If you are considering freelance blogging as a way to earn some additional income then you will need a resume or a portfolio showcasing examples of your work. Here are four methods you can use to build your blogging resume.
Your Own Blog
An easy way to showcase your work is to start your own blog using WordPress. The blog does not have to directly relate to the topic of the blogs you are being paid to write. But your personal blog should demonstrate your ability to write high quality blog posts of different types.
Include at least one blog post that of the following types:
- News coverage – Write about a breaking news story or latest development in your niche.
- Opinion – Give your decisive opinion on a topic (stay away from anything potentially sensitive such as religion or politics though).
- Long essay – Write a detailed blog post of at least 2000 words on a complex subject.
- How to tutorial – Explain to a beginner the step by step process to complete a difficult task. Use images, screenshots or video to increase the effectiveness of this type of blog post.
- Product review – Write an informative review of a new product such as a gadget, book or tool.
- Problem solution – Provide a clear explanation and solution for a problem that many people would be facing.
- Interview – Conduct an interview with an interesting person or authority within your niche. As a bonus, publish the interview as video or audio to showcase your abilities in those areas at the same time.
- Lists – Collect a “best of” list for a topic in your field of expertise, explaining why each item belongs in the list.
Free Blogging Services
If you don’t want to deal with the costs of setting up your own blog you can use one of the free blog hosting services such as WordPress.com or Blogger.com instead.
Although free blog services will cost you nothing they can be a problem later on if you want to customize your blog further. I recommend whenever possible using your own self-hosted blog instead.
Article Directories
Free article directories such as ezineArticles are another way to demonstrate your writing skills.
Although some of them only allow articles of a certain length, article directories can showcase your ability to write short, concise articles for search engines and marketing purposes.
Other Free Alternatives
There is any number of other options such as Squidoo and Hubpages for publishing your own articles.
I caution you against investing too much time and effort into these sites. Publishing content on these websites may demonstrate your writing ability but you are giving up all control of your content to someone else. If that website disappears one day you lose all of your hard work.
Image Credit: Flickr
If you found this post useful please leave a comment below. To receive new blog posts automatically subscribe for free to the mailing list or RSS feed.
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
This is great information. I have a journalism intern working with me and we were discussing ways to get more exposure. she has written some of my posts as a guest blogger and is writing articles for me. Having her own blog with a variety of topics is an excellent way to gain exposure and get attention of potential employers.
Hi,
Thanks for all that useful information. I have one question though, most of the well paying gigs that I see ask for a resume, I just began writing 6 months back so what kind of resume do I create?
Thanks!
Laya
Hi Laya, if you’ve been blogging for 6 months already then you could take a look back at your articles and create a swipe file, which is just a list of links to a variety of your best blog posts.
Then if you notice that you haven’t covered all of the blog post types I listed above (eg say you haven’t written any interviews yet) then just spend the next few weeks trying to cover all those bases.
That way you’ve got your list of your best blog posts ready to go when applying for blogging jobs.