3 Tools That Can Help Level Up Your Freelance Writing Career
You can start building your freelance writing empire once you understand how to use these tools
The world of freelance writing is unique, isn’t it?
It lures you in with promises that you can make a full-time living working from the comfort of your laptop. All you have to do is share your opinions, thoughts, and experiences with the internet. Write a few articles per week, publish them, and wallah — watch the money pile up!
Well, if you’re anything like me, you understand that it’s not this simple. In fact, I’ve found that freelance writing is a complex world where very few people find success. While those who are unsuccessful spend their days lurking in forums and Facebook groups posting about how editors or the algorithm is at fault for their lack of success.
Now, I haven’t been writing for very long. I started on Medium in February of this year, and I had zero writing experience before then. It also didn’t help that I failed every writing class I took in school (yikes, I know!) So when I submitted my articles to publications, I would get the same response of:
“Hey Alex, thanks for your submission, but we’re going to pass on this one.”
Well, a lot has changed since then. My writing has improved, my articles get published often, and I’ve become profitable! So far in April, I’ve made $1,100 from two external clients that found me through Medium.
Here’s one of them:
What’s fueled my success has been the tools I’ve used to help improve my writing. These tools have allowed me to write better headlines, generate unique ideas, and improve the SEO of the content I release. They have been at the core of what’s driven me toward reaching my goals.
Trust me, once you understand how these tools work, you can find your footing, and start moving toward reaching your freelance writing goals.
Headline Studio makes writing headlines a breeze
I paid little attention to the headlines of my articles when I first started freelance writing. However, as I began writing more consistently, I quickly found that headlines can make or break your entire article.
A good headline has the potential to make you $300+, while a bland headline (even with great content) will struggle to make you $10. I was on the weak end of the spectrum when it came to headlines, but as I researched ways to write better headlines, I stumbled across Headline Studio, and it simplified the entire process.
How it works
It’s a pretty straightforward program. You enter a headline; the program analyzes it and provides feedback on how to improve.
Here’s an example:
In this example, we’ll just use the headline “3 Ways Your Startup Can Skyrocket In Value Using Brand Identity,” which is analyzed and broken up into the following sections:
- Headline score: This is your overall score after considering things like word count, reading level, clarity, sentiment, and the type of headline you have.
- SEO score: Your headline is compared to similar headlines that rank on search engines. Your goal is to have an SEO score higher than your competition.
- Word balance: This is what will affect your overall headline score the most. This category is broken down into four sub-categories, which measure a certain percentage toward your overall score.
- Suggestions: This is where Headline Studio gives you specific recommendations to help improve your overall score.
Headline Studio recommends we take several actions to improve our headline, one of which includes using “power words.” The great thing is, you can click on “Open Word Bank,” and Headline Studio will give you suggestions of words to choose from.
Here’s another version:
In this version, I included two power words from the word bank, and it improved the headline score. Not only that, but the headline reads better, it sounds refined, and it gives the reader a better idea of what to expect from the article.
Takeaway
You’ll find it easier to write good headlines as your writing improves, but this is a great program to use for the times when your brain just can’t kick into gear. The word banks are great to have when you’re struggling to find unique words, and the SEO score comes in handy if you’re wondering what type of headline your competition is using.
Keep in mind that it’s easy to get carried away with all the fancy words and recommendations that are at your disposal. Make sure you review your headline a few times to ensure it fits the platform you used to release content. You don’t want your headlines to sound like clickbait.
Ubersuggest can help drive organic traffic
Whether it’s an image, video, or blog post, every piece of content you create on the internet will eventually be discovered, indexed, and ranked by online search engines.
Your goal is to have your articles rank on the first page of Google for specific keyword phrases, which will allow you to see an influx of organic traffic hit your articles consistently. The problem is, people don’t have an understanding of how to optimize their content to rank on search engines. Most think that SEO is too complicated and this is where Ubersuggest can step in to simplify things.
How it works
Let’s say that you wrote an article on how to make money online. Before publishing your article, you can run it through Ubersuggest to optimize your article so it can rank higher on search engines, like Google.
You can see that the keyword “how to make money online” is what people are searching for the most every month. However, if you look to the right, you’ll also see an SD (SEO difficulty) rating of 58 — the higher this number is, the harder it will be to rank for that keyword.
But, you’ll also notice that Ubersuggest displays similar keywords related to our search. In this instance, look at the keyword phrase “how to make money online fast,” which may not get as much volume as our original keyword phrase, but it has a much lower SD rating, making it much easier to rank for.
Let’s take it one step further…
Ubersuggest also makes it possible for you to view where websites are getting their backlinks from. A backlink is when another website links to your content — kind of like vouching for what you’ve written. To view these backlinks, we can click on the orange box and Ubersuggest shows the following:
Look at the red highlighted box, and you’ll see an article that was previously published in the Post Grad Survival Guide that contains our keyword phrase. The writer of that article could use the information that Ubersuggest provides to view where the higher-ranked websites are getting their backlinks; they could then reciprocate those links and start climbing up the rankings.
It might take 10–15 minutes per day to build 1–2 backlinks, but over time the accumulation of those links can lead to a higher ranking and more organic traffic.
Takeaway
Choose keyword phrases that don’t have a high SEO difficulty score as they will be much easier to rank for. Try to build 1–2 backlinks per day or every few days, it might not seem like a lot, but the accumulation of those links can lead to a higher ranking and more organic traffic.
When you start optimizing your content to take advantage of organic traffic from search engines, you’ll be positioning your content ahead of your competition. By getting ranked on Google, your article will continue to get traffic consistently long after the initial spike in traffic dies down.
Portent can help you generate ideas
Before Portent, I would find myself sitting in front of my computer, blank-faced, trying to come up with ideas that I could write about. Sure, I would have a picture in my mind of the topic I wanted to write about but coming up with something specific and unique was the hard part.
Portent simplified that process.
How it works
As I said, it’s pretty straightforward. You just enter the subject you want to write about, and Portent will generate ideas for you.
Here’s an example:
In this example, the subject I chose was productivity, and what you see in the above image is the first idea that Portent generated. This would actually make for a pretty interesting blog post because it’s not the type of article you usually encounter daily. You could definitely stick with it and write out an article.
But, I tend to use Portent to spark the initial idea, which I can then change into something that’s unique to me, fits my writing style, and plays to my strengths. For instance, I don’t know much about the Amish and I typically like to focus on 3–4 subtopics when I write. With that in mind, I could change the existing idea into “3 Important Lessons the Romans Taught Us about Productivity.” I know a lot about ancient empires like the Romans, it fits my writing style of 3–4 subtopics, and it plays to my strengths.
Takeaway
You should still make an effort to generate ideas on your own, so don’t stop your brainstorming sessions. The best approach I’ve found is to develop five ideas on different topics and then choose what I think is the best idea to write about. Usually, it takes me about ten minutes to come up with five ideas using this process, and a lot of times, I write back-to-back articles because I have a bank of ideas to pull from.
Final thought
Freelance writing is difficult, complicated, and often you see very little return on the effort that you put in. Trust me, I know how demoralizing it can be to put your heart and soul into an article, publish it, and barely get any views, or worse — it gets rejected.
Understand that your writing will improve and that you will start to see results over time. One of the best ways to improve as a writer is by using the right set of tools to kick-start your growth. The tools that I outlined in this article have helped me drastically improve my writing skills, which has brought success to my freelance writing career, and I’m confident they can help you in the same manner.
P.S. I want to take a moment to thank you for taking the time to read my story; I hope you found it helpful as well as enjoyable, and until next time — I wish you all the best.
