Your writer's website is the most powerful tool you possess. Not only can it help you to improve your writing, it can also help you to get clients, and to keep them.
I have many websites. They were all created to achieve specific goals, and each one is aimed at a specific audience.
Here's a tip: stick with one website initially, until you have somewhere between 500 and 1000 pages on the site. You'll easily achieve this over time.
Here's how your site helps you to achieve your goals.
Your Writer's Website Helps You to Stand out and Differentiate Yourself
The web is full of "writers". This makes it very hard for clients. Most of your clients, unless they're publications or are large companies which are used to dealing with writers, have no experience in hiring writers.
Therefore they can't tell the difference between someone who's a professional writer, and someone who's decided that writing would be nice thing to do to pass the time.
Your site assures your clients that you're a professional writer: they can see the results on the site.
Your website is also helpful in another way.
It helps you to qualify prospective clients. You can't write for everyone, and you don't want to. Your website can make it clear what kind of budget your client will need. This means that you won't have people contacting you who want you to write 100 articles at one dollar each.
Your Writer's Website Helps You to Stay in Touch With Your Clients
Your clients will stay with you for years, if you remember to stay in touch with them.
Add a form to your website, so that your clients can sign up to a mailing list to receive information from you.
Send regular updates. In your updates, you can describe new services you've added. You can also provide case studies, and white papers or reports, thereby educating your clients, and helping them in their own businesses.
Your Writer's Website Helps You to Launch Products and Services
How many services do you provide? Chances are that you provide at least three or four. However somebody who's hired you to write a series of articles may not be aware of the other services which you provide.
Whenever you add a new service, just send a message to your client list directing them to the information on your site which describes the service.
Your writer's website can work for you, if you put a little thought into what your clients want, and how you can help them to achieve their own goals when they hire you.
The time you spend on your site is never wasted; it can help you to achieve any goal you care to set.
Blog for Big Companies, and Make a Six-Figure Income
If you're looking for writing gigs, you'll have seen that many businesses advertise for bloggers. Unfortunately, the businesses which advertise are all doing so because they're looking for cheap content.
You can do much better.
You can find clients who don't advertise, but who pay well for blogging. Did you know that experienced professional bloggers charge their clients a minimum of $1000 per month, per blog? Consider that if a blogger's working for 20 clients, that's $20,000 a month.
You can blog for businesses too, if you're prepared. Discover how, with Blogging Ace: Make Six Figures in Nine Months by Doing What You Love.