Okay, we’re gonna discuss down the line if you need to have your successful freelance writing website. Should you decide to build one? We are going to have a freelance services website checklist so you can just go down the list and make sure you’ve ticked off all of these boxes to have a killer new website that’s gonna help you get new freelance writing clients.

So if that sounds good to you let’s roll into it!

So the main question here is do you need a freelance writing services website? You don’t have to have one if this is your big hang-up. If you are afraid of all the technical stuff and that’s your roadblock and that’s what’s keeping you from reaching out and sending pitches and applying for freelance writing jobs. Then don’t worry about it. You don’t need it but, this is a big but, it will give you a huge leg up.

Think you’ve got a business and someone emails you that I’m a freelance writer I’d love to work with you. What’s the first thing you’re gonna do? You’re gonna try and figure out if there’s actually someone you want to hire. you’re gonna try and find more information about them and if you can’t find a place to get information about them and their writing abilities and their background, then you’re probably just gonna say nope we’re good and you’re gonna go find somebody else.

But if they lead to a website where you can see a bunch of their blog posts, you can see their About page. You can see a photo of them, you can learn all about them. You can get a sense of their writing style, it’s gonna make you much more likely to want to learn more and possibly hire that person.

So having said that, as a freelancer, it’s your job to make it as easy as possible for someone to say Yeah I want to work with you. Here’s some money to go write for me, and a freelance services website is a great way to do that not to mention the fact that you can start building an Email list of it.

You can start getting search traffic from it. You know there are just a lot of benefits of having your own website. So we’ve established that you don’t have to have a website but you probably should have a website.

I’m gonna give you 18 things or tips have your successful freelance writing website should have.

Ok before going any further, I assume that you have a domain name you have a hosting account and you have WordPress installed (Check my post on how to start a blog where I covered these basic steps of making a blog site).

 

1. Get A Professional Theme

All right first thing you need is a professional theme. Yes, there are a ton of free WordPress themes out there but a lot of the time they’re gonna have extra branding on there that you don’t need.

It’s gonna be tougher to customize your page to make it look the way that you want it to. You don’t need to buy a premium version at this point. I personally use the Hello Elementor Theme. It’s fast and reliable. But you are free to opt for your own choice. Just bear in mind that your theme should make your website looks professional.

2. Get an SEO Plugin

Okay, the second thing you must have is an SEO plug-in for your website. Yoast is the most common, but I personally use All in One SEO. Both doing great work, they’ve got a free version, you can opt of your choice. But this is just ensuring you’re giving yourself the best shot of Google discovery.

You’re probably not gonna get a ton of clients from Google at the beginning, but you want to make sure your pages are optimized. This is just an easy way even if you’re not technical to make sure that you’re putting the right information in the right place to make it as easy as possible for people to find you.

3. Have a Google Site Kit Plugin

Site kit is an official Google plugin for WordPress where you can track all sorts of insights and traffic right in your WordPress dashboard. It’s a free plugin that helps you a lot to get your website traffic insights, that also gives you a handful of suggestions on how to improve, optimize & monetize your content.

4. Have a Contact Form

The third thing you need for your website is a contact form you gotta have a way for people to reach out to you and say that they’re interested in your services. There’s a plug-in called contact form 7 that’s free and the most commonly used form for word press. If you are using Elementor then you probably won’t need the contact form 7 plugin, because elementor has its own built-in contact form that’s well enough. I’m using the same.

5. Branded Email Address

The 4^th thing is a branded email address. Reaching the clients from personal emails like Gmail or Outlook isn’t the professional way to reach out. By having this branded email address that is custom to your domain name. It just looks so much more professional. It shows that you have a real business and you’ve got a little bit of a sense of technical competence.

6. Have an Email Opt-in

The 5^th thing your website must have an email opt-in. start building your email list. A lot of freelancers don’t think that they need to build an email list. You don’t have to but there is a benefit to doing it building a little bit of an audience building a list of potential clients that you can reach out to super valuable.

So think about something that you can do that’s going to incentivize someone to want to sign up for your email list. If you do this you can use a service like Convertkit or SendFox or Mailchimp. You’re free to choose whatever you feel comfortable working with.

Get the Affordable options for building your email list even if you don’t do a lot with it, it’s worth having the opt-in there. It gives people the option to keep in touch with you if that’s something that they want to do.

7. Get a Custom Logo

Get a Custom logo. Again this is all about treating your freelance business like a real business which it is. So go on Fiverr or Guru or any freelance marketplace. Spend some 10-20 dollars, and find someone that can do a nice-looking design. You don’t have to spend a ton of money. Just have something that’s custom to your business that looks a little bit better than just words.

it’s gonna go a long way again towards that professionalism and proving that you are a real business. Anything we can do to make it easier for someone to say YES and feel confident and trust that you’re gonna be the right person to work with them.

8. Avoid “Sliders” on your Site

This is something that I found a lot of first-time website builders want to add those sliders on their homepage. If you’re building a blog and it’s all about content then there’s some value in doing that.

You should have big bold headlines that tell people what you’re all about some text as a freelancer, especially as a freelance writer. You’re probably not gonna have a ton of photos or images that are directly relevant to what you’re doing.

So just having a slider on your homepage that’s constantly showing new pages, gets annoying and takes away from what you’re trying to do. So if you get a theme that offers that cool slider effect just slides past it and don’t use it.

9. Have a Blog Component

You should have a blog component to your website so I know that might sound contradicting even if you are not a blogger you should have a blog. Someplace where you can put up a handful of articles. Maybe you post once a month, it’s essentially just getting your personality out there.

Every piece of writing you put on your website is a way for someone to get a sense of what you’re all about, who you are, and all of that stuff. So the more you write and the more you put yourself out there, the easier it’s gonna be for someone to say Oh Yeah! I’d like to work with him, he’s a good writer, I’m gonna hire him.

So blogging is a great way to do that. You can have samples and you can have a dedicated samples page but a blog is just a nice way to kind of compliment that and potentially get some search traffic as well.

10. Have Descriptive & Catchy Headlines

It’s also important to have descriptive and catchy headlines. Think about everything you put on your site. Think of it as a Copywriter. How can you be persuasive with what you’re doing? So you want a headline that’s gonna grab people. You want them to know what this is all about. You want them to keep reading and one of the things that I use as a formula for a good headline is an outcome of someone once, a timeframe, and an objective handled.

As an example, one of the headlines I’ve used on some of my posts is how to make 50 dollars a day passive income in the next 12 months. Think about how you can use that in your writing.

So just think about different places on your website where you can use catchy and descriptive headlines. You can use sub-headlines on your about page. You don’t necessarily have to have all three of those components, but just think about some of those things that can be a little bit persuasive and show that Yeah you’re a good copywriter, you’re a good content writer and you’re going to be the person that they should consider hiring.

11. Have at least 2 Photos of yourself

The 10th thing you should be thinking about in your freelance writing website checklist is you should have 2 photos of yourself at least on your website. One of the best things you can do for trust is let people see who you are.

When they’re reading through your site for they to know what you look like. So they can start thinking about you saying these things, saying your words it’s just gonna make it that much easier for them to get a sense of who you are.  if you’re just a faceless person trying to market yourself as a freelance writer that can be a little bit tough I suppose.

I’m not saying you can’t do that you can certainly do it anonymously or you can do it under a pen name but it’s just gonna make it a lot more difficult for you to show them off as a brand.

So put yourself out there, put yourself front and center, and say this is me! You are hiring me, you’re not hiring some random agency, here’s my face, let’s build this relationship together because that’s what this is all about building relationships. People want to work with people. They like and one of the first steps to that is being able to get a sense of who you are and that’s seeing you.

12. Have an About Page with a Story

The next one is you need to have a good about page with the story like I said before people want to work with people they like. So give them a reason to like you. Tell them why you got into writing and tell them what you’re trying to support if you’ve got a family, kids, and so on.

Tell them if you’ve got an interesting story of how you were backpacking the world and you supported yourself by freelance writing.

You start building that rapport and make it that much easier to again build the relationship. So on your about page as you’re thinking about your copywriting as you’re thinking about being persuasive, figure out what stories you can tell that prove why you’re a good writer. Think about all those different aspects of your life that you can put on there that someone might resonate with you all.

13. Have Diverse Samples and Case Studies

Think about the people you’ve worked with in the past. Think about the stories you can share the successes you’ve had and share them on your website because if someone says Oh they did that for them, well maybe they can do that for me as well!

And if you do a lot of different types of writing, maybe you do marketing funnels but you also do just blog posts. Use a lot of diverse examples to show what you’re capable of.

If you’re brand new and you don’t have any of those case studies or samples to share, make them up create an about page for yourself, and make a marketing funnel for any product or whatever. It doesn’t necessarily have to be something real it just has to show Oh that’s a good piece of writing.

So if you’re just getting started practice those things and then share them on your website.

14. Use Testimonials

The testimonials! Who have you worked with? I was happy with what you did it. Get them to have a little blurb saying how great it was to work with you. Those go a long way!

Social proof is really powerful even if you’re just getting friends and Family that say nice things about your character. The fact you’re reliable any of those types of things, good things about you that are gonna make someone trust you.

15. Have a Rates Page

The next one is a rates page. This is important because you don’t want to waste people’s time. You want to make sure you’re at least on the same general page as to the cost of your services as they are.

So you won’t need to be super specific but you can at least give some generalities and examples to start the conversation. And this way someone can be like Oh they’re way too expensive for what I’m doing or Oh we’ve got a lot more budget than maybe we need to work with a bigger agency, whatever it might be.

So make sure that you’re generally on the same page as you’re getting going. You don’t have to include your rates. It can be helpful again to make sure that you’re not spinning your wheels and wasting your time with people that aren’t gonna be able to afford you.

16. Social Media Links

You have to have some social media links. if you’ve got an Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook, share all that stuff because again people are gonna be able to go and they’re gonna be able to see the real you. People want to work with people, they like a great way to show off the things that you might have in common is through social media.

Don’t be afraid to share that, to let some of your personal life into your business life, especially as a solo freelance writer. It’s not like you’re some big corporation that has to have everything perfectly branded.

When you’re working for yourself it’s all about you. It’s about your personality, it’s about your life. So don’t be afraid to embrace that.

17. Show Your Personality

The 16^th thing on our checklist is to have a personality. Show your personality. Put yourself out there don’t try and use all the corporate jargon and be super stiff and formal because you think that’s what people want to know. Be polite, conversational, and informal.

Show off your personality, and have an opinion. Show the things you like, and you might turn a lot of people off. Those people are a threat fit for you anyway. The people that are a right fit are going to be much more inclined to work with you because you show off that personality. So don’t be afraid to include that.

18. Have a Hook

And finally, the last thing on our freelance writing website checklist, have a hook! What makes you different from everybody else? What’s gonna make you more memorable than your competition.

There are lots of different ways you can do this. It could be pricing, maybe you say I’ll do 20 blog posts for 900 dollars, or I can generate a lead for the business in a week. You can also make a deal package where you can offer value-added service along with content writing. For example, you can offer social media marketing services or email marketing along with your writing niche.

So you are offering a package that is memorable. It doesn’t necessarily have to be price-related or deliverability related. It could be any sort of thing that you’d like to offer.

So there you go!

So that are 18 things you should add to your freelance service’s website that’s gonna make you stand out from the crowd.

If you find this post useful, just leave a comment & share your point there.

 

Cheers!