If you make money as a freelance writer or blogger, one difficult part of your craft is standing out from others in your field. One way to do so is to make sure your writing or blogging is the best it can be for every article you write. This can sometimes be difficult due to time pressure deadlines and needing to produce a certain amount of writing. Below are some free online tools for freelance writers and bloggers can use to improve their writing in a variety of simple ways.
WordCounter
Most people might not think they have a use for a word counter unless they have an assignment which requires a certain word count. The truth is word counters give a lot more information to writers than the number of words they have written. This tool also gives you a lot of useful information you can use to improve your writing. It lists all the words you use in each writing sample letting you know how often you use certain words in your writing. This can help you see the words you’re over-using. For those writing with specific keywords in mind, it will allow you to see how often the keywords appear in the article. The tool also gives the readability level allowing you to know what grade level will understand your writing.
Grammarly
It’s never a good idea to exclusively rely on spell checkers or grammar checkers to proof your writing. That being said, it never hurts to use them in conjunction with your own editing skills. When you’re doing a lot of writing, you can sometimes miss things even when you edit your own articles or have someone else doing it for you. Using a free grammar checker like Grammarly can help make sure your articles go out without editing errors you may have missed. While they do have a premium tool which costs money, they also have a basic online tool which is free to use.
Hemingway App
If you want to clean-up your writing without an editor sitting over your shoulder, the Hemingway App is the free tool for you. It will highlight sentences which are difficult to read to show areas of your writing to work on to make them easier to read. In addition, it highlights where you use passive voice, and it gives a readability grade level. Using this tool will make you take a second look at sentences within your writing to make them easier for the reader to understand, and it the process, improve your writing.
Headline Capitalization
Headlines are important. Extremely important. Studies show more than 60% of people who come across your writing never read anything beyond the headline. That means it has to be good in every way possible. If you’ve ever wondered if you should capitalize a word in the headline for an article or blog post you’ve created, you’re not alone. I ran this headline through Headline Capitalization because I wasn’t sure whether to capitalize “that.” This tool allows you to make sure your headlines are all properly formatted, consistent and accurate with a simple cut and paste.
Headline Analyzer
As mentioned above, the majority of readers never get passed the title of your article. In addition to making sure it has the correct format, you want to make it as appealing as possible to get people to click through to the article. Headline Analyzer helps you do that. This tool will give your headline a score with a rating of how it will do in driving traffic to it, social media shares it will garner, and its SEO value. It’s a quality tool that will help improve your article title writing the more you use it.
(Photo courtesy of Marisa Vasquez)
I haven’t heard of all of these, so I’ll have to check each one of the tools out today. I started using the Hemmingway App last year and it has helped improve my writing.
I’m not a big fan of Headline Analyzer although I can see how it might be helpful for some people. First time hearing about Headline Capitalization and I use the other three on a regular basis.
I don’t understand how people can make a living blogging or freelance writing. I tried for 4 years. I made some extra money, but not enough to live on and my pay for the hours I spend was much less than minimum wage.
Mary, did you focus on a specific niche? Did you offer SEO services? Were you setting your own rates or were they being set for you? Was your writing of good quality? Did you offer any additional services, such as social media management, content strategy, etc.? Did you create your own blog, website or products? Lastly, how well did you market your product(s) and/or services?
I use Grammarly often for my various articles on my online portfolio (nickerscherf.com). I like that it sends emails with statistics about my writing. For example, it lets me know when I overuse a particular word. Then I try to be mindful of the frequency with which I use the word in my everyday vocabulary and writing. I’ll have to give the Hemingway App a try, too. Thanks for the suggestions!
Thank you for sharing this wonderful article! Four years ago I also left my job as a marketing manager in Sydney to do something I’d always dreamed of: writing and editing romance novels full time.