Supplementing Your Freelance Career With Blogging and Expert Content

Photo by From a second story.

What’s the biggest benefit to you in being a freelancer? For me, it’s the beauty of having the freedom to choose what I work on, especially when maintaining multiple skills. That means that you can mix entrepreneurial endeavors with your freelancing. In fact, if you have expert skills in something, creating expert content between projects builds up a long-term stream of revenue.

For example, take a look at a Peter D. Marshall’s website, Film Directing Tips. Whether or not you have any interest in being a filmmaker, it’s worth a visit to his site to see how he’s supplementing his income. I have no idea whether he’s a freelancer or not, but he is a veteran filmmaker of over three decades. He’s taken his knowledge and created expert content and made it available for sale via his website. The website’s blog is a good example of blogging as a vehicle. The blog’s posts exist solely to promote his knowledge and his paid content, which includes audio files, video, PDF reports – all geared to the aspiring director.

This is an model you can adapt for almost any expert knowledge or skill that you have. If your freelance career is based around these skills, you’re likely to be something of an expert in them.

How Can I Apply This Approach?

Each post at Film Directing Tips includes a little promo paragraph for Peter Marshall’s info products, so you can’t help but notice the marketing blurbs.

To help ensure that the right type of reader comes along–the type who will be most inclined to want to buy the info products–each post is geared towards such readers. It’s proof of his knowledge of the topic (film and TV directing), and builds trust in readers. It also teases them into wanting to learn more by paying for additional materials. What’s more, if someone wants his services, he’s proven his knowledge in the blog.

If you have a skill that you can translate into expert content and teaching materials, blogging could become a vehicle for earning a side income with that skill beyond freelancing

You will need to devote the necessary time to creating the “expert content” and the blog posts that help promote that paid content. Consider using the time between paid projects to map out your expert content plan. Having this blueprint makes it easier to create content at odd moments while maintaining a cohesion of topics.

Building a Content Plan

In the diagram below, content types can fall into one or more cost categories. The content in different cost categories might be related, but it will never be the same. For example, you might excerpt paid content for free on your blog. You want readers of the blog to progress to either or both of the paid content options (one-time cost, or monthly subscription). So the content in each cost category has to offer something not available in the blog.

As for the content, start small and build big, after you have an overall project plan. Here is a suggested process:

1. Pick your topic. This is the skill or knowledge that you have, which you feel you can produce expert content for.
2. Build a mind map (or just a list) around what you know about that topic.
3. Sketch out a project plan for both free and paid content.
   1. What will you sell? Decide what expert content/info product you would like to sell:
      1. Podcasts on DVD, similar to what Podcast Academy does.
      2. E-books, indepth newsletters, and special reports.
      3. Screencasts or other video content.
      4. Access to “subscriber” content.
      5. In-person or virtual services. (I.e., consulting, design, coding, training – applied on-site or via the Internet.)
      6. Workshops. (Include discount coupons with other paid products.)
      7. Subscription forum access, with access to other experts.
   2. Content schedule. Estimate how much time each info product will take to create.
   3. Task dependencies. Determine if any one product should be created before another. I.e., if there are any dependencies. Then decide in what order you will create each info product.
   4. Define a blogging schedule. Decide whether you want to create all the info products before you start blogging, or to take a more organic approach: create one product, then blog to promote it until the next product is complete. This reduces the chance of creating outdated content.
   5. What’s free? Decide on what content you’ll give away free (via blog posts), in order to promote your expert content:
      1. Newsletters.
      2. Blog posts, resource/tip lists, linkbait, interview transcripts, etc.
      3. Interview excerpts, video excerpts.
      4. Podcasts. (See Podcast Academy again. Podcasts there are free for the listening, if you browse through the archives. Or you can pay a small fee and get the collection on a convenient DVD.)
      5. Free forums.
   6. Content hosting issues. Decide on where paid content will be hosted – on your site or through some service. (Subscription management software often has to be run a third party’s web server.)
   7. Subscription service. Set up a subscription service for distributing free and paid newsletters.
   8. Write (or hire out for) a short landing page to persuade visitors to become newsletter subscribers.
   9. Write a long landing page for the sales pitch for your info products.
   10. Site promotion. Don’t neglect an offline approach as well, especially through tangible items such as t-shirts, business cards, bookmarks and flyers.
   11. Payment integration plan. Determine when the payment system has to be integrated, and by whom, and how you’ll handle the occasional dissatisfied customer. (I.e., money-back guarantees, partial discounts, etc.)
4. Start implementing the plan and promoting your site.

If you’re just starting out with blogging, there’s lots of content all over the place about blogging and promoting, including here at FreelanceSwitch. Just do a search. For some tips on podcasting or vodcasting, read my beginner’s podcasting guide at Performancing.

But I’m Not An Expert At Anything

Are you sure about that? Is there anything you’ve spent more than, say, three or four years learning? You might be surprised about what you know. This is when I find mind mapping to be immensely useful, to catalog what I already know about a subject and what I have yet to learn. A mindmap gives you an excellent bird’s eye view of your knowledge, and can help you progress into a project plan.

Another approach is to team up with someone that has complementary knowledge or skills and offer a package of paid content covering a wider scope. This is often harder to manage though, as what do you do if your new business partner slacks off but still takes 50% of profits? What would you expect your partner to do if you slack off?

Summary

Wait, there’s more. Once you build up your “expert” site and achieve some level of success, you can always reinvest part of the income into a tangentially-related free site that is monetized with ads. You could even hire bloggers, since you have a budget. Leverage the traffic and “trust rank” of the first site to build the second site. The intended readers for both sites may not be exactly the same, but you have to start somewhere, and current happy readers might pass the word for you.

If you use or are planning to use this approach, or even if you think is not a viable plan, feel free to comment. Keep in mind that even if you only sell a few copies, just having created the content makes the topics more concrete in your mind. It adds to your confidence level, which in turn helps land contracts.