Freelance writing research is indeed a time-consuming task that requires energy & stamina to focus. So, do you want to know the fastest way to kill your hourly rate as a freelance writer? it’s not taking into account the research you’re going to have to do for a specific piece when you are bidding out the project. fortunately, there is one super-easy way that you can make the research process way faster for all of your jobs moving forward and that’s what we’re gonna talk about in this post.
Post Contents
#1
Something you need to keep in mind when it comes to research. if you are doing a 500-to-700-word post, you don’t need to do that much research that is an overview piece. you’re not getting down into the nitty-gritty and details of a topic in only 500 to 700 words. So don’t spend hours doing research for a post that doesn’t need hours of research. This is a trap that I see a lot of beginners dump into! they think they need to know everything about a specific topic and they spend hours and hours for posts they’re making 125 bucks on, only to realize like oh I didn’t really need to do any of that because I at least knew enough to write the overview.
#2
For a lot of the posts you’re going to write as you get into more in-depth pieces, you are going to need to do some research. So how do you keep yourself from having to spend hours of extra work for every article you write doing research? well, there’s one thing I do that has made all the difference in the world! and that’s I create a resource pack.
What’s a resource pack? well for me I take a few hours to find as many resources as I can about that topic and I put them in one place. You can use Notion, Evernote, Dropbox, or google drive whatever works for you. You should have just a place where you have A ton of resources, facts, articles, and studies.
Whether you’re a specialist where you just focus on one niche in one industry as a freelancer or you’re a generalist you’re still probably going to be writing multiple articles about the same general topic even if you’re a generalist you’re going to have clients that need you to write about the same industry
Say, If a cable company hires you to write some articles for them. you’re probably going to have to write multiple articles about cable and cable boxes and things like that so generally speaking when you’re writing for a client you have to link to things that are up to date. You generally don’t have to use anything more than two to three years old. Every couple of months you’ll have to go through and spend an hour looking for more resources, More studies, more information and if you get stuff that ends up being a little bit outdated four or five years old, then you’ll replace that with the newer information.
#3
When you’re doing this, you have to usually look for three specific types of information that are going to be credible for most clients so the first type of information is the most credible and that’s anything coming from a government agency so if a government agency puts out a study or
They put out some facts around a specific topic most clients are going to say cool that’s credible that works we can reference that. After the government agencies, the next type of information you’ll look for is generally anything from universities or medical journals. Anything from the mayo clinic, Harvard business review, new England journal of medicine, things like that. Any of those types of organizations carry a lot of respect.
If you’re linking from them Or if you’re referencing facts that they put out, that’s something that clients are usually going to be. The third type of information you’ll look for is information from larger companies that fund studies. It could be an independent research company or say you’re looking for accounting information so companies like KPMG, and Deloitte, they spend a lot of money funding studies and getting information.
If you’re referencing a study that They’ve done, that could be a great resource for your client’s work. What I found in doing this is it kind of reverses the way you think about writing an article often you’ll come up with an idea and then you’ll go search for something to support that article but if you have a bunch of facts a bunch of figures a bunch of research and you generally know what’s there, then when you’re writing you can look for ways to insert the information that you’ve already got.
But by doing this you end up using more credible sources as opposed to finding the random blogger with the blog post from 2012 that backed up the story you were trying to say but probably isn’t going to be credible enough for the clients that you’re working for. Obviously, this works especially well if you are a specialized freelancer and you work in one specific niche or one pacific industry but even as a generalist with each client you Have, that client is going to be in a specific niche.
If the client hires you to write 10 articles there’s a good chance those 10 articles are all going to be within the same industry so spending a couple hours to put together your war chest of information for that industry is going to be really valuable and then if down the line you end up getting another job in that same industry, boom! you’ve already got all the research so you’re really just building a long-term Asset here that you can turn to and use for different clients.
Summing Up
- Don’t invest too much time in research if your post comprises 500 to 700 words, as such length of content is considered an overview piece
- Make your resource pack if you are in-depth research of article by saving lots of articles, facts, studies & search papers, and verify your resources as well.
- While doing your research, you should mainly focus on the info provided by government agencies, universities, and large corporations.
So, there you go my name is Ali, and I’m the founder of this thing here at blogging regime where we learn how to make money with your words, whether it’s through blogging, freelancing, and affiliate marketing. if you want to make money with your words on the internet that’s what the blogging regime is all about.
