6 Freelance Content Writing Tips to Stay Motivated

There’s a lot to love about working as a freelance content writer. You get to pick projects that interest you and work hours according to your convenience. Essentially, when determining your work quality and schedule, you’re the boss—a privilege that many professionals desire. 

But, along with the many upsides, there’s a big challenge, too. Since the reins of your writing career are entirely in your hands, you’ve got to work extra hard to keep yourself highly motivated at all times towards your work. The responsibility to approach your work with sincerity and dedication increases significantly when you’re accountable to yourself. Only then can you offer your content writing services with more confidence. 

So, here are some tips on keeping that creative fire alive and continuing to climb the success ladder in freelance content writing.

6 Freelance Content Writing Tips

1. Know your strengths, weaknesses, and interests

As a writer, you must know your capabilities, shortcomings, and preferences. Think about questions like what type of content you write the best, what type of writing you struggle with and would like to get better at, which is your favorite domain to write in, etc. 

The answers may provide some helpful and interesting revelations for you to work with. You might realize that you need to step out of your comfort zone and experiment with content that you’ve shied away from writing so far.

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One of the best ways to understand the great and not-so-great aspects of your writing is by getting feedback from your clients. Listen to what they have to say about your work. Their assessment can be valuable in helping you understand the strengths that you can play to and the areas where you need to improve.

• Define serious, long-term career goals for yourself

It’s essential to have a picture in mind about where you stand professionally, say 5 or 10 years down the line. Think about how you’d like to see your career evolve as a freelance content writer. 

Maybe you hope to become an expert and sought-after writer in a super-specialized, niche area. Perhaps you aspire to own and run a successful blog. Or perhaps you want to become more than a freelance content writer, like a versatile digital marketing expert who also offers content writing services. 

You need to have a vision about how you’ll leverage the content writing experience you’re gaining each day for a better future as a professional. The more specific you can get with your long-term goals, the better. It will help you determine the necessary steps to take, whether financial planning or skill development, to achieve these goals.  

• Know when to take a break 

Instead of taking on more projects than you can handle, it might serve you better to focus on delivering exceptional content for select, quality projects. Incessantly pushing yourself to write more could take a toll on your creativity. It can be physically and mentally exhausting to continuously work on one project after another. 

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You might begin to struggle with pushing new ideas out of your brain, and the last thing you want is writer’s block. To avoid feeling burned out, recognize when it’s time for you to take a break from work and allow your creativity to rejuvenate itself. A well-rested and refreshed mind will enable you to give your best to your writing.

• Keep on writing even when you don’t necessarily have to

We’ve talked about the importance of taking breaks when that feeling of burnout starts to take over. However, it’s equally important to acknowledge how important it is to develop consistency in your writing. 

As a freelancer, the flow of projects might not always be constant. You might go through phases when you’re not working at all. You must find productive activities to do during such times. 

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You could utilize this time to do some personal writing, search for new opportunities, catch up on the latest trends in content writing, or take up a course that adds value to your skillset. 

What’s most important is that even when you’re not occupied with any project, you don’t stop writing entirely. To stay sharp as a writer, you have to make writing an integral part of your everyday life. Write as often as possible, even if it’s just for yourself. 

• Be disciplined and professional in your approach to work.

The flexibility with freelancing shouldn’t come at the cost of work discipline. Even though you can work anytime and from anywhere you like in freelancing, a defined structure still needs to exist for how you work. Without a well-organized structure, cultivating the discipline to write and deliver projects promptly can become much harder. 

Outline a rough work schedule to guide your writing process and stick to it for the most part. You can broadly set aspects like daily working hours to know when it’s time for you to show up to work. Establish a general sequence of steps to follow, like researching, writing, proofreading, editing, etc., for completing and delivering your content. 

Create a checklist of all the tasks and projects you’ve to finish for the day and the week. Whether it’s the number of content pieces you need to write each day or planning and preparing for client meetings, cover all the bases.

• Read whenever you have the chance!

Finally, let’s talk about one of the essential habits you can cultivate to become a more refined and successful writer. Reading is a wonderful habit, even more so for writers. It can help improve your grammar, vocabulary, and language fluency and enhance your knowledge about the domains you often write in. So, grab whatever chance you get amidst your freelancing gigs to read something new, educative, and exciting.

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The purpose doesn’t always have to be learning; sometimes, you could just read for leisure. Even when reading a fiction novel, you’re still learning about storytelling. Extensive and diverse reading can help you become aware of wide-ranging writing techniques which you can leverage to improve your skills. You may get inspired to explore what you can do more and different as a writer.

In the End 

It is very easy to get distracted and go off track when you are your boss. However, if you want to be a successful freelance writer, you will need all the above-mentioned skills and best practices. 

Focus on them daily and see how your career graph grows. 

Content writing is one Shivani Maheshwari’s biggest passions. In about four years of experience as a freelance content writer, she has worked across an extensive array of content in different industry domains. Shivani enjoys communicating great ideas through her writing and helping people with her interesting ideas.