Make A Living Writing

There are so many types of writing gigs out there, it can be confusing for new writers. Which are the best opportunities to pursue? This is one of the questions asked me recently by budding freelance writer Barry Weymouth. He wrote:

I am currently about to finally get my degree in business finance, but I was a journalism major when I first started college years and years ago.  I have been in real estate and financial services for years now, but really looking for a new lease on life and never let go of the writing bug.  I do have a financial blog that a started [up] again just this week and now I want to take it to another level.

There seems to be so many opportunities out there, but how do you land them? Which ones are the best to go after and what are the ones to stay away from?

Is it best to work for one entry-level type job at a company (kind of captive to them I would say), or is it best to stay freelance?  It all seems a bit confusing and I just want to focus on the things that will be fruitful and not so much on anything out there that will be a waste of my time.

There are so many opportunities out there, Barry! It’s not your imagination. And as the economy recovers, there will be even more.

How do you land them? First, you find them — by networking, trolling online job boards, cold-calling, knocking on doors.  Once you’ve found opportunities, you land them by auditioning for them.

How can you audition for gigs? Many ways. Send writing samples. Send copywriting samples. Send your resume. Send a link to your blog. Pitch story ideas on the phone. Or build your blog audience, find advertisers for your blog and earn that way.

Which are the best kind of writing gigs to go after? The kind that are really well-suited to your writing experience, life experience, and interests. When I work with my mentees, this is basically what we focus on: What have you written before? Where have you worked? What types of writing do you like best? What industries did you find fascinating? What hobbies do you love?

Once you’ve answered those questions, you can seek out publications or companies that are a fit for you. Notice I said “seek out.” Yes, that’s right. You are the driver of your writing-career success. You will need to aggressively market your writing services to make a living.

You can avoid being overwhelmed by all the possibilities by focusing on writing opportunities that make sense for who you are. Don’t randomly apply to every writing gig you see. Pick a couple-three niche areas and focus on them.

If you don’t get results in a few months, try a few other niches that also relate to your experience and interests. But trust me, if you have a real-estate and business-finance background, you’re far more likely to find writing opportunities that have something to do with those fields than you are to find lucrative writing jobs about healthcare or horse grooming. If you love white papers, don’t apply to blog.

Why? Because when you do what you enjoy, you tend to do better. And better clips mean better future gigs.

Which are the types of gigs to stay away from? Writing assignments that pay slave wages — $10 a blog…you know the type. Avoid, avoid, avoid. Writing assignments you’re not interested in and eager to write. Also avoid.

I wish I could give you a magical answer to how to break into writing without wasting your time, Barry. But here’s how you’re going to find out what types of writing you like, can get gigs in, and pay well enough to be worth your while: Trial and error. Sometimes, you’ll try to go in a writing direction — for me last year, that was trying to crack the business-plan writing market — and it just won’t pan out. So you’ll try something else. Lather, rinse, repeat.

You can create a shortcut by focusing on what you’re best qualified and suited for, but you’re still going to have to experiment to find where you fit.

As far as full-time versus freelance…right now I’d say that full-time writing jobs are in very short supply. The woods seem to be full of laid-off journalists. But by all means, if you need the security of a steady paycheck, look for a full-time gig — or maybe a job within your fields of experience that involves some writing, and could serve as a bridge into writing as a career.

Personally, I had my highest-earning year ever in 2009, including the 12 years I was a staff writer for two different publications, so I may be biased toward freelancing! But as a brand-new writer, freelancing may also be a better way to go because there’s less deadline pressure and you can learn at your own pace.

Are you ready to come up with three or four great story ideas, report the stories and file them, each and every week? Or crank out polished white papers in short order? That’s the typical workload of a staff writer. When I started, it took me about six weeks to write one feature story! I would have washed out as a staffer.

To sum up: Look in the mirror. Who are you as a writer? What do you need financially? Answer those questions, and there’s your answer for how to become a freelance writer.

Got any time-saving writing-job-hunt tips for Barry? Leave a comment below and tell us about it.

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Photo via Flickr user karendalziel

Earlier this week I related the story of how I first blundered into my career in freelance writing. I eventually used my freelance clips to get a full-time, staff-writer job at a trade publication.

I worked there for five years, then at a business weekly here in Seattle for another six and a half. But after all the editors who’d hired me there left, the party was really over. By fall of 2005, I was ready to try freelancing again.

Only unlike when I was starving teen songwriter, the stakes were higher. I had three kids! And my husband wasn’t earning so much since our move to Seattle. I really needed to replace my full-time writer salary through my freelance work.

Here’s how I did it:

1. I had a couple of small freelance gigs I’d done on the side while working my full-time job. One was writing for a sister publication to the trade-pub I’d worked for, and they paid quite well. These became my initial earning base.

2. I called all the companies I’d covered at my business-journal job. I wasn’t looking for work, I just wanted to say hey, thanks for the memories, and the help, and for being a great source. To my surprise, several of them referred me work! One of them asked me to ghost-blog for him and write some advertorial articles for his company’s Web site. I hardly knew what a blog was back then, but I gave that a whirl. I didn’t know it yet, but that blogging skill was going to come in real handy.

Without hardly realizing it, I had become a copywriter. Once I figured out I was a copywriter, I started learning more about copywriting from Peter Bowerman‘s free Well-Fed Writer e-newsletter, and from others. Soon, I had a $1 billion private company as a copywriting client. I started to make more than I had as a staffer.

3. I networked with previous editors, including those ones I loved back at the business journal. They connected me with The Seattle Times and other publications that became major new accounts for me. When those editors went to new publications, I connected there, too.

4. I learned how to work the online job ads, only taking the time to target ads that were really perfect for me. This paid off in some great new clients. In-person networking at Media Bistro events in Seattle paid off well, too. I learned which events worked for me and which were a waste of time.

5. I turned every new article assignment into an ongoing relationship. When I turned in stories, I was always ready with more pitches. So I got more assignments. If a publication I wrote for was a sister-publication to other magazines, I wrote for those, too.

6. I thought big. When I ended up interviewing the editor of a national magazine for a local Seattle publication, at the end of the interview I just flat-out asked her if her magazine was looking for freelancers. I’ve probably earned more than $50,000 over the past five years from my willingness to ask that one question! I connected with her publication and was soon getting $2,000 article assignments.

7. I never stopped marketing. I found new networking forums to belong to, I went to Chamber of Commerce events, I checked online job ads, I asked around. Even when I’m fully booked, like I am now, I never stop sending queries and resumes out.

Some lessons here for other writers contemplating going freelance:

Start freelancing before you leave your job, so you have a base.

Tell everyone you know you’re freelancing.

Be willing to try new types of writing.

Get advice.

Never stop marketing.

Don’t waste time online.

Be brave.

Aim high.

Have you started freelancing in the past few years? If so, how’d you do it?Share the lessons of your success in the comments below.

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Photo via Flickr user = Bruce Berrien =

When I asked new writers for their biggest questions back in May, one of the responses I got was that readers would like to hear “what it was like for successful writers early in their career.”

So here’s the story of how I became a freelance writer. It happened in L.A.

In the beginning — like when I was 14 — I was a singer-songwriter. Banging away on my parents’ black baby grand, scribbling lyrics in notebooks and taking them to school to throw out so my mom wouldn’t read my rejects out of my trash. I dropped out of college halfway through to hang around Hollywood Boulevard and go to songwriting workshops, where I eagerly awaited a chance to have my work shredded by my peers.

Songwriting involved starving. It cost money to pay band members, to rent halls, to promote my group.  I needed a day job, so I worked as a secretary at movie studios and talent agencies. There, I learned to stay calm and poised while movie stars asked me questions, or big agents barked orders. I learned to have a snappy comeback. Eventually, I started my own script-typing business, feeding off my show-biz connections, and worked for myself.

Around the time I was nearing 30 — the age at which songwriters have to ask themselves whether they’re up for a lifetime of this starvation or they want to move on — the alternative paper L.A. Weekly was celebrating its 10th anniversary. So they had an essay contest.

It was like they created it just for me. I had moved back to L.A. to pursue songwriting ten years earlier.

So I wrote an essay about what coming to L.A. to be a songwriter was like for me and my friends — namely, like slowly being crushed between two large rock walls. They printed it and paid me $200.

I pretty much never looked back. I had discovered a kind of writing where you got paid. And didn’t have to worry about whether the drummer was going to decide to take psychedelic mushrooms and the overnight party bus to Vegas to put in 12 hours at the blackjack tables instead of showing up for the gig. I literally called friends over and handed them my four-track recorder and my microphones and said, “Here — take this stuff away. I don’t need it anymore.”

Writing prose was empowering. I didn’t need anyone else to do it! I could execute this all by myself. I had all the intruments I needed inside my head. I thought it up, I talked to people, found facts, worked on it, went down to the mini-mart on Thursdays, and boom, there’s my name. Wow! I was a byline junkie from day one.

From there, I got another assignment from the Weekly right away. But then I took a third assignment I got in over my head on, and bombed.

I then pitched their rival, the L.A. Reader (now dead) about some protest I was going to. I ended up writing for the Reader for years, reviewing books, writing cover features for $300, community news for $50.

All the time learning, learning, learning. I’d haunt my editor’s office, latest issue of the paper in hand, saying, “I noticed you changed my first sentence from this to that. Why?” I got better. I wrote faster. I started to earn more from articles, and type scripts less.

Soon, the Los Angeles Times had a contest in the real-estate section. They wanted do-it-yourself fix-up stories. Again, tailor-made for me — my husband and I had just spent several years camped on our living-room floor fixing up our charming hovel in Culver City. I wrote a humorous, “our hearts were young and dumb” tale of our remodeling mistakes.

I won, they printed, I got paid. The editor there said, “You’re funny! I want you to write for me all the time!”

I’d been writing prose for about nine months, and I was writing for one of the largest daily papers in the country.

I was massively intimidated, felt hugely inadequate, and as a result it often took me six weeks to write a feature for them. But my editor put up with it and took the time to mentor me, because my writing was fresh, and honed, and really brightened up their section covers. And I was willing to work hard, beat the street, and find great stories.

Around this time, it started to dawn on me: I am a freelance writer.

Maybe I should take this freelance writing thing seriously! I love this, and it could be a career. So I took some classes through UCLA Extension in journalism, magazine writing. I learned more. I got better gigs.

One day, my husband said, “Why don’t you stop typing scripts and just write articles?” And I did. Not long after that, he was losing his job, and I applied for this weird full-time writing job I saw advertised, for a trade publication based in New York. They looked at my Reader covers, my L.A. Times covers, they gave me a writing test, and told me of 24 writers they auditioned, I was the only one who wrote something they could publish. The job paid $45,000 to start. And so began my 12 years as a staff writer, in which I learned many new skills, filed three or four stories every week, and laid the ground work for my second stint as a freelancer, which I’ll write about later this week.

Looking back over this, I see some defining points to why I was able to build a successful writing career, basically from scratch. I think these traits would be helpful to anyone looking to get into freelance writing.

1. I  didn’t develop a lot of writer insecurities, because it didn’t dawn on me that I was a freelance writer. I was just having fun!

2. When I hit roadblocks, I immedately looked for a workaround. It never occurred to me to stop because of one “no.” I liked being published too much!

3. I was willing to study my craft, both with my editors and by going back to school.

4. I got a lot of positive early feedback that encouraged me. I entered two contests, and won them both. This made me feel, “I must be good at this!”

5. I looked for opportunities that were a great fit for my background.

6. I developed a thick skin early on and was open to criticism of my writing.

7. I had run a home-based business before, so I had some knowledge of the hustle and administrative skills required to make that work.

That’s the story of how I wrote my way into a career as a writer. How did you get started? How did you keep going? What skills did you bring to it that made you successful?

Leave a comment and tell us your story. Later this week, I’ll tell you how I broke into freelance writing all over again, 12 years later, in 2005.

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Photo of singer-songwriter Kathleen Edwards via Flickr user ibm4381

When writers think about pitching magazines, many tend to just think about well-known newsstand magazines. But there are a lot of hidden writing opportunities at magazines and other periodicals.

I first got exposed to this hidden world when I got an opportunity to write $1-a-word advertorials that went in a trade publication I was working for as a staff writer. It was news to me that I could write those, too! That became a nice little side income for several years.

Over the years, I’ve discovered many national magazines are merely the best-known flagship of a larger enterprise. Many publications sell annual guidebooks, subscriber-only bonus issues, or they put out books of lists that may need freelance articles.

Some magazines don’t just have the flagship pub — they have additional magazines that aren’t as well known. Entrepreneur, for example, also publishes a newsstand-only quarterly, Entrepreneur StartUps!. And the company also publishes business books. They buy online-exclusive articles and have a blog, too. I’ve written for all of those except the books arm, adding many thousands of dollars in revenue beyond what I would have earned if I’d just stuck to the main magazine.

Some publications have college editions that include special content for students. For instance, some years back, I wrote an article for a college edition of the Wall Street Journal. AARP has its magazine, but also a newsprint bulletin.

Regional magazines may be owned by a corporate parent that publishes similar magazines in other markets, to which your article might possibly be re-spun and resold for an additional fee. For instance, Tiger Oak, for whom I’ve written at Seattle Business (which led to writing for sister-pub Seattle Magazine), also publishes five bride magazines in different markets, and eight regionals in the meeting-and-events niche. Get in the door with one of those, and that could allow you to rework and re-source stories to quickly resell them to sister books that come out in other cities.

In this age of consolidation, many publications are part of a publishing family. Conde Nast, for instance, has about 30 magazine and online properties, and several trade publications as well. Once you’ve written for one book in a family, it’s often easier to get a warm referral to an editor at another.

After I wrote as a staffer for one trade pub that covered a niche in retailing, and later freelanced regularly for a sister pub in another retail niche. The editor there knew my name and the awards I’d won during my tenure, and was thrilled to have me write for them, too.

When you’ve scored an assignment from a publication, don’t sit back and think “I’ve arrived!” Instead, think of it as a starting point in your relationship with that organization.

Once you’re in, start looking around and see if you can discover other pieces to their little publishing kingdom. Ask your current editor about the organization’s other writing needs. You may discover lucrative new writing opportunities. You’ll have a leg-up on getting assignments, and usually, these more hidden parts of the beast get fewer pitches, upping your odds of success.

Know any other hidden writing markets? Feel free to leave a comment and let me know.

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Photo via Flickr user House of Sims

Note from Carol: I am not necessarily the world’s most highly organized person. I have to admit I’m still tracking my jobs and payments in a Word document…works for me, but I’m sure there are better ways. (I use a Google calendar for my personal life…but somehow, my writing assignments just work for me in a list with deadlines. Weird.)

Turns out there are some great cheap and free time-management tools out there — and U.K. writer James Adams knows about them. Here he is with some tips on time-management programs! (And that’s his gravatar over there — conclude what you will.)

Freelancing can be compared to looking at the menu at a sushi bar — there is plenty of variety in which one may indulge. A freelancer lives each day working on many different projects at once and may find solace in proven techniques to effectively manage their time.

Everybody has a different habit of work that they follow, so it can be a great help to have access to a simple and free time management application. If you find yourself missing deadlines a few too many times, get yourself organized by using one of these top tools for time management. All of these tools are free or have free trials, and they all work cross-platform.

1. Toggl ($5 – $79 per month):This tool allows you to manage your time, create reports with a single click and create numerous tasks. Signing up for this service is free, which allows up to five users on your account, or you can purchase a plan for something more user-friendly.
2. Todoist (Free):This is completely free and is a simple tool to use. Use keyboard shortcuts, set your deadlines and see works that are either about to be overdue or currently are. It is a web based tool that can also be integrated directly into your Gmail account.
3. Get Harvest ($12 – $90 per month):This is a sleek tool that offers style that integrates well for micro or small businesses. This tool tracks time and also comes with the ability to easily invoice clients, and you do not even need to deal with making the invoice itself. You can try its services for 30 days before having to purchase a plan.
4. Google Calendar (Free): Sign into your Gmail account (signing up for one is free if you do not already have one) and use the free services of Google Calendar. Track everything you need to in a single place and allow clients to share in your set schedule. Reminders can be set and customized, and you can even have alerts sent to your desktop, email or by way of SMS – this is especially useful for folks on the go.
5. Tickspot ($9 – $79 per month): Not only can you track your time, but you can also track your budget with this service. You may sign up for a free 30 day trial of this simple, easy to use interface, and later on upgrade to enjoy the rest of its service.
6. Rescue Time ($6 – $15 per month): This tool is very helpful for those who are helplessly addicted to social media and similarly useless browsing. It does not technically manage your time so much as it tracks it, working in the background and graphing the way you spend your time on the Internet while you work. You can use the free version, but more features come to you with a purchased plan.
7. Remember the Milk (Free): All cheesy names aside, you can sign onto this website for free to manage your tasks wherever you go, whether through your iPod Touch, iPhone, Blackberry, Gmail account or computer. This is definitely a capable rival for Todolist as it offers numerous outstanding features for easy organization.
8. NowDoThis (Free): If you find yourself confused about all of the features in the previous mentions, this is the polar opposite. Click “edit” to make your list and keep clicking “done” when you are… well, done.
9. Ta-da List (Free): Folks who have heard of Highrise and Basecamp may be pleased to know that the brains behind the two have created this tool. It works as a free online wall of post-it notes. Create your necessary tasks and simply check off the ones you have already done.

Working as a writer at an ink cartridges store in Manchester for the past 18 months, James Adams has written everything including product reviews, trend stories and news releases for their design blog.

This is the story of the greatest freelance writing gig I ever turned down. It happened just last week.

About a year ago, I met an editor at a MediaBistro networking event who develops online content for a very large software company. Based here in Seattle. Yeah, that one.

In shmoozing him up, I discovered that he was best friends from childhood with one of my past editors…an editor who’d loved my stuff. He also knew another beloved editor of mine as well. To sum up, he was my dream prospect!

He didn’t have anything immediately, so for once I did a really good job staying in touch and following up.

And last week, he finally called me with an assignment. He needed someone to write a half-dozen articles, one a month, over the next six months.

The catch: It was on a brand-new version of one of their software programs. Hmmm…I’m not much of an early adopter, so I wasn’t using this new program yet. Small, dim alarm bells began to chime in the back of my head. But I was so psyched to work with this client!

We investigated a little more, and discovered the program doesn’t run on Macs, which is what I use. I’d have to buy a computer to do the gig!

My husband was in favor of buying the new computer and taking the gig. But he’s always in favor of buying new toys.

At this point, the alarm bells were louder. In reality, the assignment would be for me to buy and break in a whole new computer AND software, and quickly become an expert in using it so I could write about it. I don’t ordinarily write a whole lot about tech.

I was starting to get the ugly, real picture. I wasn’t actually a fit for this gig.

If I took it, I’d stand a decent chance of sucking at it. And that is the one thing I don’t ever want to see happen. The last thing I need is to disappoint a client at a major corporation.

So I passed.

My hope is another assignment may come along from this client that’s a better fit for my background, which is mostly writing about a range of other business topics. Maybe I’m nuts and should have bought the computer and given it a whirl. But my feeling was the huge ramp time that would be involved to essentially acquire a whole new expertise area probably would have meant I earned less net in the end, as I’d have less time for other clients.

I’d also run the risk of alienating an editor and never getting any future assignments from him.

The whole experience was a reminder to me that writers need to not jump at every offer that comes down the pike, no matter how great they may sound at first. Ask yourself, “Is this assignment really me?” I try to stay with assignments where I can answer that with an enthusiastic “yes.”

Ever turn down a major gig? If so, leave a comment and tell us about it.

Photo via Flickr user roland

I recently did my half-year analysis of my writing business. Earnings are looking good for ’10, and one reason is that over the past year or so, I have acquired some new technical skills. Those skills, combined with my writing portfolio, have led to some great-paying online writing opportunities. I think this knowledge really made the difference in getting me fully booked with lucrative writing jobs.

Now, those of you who are longtime readers of my blog know that I am not a naturally tech-inclined person. Tech malfunctions make me cry. I pay a Webmaster to create my Web sites.

So believe me when I say that all of these tech tools are easy to use. I didn’t spend more than 10 minutes or so learning to use any one of them.

In this Internet age, having some technical ability is a great way to set yourself apart as a writer. It’s a value-add — something you can offer clients that saves them money on the back end, so it supports your earning a higher rate.

Here’s a look at the tech tools I think writers should be getting to know if they want to position themselves for higher earnings. Right now, I’m finding companies are fairly open to training people up a little on these, if you have at least a rudimentary knowledge of the tools already. A year or two from now, I think knowledge of these tools may well be required to get many better-paying online writing gigs.

1. Basic HTML coding. If you don’t know how to code a link (that’s <a href=http://www.yourwebsite.com> words you want to enliven </a> except without the spaces), well, that’s how you do it right there. Know how to code to bold, underline and italicize words. That’s about all I’ve needed to know, but you can learn more about html at the handy free site W3Schools. In many platforms you don’t need to know HTML anymore, but it’s useful for adding links in blog comments, so great for those who are pitching writing packaged with social media marketing.

2. A blog program. I was thrown into this arena on Movable Type, which is pretty clunky, but have since learned Blogger, WordPress and most recently Joomla. Blogging programs are very easy and intuitive to use, and all the popular programs are quite similar to each other, so learn one, and you pretty much get the drift. I acquired this skill just in time to use it on my major gig blogging for BNET (part of CBS!). I’m not sure I could have gotten the tryout there if I hadn’t been able to say, “Yeah, I’ve used WordPress before.” I’d used it for about two weeks, and still didn’t know a lot of the features…but they didn’t need to know that. Blogging basics you need include how to enliven links, schedule posts, and add photos.

3. How to add free photos to blogs. In June, I signed a big ghost-blogging and Web content client who hired me an hour after I sent my resume, and deposited a $300 up-front payment directly into my bank account before the end of the day. Why? I was able to solve a big problem he had — this marketing-agency owner was way behind in blogs for his clients. When I told him I could write posts directly on his clients’ Joomla blogs and have them ready to post, complete with photos, he was sold. He’s paying me $100 a blog, a rate he let me know he had not paid previously. The technical skill made the difference and supported my rate. I know I should know how to add videos too, but so far that has kind of eluded me…still working on it.

There are several sites where you can get free photos to use — I like Flickr Creative Commons, which I’ve used for this post you’re reading right now. It’s easy to add them to a post two ways: either right-click on “Save image to the desktop” or “Copy image address.” Then click whatever the ‘add media’ icon is in the blog program and fill out the little menu to select and download the .jpg file off your desktop, or put the image URL directly into the address line. Ta-da! An illustration to enliven your post.

4. Virtual team software. Right now, I get my BNET blog ideas approved in a virtual newsroom on Campfire, where we all crack wise, support each others’ efforts, and stay off email for all our BNET doings. I also work in a virtual team for that ghost-blogging client above on Basecamp, posting and updating files and getting information about my projects. These virtual-team platforms are so easy it doesn’t take five minutes to learn how to use them. They’re only a half-step above the Yahoo! Groups or BigTent forums you may be using in your personal life. If a prospect asks if you know about them, just nod your head.

What tech tools are you using to earn more with your writing? Have I left any good ones out? Leave a comment and let me know.

Photo via Flickr user Andrew Abogado

There’s a lot of discussion online about writers’ rates. What’s the best way to bid a project — by the word? By the hour? By the project?

They all have their uses, especially since some publications and businesses are kind of in the habit of using one or the other of these methods for deciding what they’ll pay.

But which is the best way to price jobs? To my mind, it’s by the hour.

Time is your most precious resource. You only have so many work hours in the year, so you need to make as much per hour as you can. Which leads me to my one important rule of pricing jobs:

No matter how you price the job, track your hours and figure out your hourly rate. Because if you don’t know your hourly rate, how can you work on raising it? How can you compare clients and know which to keep and which to drop?

Now, if you’re working for an ongoing copywriting client, I personally believe bidding by the project is best. Your client is happy because they know exactly what they’re going to pay, and you can budget for the amount you will earn.

The trick is creating a flat fee for that project that will give you the hourly rate you want.

You can only do that by getting some experience with how long it takes you to do things. Obviously, this setup rewards efficiency. If you’re unusually fast, you can bid on a par with other writers, but end up with a better hourly rate, and earn more over the course of the year.

Before the downturn, I thought high per-article fees were the answer to maximizing earnings. But I’ve learned that’s not always true. When I was scrambling around for a few new clients in late ’08/early ’09, I got an offer from an old editor friend to write some quick articles for $100 apiece, just based on my knowledge of business topics, supplemented with a little online research. (Hey, it’s above my $50 an assignment limit, people!)

At first I was appalled. Prior to this time period, about the very lowest article rate I took was $300. Then I thought what the heck, and gave them a try.

I found I could write them in an hour to 90 minutes. A little quick math and hmmm…that’s $70-$100 an hour. Not too shabby. I’ve kept this work as good occasional filler projects — a quick scan of my bills for this year shows I picked up $1,700 this way so far in ’10, in maybe 20-22 hours. So the lesson is: Any work that earns a high hourly rate is good writing work.

Of course, getting a client where they’ll let you simply bill for however many hours you’re spending on their projects each month is the ideal. Then you know you’re getting paid for every hour you work. I had a client like that at $95 an hour for more than a year, sending me work every month. I think right now, those gigs are harder to come by.

But billing hourly protects you against the evil that is scope creep — the situation where you bid a flat project fee, but then the parameters of the project keep growing, as does your time spent. Been lots of discussion of how to handle this sticky problem on LinkedIn recently.

Most publications tend to assign a price per word or give a flat article price. In which case, you may need to work on your efficiency to make sure your rate stays as good as possible.

But you can always ask for more money — I’ve gotten companies to add $50-$200 to an article assignment or more if they ended up wanting sidebars, or a longer length, or I knew they were a slow payer. More about screwing up your courage to ask for more pay over at my latest post on WM Freelance Writers Community.

What do you prefer — billing by the project, the hour or the word? Leave a comment and let me know. Also, have you asked for more pay lately? If so share your strategy!

Photo via Flickr user zoutedrop

Earlier this week, I wrote about the many ways being fully booked helps your writing business. Obviously, I had a decent stable of clients…but I wasn’t at capacity. Finding a few new clients put me there.

Several readers asked if I could discuss the marketing strategies I used to help fill up my schedule. I’m happy to do so. I think many writers are wondering what the best marketing methods are, particularly what Web sites and online strategies are really useful.

So I will now reveal the single best place online for freelance writers.

First, the raw data: Below is a look at how I got each of the new clients I’ve landed over the past six months or so, which led to my being fully booked.

1.  Major TV network’s business blog — I found this gig through my weekly Gorkana alert, which offers job listings for a few specific areas in business, including finance and healthcare.

2.  Agency through which I blog and develop Web content for lawyers — I answered a Craigslist ad… I don’t exactly recall where, but I must have either seen it on About Freelance Writing (thanks Anne!) or on Writer’s Weekly (thanks Angela!).

3. Two small-business blog clients, both in business finance niches – These both found me through reading my blog for Entrepreneur magazine.

4. Fortune 500 company — They found me on a Google search for “Seattle freelance writer.”

There you have it. Have you guessed what the best place is to be for freelance writers? That’s right — it’s everywhere. As many places as you can be. Each place you are, each strategy you use, increases your odds of success.

Niche job lists are good sources of leads for specialized writing jobs.

Craigslist is full of junk, but if you keep scanning those ads, every once in a while you can find a very solid client.

Your great bylined work online is out there, marketing your business, 24/7.

Companies are finding writers through natural search on Google.

If I hadn’t had a broad-spectrum approach to marketing online — checking a lot of places, and really making the effort to make all my current online clients’ work shine — I wouldn’t have found all these clients. Just one important caveat: Be a skimmer, and don’t spend all day poking around the Internet looking for leads. I try not to spend more than 2-3 hours a week looking for job leads online.

I’d also make the observation that four out of five of these clients are on the copywriting side. My observation is that while publications are still tough to break into right now, copywriting is booming…so it’s not just where you’re looking online, but what you’re looking for, that’s important. Keep an open mind. Try new types of clients — you may find whole new areas of writing you discover you really like. That’s definitely my story.

Where are you finding good writing-job leads? Leave a comment and let me know. I’m sure I haven’t found all the great ways to market online yet!

Photo via Flickr user jared

It’s been a long time coming…nearly two years. But last week, it happened.

A prospect called to see if I could do some writing work for them. I took a deep breath, and then I uttered three magical words that unlock the key to making more money as a freelance writer.

Do you know what those words are?

“I’m fully booked.”

That’s right. At the moment, I am not spending time sifting through online job ads, obsessively trying to make new LinkedIn connections, or beating the street at networking events. I only had time to blog once for MALW last week, because I’m so busy. I have all the work I can handle, nearly all of it at very nice rates. I’m really overbooked, but I’m  hoping I can somehow figure out how to make the workload manageable again in July, once a couple of big new clients ramp up and get going.

It took a heck of a lot of marketing to get to this point, and later this week, I’ll tell you about what worked for me in marketing my freelance writing business. But for now, let’s return to the three magical words, and why they’re so important and magical.

What happens to your business when you’re fully booked?

You relax. The anxiety of starting each month with open time still on the planner is gone. I’m now starting each month with enough work booked to be confident I can pay my bills, and even take my family out for an occasional meal. Being more relaxed makes you more effective and creative, so your work gets done faster, allowing you to make more.

You gain confidence. It’s an ego-booster to realize you are in demand.

You get picky. In the depths of the recession, I took a lot of crazy assignments. One-off projects. Small-business clients with not much money. Quickie articles that paid $100. Stuff I never would have considered in 2007. Now, that’s over. If someone doesn’t fit my image of an ideal client, I can pass.

You start dropping clients. Now you can look at your client list and identify your biggest problem child — you know, the client that pays in over 90 days, is a whiner, never satisfied, wants a committee to edit your work, won’t return your emails for two days, or simply doesn’t pay enough. The next good client that comes down the pike, it’s time to swap that loser out. Repeat this process until you have only top-drawer publications or companies on your roster.

You become more valuable. When you’re fully booked, it’s like smoke signals go up. You start to attract great new clients. When you tell some prospects you can’t take them on because you’re too busy, they are impressed. You must be a good writer! They want to hire you even more. Sometimes, they offer you more money in hopes of getting you to kick someone else off your schedule to make room for their assignment. Sometimes, you say yes.

Your rate starts to rise. Besides all the reasons already stated above, your rate starts to go up when you’re fully booked because you don’t have to spend as many hours marketing (but don’t stop!). You have more productive, billable hours, so that translates to more income.

Are you fully booked? If not, maybe you want to take a look at my mentoring page and think about whether you could use a boost to get your freelance writing career moving forward. There’s a lot of work out there now — the economy is thawing, new magazines are starting, companies are ramping up marketing budgets, and now’s a great time to make new connections and find  new clients.

Photo via Flickr user Bohman

Well…it finally happened. I sat down with my designer today and the Word files for my e-book and we began the process of getting it ready to publish.

This project seemed to take forever! In fact, it took about 18 months. I’m so excited that it’s finally coming into the home stretch.

I learned a lot in the process of writing Make a Living Writing: The 21st Century Guide. If you’re thinking about writing an e-book — and everybody should be! — here are some of my tips on the e-book writing process:

1. Start small. Why, oh why, did I think my very first e-book should be a broad-spectrum, comprehensive guide to everything you need to know to earn well in the writing biz today? If I was doing this over again, I would have found a chunk to publish first as a stand-alone, smaller first e-book to get something out there while I finished the larger book. As it is, I’ll probably be doing that — I plan to pull out the copywriting section and offer it later as a separate product. But part of this information could have been out there helping writers already — and helping me earn — while I finished the bigger book.

2. Chunkify. This is a phrase I learned from one of my Seattle Times editors. Especially when people are reading online, they need information broken up into small bites. So most of my sections are short or broken out into bullets or numbered items to make them easy to digest.

3. Listen to your audience. If you’re writing any sort of nonfiction, how-to e-book, don’t sit in a vacuum in your office writing what you think people want to know. Find out what they really want to know! I’ve gotten great feedback from my mentees and readers of this blog about exactly what they wanted to know about traditional markets today, emerging writing opportunities and new techniques for finding good-paying clients. The e-book would not be nearly as strong without that critical feedback.

4. Think landscape. E-books lay out in landscape format, not portrait — that is, 11″ wide by 8 1 /2″ high, not the other way around. When I started out, I wasn’t thinking about this. I ended up reorganizing and editing a lot as a result. Landscape format is the shape of  most computer screens (though not e-readers like the one above!) — so it helps to think about that shape while you’re writing and looking at how much will fit on a page.

5. Think about structure and style. One of the toughest challenges for me as someone used to writing articles of maybe up to 3,000 words was organizing so much material. I should have spent more time up-front working with my table of contents to figure out where topics would fit best — would have saved a lot of reorganizing on the back end. On the style side, I kept doing things differently — how to put dashes, how to format lists. Think of a style and stick with it to avoid lots of combing through to change little format problems later.

6. Let it go. At some point, it’s time to call the e-book done. But I found it hard to get there. I got great advice from my online buddy Robert Earle Howells of Write Where the Money Is, who told me to just press “send” and move on to the next e-book. It doesn’t have to be perfect,  he said — it’s an e-book. Nonfiction e-books are meant to be timely and produced quickly. He told me he still sometimes goes back in and changes something in the PDF of his book, and that it’s no big deal. That helped me a lot…I probably would have kept tinkering with this forever, until the recession was long over and a lot of it would have needed revising! Wish I’d heard his advice six months ago…probably would have the e-book out already!

Have any questions about writing an e-book? Let me know — if I think the readers would benefit, I’ll answer them here on the blog.

Photo via Flickr user cloudsoup

Earlier this week, I shared the table of contents for the first half of my upcoming e-book, Make a Living Writing: The 21st Century Guide. Below is the second half, covering copywriting and earning from your niche blog. Some of you may recognize a few of these headings from previous blog entries I’ve done here or on WM Freelance Writing Connection. They’ve been revised and in many cases expanded for the book, which also includes a lot of new material I have not blogged on before.

Please feel free to leave comments about any topics you don’t see included that you would like to see covered in the book.

Thanks all –

Make a Living Writing: The 21^st Century Guide

By Carol Tice

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

PART II: THE COPYWRITING CRASH COURSE

An Introduction to the World of Copywriting

Choosing a niche

Use your life experience

My breaking-in story

Is copywriting “selling out”?

Getting Copywriting Assignments

Seven ways to find your first clients

A sample opening pitch

Two more strategies for getting those first samples

Blogging for business—a great new break-in opportunity

Five signs of a good business-blogging prospect

How to create a great business blog

The mechanics of business blogging

Break in with crowdsourcing contests

What to Charge

Why I don’t have a rate sheet

What to do if a prospect requires a quote

Sample copywriting client questionnaire

Negotiation tips for getting the best rate

Listen in on a client negotiation

Completing Your First Copywriting Assignment

Client meeting 101

Writing your assignment

Submit your work and deal with edits

Turn one assignment into a regular gig

How to Gain Confidence and Move Up

Social media + copywriting = good pay

Team with a graphic designer to earn more

Copywriting for nonprofits

Learn more about copywriting

PART III: MAKE A LIVING WITH YOUR BLOG

Blog vs. Article: What’s the Difference?

Why Your Blog Needs a Niche

Best Traits of Successful Niche Bloggers

Nine Ways to Monetize Your Blog

Advice from Successful Niche Blogger Nathan Hangen

Conclusion: Making it Happen

You Gotta Believe

Make a Living Writing: The Sequel

Some of you may have seen me mention that I’ve been writing a comprehensive how-to e-book about breaking into paid writing. Well, about a year later than I imagined it would happen, Make a Living Writing: The 21st Century Guide is shortly headed to the designer for layout.

Wow, am I thrilled to be saying that! What a slog it’s been, trying to get this material written and organized inbetween all my regular writing assignments and all that other life stuff that happens when you have a family with three kids.

But I’m pleased to say the e-book table of contents is ready for review. I invite MALW blog readers to take a look at the table of contents this week and leave comments about any topics they don’t see being covered in the book that they’d like to see me add.

Please keep in mind this e-book is intended mostly for new or low-earning writers looking to learn how to break in and start earning well. I’m planning a sequel with more advanced tactics for moving up to higher-paying writing work, so if I think a topic doesn’t belong in this e-book, it may end up in the sequel.

Today, I’m sharing the table for the introduction and part one, which is all about breaking into writing for publications, either print or online. Later this week, I’ll share parts two and three, which are on copywriting and earning from your blog.

Appreciate your feedback, readers! And hope to have the book ready for purchase soon.

Make a Living Writing: The 21^st Century Guide

By Carol Tice

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

Introduction-

Let’s Get Started

Who am I to give advice?

Freelance writing today

Myths about getting published

Three ways to make good money from writing

What’s your goal?

Watch for unexpected opportunities

The 7 Habits of Successful New Freelance Writers

PART I: Writing for Publications

Get Ready to Write

LOOK IN: What do you know?

Choose a focus

Finding the time

LOOK OUT: 7 Steps to Your First Paid Writing Assignments

1. Identify your writing type

2. Find your rung on the ladder

3. Start marketing your writing

A baker’s dozen ways to look for writing work

Research and The Writer’s Market

4. Use social media to build your writing career

Social media do’s and don’ts

5. Find places to get your first few clips

All about writing for Internet content sites

Six problems with content-mill writing

6. Find editors to pitch

7. Create your pitching toolkit

Your resume

Your bio

Your Web site

Three reasons to organize your clips on your own site

What if I don’t have a Web site?

Your blog

Your in-person pitch

Get Set to Pitch

Finding and developing story ideas

Evergreen article ideas

Submitting unsolicited, completed articles

Preparing your query letter in three easy steps

Step one: Know your publication

Writer’s guidelines and editorial calendars

A look at an editor’s life

Step two: Define an angle

Step three: Match your pitch to the right publication

Online articles vs print articles

In the back door: Online articles for print magazines

Crafting your pitch

Two foolproof approaches to writing queries

Query don’ts

Case study: Pitching Kiwanis

Send the most queries in the shortest time

Three ways to pitch editors

1. Pitching via email

Don’t help your editor rip you off!

2. Pitching on the phone

Sample script for a phone pitch

How to leave a voicemail for an editor

3. Pitching via snail mail

Should you nag that editor about your query?

Go: Writing your first assignments

What to know before you start writing

What determines writer pay?

Finding sources and interviewing

Twelve interview tips

How to find facts for your article—fast

Timesaving tips for fast article writing

Seven tips to beat writer’s block

Making your article great

Getting paid

Final thoughts on writing for publications

Image via Flickr user Ivan Walsh

Earlier this week, I talked about the opportunities out there now that the economy is finally starting to recover. Today I want to talk about one really cool niche I think few writers even consider that could bump up your earnings: Company magazines.

Many big companies put out magazines. Some are for their own employees. Some are for various segments of their customers.

In some professions, there are magazines they can get customized for their business — you’re looking at an example in healthcare in the photo above. That’s a customized healthcare magazine hospitals are buying a template of, and then inserting a bit of information about their facility and bingo, they’ve got a magazine to send to everyone who lives near the hospital. Somewhere, there’s a company creating that magazine and hiring writers to write those articles.

My experience is company magazines are decent- to very-good-paying markets. In part because the knowledge is a bit specialized, and in part because company magazines are just not considered a sexy, glamour place to write like a national newsstand magazine. They have to pay a bit more usually to get quality talent. They also pay well because often their circulations or viewership is HUGE!

You might be asked to write about a company product or service in your article, but many times I’ve found the requirements are no different from articles I might write for a consumer magazine in the same niche. The company just wants to build customer loyalty by providing useful information for their type of customer.

Note that some of these magazines are online. Corporations including Dell and American Express have huge online magazines, for instance. Many have multiple online magazines for various audiences — for instance, here’s Microsoft’s magazine just for professionals who’re certified in Microsoft software programs, MCP Magazine.

My advice: Any time you’re in a store of any kind, look around at the reading material and see if they put out a magazine. You might just turn up a great new possible market to pitch. If you can’t find a masthead, just contact the company’s corporate communications head and ask who to pitch. If you see a company with an online magazine, do some sleuthing and try to find out who’s in charge. These don’t tend to turn up even in the Writer’s Market and other guides, and they don’t tend to post writer’s guidelines, so you’ll have to be a little enterprising to connect with their editors.

Pitching the magazine of a company you patronize gives you an immediate inside edge — you already know their stores or products and like them!

Here’s some information on just a few company magazines below:

Curves gyms: Diane is their magazine all about exercise and healthy lifestyles. Looks like it comes out four times a year.

Costco: This is probably one of the best-known company magazines around — Costco Connection has a circulation of 8 million, making it one of the most-read American magazines! You can scan their issues online to get an idea of the content.

American Express OPEN Forum: Their online small-business magazine is one of the most highly regarded business Web sites on the Internet. Highly retweeted. And I don’t just say that because I’ve written a few things for them.

Tractor Supply Co: Out Here. If you live in a rural area, check out the lumber and farm-supply chain Tractor Supply’s high-quality magazine for its customers, which is all about rural life.

Best Buy: @Gamer is a new magazine they’re just launching for their game-buying audience. Word is it launches this month, so be on the lookout.

Have you noticed any interesting company magazines? If so, leave a comment and let us know about them.

Photo via Flickr user pr1001

I hate to get cranky on everybody, but I’ve had it with the whining about  how hard it is to find good-paying freelance writing assignments in this terrible, down economy. The fact is, there are a lot of signs of recovery out there. A couple of them:

Retail sales have been rising for several months now.

I’ve had about 10 really solid leads turn up in the past two weeks, way more than I’ve been seeing in recent months. My own personal economic-recovery indicator.

Do you know the first things that happen at the beginning of a recovery?

• Savvy companies start to ramp up their marketing — a recent FedEx study showed 42 percent of small businesses said they were contemplating increasing their marketing budgets. FORTY-TWO PERCENT! Know how many small businesses there are in the U.S.? Oh, more than 20 MILLION.
• Magazines begin selling more ads and adding pages or expanding their number of annual issues.
• New magazines are born — I counted six of them in just one week in my recent Wooden Horse newsletter.

My point: It’s time to stop using the recession as your excuse for not earning.

There’s plenty of writing work out there right now, and there’s going to be more. You can get in on the start of this up-trend, or you can be one of the last to jump on the bandwagon. Put it out there now, because the universe is starting to respond.

I got an email out of the blue this week from a Fortune 500 corporation looking to start a new e-newsletter for its customers. I would bet that this sort of thinking is taking place at many, many big companies right now. They all want to be first in line to get their share of the recovery. And they’re going to need skilled writers to help them achieve that goal.

It seems like twice a week now, I’m talking to some small business person who needs social media explained to them. They’ve heard they need a blog or articles on their site, but they have no idea how they promote that online and use it to drive traffic. The opportunity in this niche alone — presenting complete social-media proposals that include promotion and blogging or article-writing — is huge.

I speak from experience, since 2009 was my best-earning year ever — you can defy the downturn. And now, it’s not even as much of a downturn anymore!

So it’s time to stop moaning about low-paying content sites that rip you off, rear up on your hind legs, and start marketing your writing business. Send queries. Meet prospects. Use LinkedIn or Biznik. Put up a billboard. Whatever’s your speed.

You’re out of excuses, so get out there and find clients who’re willing to pay you a living wage. More and more of them are out there every day, now that the economy is finally thawing.

Later this week, on this blog and on WM Freelance Writing Connection, I’ll be talking about a couple of specific niche opportunities for you to think about as you make your marketing plan for growing your business in 2010.

What will you do to capitalize on the recovery? Leave a comment and let us know your strategy.

Photo via Flickr user psd

I often hear from freelance writers who say they suck at marketing. They hate cold calling! They’re too shy for in-person networking! Prospecting — ugh! Social media marketing — who has the time!

They look at online job ads, and then complain about how crummy most of the advertising companies pay. They’re stuck writing for low-pay content sites…because, well, they just hate marketing.

Recently, I realized there’s one form of marketing these writers probably already do very well. Here’s how you do it:

Do an amazing job on every assignment you have, for every client you have right now.

Your best form of marketing is always creating really stellar writing, each and every time out. Some important reasons why:

1. Repeat business. Exceed expectations and be ready with more story ideas or copywriting project proposals, and your existing clients will keep using you. That’s a lot less work than having to pitch and get one-off assignments from a long string of different clients. Who needs to prospect when you’ve got a steady stream of work coming from current clients?

2. Referrals. Editors get together and dish about who’s a great writer. They ask each other who to hire. Small-business owners go to chamber networking events and talk about tradespeople they use. If you’re outstanding, you’ll get mentioned. Presto! New clients without you having to cold-call anybody.

3. Better clients. Your awesome clips are your ticket to the big time. Write a sharp advertorial article for a startup, you could be writing one next for a $1 billion company. As it happens, that exact thing happened to me, so I know it works. I also got my first staff writing job for a trade publication — at a really substantial salary — off $100 article clips I wrote for the L.A. Reader. Every once in a while, I meet a writer whose strong clips on a content site got them a good-paying private client. Even in an environment that has a generally bad rep, outstanding work can take you places. That’s what I love about this career — you can literally write yourself to where you want to go.

4. More free time. As much as I’ve come to love the thrill of the hunt in active marketing, if you’re fully booked with lucrative clients and don’t need to block out time to write queries, call prospects or attend networking events, well…that’s more time you can spend with the family.

My work is out there online, marketing my writing services, every minute of every day. So is yours. What’s it saying about you? If it’s powerhouse stuff, it’ll be your marketing machine. If it’s mediocre, it’ll send a string of loser clients your way. You can shape your career direction just by delivering big on what you’re writing today.

Final note — my online buddy Jenn Mattern of All Freelance Writing is the guru on this passive-marketing lifestyle — if you’re interested in this type of marketing approach, you might want to check out her book, The Query-Free Freelancer.

Photo via Flickr user Intersection Consulting

Hi all –

Today we take a break from our usual straight-up advice here on MALW to throw out a question: What do you want to know about the business of writing?

I ask because my writer-friend David Volk is organizing a Society of Professional Journalists conference in the early fall, and I said I’d help him shape the agenda by asking my readers what they would like to learn about at such an event.

So here’s your chance to penetrate the mysteries of writing success. Leave me a comment and tell me:

If you went to a writing conference, what topic would you most want to see a session about?

What do you find most baffling about the process of earning a good living from writing?

What writing question have I not addressed here on MALW that you’d like me to answer?

Is there something you just don’t get about the business of writing that you’d like explained?

If you were here in my home office right now, what one question would you most want to ask me?

To grease the wheels here a little, I’ll offer a $50 discount on my mentoring service to anyone who participates in the poll. If you’ve been wanting to work with a writing-business coach, now you can get your questions answered on the blog AND get a deal on personalized one-on-one coaching! Which comes with ongoing followup email support, by the way.

The discount is good only until the end of May 2010, for new mentees only. Leave your question, all!

Photo via Flickr user Matt From London

I was asked recently to write about the art of scheduling a vacation as a freelance writer. (Have to apologize that I can’t remember who asked me!) But it’s important to take breaks from the writing grind, especially in this new-media world where so many of us have daily blogging deadlines.

Personally, I’m supposed to post like 7-8 blogs a week for one business Web site client alone!  So I know how hard it can be.

But writers can and should break away — and when I say vacation, I don’t mean the kind where you lug along your laptop and hole up in your hotel room while the rest of your family members swim with dolphins or hit the bike trails. The time spent away from your ordinary writing routine is critically important and can be transformative. For me, it’s my time to think about the big picture — where is my writing career going? Where do I want it to go?

The change in my mindset starts right away. Even as our car is pulling out of the driveway, I’m usually scribbling down new story ideas, thoughts about new markets to query, marketing techniques I haven’t tried…I come back with a whole fresh list of action items. It’s amazing the insights you can have when you’re not locked into your usual deadlines.

Here are my tips for creating a truly refreshing vacation:

1. Plan far in advance. Taking off for a week on no notice isn’t going to work. I rarely plan a vacation less than two months into the future.

2. Start notifying clients early. As soon as you know when you’ll be gone, start prepping your ongoing clients for the reality that they will not be able to contact you for a period of time. As in, “I’m going to be turning this piece in a few days early, as I’ll be gone starting on X date and I want to make sure you have a chance to ask any questions you might have before I go.” Or “This will be the last piece I can do until September, as I’ll be out the last couple weeks of August. I’ll pitch you some ideas before I leave and you can get back to me on them when I return.”

3. Work ahead. Unless you’re writing breaking news that must post the day the news breaks, you can work ahead on all your assignments. I’ve noticed some of my fellow Entrepreneur magazine Daily Dose bloggers writing and pre-scheduling posts up to three months ahead of when their blogs are due!

4. Save money. Unless you are a really good planner, it’s likely the month you vacation in will see an income drop. So on top of the vacation expense, try to sock some money away to cover that loss.

5. Set automatic notifications. Most email programs will allow you to auto-respond to messages to let folks know you won’t be responding right away. Make sure you turn those on and change your voicemail message before you go. I’ll often send a message to all my editors before I go to start them thinking about assigning me when I return, by letting them know when I’ll be back and how much open time I’ve got.

6. Really unplug. When you go on vacation, try your best to stay out of those Internet cafes. If you must, maybe take one hour at some point in the week to just clear out email. But otherwise, don’t just be physically away from your desk — remember to really let it go mentally and enjoy every precious moment of your vacation time.

Photo via Flickr user epSos.de

I have a writer friend I’ve stayed in touch with over many years. We recently met for lunch and caught up on who we’re writing for these days. She’s always struggled to earn as much as she needed to support her family, and our lunch reminded me of why.

She rattled off a list of very interesting prospective projects that seemed to be waiting in the wings. Some were potentially very lucrative.

The problem? I’d heard about many of these same projects months back. She was still in a holding pattern, waiting for them to materialize. In the meanwhile, she hadn’t earned much.

“I’m still waiting to hear,” she told me of many of the projects.

Which reminded me of one of my rules of earning well as a freelance writer: Be a writer, not a waiter.

My mentees bring this home to me as well. Often, they’ll get a nibble from a prospective client or editor…and then…paralysis. Weeks of waiting. And maybe that nibble turns into a client…but often, it doesn’t. Personally, I got four really awesome-sounding emails from four different, new possible copywriting clients late last week. I was kinda stoked! And then Monday came, and none of them got back to me. This happens — it’s just a reality of life as a freelance writer. There’s a lotta flakes out there.

To avoid wasting time on prospects that don’t pan out, here are my rules for coping with prospective projects that aren’t confirmed yet:

Don’t get excited about them.

Don’t “leave room” on your schedule for them.

Don’t stop marketing your business.

Don’t turn down other firm assignments, even if they’re not as good as the nibble.

Don’t expect them to pan out.

In my experience, many businesses that explore copywriting don’t ever end up doing their projects. Editors who make vague noises of interest but never translate that into an actual assignment are also not uncommon. So don’t get your hopes up prematurely, as it can put you into a deadly waiting game that costs you big money. This way, if a new client actually inks a deal with you, it’s an exciting and pleasant surprise — as opposed to the disaster that occurs when you pencil in a chunk of pay and mentally count it as income you expect this month…and then it gets delayed, or never happens.

When you have a signed contract, a confirmed assignment, and/or a deposit check in hand, then put the article or copywriting project on your calendar and consider it a “go.” Until then, remember — writers earn from writing, not from waiting.

Photo via Flickr user batega

Earlier this week, I answered some questions from freelance writer Lee Lefton about rates and how to find business-blogging clients. After I sent him links to some of my business blogs, he had some followup questions on how business blogging technically works:

I notice that most of the blogs have links. Do you do the research to find those related articles and then make sure they’re included? Do you write any of them?

Also, do you discuss with your clients what needs to go into each blog before writing? The company that wanted to pay $25 said that sometimes their clients had an idea what they wanted said, other times I could just “make it up.” These were attorneys!

And, are you responsible for the technical aspects of getting the blogs up, or do you just do the writing? I want to make sure I don’t get in over my head when I start doing this.

OK, taking these one at a time:

Most good business blogs contain links, in my opinion. They are what’s known as mashups — you take several recent pieces of news you’ve seen online and provide analysis of what they mean when viewed together. That’s your value-add that makes viewers want to come to the client site instead of those six other places — you’re gathering up their industry news and giving it to them in a comprehensive, insightful way. I get these links by gathering links from my own Internet browsing and from Google alerts I set up to capture news on my business clients’ industry topics. I set up a Word doc I throw them in for future use, along with a key phrase to remind me what each link was about. Read 50 or so news stories on a topic daily and at the end of the week you will have more ideas than you can ever use!

Sometimes I do link to previous stories I’ve done, either for that blog or other outlets. Nothing wrong with that…kind of builds your credibility that you’ve been writing on the topic longer than five minutes.

I discuss at length with clients their goal, intended audience, voice, tone, and ideal topics for their blog. Some hand me an Excel spreadsheet of approved topics and ask me to prioritize and execute them. Others expect me to develop all the ideas on my own. Still others are somewhere inbetween. When those attorneys say “make it up,” Lee, I think they’re referring to the latter, that they would want you to develop some of the topics (not that you could fabricate the posts from your imagination!).

Physically creating blog posts and getting them up on a client’s site can happen a number of ways, and may require absolutely no special programming knowledge, or a good deal of technical expertise. I have clients I email my blogs to with the links in parentheses or included as hyperlinked words in Word, and they take it from there.

In other cases, I’ve been given access to a dashboard in their blog program via the Internet and can post my blogs directly within their system. In these cases, I compose the blog right in the program (copying over text from Word usually creates problems) and do the work of enlivening links so that they’ll be clickable to viewers on their site. I also have a few clients for whom I serve as photo editor for my blog, researching and selecting appropriate photos (like you see above) to embed in my posts.

In some cases an editor goes over my post, where in others, as I gain a client’s trust, they’ll give me free access to publish my posts directly to the site without review. If you get this…be responsible and proofread carefully!

Blogging programs I’ve used include WordPress (which you see in action here), Blogger and Movable Type. If you haven’t used any of these popular programs before, don’t freak out. It’s incredibly easy to learn the basics you’ll need for most blogging situations, and they’re highly similar to each other. Once you’ve used one, you’ll pretty much know how to use the others.

If you haven’t used any of the popular programs, it’s probably because you don’t have a personal blog. I highly recommend starting one to provide an audition piece for business blogging clients. The topic isn’t as important as having a blog that’s well-written and shows you understand the blog format. You’d be surprised how valuable a stepping-stone your own blog can be to get into business blogging.

If you’ve got more questions about business blogging, ask them below and maybe we’ll cover them in followup posts. Thanks for the thoughts Lee!

Photo via Flickr user Mykl Roventine: Out & About

This week I’m writing all about the world of blogging for business clients. I’ve been asked about this niche before, and recently got a bunch of questions on this topic from freelance writer Lee Lefton. Today, I’m going to talk about how to spot good business-blogging clients and what pay rates are out there.

As it happens, in recent months I’m earning more and more of my income from blogging for companies and online news outlets. Coming from traditional journalism, I never thought I’d enjoy blogging, but I’ve really grown to love this scrappy new format — and I’ve discovered there are some good-paying gigs in blogging, too. But clearly, that’s not been everyone’s experience.

Lee writes:

I recently had the opportunity to write a blog for two different clients. Both required 1,000 words or thereabouts. One client would provide some input, the other would require that I interview their customers or clients. The first had a budget of $25 per blog, the second, $35. Normally, I would attempt to negotiate, but I really didn’t see any room for that, so I politely declined both.

I’ve since spoken to a writer friend who does a lot of blogging and she said that was the going rate. I just find that very hard to accept. Would you be willing to give me an idea or a range of what you charge?

Let’s start by talking about what a good business blogging client looks like. First off, they understand the blog format — which is not 1,000 words long. More like 300-400 is considered the ideal.

Second, a good client understands that your regular blog entries have the power to potentially make their business happen. As a result, they want to pay a good wage so they can get a pro to write something exceptionally compelling. And $25 to $35 for 1,000 words obviously is not an appropriate wage, especially for blogs that call for interviews!

Third, good business-blog clients make a long-range commitment because they have realistic expectations and understand it’ll take time for the blog to build their traffic. My minimum contract for small-business clients is one blog a week for two months, for $1,000, and I’ve done several of those.

I don’t want to work on scattershot projects that won’t be successful, since I’m trying to build my reputation in blogging. One thing I’ve learned: Each business blogging client requires a huge initial learning curve where you don’t earn as well on an hourly basis, so that’s the amount at which I find it worth my time to get involved.

I’ve earned from $65-$300 for blog entries, depending on the situation, on the higher end of that where interviews were called for. Since I don’t take assignments below $50, I obviously do not agree that $25-$35 is the “going rate”! I think this format is too new to have a going rate just yet — rates are all over the place. It’s up to you to seek out the situations where blogs pay a living wage.

As with online articles, when you’re evaluating a blogging offer, the thing to keep in mind is NOT the per-blog price. It’s the HOURLY RATE. If it will take you 10 minutes to write the blog and you could crank out five in an hour, maybe $25 apiece is a great rate. I generally try to keep my per-blog rate around $100 apiece since I usually write blogs that take an hour or more to create. Blogs that require interviews obviously need to pay more.

The best-paying business-blog clients are in specialized business niches not everyone can write about. I’ve blogged about surety bonds, insurance, business finance, public companies’ SEC filings, and other dorky stuff for good pay. Identify your niche specialties, and then do in-person networking, or look at all the Web sites of companies in your target niche, find the one that needs a blog, and call them.

You’re looking for real-world businesses that sell a real product or service, or established news organizations that are moving online. They want strong posts that will make people hang around their site and buy from them, or their advertisers. If you want to make even more money, sell your blogging skill along with your knowledge of social media — that’s a great package of services that’s commanding good pay.

Later this week, I’ll talk about some of the technical requirements for blogging remotely for clients — the programs and techniques you’ll need to know.

Photo via Flickr user MyEyeSees

I do a monthly “weigh-in” with my mentees, where we all talk about our goals and accomplishments for the month. One of my mentees noted this week that April was a slow month because “I spent the first two weeks of April recovering from being busy in March.”

Wait just a cotton-pickin’  minute there. Two weeks recovering? It is impossible to earn well if you need two weeks to get over it after you have a rush period.

As it happens, I had an insane rush the last two weeks of April. Two small-business clients needed four blogs apiece, another Web site needed a blog entry plus social-media links, I was blogging once or twice a day for BNET, plus three weekly blogs for a national magazine, and four fully reported articles were also due for various other clients. It was high-intensity, round-the-clock crazy. And if I let any deadlines slip, I might lose a client, or at the very least see thousands of income push into the next month. That latter is an insidious development I try to avoid as it always leads inevitably to lower annual earnings. Losing clients obviously I try to avoid as well!

I recovered from this deadline onslaught by taking all of Saturday off, as I always do. If I really want to recharge, I also don’t turn on the computer at all on Sunday…I think this time I might have just checked in for an hour or two. I garden, read to my kids, go for walks, cook, stretch, see friends. Then on Monday, I’m back at it.

I think a lot of new writers are coming into this field without ever having had to file on a regular basis. I filed four stories a week for more than six years at one point in my career, for instance. What that experience gave me is strong writing muscles. The more you research, write, and meet deadlines, the more you learn how to do it time-efficiently and without wiping yourself out. That ability to keep yourself healthy – and to bounce back, recover quickly, and be ready for more work — is key to upping your earnings.

No matter where you’ve started in writing and where you’re at now, you can think about how to make your writing work more sustainable. As you move up, you’ll get more difficult assignments, tougher editors, tighter deadlines. And you’ll need to be able to handle it all in stride and be ready for more next week.

What do you do to recharge after a big pile of writing assignments get filed? Leave a comment and share your tips.

Photo via Flickr user steve.ie

It occurred to me recently that there is one easy step freelance writers can take to earn more. I’ve used it a lot in the past year. It’s one I think many writers overlook, so thought I’d mention it today.

Ready? Here it is:

Ask for more money.

That’s right — even in this terrible economy, even though there seem to be a million other writers growing on trees…you can still ask clients for more money. Often, you’ll get it.

I got approached to write for a major business site not long ago by a content house that was providing the site with articles. I was quoted $250 an article. “Really?” I said. “I’m surprised at that rate, considering where these articles would be going. I do similar articles for clients of similar stature for $300 and up. I think $300 is pretty much the bottom rate I’d consider for this type of work.”

And presto: I got $300 an article.

Another 20-blog package I wrote started with a $200 apiece opening bid. When I said, “Gee, but it’s rush work…” they quickly raised the rate to $300 a post.

You can ask longstanding clients for a raise, too. I was writing for $85 an hour for a major private company, and at year-end I asked for $95 an hour, saying I felt I’d gained a lot of expertise in their business that made me more valuable. They grumbled slightly…and then gave it to me. That one probably translated into $8,000 or so of extra income over the next two years, for no additional work.

In talking with my mentees, I’ve found it’s common for writers to simply leap at the first rate offered for a job, and then feel locked into that rate forever. Know that an assignment offer may be intended as the opening of a negotiation, not a take-it-or-leave-it situation. New writers often get so excited when they get a work offer, they don’t think about whether the pay being offered is adequate for the assignment or calculate how many hours it will really take.

Before you leap, ask yourself whether you could make a case for a better pay rate. Does it require specialized expertise? A drop-everything rush not every writer might take on at this late date? Is it for a publication or Web site with a reputation for quality they need to burnish? If you can think of a reason why more pay is warranted, you’re crazy not to at least mention it to the prospect.

What’s that you say? You’re shy? Intimidated? Practice asking for more money in front of a mirror, or with a friend. Join Toastmasters. Whatever it takes to increase your confidence to where you could ask for more money.

There’s a basic rule in writing as in much of life — them that asks, gets. Asking for more money also has other benefits besides potentially getting you a raise.

1) You come off as more professional. Professionals negotiate, as opposed to just jumping at the first thing they’re offered. They’re not that desperate.

2) You feel empowered. You won’t do the assignment while always wondering if you could have gotten more for the work.

3) The worst they can do is say “no.” I can’t think of a gig I lost by asking for more money. Sometimes I’ve heard, “Sorry, that’s the limit on our budget,” and then had to decide whether I wanted to accept their opening price. But if you’re polite, calm and professional about it (never angry, snarky or rude), you usually have nothing to lose by raising the issue.

4) You hone your negotiating skills. Your negotiating ability is key to helping you move up the earning ladder. So consider each offer a chance to practice negotiating.

Have you asked for more money and gotten it on a writing assignment recently? Leave a comment and tell us how you did it.

Photo via Flickr user borman818

Lots of freelance writers use social media — LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and the like — as a way of finding clients, finding sources, and staying in touch with other writers. But I think few are aware of the emerging writing niche of getting paid by companies to write on social-media platforms.

The most basic social-media jobs involve writing Web content or doing social-media strategy for corporations, helping them with their social-media presence. Many companies are at the stage where they know they should be in social media, but they don’t really know how to do it, and they are turning to outside experts. It’s sort of a gold-rush moment in the field, since it’s still an emerging medium.

If you’ve been using social media yourself — you’re blogging and posting on community forums and major social sites, or running your own niche site and optimizing it for search — you should realize you have expertise that companies are paying for.

Because it’s such a new field, pay is all over the map. You can tell it’s starting to be a real job niche, though, because niche job Web sites have already sprung up to aggregate these jobs, such as jobsinsocialmedia.com. Recruiter Jim Durbin, the site owner, says pay depends mostly on your credentials and job history. If you’re a brand-new writer with your own blog, you’ll probably start out not making much. If you have copywriting experience or an agency or big-company marketing background, you could find yourself making $120,000 a year in a social-media strategy job.

Recent trends on Indeed.com show jobs that include the phrase “social media” in the description have gone from basically nothing a couple years ago to nearly 1 percent of all jobs listed on the site! I got more than 18,000 job listings for that keyword on a recent search, many for major companies including Radio Flyer, Avis, Hewlett-Packard, Coca-Cola and Office Depot. Big nonprofits including World Vision are looking, too.

Here are some of the major jobs in social media and descriptions of what they do. Maybe there’s a great new area in writing for you to help grow your income.

• Blogger. Most writers are familiar with blogging by now, but may not realize that companies and publications are paying well for blogs. Personally, I made more than half my income this month from blogging for companies and major publications. Pay ranges from squat to more than $100 a post.  To earn more, think about specialized, unusual expertise you can leverage, and target bigger companies and publications that need to project a top-quality image.
• Community manager. I wrote recently on WM about my cool friend Tony Kehlhofer, who landed an amazing part-time, work-from-home gig as a community manager for Lego’s new massive multiplayer online game for tweens, Lego Universe. You can read over there about the training he got so he can now monitor and respond on behalf of Lego to kids as they’re playing the game. I talked with a recruiter recently at a division of Spherion for my AOL story who said he’d recently filled a similar full-time community manager gig for a big company that paid $120,000 a year. Generally, if you’re already making a big-time marketing salary,  you can command these kind of rates.
• Social-media strategist or digital strategist. If you’re someone with a LOT of social-media experience, who understands what works and doesn’t in drawing people to a Web site, you can earn big in this role. Social-media strategists often oversee a social team developing on a company’s online marketing strategy. This person decides what the company needs to be doing in social media — what messages they should be sending, what sites they should be active on, the works. Copywriting coach Chris Marlow says most of the work is still freelance — but it’s going for upwards of $200 an hour. Working under this top-dog can be social-media marketing specialists and associates who help execute the strategy, tweeting, setting up Facebook fan communities and keeping them active, and so on.
• Online customer service representative. This can be a bottom-rung place to get started. It’s like the social-media version of a call center worker. Online reps troll social sites for mentions of their company, and then respond if needed. Had an interesting personal experience with this recently — got to jawing on Twitter with another writer about taxes and how we’d gotten IRS notices. I mentioned TurboTax didn’t seem to know how to do the adoption tax credit, I’d gotten a revision letter both the years I took it using the software. Next thing I know, a TurboTax rep DM’d me on Twitter to ask if I needed help! I told him about the problem and he said he’d report it to the company. What a feel-good customer experience! Somebody got paid to reach out to  me on there…and you could, too. These folks are also sometimes known as “online reputation defenders,” crusading online to burnish their brand’s image.
• Search engine marketing associate. SEM associates work with a Web site to make sure it’s optimizing its results in natural search on Google and other engines. Some of you are already doing this for your own sites, and could apply what you know to a paying gig.

Photo via Flickr user webtreats

Are you attracting the caliber of writing client you would like? Many writers complain they only seem to draw lowball-payers with drama problems.

My mentee Katherine Swarts asked this week:

Does anyone have any suggestions, when it comes to professional and social networking, for conveying an upfront image that says “Top-quality, top-pay work only”? I’m tired of fending off individuals and amateur entrepreneurs who want someone to dash off a resume, college-paper edit, self-published-book edit, or write a press release for $50-100. They usually approach me directly, so simply ignoring them as I would a content-mill ad isn’t an option.

I’m sorry to report that loser clients strike even experienced, high-earning writers… But there are some concrete steps you can take to cut down on the number of loser pitches you get and increase the number of solid leads. Here are my tips:

1.  Look at what your Web site says. Let’s travel on over to Katherine’s Web site, SpreadTheWordCommercialWriting. It’s a pretty solid site, but it could be better. I’d add a picture of Katherine right there on the home page — remember, people hire people, not faceless sites. I also recommend having at least a partial bio right on that landing page, with a few of your top client names showing, as I do on mine. Think about your site like a prospect — what do you want to know? I think primarily, it’s “Who is this writer, what types of writing do they do, and who have they written for before?” Try to get brief answers to those right on the landing page. Since Katherine’s URL has “commercial writing” in it, that helps.

Running through her tabs, her bio just has a few association and certification links, and needs beefing up. She’s got some clips (though I’d like to see markets cited with the article links), testimonials (nice!), and she does a newsletter (very nice!). So a mixed bag here, and the home page needs substantial strengthening so it screams “I’m a pro, and these are the types of writing I have experience in.”

2.  Look at the layout of your Web site. Katherine knows her bright-yellow and blue layout isn’t the most professional look, but she doesn’t know how to update it. This is a problem I hear about all the time. Two words: Solve it! Either take a class to do it yourself, or hire somebody to overhaul your layout with more professional colors. That bright-yellow reminds me of some cheesy direct-mail ad.

Cheap Web help is readily available — for about a year, I used a teen from my high school’s digital design program. They need final projects to work on! Writer sites are not that complicated, and some appropriate tones and clean organization would help. One problem I see a lot on WordPress-based writer sites is their blog about some arcane niche topic dominates the home page while their resume and clips are shunted aside. Not the best strategy for getting better-paying work. Put those white papers and feature articles front and center instead.

3.  Look at where you’re networking. When I first started actively networking for my freelance writing business back in ’08, I went to a few local events in my small town. I was a bit startled to have experienced networkers ask me, “Who’s your ideal client?” I didn’t know what to say! I hadn’t really thought about it that much. When I did, I realized my ideal clients at this point in my career weren’t going to be at these local events — they are medium- to major-sized corporations and $1-a-word magazine markets.

So I changed where I network, got off my fanny and humped it into Seattle to go to big-time networking events. What do you know — I met the editor of Costco Connection, an editor of Microsoft Office Live…way better and more appropriate clients.

If you’re not getting the caliber of clients you want networking where you are, hit a bigger market or explore some other events until you hit the right mix. Maybe consider sucking it up and joining one of the pro groups such as BNI, where people are more serious about their business and understand marketing costs. Also, plug your authority more — maybe post some articles on BizNik that display your expertise.

4.  Look at what you’re saying when you network. Do you have your elevator pitch down on what you do? Does it include a specific description of the type of writing work you’re looking for? Hone your pitch to deflect losers. “I’m a freelance writer” leaves you wide open for anything, where “I’m a freelance writer who focuses on national women’s magazines and healthcare-industry copywriting” communicates more professionalism and a sharper sense of what you want.

5.  Look at where you’re querying. If you’re thinking publications, are you taking the time to search the Writer’s Market or other databases to find top-paying markets to query? Are you crafting well-polished queries tailored to those markets? If you don’t ask $1 a word markets for assignments, you usually don’t get them.

Photo via Flickr user levaine

One of my mentees recently asked me if she could see a copy of my rate sheet, as she had a small-business prospect and was wondering what to charge them.

I had to tell her that I don’t have a rate sheet. I know some copywriters do have a set list of charges they hand out to prospects.

I think that’s a big mistake. Why? Because every client is different.

Some clients are a dream to work for, love every word you write and never ask for edits. Some are so dysfunctional you can’t get rush emails returned when you’re on a project deadline, and then they edit your work by committee until it’s unrecognizable. One wants everything in a big rush, while the other will take it whenever you can fit it into your schedule.

Both these clients might want me to write 800-word articles, but would I want to price them the same? No way!

When people ask me to give them an off-the-cuff bid or to send a rate sheet, this is my response:

“I don’t have a set rate sheet, because every project is different. Once I learn more about your project, I will be able to give you an accurate rate quote for your job.”

What to do if a prospect requires a quote

If I’m answering a terse job ad that offered few project details but requires a price quote in response, I offer a big range that leaves me lots of wiggle room.

Example: “Recently, I’ve done work ranging from $50-$100 an hour, or $.30-$1 a word.” I include the lowest figure at which I could possibly imagine doing the work under the best circumstances.

This means if the client is looking to pay $10 an article, they will not call me. So set your range low enough that you won’t be sorry if they don’t call.

If the prospect is looking for a professional writer and has any understanding of professional rates, I’ve hopefully stayed in the running without committing myself to a set price for a project where I don’t really know the details.

When you’re landing your first small-business clients, you’ll find it tough to get a firm description of what they really want. That’s because they often don’t know themselves! They just know their business needs help communicating. That’s why – after having been burned by one client too many who said they wanted one thing but turned out to want something else entirely – I have taken to sending prospects a questionnaire.

Getting project specs in writing is a useful exercise for both sides. It helps clients describe what they want, and it gives you documentation you can use to raise your prices if the client asks for more work later. My questionnaire is always evolving as I learn more about parameters I want defined before I start a project.

Photo via Flickr user Edinburghcityofprint

One of the biggest problems many new copywriters have is they’re afraid to discuss a client proposal and negotiate. Instead, the writer gets a prospect and is so excited, they jump at the first offer that’s made. Often, this means they end up with a lower rate than they might have secured if they’d explored the client’s needs and budget a bit.

This process should have some give-and-take to it as you hammer out what you’re going to do and how much you’ll be paid. It’s also an opportunity to display your knowledge of what will best help the client meet their goals for growing their business. A recent conversation I had with a prospective small-business client went like this:

Prospect: I looked at your site and I love your writing! I have a new Web site I’m launching that will have an audience of private-equity investors and small companies looking for funding. I was thinking about having you blog for me once a month for a couple months. I also need a press release written.

Me: I could certainly do that for you, but I have to tell you I don’t think it’s going to be effective in drawing enough traffic to help your business get rolling. You need more frequent posts – at least one blog a month. I have a minimum contract for startups that’s four blogs a month for $500 that I think would start getting you meaningful traffic.

Prospect: That’s a little high for my budget…

Me: What if I throw in the press release? I’d do that if you signed on to a minimum three-month contract.

Prospect: That sounds good.

–

So what happened here? I took what was likely just $200 or so of blogging work and maybe a $250 press release and turned it into a $1,500 minimum contract. Because what I proposed is more likely to succeed in building this client’s business by drawing more prospects, I also upped the likelihood this will turn into a long-term gig.

Throwing in the press release made the client feel he was getting a freebie, and sealed the deal. In reality, his blogs were easy to put together, and he was willing to let me write them ahead of time all at once, which was very time-efficient for me. Even with the press release, my hourly rate for the project stayed in the neighborhood of my target $75-$100 an hour, so it wasn’t much of a sacrifice on my part.

As with all truly successful negotiations, it was win-win.

Of course, if you make a suggestion and the client doesn’t like it and wants to stick to their original idea, you can always agree to it and take the work that’s offered. But remember, it never hurts to negotiate a little and see if the client might commission a bigger, better project.

Photo via Flickr user Joe Howell

Are you in a job-ad rut? I hear a lot of complaints from writers that there are no good jobs advertised online.

What writers who say that often mean is they keep going to the same two or three online job boards every week, or even every day. The jobs are all super low-paid junk from Craigslist…and they’re getting depressed.

If that’s you, I’d like to gently remind you that insanity is sometimes defined as doing the same thing every day but expecting a different result. If you don’t think you’re seeing quality job listings, it’s time to shake up your online job-search routine.

Some different places I look for writing jobs:

• Niche sites. Since I’m kind of a financial dork, I get great leads from Gorkana alerts, which seems to attract a lot of financial publications. I got my new gig blogging for BNET through Gorkana, and I did not see that job anywhere else. Somewhere, there’s a site for an industry specialty you have that might list related writing jobs. Find it and bookmark it. Realize that employers are sick of getting bombarded with 200 resumes when they place an ad, and they’re seeking out smaller-circulation places to put out the word.

• LinkedIn. If you haven’t looked for jobs on LinkedIn, check it out! It’s a growing, busy place for listings, and has a sophisticated search engine so you can filter jobs a number of ways. While I don’t see a lot of freelance gigs on LinkedIn, I’m impressed by the number of writing-sector full-time jobs I see on there, every day.

• Indeed. This is a powerful job-oriented search engine that searches across many other portals. It has interesting statistical capabilities too, and can tell you trends in job listings. Great way to toy with search terms and turn up jobs you might otherwise miss. Want to cheer yourself up? Look at this chart for jobs with “writer” in the description — and you’ll see ads have stayed fairly constant straight through the downturn!

• Twitter. Search on twitter for “writer jobs” and take a look at the number of sites that are streaming their job offers on there! Build yourself a nice list where you can look at your customized jobstream — or just follow my list if you like.

• Your desktop. I don’t often go on job-search sites anymore, because I’ve dragged most of the sites with jobs that interest me onto my desktop through RSS. Great way to save time and get to the jobs you want as soon as they’re posted.

• Industry association job boards. The Society of Professional Journalists is among the professional writers’ organizations with their own job listings. When’s the last time you checked them out? The National Writers Union has a job hotline for members that enforces decent-pay standards.

• Morning Coffee. I just discovered this list recently, and it’s one of the ones on my desktop, along with Writer’s Weekly. Morning Coffee seems to have a more extensive range of writer jobs than I find on many writer-job sites. I found a smokin’ hot lead for me this week on Morning Coffee that needed my insurance expertise and was offering up to $60 an hour.

Of course, as regular readers of this blog know already, I find the best jobs aren’t waiting for you on an ad on the Internet. You get them by prospecting — getting out and meeting new people, sending query letters, or however else you reach out in the real world. Don’t forget about in-person networking and cold-calling, as they can’t be beat for meeting new clients. But if you are looking for jobs online, think about new ways to approach your search if you’re not seeing quality leads — they’re out there.

Photo image via Flickr user szlea

I got a new client recently that I was very excited about. It was an ongoing account for eight short articles a month, from a decent-sized, established company. They had a big list of topics ready to go. I thought it sounded just great.

Then I started trying to work on the account, and everything changed. This client turned out to be a crisis-creator. And even though it represented more than $1,500 a month in income, I dropped them.

It turned out the client didn’t really want short blog-type pieces, they wanted full-blown reported articles. They also wanted me to interview their experts and ghost some of the entries for them (a fact they hadn’t mentioned up front). Their experts weren’t very readily available, I’d have to try and try to reach them before finally getting an interview time, so deadline panic became the norm.

It quickly became clear that this client was a massive pain in the butt. Also, the services they really wanted I would have billed at three to four times the rate I’d quoted them for the “quick blog pieces” they originally claimed to want.

Some writing clients are really dysfunctional and tend to create crises in your schedule. If you end up with a crisis client, you have to decide if it’s worth hanging onto them or not.

I have another crisis client right now. They pick their topics v e r y   s l o w l y…then they take forever to OK a story outline. Then…the minute they approve it, it’s due in one week flat. Kinda crazy.

But they’re paying me $1 a word, and I’ve decided they’re worth it. Which brings me to my main rule of crisis clients: They need to pay a lot.

Often, you get the deadly combination of crisis-creating client AND they pay sorta crummy. Those two do NOT go together!

When I worked as an entertainment-industry secretary back half a lifetime ago, I saw that the production office often had a sign posted on the wall. It was a triangle with the corners labeled “Good,” “Fast,” and “Cheap.” Below it would say: “Pick any two.”

Clients who want good work done fast because of their crisis-creating proclivities need to pay top dollar. Otherwise, you’re letting them turn their crisis into your crisis.

Don’t let that happen! My philosophy is that your crisis is my opportunity. I happen to have the ability to turn around complex stories fast — if you need that, pay the freight.

Photo via Flickr user alancleaver_2000

So here’s a situation a lot of freelance writers are confronted with: You’ve had a great client and been working on their great project, but now you can see the end is in sight. Soon, this project will be over.

What to do? How to prevent the income and self-esteem crash that can come when suddenly, a fat account wraps up and that party’s over.

Got an interesting comment on this topic from one of  my mentees this month, Boise freelance writer Lindsay Woolman. She’s in this exact situation right now, as she strives to find more direct clients and move away from working as a subcontractor:

Right now my only client (other than subcontracting) is a ghostwriting book project, which has been the best and good pay. I expect it will last through the end of the month. It makes me nervous to have the project end, but she has really liked my work, so it has given me more confidence.

Right on, Lindsay, about the confidence — it feels great to do a fun, lucrative project!

But you’ve got that bad, nagging feeling because it’s ending. What is that nervous feeling? It’s the feeling that you should be doing something about this. Either:

1) You do nothing. You’re going to work this account, and feel nervous until the bomb drops and suddenly you have less income. Then you’re going to be poor and scramble to try to find a replacement. Meanwhile,  you’ll be depressed because the ego boost of having this great client is gone. This is not a good scenario.

OR

2) You take action now to find a replacement client. You really can’t act fast enough. If you start a six-week project that you know will end, the day you start the job is the day to start looking for its replacement. Because finding another great client takes time!

AND

3) You keep constantly prospecting, in case a client unexpectedly shuts down. In this economy, it’s happening more and more. Even if you can’t see an end, there may be one coming.

I’ve dealt with replacing big accounts myself…one of my biggest clients ever suddenly fired my editor about a year ago, and everything changed. Though I initially still had plenty of work in the pipeline from them, I felt the writing was on the wall. This account was going to wind down.

So instead of just cruising along on my remaining projects, I started looking immediately for something else to take its place. As it turned out, I didn’t find one giant account just like it to plug in when it went away — which it did, in about 4-5 months — but I found several smaller ones which together paid roughly as much.

Life went on without much of a hitch. No panic, no depression, no big income dip. The client went away mid-year in 2009, and it still wrapped up as my highest-earning year ever, because I was aggressive about replacing this account, and others that came and went, too.

This is one of the prime strategies for becoming a higher-earning freelancer — keep your pipeline of clients and projects constantly full. If you wait for the crash and then start looking for a replacement, that delay — and in this economy who knows how big a delay it will be? — will cost you big dollars over the course of the year.