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Become a Freelance Blogger with Sophie Lizard

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I’d never pass up an opportunity to chat with an industry expert, so when Sophie Lizard replied to one of my guest posts, I jumped at the chance to have a  more in-depth conversation. Sophie is a very successful freelance blogger, and her story is invaluable preparation for anyone considering the same career path.

Interview Transcript

Grant
Hi everyone, I’m here with Sophie Lizard, she’s a freelance blogger and social media marketer over in the United Kingdom, she blogs at Invisiblogger and runs BeAFreelanceBlogger.com – thanks so much for doing this interview, Sophie!

Sophie
No problem!

Grant
So, you are a blogging/social media extraordinaire, can you just tell me briefly about the one most impressive thing that you’ve done during your career?

Sophie
The most impressive thing is really what I’m doing right now. It’s BeAFreelanceBlogger.com, it’s a new website that I’ve just recently set up, and essentially the reason I set it up is because I feel it’s downright wrong that intelligent people who have all of this valuable knowledge and experience are having trouble finding a job that fits into their lifestyle.

People should fit their job around their life, not their life around their job – especially for people with kids, that’s so important. I’ve dedicated BeAFreelanceBlogger.com to showing writers and non-writers how they can make money blogging for hire, how they can use their life expertise and get that extra income.

I’ve reduced my freelance hours so that I can share everything I’ve learned so far and everything I’m still learning. I guess the reason why that’s impressive to me personally is that the more successful I’ve become, the more I’ve felt this desire to help other people achieve the success that I already have. It’s kind of a growing feeling of responsibility – there are people who have the potential to achieve this kind of success but haven’t yet.

Grant
Gotcha. So, helping people break into the freelance blogging world and get their careers started…

Sophie
Exactly – I speak to people every day who are fully capable of it but have no idea how to proceed.

Grant
Could you talk about how you broke into freelance blogging and what that journey looked like for you?

Sophie
I just started off blogging for myself, I had a personal blog a few years ago, and then in 2009 of course we had a global recession and I was made redundant in my day job as a marketing manager. And not long after that I got pregnant as well, so at that point starting a freelance career that I could follow from home seemed like pretty much my only hope, so I took it!

Grant
Wow. And so now you have established clients and it’s all worked out – how long did the entire journey take, from zero to where you are now?

Sophie
It’s been about three years, but I guess you could take about a year of that out when I was pregnant and recovering from the birth because I didn’t work much for about a year there. So you could say that I started from nothing, built myself up, dropped off the face of the Earth, had a baby, and then built myself right up again.

Grant
So, obviously getting clients and building relationships is critical to your success. Are there any strategies that you use to get clients or any stories you can tell about how you won a particular client?

Sophie
First of all, I see a lot of freelance writers who don’t like the freelancer websites, like Elance or oDesk, because they see them as offering a lot of low-paying jobs that will be picked up by people who don’t really know what they’re doing. Both sides of the equation are getting ripped off in that case.

But I still use these sites a lot, I get most of my work through them – very well paid work, they’re usually long term customers. The difference is that I’ve found the people who are looking for quality instead of just a low cost solution.

Grant
Ok, gotcha.

Sophie
So now, I have some breathing room because I don’t have to hunt for jobs every week. I usually have people calling me up or emailing me, saying “I saw you online, could you do this?”

Grant
Ok, so online networking, just getting your personal brand out there. Do you have particular strategies for approaching online networking? I know I got in contact when you responded to a guest post I wrote – are there general strategies that you use to get your name out there and build relationships with people?

Sophie
I follow a very simple strategy, which is: I read the things that interest me, and if they interest me enough I respond to them. And that usually leads to me getting to know people that interest me the most and are the most likely to be interested in me, and maybe will want to work with me in the future.

Grant
Interesting – did you only start deliberately meeting people online after you decided you wanted to become a freelancer?

Sophie
I think really I started doing it deliberately only a few months ago… It took me a while to realize that was what I was already doing. I kept thinking, “how come I get these jobs by accident?” and then I realized it’s not by accident at all. These are the people who I have been showing interest in, and they just show their interest in return.

Grant
So a very non-pushy, human type of marketing.

Sophie
Exactly. If you want to do it from a deliberate perspective, the best way to do it is to choose your ideal clients and then convince them to hire you.

If you approach websites and businesses that you genuinely admire, that’s often better than if you approach a company purely because they have a big budget.

You have to be prepared to be rejected or ignored, but often it can be the start of a relationship or an acquaintance that might lead to a great job.

Grant
Ok. So, you are totally immersed in blogging and social media– do you have an idea where the space is going and what the biggest opportunity for companies today is?

Sophie
A lot of experts in the blogging world will still say that anyone can find a topic that they know enough to blog about – the idea of being ‘expert enough’ to start a blog on something. Even if you’ve just read a couple of books, you know more than the average person.

And that’s great, but what really matters more to me is knowing how to take that expertise and throw it out to the people who are drowning without it. You can’t just shovel it on to the internet and wait to catch bears, it’s not going to happen.

I guess that’s really where Viibrant comes into my thinking, because this is the kind of platform that will help you get that information out, without necessarily even needing a blog of your own or a website of your own.

Grant
That’s certainly the idea. It’s interesting, ‘expert enough,’ have you seen the Expert Enough blog?

Sophie
Yes, I was just on there today.

Grant
It’s an interesting concept. You have a lot of bloggers, and I feel like at the end of the day you have to be more than just expert enough if you really want to establish yourself and dive deep.

Sophie
I think there’s such a thing as being expert enough to start something, but being expert enough to finish it or to keep it going is a completely different level.

Grant
Couldn’t have said that better myself.

Sophie
The nice thing about the industry now is there’s a really big opportunity that people are missing, and it’s so simple that sometimes I get completely bewildered by how it gets missed. I think the biggest opportunity right now is to give people more information, more useful information, about what you’re doing and what you have to offer them.

I still see people who are struggling with simple things like, “I want to find something out about my Xbox 360 and get a hold of someone in support who has a simple answer,” or, “I want to know how to take my market to this particular niche but I can’t find anybody that will supply me with directions”. If there were one place that people could go where they could find expert information on a million different subjects and pick it up easily from straightforward instructions, that would be a godsend to most people. There are a few people who have tried it, I’m sure you’re aware of Udemy?

Grant
Yeah.

Sophie
I have to say their concept’s not quite working for me. It seems a little limiting.

Grant
Interesting. The whole purpose behind Viibrant is that instead of just giving people knowledge or information, you’re picking a goal and specifically helping customers accomplish that goal. And Gateways are rated based on that completion percentage.

Sophie
I really like that approach to things. I always say to people, “I’m not buying your product, I’m buying your product description.”

And as a product description, a product that ‘helps me meet a goal’ makes perfect sense to me. It makes much more sense to me than ‘you can learn this, you can learn that.’ People can learn a whole bunch of stuff, you can go to school for twenty years, but then if you walk out and don’t know how to apply it, it’s useless.

Grant
Exactly. Maybe you should market for us, sheesh. :)

So, one last question. Since this is Viibrant and we’re about helping people accomplish a goal, what are the goals that you help people accomplish?

Sophie
There are two goals that I really try to help people accomplish. One of those is the completely non-mystical way of the freelance blogger. No bullsh*t, no ‘affiliate this’ or ‘monetize that.’ Just ‘you blog,’ and people like it and pay you to do it. The goal with that is to build a career that has freedom and rewards.

And then also, of course, I am a freelance blogger myself, so I help people boost their relevance, their authority and their search engine rankings with blog content. And that’s a goal for businesses, obviously often the first one is a goal for people who are not yet a business.

Grant
Certainly. Well, Sophie, thank you so much, it’s been awesome.

Sophie
Thank you.

Grant
Alright, until next time, bye everyone!


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