If you’ve ever hunted around the “in search of” areas for freelance jobs, you may have noticed a trend. This trend was there before AI became a thing in content writing, but it’s even more pronounced in the new reality of AI vs human writers. Can anyone guess?  It’s the trend of having to do multiple types of writing in the same job. This leads to the question of today’s blog post: Do you need to offer extra services as a freelance writer? Is it required in today’s gig economy? Let’s dig in and find out together!

Examples of freelancer extra services

I want to take a quick moment and touch on what you might consider extra services as a freelancer. Since I’m a freelance business content writer, I’ll use that as my jumping point. But you can customize this to your own freelance niche! Extra services in my line of work might include:

• Keyword research
• Competitor research
• Meta descriptions
• Formatting and posting blog and web content
• Image selection

As you can probably guess, these are small, convenient extras that I can include in an order and enhance my overall customer experience. But do I have to offer them?

Are extra services required as a freelancer?

No, definitely not. If you want to market yourself as a freelance writer who just writes and does basic editing, etc., you can absolutely do that. In fact, that’s how I started. In my first year as a full-time freelance writer, all I did was write long-form content and blog content. And I got plenty of orders and interest from customers.

To any of those who have taken a look at my services page, you might be thinking: “Hey, you do offer extra services!” And you’d be completely right! I do offer some of these services as extras. But, some I don’t.  Also, I offer extras for certain clients, but not others. It really just depends on what makes the most sense for my abilities and time, as well as what best serves the client.

The bottom line is that I started with what I knew I could do well (content writing), and then I branched out into extra services when I felt comfortable. I also modify the “extras” list regularly.

What does this mean for the freelance job market?

So, what does this actually mean for the job search? It means that jobs that are hiring for content writers who also offer social media content, graphic design, and HTML work are really expecting a lot from one person. I’ve spoken before about what types of extra services are popular and the tricky details about trying to hire one writer to fill multiple roles, so you can hop over there to read more of my thoughts about that. The bottom line, if you are trying to determine the answer to this question, is stick to what you know and don’t feel pressured to offer extras. It really is all about your professional skills and offering services that give clients a worthwhile experience!

What do you all think? Do you disagree with my thoughts in this competitive world? Share below!