Expert: Amanda J Evans - 1/24/2010

Question
Hello Amanda,
First, I'd like to thank you for sharing your expertise with us!  I'm in the midst of a career change, and I keep coming back to writing as an option to explore.  I'm quite interested in the freelance writing world, and have been scouring writers' blogs for some insight into the writing life.  I'm also exploring all the different kinds of writing opportunities there are on the Internet, and I'm floored!  It's exciting to see so many options.  One question I have right now is about SEO article writing.  Can you give your own brief explanation of it and perhaps some resources for learning more about it?  Also, I'd read on a couple blogs that a freelance writer should be prepared to work 10-12 hours per day in order to make a living.  I understand that includes all the tasks required outside of writing, and I'm aware of the varying pay scale depending upon web site and type of writing, but do you find this is typical?
Thanks so much for your time!

Answer
Hi Tina,

Many thanks for your questions.  

SEO article writing is search engine optimized writing which is actually very popular and important at the moment.  Clients look for these articles so that they can rank higher in the search engines and these articles are all about keywords.  Clients will usually give you are list of keywords that they want articles written on.  Keyword placement is important but you also have to keep in mind that these articles are going to be read by real people too so they need to make sense and provide value.  There are specific keyword placements and I know I created a 4 part series on SEO on my blog www.ghostwritinguncovered.com/blog if you want to check this out.  A Google search for how to write SEO articles should bring you up more information.

Your second question about 10 to 12 hours work per day to make a living.  This is not something that I do and I have been freelancing since 2003.  I usually spend between 2 and 3 hours per day on client work and then maybe another hour on promotion, job hunting and networking.  I defintely wouldn't work 10 to 12 hours and unless you are accepting extremely low paying jobs I don't see this being necessary.  I think the typical beginning freelance writer would probably spend about 5 hours or more but if you have a day job already and you are just getting into freelance writing then you will probably spend 2 or 3 hours in the evening building up your career.  I definitely wouldn't see 10 or 12 hour being typical of any freelance writer, if this was the case people wouldn't do it.

Hope this answers your questions but please feel free to contact me if you have any other requests.

Kind regards,

Amanda