If you want to become a freelance writer, use these tips from a content marketing professional to approach your business the right way.

When I started freelancing, I didn’t know anything about how the freelance world worked. But that didn’t stop me from building a successful freelance business and doubling my corporate salary within a year. The thing is, there are several very important tools that I use that every freelancer should know about. They help me run my business daily and I find them invaluable. You can certainly freelance without using these tools (but I don’t recommend it.) So let’s get right into it, shall we?

How I started freelancing and quit my 9 to 5 in just a few months! This is just my story, but I have heard thousands of others similar to mine. Stories full of people who aren’t fulfilled in their corporate jobs. Or maybe they are pregnant and facing an unsuitable amount of time at home with their baby (and lets face it, if you are in the US, any amount of time less than 6 months is not enough.) And, lots of stories of people who just want more work-life balance and don’t want to be stuck in the 9 to 5 grind their entire life. My story is similar, except I wanted all of these things.

If you’ve been thinking about becoming a freelancer, but are worried about how you will find clients, I hear you! I had those thoughts too. I was SO worried I wasn’t going to be very good at networking, or that I would not know where to look. I’d tried websites like Fivrr and Upwork, but the rates that people wanted to pay for work seemed ridiculously low. I get that you can often charge more once you get established (that’s true in any job) but I didn’t want to basically work for $1 an hour. Yeah, it was that bad. But it doesn’t have to be that way!