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Are you new to writing and exploring what type of writing you want to do? This eBook excerpt, How Do I Start a Freelance Career?, from the Beginning Writer’s Answer Book, covers everything from freelance writing to technical writing and writing for niches – such as comic strips, book reviews, and more!

In this post, we’ve picked a couple of frequently asked questions about freelance writing and making money. Enjoy!

For many years, I’ve had a deep-seated desire to write, and I’d love to break in to the field and make enough money to support my family. How much money can I make freelancing?

A lot of money can be made by freelancing, but most writers receive fairly little income while they perfect their writing and marketing abilities. There are hundreds of full-time freelancers who make good livings but who started slow—freelancing on the side while holding down a day job. Your best bet is to begin with magazine articles, since the market is large and varied, and fodder for articles is everywhere.

What are the advantages and disadvantages I might face as a full-time freelance writer?

There are many advantages to being a full-time freelance writer. You are your own boss. You control your working hours and, in a sense, the amount of money you make. You practice as a profession the thing you enjoy most. You may have much more opportunity to be creative than if you worked as a staff writer. You choose what you want to write about, and get paid for learning something new through research. You can work at home, and if you’re a parent, you can save on childcare expenses. In addition, the research involved in writing can bring you into contact with interesting, stimulating people.

On the other hand, most writers face innumerable rejections (and no income) before making their first sale. To avoid losing faith in yourself and your career at this stage, it helps if you are thick-skinned, self-confident, and persistent. Unlike a job in a company, freelance work does not bring regular paychecks in regular amounts. Further, you are responsible for collecting your own payments. You receive no fringe benefits, such as the insurance and retirement benefits that company employees receive. Being self-employed, you must spend part of your working time on administrative tasks like bookkeeping and filing income tax and social security forms.

Writers usually work alone, and this can be a disadvantage (depending on your personality), especially after a number of days without contact with your colleagues. If you’re married, it’s best to have a spouse who approves of your career and all it entails, since your irregular working hours and irregular income will affect him or her.

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Building a fire is a great illustration for authors who want to sell more books. For example, if you want to start a fire, experts agree that the first step is to gather together kindling. Once you light a small pile of this tinder, the result is a flame so intense that it quickly spreads and ignites the larger branches around it. As the larger branches catch fire, they generate enough energy to ignite a large log. And if that resulting fire is left uncontrolled, the flames can get so powerful that they create a wildfire that sweeps through the entire forest.

If you want to sell books like wildfire, utilize the same principle. Start by identifying and igniting an initial group of readers (your kindling) who get so excited that they turn into raving fans. I like to call them “word-of-mouth warriors.” These are people who will forcefully take up the cause to tell others about your book. You don’t have to ask them to promote. They will do it willingly, because the value of your book touches an emotional fuel that lights them into action. They want to tell others how your book improved their life. Or they want the joy of being the first person to tell others about your book, which makes them feel cool (never underestimate a person’s desire to be seen as influential).

A “kindling” reader is a person who feels so excited or grateful for your message that they want to share their experience with others. This excited influence acts like a flame that spreads interest to new and larger groups of people. A domino effect occurs, and the excitement about your book expands outward from your raving fans to other readers they know.

To create a similar dynamic for your book, the question you must ask is, “Who needs my value the most?” You could even turn the question around and ask, “Who stands to lose the most if they never get my value?” Your answers to these questions help identify the people most likely to read your book, burn hot with excitement, and enthusiastically tell others. They define the tinder needed to start your own wildfire.

* Learn how to find your kindling readers and start a blaze of book sales with Rob Eagar’s new resource from Writer’s Digest, Sell Your Book Like Wildfire.

It’s essential these days for authors to have a clear understanding of writing platforms. Learn what an author’s platform is and ways to build a writing platform from today’s tip of the day, taken from the book The Productive Writer by Sage Cohen.

What is an Author Platform?

Platform is the turf you claim and name as your area of expertise in your writing life, and it’s everything you do to make that expertise visible. Just as a thesis is the foundation of a term paper around which its argument is built, a platform is an organizing principle around which a writer’s many expressions of work revolve. A platform says to both the writer and the world, “I am an expert in [fill in the blank with your specialty]! Yours should be a topic or craft or theme or audience that has energy and curiosity for you: one that you know about and want to invest a whole lot more time knowing a whole lot more about.

With such clarity of purpose, over time you will likely publish, teach, lead, and share wisdom in ways that express, explore, and give shape to your expertise. And as this happens, you will start to become recognized as an authority in your chosen realm.

Platform is both the destination and the path. You build it as you go. It keeps you moving forward, tells you where forward is, and is the measure against which you decide if you’re getting there.

Using a Writing Platform & Publishing Your Work

Which came first, the publishing or the platform? This seems to be a topic of some confusion for folks. So let’s break it down.

Platform is about becoming a recognizable expert. The book publishing ideal is to first build a platform, and then leverage that platform to pitch, sell, and write the book. But there are many stages of publishing (articles, essays, poems, stories) along the way that precede becoming an author and contribute to growing a platform. And for many writers, those early stages of publishing can be slow going.

The good news is that there are many ways to grow your visibility as an expert in your field that are available to you right now. So while you’re waiting, for example, for your next short story to find a safe landing in just the right literary journal, there is much you could be doing to develop your platform, including:

• Teach what you know.
• Self-publish: Write and sell instructional e-books or publish print-on-demand collections of your creative writing (only if you are not seeking “mainstream” publication for this work).
• Offer tips, insights, articles, and links via a blog, Twitter, Facebook, or Squidoo.
• Read your work publicly as much as possible.
• Start your own online community to explore your topic.
• Offer coaching, consulting, or editing in your field.
• Create a subscription publication, such as an e-zine or newsletter.
• Join organizations in your field that allow you to gather and share ideas and opportunities with like-minded others.
• Publish magazine or newspaper articles on your topic or expertise.
• Share content with business or organizations that serve people in your area of expertise. (For example, if your platform is dog training, maybe local pet stores would want to feature a Q&A with you on their websites or as part of their monthly newsletters.)

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