How to Become a Freelance Writer with No Experience in 9 Easy Steps 2024

Yes, freelance writers earn thousands of dollars in a month from the comfort of their homes – have you heard it before? Yes? Then yes, you’ve heard it right! But the problem is you can’t just wake up one fine morning and happen to work as a freelance writer earning so much. Like every other one, you have to start from the zero – from having no experience. But how? Here’s when I come in. I’m a freelance content writer with years of experience. I’ll be sharing a step-by-step guide on how to become a freelance writer from my personal experience. 

What is Freelance Writing?

For those of you who have little to no knowledge about freelance writing, it’s for them. If you know what it is, you can jump to the next topic.

Freelance writing is something where you need to write compelling articles for your clients, just without any specific office. Don’t wanna get up from your bed? – no problem! You’ll get freedom in choosing your own projects. That means you’ll write stuff you only want and get paid accordingly.

Also, you get to work whenever you want – just make sure to submit before the deadline. So you see freelance work in writing is not a very complex thing to understand. It’s simply like a writing job with more control and freedom in your hand.

Is It Worth It to Become a Freelance Writer?

Do you enjoy writing? If yes, then sure it’s worth your time. But if you don’t like it and only here to earn some bucks, I won’t recommend this to you. 

As someone who doesn’t enjoy writing, I can’t tell you’ll go a long way as a freelance writer.

But like me, if you like expressing yourself with words, become a writer and get into it right away. Only you can go on for a long time and eventually have a very successful career as a freelance writer.

So unless you are a Yes-Sir person in a traditional office, freelance writing is totally worth it. Learn how to become a freelance writer without experience shortly.

How Long Does It Take to Become a Freelance Writer?

Hmmm…. now that’s a complicated question. Becoming a freelance writer varies for everyone. If you already have writing experience in a traditional office job or have a portfolio, then getting started shouldn’t take long.

But let’s say you are completely a beginner, have nothing but passion for writing, and long Facebook posts which most of them haven’t even read, it may take a while.

Giving a specific time frame is hard but to build your skills and portfolio, you have a good chance of hitting your stride within 2-3 months – that too if you follow all the steps I’ve followed in my early days in this field.

Can You Freelance Write with No Experience? 

Well, technically you can’t. I mean you at least have to know how to write, right? But you necessarily don’t need to have any professional writing experience with a client to get your first gig as a freelance writer. Take it from me – you’ll land with freelance writing work as long as you are following my own footsteps. I’ll be coming to it shortly with my guide to getting started.

How Much Do Beginner Freelance Writers Make?

You do have this question in your mind from the beginning of this article, don’t you? Yeah I know, I can read my readers’ minds too. Jokes apart! You actually should know how much you can make in the future. Unpopular opinion – but I never suggest anyone follow one of their passions that hasn’t the ability to bring food to their table.

As a good writer in a freelance job, depending on your skill and experience, you can write an average of $5000 per month. At the beginning, you can start with $500 a month which is not bad as a new side hustle.

How to Become a Freelance Writer with No Experience in 9 Steps

To make things easy and organized for you, here’s a step-by-step guide on how to start your freelance writing career without experience.

1.    Get Familiar with the Necessary Skills

Before you start with the writing, you need to know what are the required skills. Think – do you have a good written skill in the language you are planning to write? Do you have proper grammatical knowledge of that language? Can you type fast? Do you have the dedication to finish before the deadline? If yes, good! If no, improve your writing and start gaining other skills first. You can start gaining content writing skills later. Improving your writing skills should be your primary focus on this step. 

2.    Create Account in International Marketplaces in Advance

Creating an account in freelance writing marketplaces like Upwork in advance will give you an upper hand. Now you may ask, what for! You don’t even know how to write any content. I get it but trust me and create an account and input all the necessary details right away. There’s a reason behind it – I’ll come back to it later.

3.    Find Out the Helping Tools for Freelance Writing

Google storm and find out all the necessary tools that’ll help you with your content. There are free tools like Ahrefs for keyword research, NeuronWriter for SEO, Grammarly for grammar check, Smallseotools for plagiarism check, etc. As a freelance writer with no experience, try looking for the best free tools available online to help you with the writing. Let me tell you – the freelance industry is very saturated right now, it’s all over the place like never before. But to sustain in an industry that is being hit by AI software, knowing amazing tools that will add great value to it despite your average writing skill is very important. 

4.    Decide on a Writing Niche

There must be some specific topics that you are interested in or have experience with. For example, if you love tech kind of things and have a lot of knowledge about them, your niche can be technical writing. Let’s say you are into fashion, your writing niche can be about that. 

5.    Write Great Sample Work

As you have no experience in writing, now is the time when you start writing as sample work. You can search anything in your niche and get ideas about any topic to write about.

Let’s say you have a cat for a long time and want to write something about it. Search ‘cat foods’ on Google and get thousands of articles about cat foods. Now choose one title and write your own article following these articles’ structure. This way, write an article of 1000 words daily on some specific topics that you are interested in.

You’ll have 30 sample articles by the end of the month. That’s it – now you are no longer a freelance writer with no experience. You have successfully gained some experience and are ready to hit the freelancing world.

6.    Set up a Website or Blog (optional)

This step here is optional – it’s suggested but not mandatory. If you have the budget to build a website of your own – great! You can start with writing your own blog on your favorite topics and publish them on your website.

Writing blogs will work like a solid proof of your work in those niches. It’s okay if you don’t. I didn’t have my very own website at the beginning, yet I turned out pretty successful as a freelance content writer.

7.    Create an Outstanding Portfolio

If you have your own website, you can skip this step, but in case you don’t, writing portfolio is mandatory for you. If you want to become a freelance professional writer and make good money, Having a great portfolio is something that’ll give you a strong ground as a freelance writer.

There are a lot of free websites where you can sign in and make your portfolio adding all your written stuff, your identity, expertise, etc.

8.    Find Freelance Writing Jobs

Now it’s time to find some work! Till now you’ve been only writing for yourself to have samples. You weren’t getting paid to do it. But now you have to find freelance writing jobs even if you have no professional experience to start earning. There are two ways to do so:

·               Find Jobs in the Local Marketplace

Looking for freelance writing work and want to make money? Wherever you are from, there is a local marketplace on social media platforms like Facebook.

If you search ‘Freelance writing groups’, most probably you’ll see a hundred groups popping up in front of you. Get into freelance writing industry by joining those groups and get your first client there with your writing services in your freelance career.

Many people give job posts there regularly searching for freelance writers. You can start applying to them. The drawback of these local marketplaces is that many of the clients may want to scam you. So you gotta be careful while applying for jobs in this freelance business industry. Stay away from potential clients that don’t lead to paid work, or to put it simply, don’t ever agree to freelance writing without any payment. 

·               Find Jobs in the International Freelance Marketplace

I prefer this way more because the chance of getting scammed gets drastically low here. Also, the payment rate is way better here than in local marketplaces. Every day there are a lot of job posts for different type of writing on the freelance writing job boards.

Also, you can create freelance writing gigs or projects on your account. Remember I told you to open an account in international marketplaces in step 2?

Finally, it’s time to use them. You must be wondering why I told you to do it so early. It’s because there are some marketplaces where you may need to send proposals to the clients.

For example, in Upwork, you need to spend ‘connects’ to send a job proposal which you need to buy. Upwork gives away 40 free connects after the sign-up and also gives 10 free connects each month.

Let me tell you my story – I opened my Upwork account 6 months before I originally started as a freelance writer there. That way, when I started sending job proposals to clients, I had 100 free connects in my account. That helped me a lot to land a few successful jobs which is very rare for any newcomer in Upwork. 

9.    Find an Agency, Then Start an Agency

As a freelance writer, to get constant work, besides writing for individual persons, try to find writing agencies. This way you can get constant and regular paid work with a guaranteed monthly income. 

With your increased skills in writing and sales pitching, when you have quite a good amount of clients, start your own agency. Hire freelance writers to write for you while you give your full focus on getting more clients in freelance writing.

Well, you can skip having your own agency and that’s okay. But remember you can’t leverage your skills and money unless you start your own agency. At the end of the day, you are just another human being with flesh and blood – there’s always a limitation of how much you can write in a day. But with having an agency with other freelance writers in it, limitations! – what? 

How Much Do Freelance Writers Charge per 1,000 Words?

How much you can charge as a freelance writer for 1000 words depends on the demography. If you are applying to an Asian and African local marketplace, you need to charge less for getting hired. Usually, for a new freelance writer without experience, the charge is around $3-5 for 1000 words in these regions.

If you are applying to Europe and America as an aspiring freelance writer with no experience, your average asking price should be $5-10 per 1000 words. These prices should not sound much to you but remember you are getting this without any professional experience. 

With increased skill, the charge also gets higher and higher. After 4-5 years of experience as a freelance content writer, you may charge $25-30 per hour. That way you’ll earn $200 daily as a successful freelance writer, sounds good now? 

How to Become a Freelance Writer – Frequently Asked Question

Q1: Is it hard to make money as a freelance writer?

A: No, not really. Once you crack the game, you can easily get more and more jobs and eventually make a lot of money too.

Q2: How to approach clients as a freelance writer?

A: Have an outstanding portfolio built up with great writing samples. While approaching potential clients, be professional, understanding, and clear about your service. Value their time and don’t keep on annoyingly pleading for the job.

Q3: How can I be the best freelance writer?

A: Gain more experience in online writing. Get feedback on your work or writing advice from the clients, so that you get in the habit of improving yourself constantly with new writing.

There are freelance writing course as well that I’ll talk about in any other blog. Remember, successful freelance writing comes with years of consistency. You can keep on blog writing on your website to have an authority in content writing as one of the best freelance writer.

Final Words

With the comfortable work of a freelance writer, you’ll not only get to earn quite a lot of money, but you’ll get immense freedom too. Writing isn’t an easy job – don’t be in an illusion. But there’s a lot of plus points that you’ll never have in a 9-5 job.

Feels bored? – you can just take a week off anytime you like and enjoy a vacation. No boss will threaten you to fire, no HR will harass you to approve the leave application. You’ll be your own boss. And if you decide to leverage your freelance writing business model with a writing agency, you can earn like $20k-$25k in a month – no sweat!

So let me tell you – the future is pretty bright. If you still don’t know how to start freelance writing, no worries. I’ve written a complete guide on how to become a freelance writer with no experience in detail. Make sure to follow all the steps and you’ll be all set to get started as a freelance writer – where should I sign? But also remember it’s the consistency and perseverance that pays off.