Make A Living Writing

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