Freelance Writing Success - Collateral Skills Bring Business
The aspiring freelance writer can lay the path to greater success simply by learning collateral skills. When you offer your clients additional services and capabilities, you make their lives easier. This makes for happy clients, and happy clients will stay with you for a long time and refer you to others.
In this context, "collateral skills" refers to any skill that complements your writing services. For example, I'm familiar with HTML / web coding. This is a good collateral skill for a web writer to have, because it means I can create content for my clients in addition to putting that content online for them. So instead of dealing with a writer and a programmer, they only deal with me. And, of course, I can bill for additional services!
What extras can you offer? Well, that will depend on your natural inclinations and talents. Here's a short list of creative services that could pair well with your writing skills.
- HTML / Web Writing - I mentioned this already in my personal example above. This is an excellent collateral talent for a freelance writer to have these days. After all, nearly every business has a website. Your clients get more value from you, and you get more revenue from them!
- Page Layout - If you are handy with page design programs such as Adobe's InDesign or Quark, you can once more provide greater value and earn greater revenues. Why stop at writing the company's newsletter if you can design it as well?
- Blogging - A lot of businesses want to blog these days, but many of them don't know how to get started. If you learn the technical aspects of managing a blog, you can offer an additional service to your existing clients. You could even bill yourself as a professional blog writer.
- Industry Expertise - Okay, so this is more of a quality than a skill. But it's relevant to our discussion here. If you can establish a level of expertise within a certain industry or niche, you can add value to your writing by having the knowledge to back it up. I do this for my real estate clients. I know a lot about the topic, so I can charge more than a freelancer with no real estate expertise. I can also bill myself as a professional real estate writer to get more business.
What can you add to your freelance writing services? What collateral skills can you offer to your clients? How can you bill yourself as a "one-stop shop" for multiple creative talents? Answer these questions early on, and you'll be more successful in the long run.
About the Author: Brandon Cornett is a freelance writing specialist and Internet marketing consultant in Austin, Texas. If you would like to learn more about the Internet side of running your business, check out the author's informative website at http://www.austinseoguy.com
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Print Article | Download PDF | 22 views | May 28 2008
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