Aside from the fact that we rely heavily on our partnership, Tamara and I believe that this blog is the biggest factor in our current success as freelance writers. There are the obvious benefits of using it to market our business, of course, but there’s so much more to it.
I know you may find this shocking, but when we started our freelance company, we really had no intention of creating a blog to go along with it. It’s kind of crazy, when you think about it, because I’ve been blogging for five years. I’ve kept a personal blog for all that time over at LiveJournal; and for more than a year, I’ve also maintained the Something Good blog there. Not only that, but I was an avid blog reader. eMoms at Home was one of my favorites, even though I was yet to be a parent.
Still, when Tamara and I started planning for our business, the idea of blogging never came up. Sure, we talked about marketing materials like brochures and web sites, but a blog . . . it never occurred to us that we could use one. Thank goodness Wendy approached us about joining eMoms when she decided to expand her original site.
We’ve experienced a lot of benefits as a result of the Freelance Parent blog:
Marketing
I mentioned already that this blog has been a tool for marketing our business. One client happened to be searching online for freelance writers and came upon the site before heading over to Guru to post a job. She liked our personalities and our approach to what we do, and rather than posting on Guru, she popped us off an email instead.
Money
Tamara and I don’t make a lot of money from this blog, but we also don’t have to put a whole lot of work into setting it up and maintaining it. Basically, we write about topics that we think will be useful for other freelancers, and once a month we get a check. As a result of having a well-maintained blog, we’ve also been hired to write on as many as five other blogs in the last couple of months. In addition to being paid for the writing, many of the freelancers we know set up their own blogs and earn a little extra income through advertising and affiliate programs.
Review
At first, Tamara and I were a little nervous about having enough to say in order to post three times a week. We ended up just sort of forcing ourselves to write a little something every day. In no time at all, we realized how valuable this was. Not only were we keeping ourselves active on days when there wasn’t much paid writing to do, but we were also learning a ton about our business. By doing a write-up on record keeping, for example, we had to review our own process and determine if it was working for us or not.
Networking
Becoming part of the online freelancing community has been such an incredible part of blogging here at Freelance Parent. Our peers have educated and inspired us. I’ve mentioned before that we’ve made friends through the blog, but we have also made some wonderful business contacts. As our company continues to grow, we’ll be not only working with some of these businesses ourselves, but will also be referring our own clients to this network of professionals with whom we’ve developed personal relationships.
Expertise
Tamara and I have been upfront since day one about the fact that we are new at this whole freelancing thing. On the other hand, the mere fact that we’ve kept this blog has given us some sort of reputation as knowing what the heck we’re talking about. We take that very, very seriously; and it has been such motivation to constantly learn and grow. We are fanatical about learning all we can, not just to make our business succeed, but also because we know that other freelancers are looking for good resources to do the same. Writing this blog has seriously made us strive to be more knowledgeable people.
At this point in the post, it should be no big secret that Tamara and I are pretty much in love with blogging. We enjoy the research that goes into those how-to posts, and we appreciate the feedback that we receive when we share the more personal aspects of our lives. We’re also aware of how blogging is helping our business grow. During the rest of the week, we’re going to focus on a few more aspects of how you can use blogging as a part of your freelance business.
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You point out a number of good reasons to have a blog. We’re about to start one for many of these same reasons.
Even though we are not a freelance business, but we still think having a blog will allow us to ‘connect’ with our user community - hopefully creating something of a personal bond between ourselves and our members.
I couldn’t agree more. I waited two months after starting my freelance writing business to create a blog, and I shouldn’t have waited so long!
Can’t wait to hear your blogging ideas.
I’ve had clients say the exact same thing- “I hired you because of your blog.” My understanding from clients is that my blog puts a voice on my name- a warmth to my business. Yours does the same for you. Interestingly, I believe photos help a bit, too. Smiling photos show that you’re a real person, that you’re welcoming, that you have a life and family. I really like your two photos at the top here, especially the baby one.
Steve - That “personal bond” you mentioned is one of the coolest aspects of having a business-related blog. Would you rather take advice from some anonymous person or from someone you’d built a bit of a rapport with via their blog? I’d definitely go with the latter.
holli jo - It cracks me up that two months is considered “so long” in blogging time. I hear people all the time say things like “I’ve been blogging for six months!” as if it makes them an old hand at it. In some respects, I guess it really does.
Ally - I’ve noticed that you have a couple of blogs serving different purposes, and that seems like a great approach to me.