undergo the risks of buying a cat in the bag. Simply bear in mind this simple truth, but do not try to use unfair methods in your practice. Professional ethics is very important for your success.

Writers’ market opportunities

This investigation may have two contradicting, but not mutually exclusive advantages:

1. you improve your self-confidence (as you see that some of your competitors have poorer chances than you to get to work on some of the most interesting projects that you found);
2. you gain a renewed understanding that there are no limits to perfection (as you probably will also see that you lag behind leaders and top earners.)

Therefore, after this visit to the writers’ markets, you will not fill your shopping basket with unnecessary goods, which will collect dust on the shelves. Instead, you will improve your motivation for further self-improvement. To do so, here are only a few questions you might want to ask yourself:

• What if you could write more pages a day? Completed 6 pages today? How can you complete 8 pages tomorrow?
• How could you improve your grammar, style and punctuation?
• What if you could be more creative?
• How could you improve your communication with customers?

As you see, research of a writing market can be a truly valuable experience and a good investment of your time. Knowledge of your main competitors will help you identify your own position in the market. Do not lose this opportunity to improve your competence and chances of success.