**Become a Freelance Blogger:**
*Create a Real Money Blogging Plan*
**Business Skills for Freelance Bloggers**
(How to Sustain and Grow Your Income)
When you decided to become a freelance blogger, did you immediately draft a five-year business growth plan? Did you calculate a complete financial forecast?
If you did, everyone here permits you to skip this post and go order more champagne while the rest of us catch up.
But most freelance bloggers start with the ability to write and pick up a bit of business sense along the way. If that sounds like you, don’t worry – you can still grow your blogging into a profitable business. We just need to fill in some gaps in your understanding of how business works.
Here’s the key part, though: you need to fill those knowledge gaps now. Every month that those gaps aren’t filled is another month that you might go without making money.
"Value your business skills!!
Here’s the translation of your text into English:
"These concepts and skills can bring you $1,000 or more per month if you are just starting out or doing it part-time along with a day job. And if you’ve already been running a freelance blogging business without developing business skills, you can add an extra $1,000 to your freelance writing income each month.
This means that if you wait another year to gain basic business knowledge, you’ll be short by 12 months x $1,000 = $12,000. And that’s likely a conservative estimate because strong business skills will allow your business to grow beyond $1,000 per month.
In the first two years, I learned from my own mistakes without any business training. I was quite frustrated and charged very little because I didn’t know what I was doing or how to value my services.
What transformed my once amateur freelance blogging business into a high-paying career wasn’t any big break. I wasn’t discovered by a new media mogul, nor was I trained by a famous blogger. I didn’t start a personal blog that went viral, nor did my breakfast post on Insta suddenly lead to fame and fortune.
I educated myself through various business blogs, then took the big step of investing some of my salary back into my business by joining top trainings, mentoring, and mastermind groups. That’s how I finally started owning my business.
Here are the 3 questions I learned to answer that made a real difference in my business and my income:"
#1: What is your business model?
In other words…
What do you sell?
What do you need to deliver it?
How (and what) do you get paid?
For me, I had my initial answers:
What do you sell? "Writing."
What do you need to deliver it? "Me, writing."
How (and what) do you get paid? "Whatever I can get, as long as the client agrees."
Now, though, I know my best answers for my blogging offering:
What do you sell? "Website traffic, audience engagement, and more sales for my clients. Through blogging."
What do you need to deliver it? "Me, writing feature-length blog posts that are useful and engaging for readers, based on deep research to ensure each post achieves the results my client needs."
How (and what) do you get paid? "At least $500 per 1,000 words, paid monthly in advance, directly to my bank account."
Yours might vary—for example, small corporate blog posts paid per piece on net 30 terms, or high-volume batches of recipe posts with Insta-ready images paid per word upon delivery.
It’s easier to charge a reasonable rate for fewer gigs than a low rate for a large volume of gigs. And for your cash flow, getting paid in advance, or at least partially upfront, is better than waiting 30 or 60 days after invoicing.
Clear, right? But these are lessons that come to many freelancers only after some time—I was one of them. Another thing I never considered during my first year of freelancing was my "product." Wow, I was really clueless..
#2"What is your best offer?"
"No, I don't mean the minimum amount you're willing to accept. I mean the offer that is the best for you. In other words, from the products you sell, which ones bring you the most profit with the least effort?
The first thought that might come to your mind is, 'I don't have any products – I just sell my writing services.' But when you offer one or more services with predefined details like price, timeline, what's included, and payment terms, you've essentially created a product.
In freelance blogging, it often feels like you're creating a brand-new deal for each client. But once you look a bit more closely, you'll likely notice a pattern where certain types of posts, post lengths, delivery speeds, and additional services are more popular than others."
"Are your most popular deals also the most profitable for you? Do they offer a good hourly rate for your time, including all the time you don’t bill to your client, such as the time spent securing the gig in the first place or the communication that doesn’t go on your time tracker?
And how do you feel about that time? Does it make you want to cry, or is it the kind of gig you’d do for fun even if you won a gazillion dollars tomorrow? Is it usually rush work that eats into your weekends, or does it fit neatly into your schedule?
If your most popular product pays well in terms of an equivalent hourly rate and involves work you enjoy doing, then you’re already on the right track.
But if your best-selling product only pays you $15 an hour after accounting for all unbillable hours, or it means spending late nights on work that drives you crazy, then it’s time to change the product description.
It said it's much easier than working. That's why most freelancers take a long time to figure out what's happening in their business. In fact, most freelancers take a year and a half to start their business.
But you don't need to figure it out on your own. Click on the links above for more information on how to do each of these 4 things.
#3: Can you start today?
This is the key to successful freelancing: start, then keep improving.
With the experience gained from your first freelance blogging gig, you'll feel more confident (and more capable) with your second gig. Once you've been in business for a while and can analyze your clients' needs, you'll be able to make your product even more appealing and more profitable.
Your answers to these 3 questions will evolve along with your business, so it's a good idea to review them at least once or twice a year, no matter how successful you are.
If you feel it's a good time to take a look at your business now, or if you haven't really started yet and aren't sure what to do, scroll to the beginning of this post and write your answers in detail for each question.
Now, write what you're going to do with these answers.
Now go and do it.
