“The world of work is changing in the most beautiful way. We can work with people from all over the world.” -Gina Horkey
Gina Horkey is the founder of the hugely successfully HorkeyHandBook, a platform that helps freelance writers and virtual assistants succeed in the freelance world.
But her success certainly didn’t happen overnight; it required hard work and dedication. Prior to freelance writing, she worked in the financial services industry for 10 years, despite knowing two years in that it wasn’t something she wanted to do for the rest of her life.
The problem, though, was that she feared that if she decided to transition into writing it would be the wrong choice; that she would fail. But the fear of failure disappeared in April 2014 when she finally decided to make the move.
The transition though was by no means easy: she held down her current job and was also juggling motherhood.
Nevertheless, she took action and persevered: six months later she was earning $4,000/month and two months after that she quit her job.
She did all this without having some fancy writing degree.
Now, there’s no reason why you can’t become a freelance writer and achieve similar success in your own career. You only have to follow the right people, right strategies and take action.
In this interview, Gina explains how she broke into freelance writing and also shares some invaluable tips to help you start your writing career. We cover a lot of territory:
- Why you should focus on your first client and how to find that client. Yes, cold pitching is mentioned as well as another simple – yet often overlooked – technique for finding clients.
- What you should do today if you want to start writing for a living. No, having the perfect website is not important. Rather, you should spend more time prospecting for clients.
- How to deal with the niching dilemma. She suggests you select three niches to start with if you’re struggling to pin down a niche. She also provides a valuable resource to help you choose: her free copy of 200+ Freelance Writing Niches.
- How to scale your business
- Writers who have inspired her: Tom Ewer from Paid to Blog and Carrie Smith from Careful Cents.
- How to keep your writing skills sharp.
There’s also much, much more. So why not sit back, relax, and hit play?
Also if you have any questions, feel free to leave them in the comments section and if you want to connect with Gina be sure to follow her on Twitter.
