Just as with any other career, a tool or two of a trade may be required. Freelance writing tips are vital to the improvement of any writer. Ask any ‘old school’ freelance writer how tough it was when they started out and they will tell you how easy today’s freelancers have 
it, if they will just utilize the tools the internet has given them.
Plagiarism Checking
Don’t let the word scare you, and don’t assume that every instance of plagiarism is a writer blatantly thumbing their nose, or their keyboard, at copy rights. Often, with content such as product reviews or travel writing, the same words can be, or even need to be used repeatedly. When there are a hundred thousand articles about those same items or locations, let’s face it, plagiarism can happen.
Although if you have already posted, you can run a check on your current live page to be certain it did not copy from any other sources, checking offline work however, will cost you on Copyscape.
For a totally free method that rivals Copyscape, head to the Dustball page. This plagiarism checker has a great record of finding the same issues that Copyscape does for their paid version.
Quality Improvement
Want to really test your writing skills? Trying out the Paper Rater may be a great idea for any writer regardless of skill level.
This program is free and can be tweaked to judge the writing skills on educational articles, reviews, short stories as well as research papers.
Don’t forget about WordWeb. Not only is it free, but it is easiest way to add more depth and flavor, not to mention correctly spelled words, to your articles. WordWeb is the absolute best dictionary and thesaurus, even in its free version, for many reasons.
- It uses minimal resources.
- You can right click on any word and the user interface will pop up instantaneously allowing a user to select from dictionary or thesaurus options.
- Thesaurus options number in the hundreds of thousands and brief explanations for each word is listed just under the options.
- This tool will work inside of any possible word processing program you use. Anything from rich text files to open source office programs are recognized by WordWeb to allow users the quickest access possible to the help and options they need.
- It works online or off.
Keyword Analysis and Density Checking
If you have a client who request you do the keyword research for a project and perhaps even measure the keyword density to a specific percentage, you may have need of a couple of quick, easy and free tools.
For keyword research there is no better tool than Google’s Adword Keyword Tool.
Live Keyword Analysis will allow you to input your content as well as up to three keywords or keyword phrases to check their exact percentage. This is definitely an invaluable free tool for SEO copywriters.
This small arsenal of tools will not only help the freelance writer create better content. It will also provide invaluable training at absolutely no cost.
Joy L is a freelance writer available on WriterAccess, a marketplace where clients and expert writers connect for assignments. WriterAccess is powered by ideaLaunch.
