Literally the word freelance was used in old times to denote a mercenary or a knight who, if paid a handsome compensation by a lord, was willing to offer his services or rather sell his services to whoever was willing to buy them. In old times it was therefore written as free lance. So, what is freelancing or what are these freelancing jobs that you get to hear about so much?
Freelancers are writers who are more or less independent and can choose who to work with. Usually freelancers will write articles (since writing is their job) either for an individual or for a concern/firm/company and they will be bound by a project or a contract. On the basis of this contract, these freelancers will get paid. That means, if you are offered a project of , say, 100 articles which you have to write up and deliver within a given deadline as mutually agreed upon, you will be paid your due after completion of the assignment.
Freelancers are also often known as freelance content writers or freelance journalists etc. By saying that freelancers work on a contractual basis, I may not mean a formal contract. But if you are seriously considering a freelance career, having a contract in place will be in your best interest and safeguard your rights. As freelancers in a freelance career, you have to stick to clear goals and write and submit articles or assignments within a set time frame. Once Project A gets completed, freelancers have to move on to project B and so on.
Freelancing jobs can be of different types like web writing (in which case you will be known as a freelance web content writer), marketing writing, business writing, technical writing; then there are writings related to proposal development and grants for which freelancers are employed by non profit organizations; some other freelancers work for newspapers, anthologies, magazines etc or concentrate on querying.
If you want to make it big in freelancing jobs or in the freelance career, you should take the plunge into the world of writing and towards the beginning, you should try to write on a wide variety of topics to increase your versatility. Within 6 months or so, you will be in a position to identify your strengths and weaknesses and later on you should try to focus on writing articles which you like or are good at and where you can showcase your talents to the best level.
Freelancers are supposed to write on a variety of topics, the most common topics being health and fitness, weight loss, travel, SEO, SEM, internet marketing, e commerce, beauty, woman’s articles, lifestyle articles including zodiacs, horoscopes, religion , spirituality, landscaping, interior designing, cosmetic surgery, cinema, gifts, career, technical articles, articles on pets etc. In short you are expected to write on anything and everything under the sun.
Source by Lee Su Jung
