If freelancers could choose to have only one tool for their business, without a doubt it would be a blog. There are countless benefits freelancers can gain by owning a blog. It can serve as a portfolio, a way how to attract more clients and blogs can even generate some extra income. It doesn’t matter if you are creating your blog for branding or exposing your business because having a blog is always profitable and not only in the monetary sense.

This article focuses on 15 reasons why freelancers, and especially web designer freelancers, have blogs.

1. You Can Promote Yourself

In every field it is important to stand out from the crowd. Owning a blog gives you a significant advantage over other freelancers who don’t have blogs of their own. In your blog you are in charge of everything. The web design, the content, the structure of your website; it all represents you and shows your abilities in these fields. It is a great responsibility but it also speaks for you, lets your work be seen in the light you have set up for yourself. You can put the address of your blog on other promotional materials and if people are interested in what you have to offer, they will visit your site and see all you have shared about what you have to offer. A website address in your e-mail signature or business cards will help you to appear more professional for low to no cost at all.

2. A Blog Is a Way People Can Find You

Freelancers wouldn’t be freelancers if they had no clients. They would simply be broke and needing to search for a job. Having a blog attracts people that are interested in your work and improves the potential that of these people, some of them might become your clients. There are several ways your blog can attract people. One is through search engine results. If you have built your blog to generate traffic by keyword-rich content, you will see that more and more people will visit your website. Other ways a blog can help to attract people is by communication networks with other freelance bloggers, sharing links with and creating teams with people that work in a bit different field. A freelance writer might be interested in co-operating with a freelance web designer, for example. Word-of-mouth is another huge benefit which can be enhanced by having a blog.Often clients that liked your services will recommend your blog to their friends. And the best part is that this is on global scale. You will eventually meet people from all over the world.

3. Through a Blog You Can Offer Your Own Products

Freelancing in its core is still working. It is always nice to have work, but you are getting paid either by the time you spend working or by how much you do. Once a job is done, it’s done; t doesn’t give you any extras or benefits. Owning a blog not only promotes your skills, but it can also allow you to offer your own products. You can create your own guides for newbies in your field of work and use your blog to promote and sell them. Maybe you can write an interesting e-book about your life as a freelancer. Your website might also have premium content for a small membership fee. There are countless additional ready-made virtual products you can create and offer via your blog. This will help you to earn extra income. Since the blog will be working even when you are not directly managing it, you will be able to earn some money while you are sleeping.

4. Having a Blog Increases Your Credibility

If you and another freelancer are applying for a same job, having a blog will show that you have had some amount of experience in the field, as well as provide examples of your work and maybe feedback from your past clients. Your competitor without a blog might have similar amount of experience and similar skills to yours, but if he doesn’t have a blog to showcase his work and experience it will be much harder for the potential client to fully understand it and for the other freelancer to easily prove. Owning a blog increases your credibility when you claim you have dedication and love for your work. Blogs will help you gain the upper hand if you are competing with people that have similar qualifications and education because you will have something to show immediately.

5. Blogs Are Easy To Maintain And They Work Long Time

Creating and maintaining a blog is easy. All you have to do is register a domain name, create a WordPress or similar website, and update the content once in a while. It is a common misconception that it is hard to make and create a blog. Blogging is a long term investment. Simply owning a blog often is not enough. Content has to be updated at least once in a while. It might take a long time before you start seeing results. Search engines usually prefer content that has aged a bit but is regularly updated. However, this doesn’t mean that you have to be working on your blog all the time. Sometimes a couple of posts a month are enough. This could mean taking a couple of hours every month (which is not much at all considering the time you spend working for others). And you will definitely reap benefits over time by attracting more clients.

6. You Can Build Your Own Profile

Having your own profile lets you stand out when competing for a job. And since this is your own blog, you can create your own portfolio according to your wishes. You can create a gallery of your best images, writings and video or audio files and skip less successful ones. All work samples displayed on your blog will be completely your choice; you can categorize them as you choose. Your clients will be able to browse through your galleries and other compilations of files as well as will be able to see your work ‘in action’ if you provide external links with samples of your works. All posts showing your skills will establish your authority as a freelancer.

7. Having Your Own Blog Gives You Sense of Confidence

This point is often overlooked when creating a blog, but it is a very important one. Working on a freelance regime can sometimes be discouraging because once one project is completed you don’t have a job anymore. This situation can make you feel anxious and sad. By having a blog, you can feel like a service provider instead of a person without work looking for any kind of contract just to earn a bit money. Every time a client offers you a contract through your Hire Me page, you will feel confident in your abilities and your self worth will get a boost. Such confidence can also attract more clients because they are interested in co-operating with confident people. All in all you will feel better too.

8. Your Blog Will Show You As An Expert In Your Field

It is pretty easy to show your expertise in your field if you own a blog. Usually just having it is enough to prove your interest, qualifications and skills. Including tutorials and guides in your blog next to samples of your work will show that you are a professional in your area of expertise. Only skillful masters have knowledge they can share with others. Such presentation will make it much easier to prove your experience and abilities to your clients. People will pay you more if they trust you as an expert versus a random person that has only claims one of expertise. Displaying your know-how will attract people that are willing to pay more for quality. And you will have a blog to prove it.

9. Your Blog Is Focused On You

Every little thing in your blog is not only created and carefully chosen by you, it also represents you and was crafted according to your interests. There are hundreds of websites offering different services and thousands of freelancers competing to get a job. Maybe there are some that can get work done faster, better or cheaper and competing with them would waste your time. This is why having a blog to attract clients is so great. The ones that are contacting you are interested in you, in your work and you can negotiate terms of contract for profit with no competition for the job. This way, having a blog not only gives you advantage over other freelancers if you choose to compete; it can also eliminate competition almost completely since clients are the ones coming to you, not the other way around.

10. There Are No Third Parties Involved

Websites that provide freelancing services not only give you competition where you have to compete with people who very often can work much cheaper than you, they also have their own interests. The reason why people create websites that offer freelancing services is to gain profit, usually in form of different commissions. Very often these commissions are based on a percentage of the amount you earn so that the more you earn the more you lose for the commission fees. If you are dealing with large sums of money you can see that, let’s say 10% is actually a big sum for almost no work. Attracting clients through blogging doesn’t involve any third parties with ridiculously high fees. You always get exactly the amount you have earned. Of course, your clients are also interested in profit, but you can always negotiate the price without any third party wanting to benefit from your deal.

11. You Can Meet Other Freelance Bloggers

If you create a great blog it is very likely that sooner or later you will find other bloggers in your niche willing to co-operate with you. A common practice is to exchange links with other bloggers. This way you can create more links to your site which will make it more popular. You can also offer to post on guest’s blogs and let them guest post for yours. This way your name will appear on different websites, building your credibility as an expert in your field. If you are a web designer blogger, you might also be interested in creating relationships with bloggers that are working in different fields. For instance, if you are a web designer, it might come in handy to befriend a writer blogger or a programmer so if your client needs, for example, not only a web design but also web content, you could suggest your writer friend and he/she could recommend you to his or her clients in return.

12. Blogs Can Be Monetized

You can create a blog as an alternative source of income. There are several ways that you can profit materially by owning a blog. First, you attract clients which need and allow you to participate in their projects. Second, you can create and sell your products on your website as well as offer premium content for a fee. You can also join affiliate programs or add advertisements on your blog. Google AdSense is a good choice because the ads are displayed on your blog and you don’t have to worry about them. However, Google also takes a commission fee and sometimes show ads that are not relevant to your content. If your blog is very popular, you might want to contact companies on your own and offer them to display advertisements on your site. This way, only advertisements of companies that are related to your content and that you like will be displayed. You could also write sponsored posts for them.

13. You Can Create A Mailing List For People Who Are Interested In Your Work

Having a mailing list provides loads of bonuses to your business. First, it allows you to create a database of potential clients, partners, fans and other people that are interested in you and your work. By sending occasional e-mails, you can create relationships with them that allow you to build trust and builds more authority in your freelancing name. Mailing lists can also enhance your image, especially if you are sending out helpful and capturing information related to your topic. If people are happy with what you do they tend to sign up for your mailing lists. You can use your blog to create a page where people can sign up for your mailing list. Since this takes some effort, it is always a good idea to encourage people by offering something in return for signing up. These can be things such as special information that won’t be displayed anywhere else, special discounts to your products and similar extras. One of the best encouragements is offering a sample or a full product such as a short e-book.

14. You Can Learn New Skills While Maintaining A Blog

It is easy to write posts about things that you know and about your personal experiences, but sometimes you could be interested in a topic you are not very familiar with. Instead of just reading and researching these topics which are unfamiliar to you, you can also create a post about it. This way you will learn and share the information with your readers as well. All freelancers are learning a lot while working and your blog post could be very valuable for your readers. If you research the topic of your posts as you normally do, you yourself will gain lots of valuable knowledge that will help you evolve in your field and increase your knowledge base. This is what bloggers often do when they run out of ideas for their blog – they write about things they are currently learning.

15. Blogging Is Fun

Blogging might sometimes seem to be too much work, but it can also be fun. Every time you have finished a post and are about to publish it, there is a feeling of accomplishment. You can share your thoughts and feelings with the world and when someone responds to your ideas and passions with an insightful comment, it can make your day. Also it is an amazing feelings when someone offers you a project of your dreams as a result of having read about your dreams and passions in your blog. Even if you don’t earn much with your blog, you can befriend someone because they have found and liked your blog. You might not even meet this person if you didn’t have a blog. Blogging is a way of expressing yourself, your thoughts, feelings, ideas and passions. And when you see that the world is responding to you, it can give new meaning to your life. The tendency is that if you blog for fun, you will eventually earn some money too because blogging for fun both relieves stress and let your posts be lighthearted. And that is exactly what people are looking for.

We hope you enjoyed reading this article and got inspired to create your very own freelancer blog. We wish that your blogging experience be easy, fun and fruitful!

Image Credits – shutterstock.com