There are a few different ways that you can expand your freelance writing business. Most people usually think that taking on more clients is the best way to expand, but offering different services and expanding beyond just writing is a great way to make more money and not have to take on a lot more writing work.

Here’s the thing, even if you are just a writer and think you don’t have any other services you can offer to clients, you are most likely wrong. If you know how to set up a website or install WordPress on a site you have skills that most small business owners don’t. If you know how to tweet or you have a Facebook account those are other skills that you can utilize as well.

Here is a step-by-step process of expanding your freelance writing business by offering to build websites for small businesses.

Finding Potential Clients

If you have a problem with cold calling or emailing people, then you will have to get over that in order for this work for you. In the beginning you may find that you are sending out several emails or making several phone calls but once you have built up a portfolio of your sites you will find that it is easier to land clients. Also, you will find that word of mouth referrals will grow your business as well.

The first thing you should do is to narrow down a specific niche you want to pursue. There are several of them to choose from and you may want to go with one that you are familiar with. Some of the niches you may want to pursue include landscaping companies, dentists, electricians, handymen, artists or homemade crafts, real estate agents, and travel agents.

There are two main places to find small businesses that need a website. One is Craigslist and the other is the good old Yellow Pages book.  When you have your niche simply look through the ads in the “Services” section of Craigslist for your city. Check out the ads to see which ones don’t have websites in the ad and have emails addresses listed instead. For the Yellow Book you can go through the ads and call the different companies and ask them if they have a website or you can check online to see if they have a website before calling the company.

Be sure to keep a record of the companies you have called or emailed along with contact names so that you have the information handy and you don’t end up contacting the company twice.

Selling Your Services

Since you are writer it shouldn’t be that hard selling your services to them. Come up with several reasons why the company or owner needs a website. Make sure to mention things like how many people search online as well as how much business they may be missing out on by not having a website.

If you are sending an email you can use a form letter but be sure you personalize it as much as you can. Use the owner’s name if you can find it as well as the name of their business and how you found them. You should have a phone number they can reach you at as well as your email as some people feel may feel more comfortable talking on the phone to know you are a real person.

If you are going to go with cold calling then it is a good idea to have a script written out that you can refer to help you through the phone call.

It is up to you how much you want to charge for your services. Try to determine how long it will take you to set up the site as well as write the content for the site and then divide that by how much money you want to make an hour. You can also charge by the hour if you want but a lot of the time a flat rate fee works better in landing clients.

When you do set up the site, a simple WordPress site should be enough unless they want something outrageous and then you should definitely charge them a lot more and then outsource the job to a website designer you can trust. For a basic site you should include the home page, about page, contact page, and you can add anywhere from 5-10 articles about the business or articles related to what the business does.

Image by Adam Holloway via Flickr

Added Bonuses

There are some potential extra added bonuses that you get when you follow this method. One of them is actually a great way to make some extra passive income along with your writing.

If the client doesn’t have a website they are going to need to purchase a domain name as well as website hosting. There are two ways that you can approach this. The hand-offs way is to sign up for a website hosting affiliate program (I recommend Hostgator.com) and then have your client buy their hosting through your affiliate link. You then get the commission every time one of your clients pays for their hosting. You can also buy a reseller hosting package and have the client pay you to host their website on your hosting plan. This does gets a little more involved and costs you more money upfront for the reseller hosting package.

Another bonus is the fact that you can easily get more work from these small businesses if you offer other services. For example you may offer to write them 5 articles to be posted on article directories to get their site some backlinks. Or you may offer to set up a Twitter or Facebook account for the business as well. You can even offer to maintain their social media accounts for a monthly retainer fee. You can also do this with a blog on their site as well. Offer to write 2 blog posts a week for the csite for a monthly fee.

If you follow this process for expanding your freelance writing business you may just find yourself making more money than you thought you could and actually working less. Get enough clients and you may even be able to make more passive income from affiliate commissions than you did for writing for clients.

Unique Way to Expand Your Freelance Writing Business is a post from: The Social Freelance Writer.

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Not the blog – me, as in I’m moving to a new home.  And I’m packing.  Do you know how much I hate packing?  I’ve got today and tomorrow left and the whole house needs to be packed up.  And then I have to unpack it all!  OMG – I really hate this!

So, I just wanted to let you know that for the next week my entries might be kind of sparse.

But I’ll be back in like a crazy woman once I am settled and have my Internet hooked up.  I’m still participating in the Ultimate Blog Challenge so I’ll have to play a little catch up (I have one blog post pre-dated and I might get a few more in there).

But as much as I have to pack do you think I’m packing right now?  No.  I’m procrastinating!  LOL

So, while I’m getting my act together (because it is sure to happen any time now…) why don’t you check out some posts from the past that you might have missed?

Moving is a post from: The Social Freelance Writer.

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Have you been dying to get some private clients under your belt?  If you have, you should read my post on Getting Private Clients first.  Go ahead, it will open in a new window and I’ll be here waiting when you’re done.

Now that you’ve read that you’re likely thinking, “I just don’t have the time to do that!” But it doesn’t have to take that much time.  You can cut down on time a lot if you use some organization techniques make it go faster.

I could tell you how to do this but I figure you’ll find it a lot more enjoyable if you can see me do it!  So, I’ve created this little tutorial for you.  Hopefully, you’ll find this helpful.

BTW – I can’t take credit for the idea of how to do this.  I first read about it at Freelance Writing Gigs where Carly Schuna blogged about Being a Craigslist Millionaire.  I’m not doing it exactly the way she’s suggested but I’ve used most of her ideas.  Thanks Carly!

Job Searching on Craigslist for Freelance Writers is a post from: The Social Freelance Writer.

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You know, on several of the writing boards that I frequent I see that most of the women who work at home (and some of the men) are freelance writers and most of them write for content sites like Internet Brands or The Content Authority.  And there is absolutely nothing wrong with that.  I do, too.  But for me it is a little bit different because I’m totally new to the content sites.  Before I started working for them I was completely working for private clients so to me that is easy.

But I always see the people who write for content sites asking about how to get private clients.

I’ll tell you how I do it.  And it is a lot easier than you might think so don’t get mad at me.  Here’s the secret….

Apply for jobs!

Yes, that’s it – start applying for jobs and you’ll get jobs if you have any talent at writing at all.  You can’t get the private clients though if you don’t apply and express an interest in it.

Where to find jobs?  OMG – the list could be so huge!  But I’ll share a few of my favorite places with you.

1. Freelance Job Openings - this can be a bit of a grab bag but less so than other places I’ve seen.  I recently grabbed an awesome job here that looks like it is going to be a big portion of my writing income.  And the job pays more than double what I would normally get for ghostwriting.
2. Freelance Writing Gigs – I don’t know how anyone could possibly not be aware of this one because Deb Ng has been around forever and ever I think (she swears she had a beginning and if you want to know more about it you can listen to the Freelance Writing Jobs Story).  But basically, Deb and her staff troll the net for writing job leads every Monday to Friday and put them up for anyone to see.  When I don’t have time to do a lot of searching this is where I go first.
3. About Freelance Writing – this is another job list that is put together by Anne Wayman.  She’s been around even longer than Deb I think!  Her site is the other one I visit when I don’t have time to really do much searching.  There’s a little more variety there I think and she lists “Low paying” jobs at the bottom.  This isn’t such a bad thing.  I’ve actually found some not bad leads in there.
4. Craigslist – don’t knock it.  I know – there are a lot of scammers but this is still a great place to find writing gigs.  There are writing gigs and editing/writing jobs for every city in America and Canada.  Some will have more than others.  I think my first big writing gig came from there and lasted a long time.  You don’t have to stick to your city either because many of the writing gigs are for anyone, anywhere.
5. Writing forums – in general, those in need of writing will go right to the writers at the writers forums and ask for applications.  Don’t pass this off because there are some great opportunities out there.

There are so many more places where you can find private clients but the bottom line is that you do have to spend some time looking for the jobs and you do have to apply to them.  Dedicate half an hour a day to looking for jobs and another 15 applying (use a standard writer’s resume and cover letter and tweak them as needed) and I will almost guarantee that  you’ll find your writing work increasing.

And the best part of writing for private clients?  If you do a good job they almost always come back for more!

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• 5 Tips to Promote Your Freelancing Writing (shoutmeloud.com)
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• Want More Clients? Just Ask! (freelanceswitch.com)

Getting Private Clients is a post from: The Social Freelance Writer.

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