Blogging is a great way for freelancers to leverage or supplement their income

Everyone isn't an expert or specialist in the freelancing world, and even the so-called experts have to bow down before the gods of supply and demand in the freelance market. The truth is that 90% of us freelancers are just average or mediocre, and that's probably never going to change.

But the good news is that you no longer have to be an expert or specialist to earn money in the digital age. A great writer once said that in 90% of cases, success is simply a matter of showing up and that's very much true, at least in case of freelancing and especially freelance blogging.

Even if you are a dedicated programmer or designer, you can start blogging as an additional means to supplement your income and/or spread the word about your primary skill. In fact, blogging can help boost your main skill and vice versa as both are quite complementary. Another advantage you have is that you'll get lots of existing raw material for a blogging topic out of your main skill which a regular blogger may not have.

You don't have to be a pro-blogger in order to start earning money with blogging, nor any specialized knowledge of PHP/MySQL/Apache is needed (though it'll always help if you have it!). All you need are these three things:

1. A Google account signed up with Adsense.
2. Either have your own custom site for writing blog posts (Wordpress/Drupal/etc.) or sign-up with a free blogging platform such as Blogger which allows you to embed scripts for adsense adverts.
3. A never ending thirst for creative writing!

You see, the first two requirements are easy to fulfill as almost everyone has a Google account these days and singing up with Blogger and Adsense isn't a big deal. Its the last one that truly matters and is a real make or break factor in your blogging career.

Another common misconception is that there already are some crazy huge tech blogs out there such as Gizmodo, Tech Crunch, Engadget, etc., so who's going to read a plebeian like me? But you are mistaken on several fronts:

1. While its true that there already are some established professional blogs on the internet and perhaps you'll never be able to beat them on page views but hey, we don't even need such huge number of page views! Unlike these firms, you don't have a staff to maintain or overheads to incur, whatever you earn will mostly be yours to keep minus the taxes. What they make in profits after getting a few million views a day is what you'll probably make after getting just a few thousand page views a day!
2. Believe it or not, but its content which causes Google to drive people to your blog or site, not your reputation or website design or SEO capabilities (though these things do have a minor impact on search results too). Who are the writers who write posts on these professional blogs? They are just human beings like you and me, some of them enjoy creative writing and there is no reason why you cannot do the same. Believe me, I've seen writers make spelling mistakes, write things out of context or factually incorrect on even these pro blogs and websites.
3. Being a small blogger, there aren't any pressures on you to write about specific topics (or avoid certain topics). You can write to your heart's content on just about anything you like including controversies and speculations! This kind of writing is what readers usually appreciate and will bring you glory and success provided you stick to it.

Of course, the biggest challenge is that creative writing requires tremendous amounts of patience and perseverance. You're not going to get thousands of page-views right on the first day. You need to consistently keep writing while ignoring the stats for some days. The world out there needs to know that you have a story to tell, so its important to have back links to your posts too, you can do that by sharing your posts on popular social media sites like reddit, twitter and quora.

I know all this sounds very simplistic and reeks of mediocrity but do it sincerely every day and at the end of the month, you'll have earned enough as a freelancer to pay your bills. Go ahead and try it!