6 Steps to Get a Professional Blogging Job

How to Get the Experience You Need to Become a Professional Blogger

Once you've decided to pursue a paying position as a professional blogger, you'll need to get the experience that hiring managers are looking for. Follow these steps to boost your chances of landing a professional blogging job.

1. Define Your Area of Expertise

People who hire professional bloggers have high expectations from those bloggers. Professional bloggers need to create fresh, timely and meaningful content for their readers, and they need to be able to participate in the blog's community providing information that readers want to see. You'll need to be able to establish yourself as extremely knowledgeable in any subject matter for which you apply to be a professional blogger. Just like any job, the most qualified person will get the position.

2. Learn to Blog

Before a hiring manager can be interested in your skills, you need to polish them. Create a personal blog on a topic of interest to you that you are passionate about and begin to blog about it. Take the time needed to fully understand all of the blogging tools available to you.

Learning to blog also requires learning how to promote your blog through social bookmarking, social networking, participating in forums and more. Invest quality time in learning how to market your blog as hiring managers will expect this from the professional bloggers they hire.

3. Build Your Online Presence

Once you establish your own blog and your area of expertise, invest quality time in growing your online presence. To be considered an expert and knowledgeable in your topic, you need to develop your credibility by networking online. You can do this through social networking and forum participation as mentioned in step 2 above. You can also accomplish this by writing great content on websites such as Associated Content, HubPages or another site that allows anyone to join and post content.

As you build your online presence, remember that you're also building your online brand. Everything you say online can be found and seen by a hiring manager. Keep your online content appropriate to the type of brand image you're trying to create.

4. Search Blogging Job Boards

Take the time to view the websites where blogging jobs are posted and apply to the ones in your area of expertise. You need to commit to your blogger job search, because many qualified bloggers apply to every blogging job. You need to apply quickly to be considered.

You can find professional blogging jobs using this list of blogging job sources.

5. Show You Can Add Value

When you apply for a professional blogging job, remember the competition is tough. Show the hiring manager how you can bring value to that blog through great content and promotion which will lead to increased page views and subscribers, which will then lead to ad revenue for the blog owner. Include your blogging experience in your application along with links to your blog posts or other online writing clips that demonstrate you understand the blog's topic and what the hiring company wants.

Read more about what hiring managers look for in terms of professional blogger skills, then brush up on those skills and reference your abilities related to those skills in your application.

6. Make Your Writing Sample Shine

Many hiring managers will request that professional blogging applicants provide a sample blog post related to the blog's topic to get a better understanding of the type of content the applicant would write if they got the job. This is your opportunity to stand out from the crowd. Write a sample post that is relevant and timely and shows you know the topic better than anyone else. Include useful links to show you understand the topic's place in the blogosphere. Finally, make sure your sample post does not contain spelling or grammatical errors. In other words, make it impossible for the hiring manager to refuse your application.