There are many myths about freelance writing and one of the biggest ones is that you cannot earn a livable income doing it. That’s simply untrue. If you’re willing to work hard and put in the hours, you can totally make a living as a freelance writer. In fact, according to David Drake and his 6-Figure Freelancer e-book, you can make over $100,000 a year doing it from the comfort of your home.

Before I continue with this paid review, let’s have a look at a brief quote from the book.

An average writer on websites such as Guru.com and Elance.com charges between $15 and $35 per article. These articles take about an hour each to write. How many can you write each day? Even with 4 hours of work, you can cross the $36,000 per year barrier.

Let’s do a little math. Even if we assume the higher end of this pay structure, that would require 2,857 articles a year. If you work 250 days a year (5 days x 50 weeks), that works out to 11.43 articles a day. If each of these take an hour… well, you can do the math. Naturally, you’re going to want some higher paying gigs if you hope to become a six-figure freelancer. That, or you’ll be working 12 hour days, every day.

Site Improvements

I have three gripes about 6figurefreelancer.com, the website where you go to purchase the e-book. First, every visitor is immediately struck by a pop-up ad trying to sell a free first lesson. Ugh. Can you catch the punctuation error in the headline? How about the strange capitalization throughout the marketing copy?

The claim on the front page is a little misleading. It reads “I’ll reveal quick-n-easy tactics that generate an online 6-figure income… guaranteed!” Well, it’s not guaranteed at all. The disclaimer states that “there is no guarantee that you will earn any money using the techniques and ideas in these materials.” I realize that this sounds obvious enough, but I’d avoid using the word “guarantee” on the sales page.

Although 6-Figure Freelancer is said to be authored by David Drake, you come across something a little perplexing on the contact form. The email address is for someone named “jatindhillon” and it’s a gmail account. Wouldn’t it be better to have a contact email reading daviddrake@6figurefreelancer.com?

Valuable Tips For Would-Be Freelancers

6-Figure Freelancer is an 88 page e-book, broken down into 12 chapters. It starts out asking whether a 6-figure income is even possible with freelance writing, and ends with “how to really make a 6-figure income.” In between, David Drake makes mention of why you need a personal website, he describes the type of work you can expect, and he takes a look at freelance exchange websites.

One of the claims that he makes is that if you don’t need to be a great writer to make money as a freelance writer: “To be a good online content writer you only need to write in a basic conversational tone… like you talk.” That’s partly true, but poor writing skills will only get you so far and there’s no way that you’re netting any lucrative gigs with below average skills.

Some of the better tips that I encountered in the e-book are:

  • Look for lucrative writing opportunities and become an expert. There are many areas in writing that pay several times more than the commonly found opportunities.
  • The future of freelance writing is on the Internet and in company websites.
  • Your income would be dependent on how much you can write. The day you leave it, your income will tank.
  • Rehashing is taking your past work and modifying it to suit the needs of a particular buyer. It lets you finish work assignments at half the time required.
  • Do you know where the real money is in freelance writing? It’s not in getting as many new clients as possible. It’s getting as many repeat clients as possible.

I found that much of the content in 6-Figure Freelancer focuses on freelance writing websites like Elance and Guru. This is only the beginning. From there, you will want to expand to having your own freelance writing business. David Drake spends the last third of the e-book talking about this.

The Single Greatest Piece of Advice

…in this e-book can be summed up in five words: “Treat it as a business.” Anyone who treats freelance writing as a hobby or a means to get “a little cash on the side” will never enjoy true success in this industry. I take my work as a freelance writer seriously and if you want to make a livable income from it, so should you.

A six-figure income as a freelance writer is totally feasible. Just don’t expect it to fall in lap. Reading 6 Figure Freelancer is a good start too. It sells for $37.