In the competitive world of freelance writing, a competitive writing sample can be the difference between landing your dream client and not. For anyone looking to hire a freelance writer, their writing sample can provide huge insight into their writing skills and past experience.
Writing samples are an essential part of freelancing, whether you’re a freelancer yourself or hiring a freelancer.
This snappy guide will tell you everything you need to know about writing samples, including how to make your own.
What is a Writing Sample?
A writing sample showcases your writing skills and expertise to clients and employers. For those hiring, it can provide a look into a writer’s actual skills and style, making it easier to decide if they are a fit for you or not.
Why Do You Need Writing Samples?
Writing samples are necessary for anyone looking to be a freelance writer or hire a freelance writer. They demonstrate concrete evidence of the freelance writer’s abilities and allow the employer to assess their writing style.
What Do Prospects Look For in a Writing Sample?
Prospective employers look for clarity, grammatical correctness, and style when reviewing a writing sample. The writing should maintain their attention and be free from grammatical errors. Most of the time, employers also want the writing sample to be relevant to the freelance job they are advertising.
How Long Should Your Writing Sample Be?
It depends largely on what writing job you’re trying to get. If you’re writing email newsletters, your sample should be the length of your average email newsletter – around 200 words. If you’re writing long-form blog posts, you can expect to write over 1,500 words for one sample.
Focus on making the sample good – not reaching a certain word count. Don’t use fluff, as this will almost certainly turn potential clients off. Show that you can explain complex ideas and know how to write with grammatical errors.
That said, don’t throw 100 words together and call it a blog post!
8 Types of Writing Samples
There are tons of different writing samples you can create. You don’t need all of these. Focus on the ones that relate to the jobs you want to land. If you don’t want to write emails, don’t write an email sample.
Here are the eight kinds of writing samples you may want to consider for your writing portfolio:
- Blog Posts
- Email Newsletters
- Ad Copy
- Landing Page Copy
- Brochures and Ebooks
- White Papers
- Short Stories
- Research Papers
You probably want to choose at least two sample types to show your versatility. However, if you’re specializing in one area heavily (like blog posts), consider choosing two different kinds of one type. For instance, you may choose to write a shorter blog post and a longer one.
Try to choose options that demonstrate your writing skills the best. If you’re particularly good at writing landing pages, write a couple of landing page writing samples.
What If You Don’t Have a (Relevant) Writing Sample?
Sometimes, freelance writing clients only want a writing sample to prove that the freelance writer can write well. In this case, you may not need a relevant sample – just a good one. I’ve gotten several writing jobs without having super-specific writing samples. Instead, I focused on making my writing skills clear.
However, if you really want the job, you may want to consider crafting a super-relevant, perfect writing sample. You can write a post for a fictional client like the one you’re trying to get the job from. While this does take some time, it can increase your odds of landing a job.
Below, I’ve outlined exactly how to write one of these writing samples, whether you’re writing a few relevant writing samples or just fleshing out your portfolio.
How to Create a Compelling Writing Sample to Apply for a Job
Writing a great sample isn’t complicated, but it does require some background research. You want the writing to be superb, of course, but you also want the topic and tone to be carefully curated.
Here’s how to write a great sample about anything:
Step 1: Follow The Employer’s Guidelines in The Job Ad
Potential employees often describe the type of writing they want in their job advertisement. You’ll need to read through the client’s job ad several times to identify it:
- Topics
- Target audience
- Writing style and tone
- Word count and formatting
- Business goals
If the freelance client took the time to put something in their job posting, it’s important. A successful writing sample will be based on all of this information.
As an example, I wandered over to Problogger and found this job advertisement for a travel writer:
After skimming the job posting, it’s clear that the company is looking for “long-form web content” that’s mostly about reviewing hotels, tours, cruises, and other travel-related topics. They’d prefer someone with travel-related writing experience, so a custom sample will be necessary unless you already have a travel-related sample.
Step 2: Ideate Relevant Topics
Next, you need to generate a list of possible topics based on the writing niche of your sample. If you already have a potential employer in mind, check out their website and their competitor’s websites to see what tends to get published.
You may also want to check the “News” tab on Google when looking up key topics in your target niche, as this may help you discover new ideas and considerations that are trending. Don’t be afraid to use ChatGPT, too. One of its big benefits is idea generation.
For instance, here’s a list of topics it provided me in the travel niche:
I think most of these look pretty good! I recommend adding the word “unique” to your input, as this prevents the AI from providing very general, boring ideas.
Step 3: Pick a Topic From Your List Above And Start Drafting
If you’ve done the previous step well, this one should be easy! I love tons of the ideas off my list above, and I would double-check any serious contenders with what my potential writing client already has posted.
“The Perfect Weekend Getaway: [City] in 48 Hours” and “A Culinary Journey: Trying Authentic Street Food in [City]” have the potential to be very good if you have any real-life experience with an interesting city.
Step 4: Align Your Writing With The Company’s Tone
There is no better way to figure out what sort of content a company publishes than to read their content. Most companies will have an overall tone. This tone may be described directly in the job posting (though what a company thinks their tone is and what they actually publish is sometimes different).
The job description above does not discuss tone, so we’d need to head to their blog to figure that out. Read through a few of the most recent posts for a general idea. Are they being purely factual? Do they talk in the third person only? Or are their first-person sentences? Are they humorous? Or very professional?
You don’t have to have it down to a science, but having some general idea can be very helpful.
My example client has a pretty professional tone, which I can tell from a quick glance on their website. Their articles also tend to be listicles with only a paragraph or two under each point.
If I were considering applying for this job, I’d likely take one of the ideas above and turn it into a listicle in a similar format.
Step 5: Edit and Polish Your Draft
Once you write a draft in the niche and style of your chosen client, you need to thoroughly edit and proofread your work. In the freelance world, your work will typically be looked at by an editor before it is published. However, when writing samples, you have to edit the work, too.
I highly recommend doing the final draft in Google Docs, as this is what most clients use. Editing the writing sample with something like Grammarly should be your first step. However, don’t underestimate proofreading and having a friend look over it for you.
Writers with their own websites can publish their work. Otherwise, you can send the link to the article (with sharing turned on) when applying for jobs.
Step 6: Add The Sample To Your Portfolio and On Social Media Platforms
Even if the specific writing sample doesn’t end up landing you a job, you can still publish it on your own website or even pitch it as a guest post. You wrote it, so make sure you use it somewhere.
Publishing the writing sample somewhere online will make it seem a bit more “official” to future potential clients, and it can help your name spread a bit.
There are many ways to set up a portfolio – and they don’t all require building a website from scratch. Websites like Clippings.me are perfect for those who don’t want to put together a whole website but would like an online portfolio that looks very professional.
Just take a look at Naomi Conrad’s portfolio:
Be sure to regularly update your writing portfolio with new writing samples as you create them.
Parting Tips on Submitting Your Writing Sample!
On top of having a very good writing sample, you need to submit them properly. Most of the time, the job posting will explain how to submit the perfect writing samples. You may need to place them in a particular line or include a certain number of writing samples.
If there aren’t any particular instructions, just include your sample links within your job application. When possible, consider placing the sample within some context, such as why and when you wrote the piece.
