You Don’t Have to Have a Blog About Writing

I’ve seen the question asked plenty of times and a recent post at Freelance Writing Gigs reminded me to post my thoughts on the issue. Many new freelance writers are under the impression that they’re supposed to have a blog about writing. Once you get into the freelance writing world, it seems like every freelance writer has a writing blog. You can easily make the assumption that a writing blog is required to be successful. Let me tell you, it’s not.

I have a freelance writing blog because I want to share by freelance writing knowledge with other people - mentoring has always been in my nature. I can’t say that I’m the most successful freelance writer, but I know business. If you follow my blog, you’ll see that many of my blog posts are about the business side of freelance writing more than the writing itself.

Looking back, when I started Writer’s Brew, I didn’t have much experience freelance writing and that made it a little hard to come up with posts. I advise any writer thinking about starting a blog to come up with a list of 30-50 tentative posts. Why so many? To make sure you have a feel for the niche and have a store of topics to write about.

While it’s a good idea to have a blog to showcase your writing ability, your blog doesn’t have to be about writing. In fact, a blog might be a better marketing tool if it’s related to your niche rather than strictly about writing.