How Did I Make Money Online Without a Blog (And How You Can Too!)

If you want to know one way to make money online fast without a blog, you cannot ignore this:

Sample articles, blog posts or designs ghostwritten or designed without your credit for your past clients doesn’t work anymore.

So…

What can you offer your clients that can land you the best-paying freelancing gig in the first shot?

Articles, blog posts, designs or coding credited in your name.

It’s a simple strategy that helped me make money online and increased the rates I charge as a freelancer by 180% later on.

Well, in this article, I will show you how.

Those who already know me are aware of the fact that I started my career as a freelancer doing freelance writing and then niche site designing. After a while, I shifted to working as a SEO freelancer while still continuing with the other two services.

As I do freelancing projects, I started this blog to make passive income. Though I haven’t made much from this blog yet, I sustain a full-time living making money online through my regular freelancing projects. Once this blog starts getting off-the ground earning an amount that sustains me, it will be time to focus more on this blog and less and less time on freelancing.

That was a little about me for those who don’t know me yet, but in today’s article, I’ll show you the exact step-by-step process I used to land freelancing gigs when I started out and then how my rates increased by 220%.

The first step is to sign up on various freelancing sites.

When I started, I signed up on freelancer.com, elance.com, guru.com and odesk.com. But I focused only on one site freelancer.com and placed bids for landing projects to make money online.

It’s better to focus on one site and establish yourself there before you move to the other one. That way, you don’t have to divide your attention and you will get projects faster.

In the profile section, introduce yourself with a small paragraph and then state the benefits clients will get by hiring you to do the work for them. Also, indicate your estimated pricing and share some samples of your work in the portfolio section.

It’s best to display works with credit as the chances of you getting hired increases. However, if you don’t have any credited samples yet, do some on your own and put them up.

For example, if you are a writer, write some articles, blog posts or Press Releases and upload them to the Portfolio. On the other hand, if you’re a designer, display your best web designing, graphic designing, or logo works.

Making money online without a blog is tough but not impossible.

The time I started, I didn’t have any blog or any online credit from other sites citing me as the author to prove myself, nor did I design niche blogs then.

I knew my writing was not worth a few pennies and that I’d to start out big. But to my dismay, without an proof, I couldn’t start as big as I imagined.

It took me almost two months to land the first project.

In these sites, you’ll find many charging only $1 to $3 per article but that’s ridiculous.

There’s research, drafting, writing, optimizing and proofreading involved. A lot of time needs to be spent. At least 4 to 5 hours for a high quality, data-driven article or at least one and a half hours for a medium quality article.

You can start out at $1 per article or even at $100 article; it totally depends on how much money you want to make money online and how worthy you consider your time spent.

I had expected to start out at somewhere $35 per 1000 words but since I did not have any credit as an author to show my clients, I started out at only $25 per 1000 words.

You’ve to bid on projects pertaining to your skills regularly and I’ve seen many bidding on these platforms sending the same message across all clients. That’s where you can go wrong.

All projects are different, so though the template of your writing remains the same, you’ve to customize the message of a project to meet its needs.

Using the same templates I shared with you, the first project was from a Macedonian client who was seeking a writer for long-term and wanted to start out with a trial of 2 articles.

All I could show was some articles written offline just for myself. The client asked me to show write a short original sample of 300 words on a topic he provided.

Now, since you’re new to the platform with or without credited samples and no feedback, the client may question and cross-question you.

He or she may even ask you to lower your rates because there’ll be many others with greater feedback yet charging lower than you, which you might not be able to compete with.

If you want to make money online and make full-time earning, you’ve to learn the art of cracking deals with your clients because here you’re the boss, you’re the worker and you’re the financial expert.

After writing the sample article for my new Macedonian client, we talked on few things, and when he seemed quite impressed with my answers, I landed the first gig.

You may have heard this discussed on many forums that clients on freelancing sites cheat or scam freelancers. This might be true to some extent when you don’t request them for a milestone and accept and start working on a project immediately before an money is funded.

So, make sure that that they put full amount escrow before you start working on the project. This way, you’re safe that your payment will be released after work is fully completed.

Continuing with this will land you regular projects as a writer, designer or coder. But what if you want a price hike?

Read on…

How to Increase your Freelancing Charges and Make More Money Online?

One of the surprising things I learned as a freelancer was proving the words you say to a client.

This is the most essential thing if you want to make money online.

Since most of the work is done online and you don’t get to meet the client individually, so you’ve to bag the deal virtually with proof of everything.

That’s when you can demand more and they’d be willing to give more.

That’s when I realized that I needed a blog terribly.

With a blog or few blogs, you can prove yourself as a credit writer, a designer or a coder. You’ve to make the blog specific to your skills if you want to use the blog as a medium for clients to hire you.

Say if you’re a designer, you can make a beautiful blog or a website displaying your best graphic designs. As a coder, you can implement some awesome functionality in your website your blog.

If you’re a writer, you can write some great articles or even publish some guest posts credited to your name on other blogs.

When I started my blog, I could display the articles on my blog for getting writing projects and the blog itself for creating custom-designed blogs for other clients.

The result of starting a blog? I got projects from clients willing to pay $70 per article of 1000 words for my expertise niche.

The rates for designing also increased. But since I had to create customized rates depending on the features I had to put on a blog, the rates varied. So, I cannot share that.

That’s a 180% rise in writing rates.

Before the price hike, I would get almost 12 to 15 projects in a month with earnings of around only $1000 to $1200 per month from writing and niche site designing projects.

But after the hike, I get only 5 to 7 projects per month but the earnings have increased vary around $1600 to $2000 per month.

So…

Though the projects have become less, my earnings have increased.

The pressure of working constantly for clients has decreased and the quality I can provide now has increased because I can allot more time per project.

More time for my blog too. 🙂

So, what do you learn?

It is possible to MAKE MONEY ONLINE WITHOUT A BLOG.

But you CAN MAKE MORE MONEY ONLINE WITH A BLOG + You can make passive income from the blog.

When you earn enough from the blog, you can dedicate your full-time to the blog and make it automated like a REAL BUSINESS that makes you money while you’re on the go.

Freelancing is an option for making quick bucks, as long as you work and get projects, you’ll have money in your hands.

But what after that?

When you don’t have projects?

When you’re sick enough or old enough or stressed up for a week or a month to work?

That’s when your blog will come to your rescue and act like a real business.

Over to you

Are there any friends who would like to share their experiences? How did you make money online without a blog? How many months did it take you to earn? Share your experiences in the comments below and spread the word by sharing it on Twitter or Facebook or Google+.