Advice for a freelance article writer: how to write faster

The beginning stages of freelance writing are exciting and new. You’ve likely made your first batch of cash and you’ve decided that freelancing is the career for you. But you’d be mistaken if you became too complacent at this stage. There’s a lot of competition out there and it’s important to stay on top of your game.

One way of doing this is by learning to write faster. The faster you write, the more work you can fit in, and the more money you will make per hour.

Time yourself

It’s beneficial to know exactly how much work you can fit into an hour. Time yourself to see how long it takes you to write a 500 word article—which is the standard length for blogs and web articles. If it takes you half an hour, you‘ll know that you can successfully fit two articles into a one hour period.

You should try and beat this time. Keep practicing and improving yourself so that an article takes you 25 minutes instead of 30. To follow is one strategy that can help you do this.

The 3 stages of writing

When you write a standard 500 word article, there are 3 steps that you need to keep in mind:

• The outline: This process involves the basic conceptualization of your theme and the subheadings throughout the article.
• The content: This is the filling in of all the content until you reach your desired word count.
• The proofreading: Spellchecking the article is important if you want to get repeat business.

Now, if you’re received a job of 10 articles, try to perform each stage on all the articles systematically. In other words, plan all of them in one go, fill in the content for each one, and then proofread them all at the end. This technique has proven to be a huge time saver for freelance writers.

Repeat business – the key to fast writing

If you want to ensure faster writing, repeat business is the best way. Impress your clients so that they continue to ask you to write for them. Chances are the niche will be the same each time, so you will have to do little to no research. Less research means much more writing time. You will soon be zooming through your articles like never before, because you already understand the niche—as well as your client’s expectations.