Sell Your Writing Online NOW Blog

Although the outsourcing sites are great for finding freelance writing jobs fast, many freelance writers avoid them. If you’re spooked by having to compete and make bids the information in this article will help you.

Here are some tips to turn you into a bidding dynamo.

1. Give a Detailed Proposal After You’ve Communicated With the Buyer

Avoid making your bid proposals too detailed until you’ve communicated with the buyer. Some “buyers” are just lookers, rather than serious buyers of your writing. Write a short proposal, asking the buyer to contact you for the details.

Once you’ve made sure that the buyer is legitimate, give a more detailed proposal, but not too detailed. It’s an unfortunate fact of life that some unscrupulous buyers will take the scope you’ve written, and hand it to a cheaper writer.

2. Quote a Project Rate

Rather than quoting an hourly rate, give a range. For example, if you’re bidding on an ebook, you might quote a range of $1500-$3000, depending on how much research is required. The lower end of the range would apply if the buyer supplies your research material.

(If you’re a fast writer, you can always make more money when you bid with the project fee rather than an hourly rate.)

If you are totally new to bidding on projects, however, you must bid via hourly rates until you get a sense of how quickly you can write certain types of projects. For example if you’re an experienced writer, you should be able to write at least two Web articles within an hour. When you’re new, you’ll take longer, and this is fine. Practice makes you faster; your speed will increase with time.

3. Ask Questions

Asking questions will help you to tailor your bid. I once had the unfortunate experience of quoting a fee for a writing job without reading the project brief with complete attention. I ended up doing three times the amount of work I’d expected to do; my income was shot for that week.

Never feel you’re being silly when you ask for a clarification. Your buyer wants you to do a good job, and you can only do a good job when you have complete information.

4. Once a Client Has Accepted Your Bid, It’s Time to Negotiate

Unfortunately some clients have a habit of loading extras onto you once they’ve accepted your bid, so make sure that you charge for any extras. If however you feel that client is being unreasonable and is trying to take advantage of you, you can always politely back out of the project.

5. Ignore the Other Bidders

It’s fatal to assume that just because everybody else bids low for project, that the lowest bidder will win. This is rarely the case. Always bid a project rate that you are comfortable with, you’ll be surprised at how many bids you win. Genuine buyers want good, reliable writers because they know that the “cheap” writers will cost them money because they either won’t complete the project, or the work will be sub-standard.

If you’re looking for writing jobs, the outsourcing sites are your happy hunting ground. Turn yourself into a bidding dynamo, and you’ll land all the writing jobs you can handle.

Want more help on acing the outsourcing sites? In Sell Your Writing Online NOW (SYWON), we cover winning bids for writing jobs in the first couple of weeks of the training — discover how YOU can become a bidding dynamo, and win more bids at great rates.

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