MAKE MONEY BY WRITING -7

I.Can You Really Make Six Figures As A Freelance Writer?

Does $100,000 a year sound too ambitious? I hope not. Thousands of freelance writers have broken the 6-figure barrier and with some determination and a clear set of goals, it's very achievable.

Possibly you would laugh and burst out if I told you some freelancers even make $400000 - $500000 per annum , so I would save my face and stick to $100000.

There are different kinds of freelance writing. You could write for magazines, write general articles, write direct marketing advertisements (More on this later), and e-books . The world of freelance writing is huge and many times confuses newcomers.

The purpose of this article is to show you how achieve a six figure target, primarily using the Internet. (Get ready to work, eat and live in your pajamas!)

The September 2007 issue of The Writer published an excellent article: "Secrets of Six-Figure Freelancers", which covered magazine freelance writers who are making six figures, with one making $260,000 per year. This proves that you can make a great income as any kind of freelance writer. The money is there, all you have to do is take it.

* An average writer on websites such as http://Guru.com and http://Elance.com charges between $15 - $35 per article. These articles take about an hour to write. How many can you write each day? Even with 4 hours of work you have crossed the $36000 per annum barrier.

* Web Copywriters charge a minimum of $250 to about $2000 for 3 -4 pages. You need 50, $2000 assignments to break the 6 figure mark. If you can prove yourself, raise your fees to $25000, there still are buyers for that price! Yep it’s true. That’s what the best copywriters charge! It's hard to find a seasoned copywriter who charges less than $8000 per project.

Freelance writing is not a get rich scheme. $100000 per year is a very realistic figure to reach in freelance writing. No, it does not happen quickly, but it does happen. And it does not happen to especially talented or lucky people as sometimes the mind can trick us into believing.

It happens to normal people who make it happen!

As opposed to what many people think, it does not take a genius or greatness to make a six figure income as a freelance writer. All it takes is

* A New mindset: Change in beliefs which hold you back and your negative ideas on making money.It is indeed a fact that many of us have a negative attitude towards money and it actually hinders us. For example many of us have this belief that "life is hard" and "money does not grow on trees". They are perspectives but not the reality !

* Dedication: What are you willing to do to achieve your goal? Earl Nightingale in his famous book The Strangest Secret states it clearly...” The only way to achieve financial abundance is to provide value to people “. Are you willing to provide good service to people?

* Treating it as a business: All the freelance writers making six figure incomes treat their writing as a serious home based business and employ sound principles which are common in all successful businesses. That’s the beginners secret to break the six figure mark. Treat it as a business.

II. How to Write Articles Quickly

One of the best ways to promote your website or blog is through article marketing. Learning to write articles quickly is a skill you have to master to accomplish this.

Many website owners make article writing a lot more complicated than it has to be. When writing for websites, remember first of all that people online are scanning web pages, not reading every word, so there is no need to spend hours making every word perfect.

Your content isn’t going to be totally unique, no matter what you write about. Every topic you can think about has already been written about by someone else. Think about it – every newsworthy event is covered by CNN, NBC, ABC, etc. Every network and every newspaper are all covering the exact same event or topic, just in different words.

The fact is, there are no new topics. Your job is to take what’s already been written and improve on it by injecting your own comments and personality.

One way to do research quickly is by inputting the topic you want to write about into a search engine. Choose three or four matches and read these articles thoroughly, taking notes.

Or, other places for quick research include article directories, forums and yahoo answers. By reading what people are asking in yahoo answers, you will learn what information people are looking for.

Amazon.com provides some great tools for quick research. By choosing a few top-selling books on a given topic, you can research quickly by browsing a book’s table of contents, the back cover of the book and even an excerpt.

Once you have taken sufficient notes, it’s time to put your article together. Write an outline of the important points you want to make in your article. Then write the article without looking back at the other articles. This is nothing more than the same work you did in high school writing book reports. Most of us have written quite a few book reports in our lifetime, and in those days many of us put ourselves through the unnecessary stress of cutting it too close to deadlines. That means we already know how to write and research quickly!

Basically, we need to decide what we’re going to accomplish and when. If we intend to write an article a day, then we have to stay glued to our computer until we complete that task. If we want to get it done in half an hour or less, this is another goal to work toward. Practice will definitely lead to improvement.

Article marketing is one of the best forms of free advertising there is. Learning to write articles quickly is an easily learned skill that will help us get the most out of article marketing.