Being a blogger means enjoying one of the fastest growing careers today and into the future. Here’s a roundup of the recent trends associated with blogging that shows the opportunity as well as advice on how to ensure you get paid on time as a blogger by using specific types of online invoicing tools for bloggers.
Blogging is Big Biz
According to an infographic posted on WebMag.co by Wolfgang Jaegel, companies believe that having a blog is making a difference in their business. Statistics show that 81% of marketers think blogs are useful or better to their business. Approximately 40% of all U.S. companies have a blog used for marketing purposes.
And, according to statistics on this infographic and others, people are reading blogs and using the information to make purchase decisions. According to recent research presented on Slide Share by Webmaster-Tutorial.com, 77% of all Internet users read blogs, while 57% of companies with blogs have acquired customers through their blogs. Additionally, a company that blogs gets 97% more inbound links than one that doesn’t.
Making it as a Blogger
With demand from companies for experienced bloggers to produce relevant and engaging content, the number of bloggers has increased. Webmaster-Tutorial.com reported there are now 31 million bloggers in the U.S. with 6.7 million who blog on blogging sites and 12 million that do so through social networks.
There is a diverse range in the salaries a freelance blogger can earn, depending who hires you, the type of industry you specialize in, and the years of experience you have in terms of a portfolio. The range listed by Webmaster-Tutorial.com is $24,086 to $33,577 per year while Simply Hired reported that the average salary is $43,000 per year.
On the other end of the spectrum are bloggers that have been able to do extraordinarily well, such as fashion bloggers that make up to $1 million a year. Then, there are bloggers like Perez Hilton, who parlayed a love of everything celebrity into a well-loved and fully branded blog that also makes significant money off of endorsements and other monetization strategies.
That’s the Pay, Now What about Getting Paid?
For those of you starting out your career in blogging and are finding jobs through various online sites like Guru, iFreelance, ProBlogger, and more, you need to ensure you can establish a relationship with these clients to generate long-term work and that delivers a payment schedule that maintains a steady cash flow.
Often, many bloggers work as moonlighters and keep a day job until they can establish enough blogging revenue to transition to the life of a freelance blogger.
To help you encourage your blogging clients to pay those invoices, you can use free invoicing tools that are available online.
Here are some tips that make invoicing a very small, yet effective, part of your blogging biz:
- Create a written agreement between you and each client you have that outlines the number of blog posts, rate, and payment period. Add anything else important to ensuring a mutually beneficial relationship. This establishes clear terms from the start to regulate payments.
- Design a professional invoice from existing online invoicing templates that reflect the look and feel of your brand and that provide a consistent design for your invoices. Having a template also saves time because you only have to go in and change the invoice number, date, and number of blog posts each time you need to send an invoice.
- If you are being paid by the hour to produce blogs, use an online time tracker tool to keep track of your research and writing time. This is also a useful tool that can help you consider how you manage your time and where the most time is spent for each client.
- If you have a retainer with a client that means invoicing the same amount each month, use an online invoicing tool that allows you to set up recurring invoices and set the date for these to be sent to your client. That way you will not forget to send an invoice and your client will grow accustomed to specific days for payment.
- Make your invoices easy to open and pay using online invoicing tools that allow you to email the invoice and link directly to a payment portal. The easier you make it to pay your blog invoice, the faster you will get paid.
- If you work for clients in other countries where currency or taxes become an issue, make sure you select an online invoicing tool that works with various currencies. That way, you can supply them with an invoice and payment portal that works with the same currency. In return, you can use that payment portal to convert it back into your home currency.
Conclusion
When you use online invoicing tools that work for you, you have more time to create content. To unleash the floodgates on your cash flow, sign-up for Due.com’s free invoicing tools by clicking the box below.
