What skills do you need to become a freelance writer?
If a client has paid you to produce words, then you’ve become a freelance writer. But to be successful, or to be offered specific projects or roles, you’ll need to demonstrate a range of skills and qualifications.
The most important is a love of the written word. Despite the availability of software tools and AI assistance, you need to enjoy what you do. That includes reading for inspiration, research and acquiring new techniques. And then spending time crafting your content to be as good as possible. Especially when being a writer means spending hours agonising over the structure of a particular sentence, before deleting the entire thing and writing something different.
Communication and interpersonal skills are important to not only maintain a good relationship with clients, but also build a rapport with interview subjects, colleagues and other writers. You may need to deal with designers and editors before your work is published. And a good network of other freelance writers is invaluable in finding out about projects and opportunities.
Organisation is important in two ways. The first is the obvious need to manage clients, projects, deadlines and invoices, which can often be a challenge for anyone who prefers to focus on creativity. But it’s also key to making use of your research effectively and creating well-structured articles.
Most freelance writing projects will focus on experience rather than qualifications. But you may find larger publications and longer-term contract work requires you to have formal education, including a degree or postgraduate qualification in journalism.
Before you commit to potentially expensive and long-term training, it’s worth researching the projects you’d like to be winning, and seeing what types of qualification they typically require. You can then look at the recognised and often official bodies for those specialisms to decide which courses and education will be most suitable and valuable. There’s no point in signing up for a three- year journalism degree if you want to mainly write blog posts. But courses from organisations like the Press Association, or the Publishing Training Centre can be a useful justification for increasing your rates, and help you beat the competition for a particular opportunity.
In addition to research and writing, an increasing number of clients will also expect you to upload articles, add images, and include elements for SEO such as meta descriptions. So having a basic understanding of the most popular website content management systems (such as WordPress), and simple photo editing software will be useful. Common examples include Photoshop (or the free alternative GIMP), and Canva for creating social media imagery.
You should have a good understanding of grammatical rules, along with a grasp of the relevant SEO best practice for articles. Most word processors and writing tools will include checks for spelling and grammar, but they won’t catch everything.
Researching other freelance careers? Why not check out our other guides:
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