If you want to win writing clients, you need a client-winning freelance writer website.
Now, while you can get started with your freelance writing business without a website, you will need to get one eventually.
And besides, it is 2020. Websites are no longer a “luxury”. You need one for your business.
I personally recommend a self-hosted WordPress website to get the job done.
I use Siteground to host all of my websites. You can get started with them for $6.99 per month, which will be billed annually.
Regardless of where you choose to host your WordPress website however, making sure you have the following 5 elements on your website will increase your chances of landing high-paying clients.
For all my video lovers, you can watch me explain these points in the video below.
5 questions your client-winning freelance writer website MUST answer
If you are looking for a freelance writer website template to follow when you create your writer website, if you do nothing else, you answer these 5 questions.
Who do you serve?
Which industry or niche do you serve?
My former podcast guest, Taylor Kathleen declares she is a writer for the personal finance space as soon as you get to her website.
The industry or niche(s) you write for and who you serve needs to be clear so an interested client knows immediately whether they should keep reading or bounce.
What do you serve them with?
Once the potential client is sure that you could be the right writer for them based on the industry or niche you write for, it is time to tell them what kind of content you can help them with.
There are several types of content you could serve freelance writing clients with.
You may be a writer who focuses on white papers.
Or perhaps your strong suit is writing sales pages for clients.
You may also be like me a write a mix of blog posts, email newsletters and white papers.
Regardless of what that looks like for you, you will need to state on your website what kinds of content you can help potential clients with.
This is what that looks like on my website.
Why should we trust you?
You may have noticed that the first two elements focus heavily on the client and how you can help them.
Now, it’s time to talk about yourself.
Yes – you have told us you write in the healthcare space and that you can help us with blog content but why should anyone trust you?
This is where you can add credibility factors that explain why a potential client should work with you instead of another writer.
Here are a few ideas to consider as you write about why you’re credible.
- Your educational background. Do you have a unique educational background that makes you well-suited for the industry?
- Your work experience. Have you worked in said industry? How many years have you worked in that niche/industry? I have over 10 years experience working in the health and biomedical research space. This is a credibility factor I can use in my industry.
- How many years have you been writing
- What other publications have you written for? If you have written for well known publication in the niche/industry, talk about this. Even if these are now well-known publications, it is okay to state those as well.
- Have you written a book that become a bestseller on Amazon? Have you published articles in a journal, magazine or even a high school paper? Mention that.
- Have you won awards for writing?
- When I was a newbie freelance writer, I regularly stated that I had started a blog from scratch and built it to over 10,000 monthly page views.
- Have you published a post on LinkedIn that ending up trending?
I find that this part tends to trip new freelance writers up.
It doesn’t have to be the case.
Look into your background. What can you mention that puts your credibility on display?
Use that.
Show us your samples.
Before you hand over money to someone else for a service, you want proof of that service, right?
You would not give your money to someone who says he/she is a mechanic and yet there is no evidence that they fix cars.
The same goes for your business.
Your potential client wants to see samples of your work.
You should make it easy for a potential client to find these on your website.
Any content pieces you have created for your own blog, LinkedIn, Medium, guest posts on other blogs can all serve as samples on your writer website.
Usually, at this point, I get a question from people who have been ghostwriters in the past and may not have samples of their own.
In this instance, I recommend that you create similar (not identical) content to the ones you have ghostwritten before and then post them on your blog or on LinkedIn. You can then add those links to your samples or portfolio.
If you don’t have any content online yet, you can write samples of the content you’d like to get paid for, in Microsoft Word or Google Docs, save it as a PDF and then upload it to Dropbox or Google Drive.
Both of these services give you share links.
You can include those links when you display your samples.
Here’s a snapshot from my samples/portfolio page on my health writer website.
How do we get in touch with you?
Now the client has read through how you can help them, your amazing experience and browsed some of your samples and is excited to start working with you.
How do they get in touch with you so you can work together?
Don’t make people guess and/or waste 5 minutes looking for a way to get in touch with you so they can work with you.
Include an email address, phone number or give them a (VERY) short form to fill.
If you make it too hard for a potential client to find your contact information, they may leave and never come back.
Don’t let this happen!
Writer website or writer page?
This is a great question and the truth is I don’t have a preference for either.
A writer page is a simple presentation where you include all of the elements I’ve discussed here on a single page of your website.
Holly Porter-Johnson – who mentored me during my early freelance writing days – has a writer page on her blog.
She does an incredible job of incorporating all the 5 elements I just discussed on a single page.
A writer website has multiple pages (3-5 pages usually) that incorporates all of these 5 elements as well.
I have both a writer website and a writer page.
Most of the time, when I pitch potential clients, I send them my writer page. I find it simpler and the less work I make my potential client do, the better.
You may have noticed that I did not talk about having a fancy theme or design for your freelance writer website.
Your website doesn’t need to have fancy bells and whistles.
It just needs to do the job of convincing your potential client that you’re someone they want to work with.
Incorporating these 5 elements on your writer website is all you need to win clients.
