Are you a freelance writer who’s struggling to advance your writing career?

The internet is full of the best strategies to help you become a successful freelance writer. Whilst many of these strategies are solid, they often fail to address an important aspect – your mindset.

Mindset is “the established set of attitudes held by someone”. Attitudes, in turn, refer to a settled way of thinking about something. Because everyone is different, it’s normal that people will have different mindsets.

But, there are certain mindsets you need to adopt if you want to become a successful freelance writer. These are mindsets I continue to cultivate on a daily basis with my own writing career.

These are the mindsets I see successful freelance writers like Bamidele Onibalusi adopt in his own writing career. For example, he recently shared an email with his subscribers emphasising the importance of investing in yourself, something which many freelance writers aren’t willing to do.  Quite frankly this is a mindset change you need to make!

If you’d rather spend your money on clothes, a beer, or some other luxury you don’t need – instead of advancing your writing career – then you need to ask yourself, “How badly do I want this?”

Okay, enough ranting, here are the 6 mindsets to propel your writing career.

1. The “I’m Unique, Talented and Deserve to be Paid a ‘Pretty Penny’” Mindset

Far too many freelance writers write articles for $5 an article. Many do it because they think there’s no other option. Unfortunately, that’s why there are still people who post ads like this on Upwork:

A budget of $50 for 20 articles, at a length of 300-700 words?!

That’s a slap in the face don’t you think? But, as long as there’s demand, you’ll have people posting crap like this.

But, I’m here to tell you there is another way.

As a talented writer, you deserve to be paid a “pretty penny” for your words. More importantly, YOU need to adopt this mindset and look for clients who will pay you what you’re worth. Don’t stop until you find them. Otherwise, you’ll continue writing for content mills, earning peanuts in the process.

The good thing is: there are many who see the value in content marketing and high-quality writing. You simply have to find these people.

Finding these people is exactly what I did when I launched my freelance writing career.

When I started writing I was writing $15 articles. But then I stumbled across a challenge by Bamidele Onibalusi and realised, “Hey, hang on, there’s another way.”

I used a cold pitching strategy, sent 80 pitches and landed two clients. One client paid me $50 an article for 12 articles a month, and another paid me $300 per article. So, now I don’t settle for anything less than $50 per post.

Know your skill set, value yourself, and charge for it! As simple as that.

Those who don’t see the value, well, move on to someone who will. You need to think like this.

2. The “Business Owner” Mindset

Freelance writing is an appealing career choice. You’re your own boss, can set your own hours, and live and work from anywhere. But many freelance writers only see themselves as exactly that: freelance writers.

This is a recipe for failure because when you decide to become a freelance writer you’re also unconsciously making the decision to become a business owner, whether you like it or not.

As a business owner, you need to send invoices, chase-up on payments, negotiate, deal with difficult clients, manage your clients, market yourself, find new clients and a host of other things that aren’t related to writing.

Sure, you can ignore all these other “things”, but I can’t say I’d be too confident in you making a success out of freelance writing if you’ve adopted the mindset of only writing. You need to make that shift. For some this shift happens organically, for others, it takes them a while. Don’t be like the others.

3. The “What Value Can I Provide” Mindset

You’re the writer and when you’re pitching clients it’s all about you and your writing ability. Right? Wrong! It’s about the value you can provide them. You need to move away from the “Hire me” mindset to, “What problems is this business facing, and how can I help them.”

For example, if you’ve found a website to pitch for and you see they have an outdated blog send them a pitch that mentions this. Ask them if they need someone to keep their content up to date. A pitch like this goes beyond the generic emails they no doubt get from bloggers and writers.

So, provide value and you won’t even have to ask them to hire you. They’ll ask you.

4. The “I will Invest in Myself” Mindset

Many people (yet alone writers) are quick to hesitate over purchasing a resource to advance their career, but don’t think twice about buying a beer or new clothes they don’t need.

You need to change your attitude toward buying resources that will benefit you. Instead of seeing it as an expense, you need to see it as an investment in yourself and your writing career.

You can always redeem that $500 you invested in that “Writing Sales Letters Course” with one client who pays you double that for a sales letter. And yes, writing sales copy is that lucrative!

5. The “I will Use Criticism to Improve My Writing” Mindset

You’ve put a ton of effort into an article for a client. You’ve written, rewritten, edited, and even sent to a friend. You confidently send the article to the client, only to receive an email saying it’s not what they wanted. They may even point out that your punctuation isn’t up to scratch and that the article needs more work.

How do you react in this situation? Do you take it as a personal attack or as a means to improve your writing?

I’ll tell you a story. One of my current clients – who is one of my most lucrative – sent me an email like this after I submitted my first article. She told me (among other things), “Your punctuation is atrocious. I told you I want Oxford Comma. Look it up if you don’t know what I mean.”

Initially, it felt like I was being attacked. But instead, I calmed down and responded with the following: “Kindly send it back to me so you don’t have to make those corrections.” Needless to say, since then I have been more ruthless with my editing.

Since then I have written many more articles for them. In the last week alone, I’ve written four, each of which pays handsomely. The outcome could have been very different, but I chose to see it as an opportunity to improve. I ate humble pie and moved forward.

6. The “I’ll Take Action” Mindset.

For me, this is the most valuable mindset to adopt as a freelancer. Richard, Ciaran, Yassir and myself are here today because we took action. In the recent “Earn Your First $1000 as a Freelance Writer Challenge”, Bamidele showed step-by-step how to make your first $1000 as a freelance writer. Many people didn’t achieve this goal because they simply didn’t take action.

You see, many people make excuses, they think to themselves, “I’m not ready.” They play things over in their minds for too long, letting fear and self-doubt enter. And so, they procrastinate. They don’t do anything.

The other day I saw this over thinking element with a friend of mine. I’ve been urging him to pitch an article for the Huffington Post. I provided him with a template. A few days later he called me and asked me if I could help. When I arrived at his house, he was creating the pitch.

But, what caught my attention was that he was thinking about how he was going to write the article once accepted. I told him to send the pitch and that if accepted he would figure it out.

This is the strategy I have adopted. It’s worked for me so far. If I have an idea to pitch to a publication, I pitch, I don’t worry about how I’m going to put it together. I only worry about that after the fact. Trust yourself to figure it out as you go along.

You’ll surprise yourself of what you’re capable of when you adopt the “I’ll take action”, mindset. After all, action displaces fear.

P.S. If you’re thinking about taking action and pitching your services to a publication or company, but aren’t sure how to craft a pitch, then grab our Pitching Template Cheat Sheet.