As a newbie, what I’ve learned from following other writers and their experiences is priceless. I’ll forever be grateful for the invention of blogs for how they’ve helped me. They’re a source of information worth the most expensive course on freelancing. When I decided to freelance three months ago, all I knew was nothing.

Through reading blogs and online books, I’ve learned three lessons that are engraved in my head. When I reach my first goal for myself I plan on gifting myself with a plaque of top five lessons to never forget, to keep in front of me every time I write.

There are no short cuts.

The best thing I learned is that there are no short cuts to a freelance writing career. It takes time and dedication to be the writer you envisioned yourself to be and to earn half of what you thought you would earn. Be vary of websites screaming that it’s easy to be a freelancer or that you can make heaps of money through it. Sure, there are people for whom it has happened. But its not the norm and its not going to happen to me. Or you.

Don’t sell yourself cheap

The next lesson that I engraved upon my writer heart was to never sell myself cheap. No matter how desperate I was to get work. I found plenty of people looking for writers to write 500 word article for $1-$3. It felt like an insult to my intelligence but I was on the verge of accepting that maybe this was the norm when I read a discussion in the comment section of a blog about how so many writers were doing work for next to nothing which was why they felt that such rip-off jobs were still on the market.

Persevere and eventually you’ll find clients and gigs according to your personal standards.

Be realistic.

Don’t sell yourself cheap, but don’t put too high a price on yourself either. Personal standards should be realistic. Don’t expect to get $500 for a 500 word article. If you’ve got no credential, potential clients won’t hire you at the standard rates either. Lower your rates if you must…but be realistic about it too!

It only took me a week to realize that it was going to take me a long time to land any kind of work. I don’t have a diverse portfolio. I don’t have any references from previous clients, I also have no experience. I knew it would be idiotic to charge high rates. In fact, charging standard rates would have to be let go for the time being too.

If you’re a new writer with no experience, you cannot expect to land a column at a national newspaper or magazine. Even applying for such jobs is folly. Keep them as a goal and gain experience and knowledge to work towards materializing that goal.

Find out what the going rates are for the kind of writing you do and charge according to that. Again, that still is no guarantee to get instant work

The gist of all these lessons is that patience and hard work is the key to success. What lessons has freelancing taught you so far?

As human beings we keep on learning new things. Whether it’s in school, college or on the job. As a freelancer, we couldn’t succeed if we didn’t keep ourselves open to learning every day with every article or at the very least – every gig.

Learning leads to experience which leads to expertise.

That’s the story of a freelancer. You don’t need a Master’s in English, Communication or Journalism to be successful as a writer. All you need is the love of learning. We, as freelancers start learning from the beginning. Our first article, first gig, first pay check, first returning client and let’s not forget – first scam.

Learn from mistakes.

Every writer has either fallen for a scam, missed a deadline, or generally been careless with keeping in touch with a client. All of these happen at some point or other. We’re humans and mistakes happen. But if we keep on repeating them we’re stupid. Learn from them and we get wise. It’s a simple formula really.

Be smart.

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. A large part of the learning process of a freelancer is to read, read and read some more of authority blogs and books of established and successful writers. If you’ve fallen for a scam, read up on the kinds of scam there are, what to watch out for and how to avoid them. Missed a deadline? Find out how other writers stick to their schedules and what techniques and tools do they use. Utilize every resource available to avoid making the most common mistakes freelancers make. Sure, nothing teaches a lesson better than a mistake, but mistakes can be avoided by being prepared.

Don’t be dependant on your niche.

Sticking to one genre, or one topic of writing can severely limit a writer’s exposure as a freelancer. Depending on a niche to make you successful is not smart planning. Take one topic or genre at a time. Learn about them. Write about them. Keep them in your portfolio for times when you’re short on jobs related to your niche. Even if you’re not short of work, sometimes a writer needs a break. Writing about a different topic can be a breath of fresh air.

Have something to add to these? Share your views in the comments and add to the list of things we learn on the job. Stay tuned for the things I’ve learned on the job so far.

A freelancer is easy to please. All you gotta do is accept their submission, pay them on time and tell them they do a good job. Really, how hard is that? As a freelancer, I’m learning to appreciate every small thing. Someone replying with a rejection is also appreciated. At least they bothered to tell me they were rejecting my application! That’s more than I can say for a lot of freelance writing jobs out there.

Every freelancer has a bliss. Something that makes them feel successful, happy, content and rewarded. Whether its getting so much work that they have to turn employers away, or getting published in their favourite magazine, Getting that big fat pay check for which they worked diligently or finding out that someone other than yourself reads your brand new blog.

That last one would probably be me if it happened to me. Since it hasn’t yet, my bliss till now is a little different. My freelancing bliss is having my article accepted without a single revision! Yep, you heard me. My web article did not require any changes from the editor. I got a “This article is ready to go” e-mail and boy did it feel good!

What’s your bliss as a freelancer?

In my last post, I boldly claimed that I knew blogging like the back of my hand. Now I can just imagine the looks I’d have gotten from people who treat their blogs like a business and continuously do so much to make it productive that they can point out ten things that I’m not doing right in this blog with just a glance. The good thing is that so can I. Apart from setting up a blog, updating it regularly, using similar templates for my blog and portfolio blog to give it a sense of connection, I haven’t done anything at all. There is no interactiveness here, nothing to tell about the author and absolutely nothing to sell. To begin with I’ll point out five things that I know I’m doing wrong. Five is all my ego can take at the moment!

1. No ‘About Me’ page – There should be one. A picture of the writer is great to associate with the blog but what is the writer like? A page about the writer and/or blog is as important as the blog itself. So why haven’t I one? Because I haven’t quite worked out how to add a page in blogspot when clearly it doesn’t let us put up separate pages like wordpress.

2. No pictures with my posts – This is something I need to work on. Sadly, Flickr is blocked in UAE (which is where I am) so I need to find other sources. I know there are several other sources. I could make an entire blog post out of it. Suffice it to say, I’m lacking in this area because I had this idea to make my own illustrations for posts. The only thing stopping me is that I don’t know how to make illustrations. It’s in my ‘things to learn’ list.

3. I’m not selling my services through this blog – Yep, it’s the biggest mistake a freelance writer could make. Any potential client coming by my blog has no idea what kind of writing I do or what services I offer. Do I write web content? or blogs? Or do I write for print media? What kind of different writings can I do? No one going through this blog would know.

4. No blogroll – I don’t spread link love. Another faux pas, one that is in the works. I subscribe to countless freelancing blogs. And every week they come up with some really great posts and articles about the business of freelancing. Yet I read them, hoard them but don’t share them.

5. No promotion of my blog – I haven’t done any promotion of ‘The Base’. I have possibly one reader which is the witty Sal, and he probably stumbled upon my blog through one of the comments I made on some freelancing blog. Him finding my blog can be chalked off as a fluke because the number of writing blogs I’ve commented on can be counted on the fingers of one hand.

I also don’t use any of the social networking sites to promote my blog except for linkedin. I use Facebook, Digg, Del.icio.us, Stumble Upon and Twitter as well. I’m on a couple of forums too yet the promotion hasn’t happened. And its not like I don’t know how to promote. I do. Had I stayed back home I would have been working for a major local marketing firm. My internships were all in marketing departments and I was lucky to intern in firms that believed in sucking the intern’s brain dry through work. Promotion of my blog is one of the things that will happen in its time.

If I know what I’m not doing right with my blog, then why have I not fixed it yet? Because I’m a firm believer in everything having its own time. It will possibly seem a weird philosophy to most but I like to plan and move things forward in stages. I want to enjoy the process of doing things. I enjoy seeing the progress my changes make. I have given myself six months to develop my blog the way I want it to. In the meantime I will be learning more and more things that will help me. Too much, too soon is not something I want. I don’t want success soon. I don’t want big bucks soon. I want to improve and progress as a writer.

All this does not mean that I don’t have big plans for myself. I most certainly do. My plans are so big that when I accomplish them all, I’ll be super woman! With a different costume of course and a laptop as my super power. Patience and hard work is the name of the game called success.

Have anything to add to my list of ‘things I’m doing right?’ What did you do wrong when you started out?