I know a lot of people are trying to finalize their options as freelancers and many of them have already begun their journeys as well. This post is meant for the advanced level people but I am sure it may help out some beginners also to set their vision. Also, it is a bit inclined towards SEO, so feel free to ask me any questions that you may have.
If you are into content writing and looking to make more money or just want to be a bit different from what everyone is offering, you may want to upskill and niche down a little bit. Here are 4 options for content + 1 option for a graphic design that can help you:
1. HARO (Help a Reporter Out) – HARO is a technique through which various reporters form a nice piece of content on their website by taking answers from other business owners. For example, if I have a site about health and I want to write an article on Hair Transplant, then what better source than other health professionals in the industry. So I will go to helpareporter.com and submit a request/set of questions for the health professionals. Then, the health professionals or the health website owners will submit their answers and I will feature them on my blog by quoting their answer as well as giving them a backlink.
Example – https://databox.com/google-analytics-tracking-mistakes See how many professionals they have listed on their site. Each of those answers have been submitted through HARO.
How YOU as a Content Writer Come into Picture – As a content writer, you respond to the queries of these reporters. Once you sign up on helpareporter.com, you will get a list of these queries thrice a day (morning, afternoon, evening). You can reply to which ones you want for your clients. The queries will have to be replied from an email on the client’s website and they would check for you to be an actual owner or employee of the company so that they know its a genuine answer.
Payment – It is generally paid once you start getting backlinks for your clients. For example a DR 60-80 backlink will land you from Rs 7500 to Rs 30,000 in your account. Some people also charge on a per answer basis. For example, you can charge Rs 300-Rs 700 per answer generally if you are able to land atleast 5 links in 100 replies.
Cost to You – helpareporter.com offers a free plan. That is enough. Answering queries will cost you your time.
2. Digital PR – Digital PR is another amazing technique to acquire backlinks for clients. This includes two things – creating the content and then pitching it to journalists who are looking for content in the same industry.
Lets start with creating the content first – you create a nice piece of content that has information presented in a unique way. This might or might not include statistics for your niche. For example, a unique piece of idea can be to find out how many companies in the world moved to which countries for business (for example a lot of companies in India moved to Dubai, Singapore etc to save taxes) and then based on that data, compile a report on the best countries for businesses. It can be as simple as predicting the trends or just gathering all the data based on several trends in a particular industry or something that catches attention.
I might not be able to explain this properly because I am not a PR person but follow this guy Fery Kaszoni (https://www.linkedin.com/in/ferenczkaszoni/) and his company page Search Intelligence Ltd (https://www.linkedin.com/company/searchintelligenceltd/) to understand what it is and I am sure you will like it. Once the content is created, with the help of various software, you can pitch it to the right journalists.
Example of a Digital PR Coverage – https://www.mensxp.com/special-features/today/35858-this-company-is-offering-to-pay-10-000-to-travel-the-world-in-luxury-the-deadline-is-almost-here.html
How YOU as a Content Writer Come into Picture – Offer your client to get them backlinks by creating a package of Digital PR and minimum 10 links guarantee. Start creating pages that can get really popular among journalists. If you are able to make one page picked up by a few journalists, it will automatically get a lot of links because other publications will also copy them.
Payment – A Digital PR package can easily cost between $1000 to $8,000 per package for a minimum of 10 links. If you are not able to land links, no worries. Keep creating new articles and pitching them to journalists.
Cost to You – Creating the article will involve you brainstorming ideas with your client. Pitching to journalists will need software which is a monthly cost. So buy it when your PR articles are absolutely ready to go or ask your client to buy it for a month for you (doesn’t look professional though).
3. Outreach – This is a common technique in which you ask the owner of a website to publish your content on their site in exchange of a backlink to your site. If you have not heard about how to get links via outreach, you need to learn more about it through google. Search for things like content outreach, guest posting, etc. and you will understand what exactly it is.
If you want to take your outreach to another level, here is a video that you need to watch (but clear your basics first):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URGL6jyC1sQ
How YOU as a Content Writer Come into Picture – You can offer your clients these types of guest posts.
Payment – You can easily sell each guest post from $200 to $500 depending upon the authority of the site you have acquired it on.
Cost to You – It would just cost you your time and maybe a software account (semrush or ahrefs) from your client.
4. Niche Down – Niching down on one niche for content writing is always a great thing to do. There are a lot of high paying niches like Finance, Health, Crypto, Legal etc. Generally people pay $100-$200 per article of 1000 words in such niches if you can write well. So, you might want to choose one of these and then accordingly modify your LinkedIn profile.
5. Graphics – A lot of people pitch graphics designing to companies but may end up not working with them because they didn’t include enough data in their pitches. Here is a unique angle to pitch to big clients:
Go to their website and find out images from their recent posts or services they are offering. Search those images on Google using Google Image search and see from where they have used those images. Most likely, they must have used stock photos. While sending them an email, let them know politely that they have used the stock images which their competitor sites are also using. Inform them about using images created in-house and what value will that add to their brand.
Also, offer them one free image, attached in the email, which they can use on the site free of cost. Ask them if they like their work, you can offer them not only images that will replace their existing posts images but also images for any new content going on their site. They might not even ask you about whether you have worked for anyone else or not, and just say yes. After that, later maybe, offer them infographics which will add more value to their site and thats how you will upsell them.
Another way to pitch clients is to create generic images for their niche and then put these images in popular sites like pixabay, pexels etc to acquire links later. Once these images are used by people all over the world, you might send them a polite email on getting a backlink from their site. This happens over the period of 6-12 months when the images have become popular and they are being used on other websites. The image download stats are given by these sites.
Here is a short email you can send – “hey, thanks for using our image. we love that you liked it so much that you have used it on your website. hope that its adding value to it. Here is a copy of high resolution image that you may want to you on your site instead. Would it be possible for you to give us an image credit as a favor in return?”
You can then charge per link on the number of links acquired. It would also be a good idea to charge $500 as an upfront setup fee in which you will create 10-20 images and upload them to 5-10 popular websites.
Glossary:
Backlink – A reference (known as a lick that you click) on a page of a site that takes the user to another site.
DR – Domain Rating. A measure of the authority of the domain. It is provided by a software called Ahrefs which is commonly used by people in SEO.
Niche – Niche is a particular business domain. For example, a hair transplant website will come under Health niche.
I know all this may sound a bit complex or even confuse you, but trust me, I have gotten work from professionals in each of these niches and currently they are paying really well in the market. I am happy to answer any questions that you may have or guide people in the right direction if you need.
Here is my LinkedIn profile if anyone wants to connect stay in touch: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kapilochani/