I've been a freelance writer since 1993 and let me tell ya, it's a roller coaster ride. It can be extremely satisfying when the clients are rolling in and you earn more in one day than you do in a few weeks on a full-time job, and extremely frustrating when you can't seem to land a client even when you offer to write for free.

The good thing about freelancing writing though is that it is such an easy career to start and grow into a viable, lucrative home-based business – IF you know some tricks of the trade. To this end, following are five habits that – in my experience – successful freelance writers practice these days. If you don't come by these naturally, it's ok; they can be cultivated.

I. Diversify Your Service Offerings: Freelance writing isn't what it used to be when I started out in 1993. There are so many more ways to earn money now, eg, social media consulting. Not only does this go hand in hand with writing content, it's a must with the rise of concepts like "content marketing."

You can add significantly to a lot of your invoices by offering this service, in addition to writing. And if it's something that you don't want to do, it's easily outsourceable.

II. Set Livable Freelance Writing Fees: This is a hard one for many, but to make a good living, it's a necessity. Many freelance writers are afraid to charge appropriately for their services because they're afraid that they'll be too expensive and will have a hard time landing clients. This is understandable, as online freelance writing in particular can be very competitive.

But successful freelancers know that competing on rate alone will get you stuck in "rate wars" that you can never win, especially when competing with things like content mills and writers from other countries who can afford to charge so much less.

So when setting your freelance writing rates, remember, you don't want clients who choose writers on rates alone because once another freelancer comes along with lower fees (and there will always be another one), you'll be out the door.

III. Work ON Your Freelance Writing Business; Not In It: In the uber-successful book, The E-Myth by Michael Gerber, one of the mistakes the author says that most small business owners make is that they work themselves into a job instead of building a business (I'm paraphrasing).

And this is true. I know I'm guilty of this. You see, you get so used to handling everything yourself and/or you may not be earning enough to pay someone to help you out that you keep churning along. And that's what you're doing – churning in one place. You don't make progress when you do this. And this is why so many small businesses fail. Proof?

**Over 1 million new businesses are started each year in the U.S.; 

**At least 40% will not make it through the first year; 

**Within five years, more than 80% will have failed; 

**And 80% of those business that survive the first five years, fail in the second five years; and 

**Therefore only 40,000 businesses or 4% of the original 1 million survive the first 10 years. 

FYI, all of these stats were taken from The E-Myth Revisited, a sequel to The E-Myth. This brings me to my next point, which is to . . .

IV. Create a Life Plan: If you don't at some point make a plan to work ON your freelance writing business instead of in it or at it, you will just be working yourself into a job – and what happens when you don't want to and/or can't do that job? You have to start over doing something else. Who wants to constantly be doing that?

Many freelancers don't give things like retirement much thought. But they should since just because you CAN ostensibly write until the day you die (one of the great things about this career choice), what's to say you're going to want to.

So create a life plan. Lay out where you want to be a year from now; three years from now; five years from now -- and structure your freelance business to meet these goals.

Deb Ng, who founded FreelanceWritingGigs.com did this. She sold her highly popular freelance writing blog for a good chunk of change and moved on to other things. All of us as freelance writers can learn a lesson or two from her.

V. Diversify Your Income Streams: If you're a regular reader of my blogs and articles, you've probably heard me talk about the fact that in 2010, for the first time ever, over half my annual income came from ebooks I wrote and self-published.

This was a surprise to me since I'd been writing and selling ebooks since 2002. Once I dug into my stats, I realized that I could make a full-time living as a self-publisher. So I spent 2011 writing – a lot! I uploaded 50 ebooks to Amazon and because of those efforts, if I never landed another freelance writing client, I earn enough from these ebooks to get by.

My earnings in this area still aren't where I want them to be so I'm not gonna lie, it would be tight – but the point is, it could be done. This is VERY freeing because it means I don't have to do things like take on freelance writing jobs that pay too little. This is the power of diversification.

A couple of other ways I've diversified my income as a freelance writer include:

Affiliate marketing;

Selling ads on my blogs/websites; and

Developing minisites and monetizing them with Google AdSense and affiliate products.

As these examples illustrate, how to earn money as a writer is only limited by your imagination.

Conclusion

There are many facets to becoming a freelance writer – especially a successful one who closes the door on the 9-to-5 work world and never looks back. These are just five of the traits – five of the most important these days in my opinion.

What would you add to this list?

Author Bio
Yuwanda Black is the publisher of InkwellEditorial.com, an authority site on how to start a successful freelance writing career. Ms. Black says, "Freelance writing is one of the easiest online businesses to start because if you have a computer and an internet connection, you can literally get started today!" Don't know where to start? Take Inkwell Editorial's in-depth SEO writing course, which teaches you how to start earning $50,000 to $75,000 per year working from home as a web writer.