Freelance Writing Is a Sales Process, As Much As a Creative Process

The position of freelance writer is one that is as much a sales process as a creative process. The type of genre you choose to write does not change this point. You can be a poet, novelist, or journalist. You can write online or for paper publications. The point here is that you must sell your work, and your confidence in it, after you create the written piece.

You finish your online article or publish your novel on Amazon. Now, you need to ensure you get page reads of your article or buyers for your novel.

While you enjoyed the creative process of forming the particular piece, you cannot survive on creativity alone. Money, as your parents told you, does not grow on trees. Money also does not often automatically grow from a piece of work, no matter how well it is written.

While you can leave your work to be magically “found” by people on Google and other search engines, as it (may) climb up the search results page, you can also increase the reads through a sales process.

Your sales tool is called Social Media.

Google+, Facebook, and Twitter

There are many social media networks. Google+, Facebook, and Twitter are big players on the social media team. They can all be utilized to increase your visibility as a writer and gain you more money in your profession.

By creating profiles on a variety of social media networks, you create an online presence. You post messages within the networks that relate to both your own writing and the work of people of similar interests (other poets, marketers, novelists, etc.).

When you increase your visibility and share quality content, you are creating your reputation as a writer. You create a quality image, following the act of creating your written piece. These are different levels of creation, both of yourself and the work you produce.

A good reputation leads to trust from people who you connect with on the social media networks. With trust comes more Followers and in turn more reads and purchases of your writing. You are actively selling your work, sharing it online in order to get money in return for page views and purchases of your book. You are a sales person and your product is your piece of writing that is in paper format or electronic.

The writing process has changed significantly since the growth of social media networks such as Twitter and Google+. Writing is still is based in a creative process, in which your thoughts are put into written words, edited, and then published. Today, as a freelance writer, you are also involved in a sales process, as you actively seek out connections and look to get reads of your work. You play an active role in the number of reads and sales of your writing; develop a sales approach that works for you as a creative person and actively pursue that method.