Freelance Writing

I get asked a lot about the size and pay of each of my freelance writing jobs. Even though my workload changes from month to month, there are some generalizations that I can make when it comes to the size of my freelance writing jobs.

During my first six months as a freelance writer, I would consider all of my jobs small. They were not paying a lot of money, and were more or less keyword or SEO articles of 500 words or so. While there is nothing wrong with these jobs, you have to put in a lot of work to make a decent income. Obviously, this is not something that freelance writers strive for. But of course, any job with any pay is better than none at all.

Soon enough, I began to move onto jobs that did not take as much work but paid more money. For instance, one of my biggest clients pays me about $1,500 month. The only thing that I have to do for them is write one or two articles per day on the topic of my choice. To make this even better, the article only has to be 300 words or so. This may sound like a small job due to the size of the articles, but it works out to big pay in the end.

In my opinion, there is no job too big or too small to take on. In other words, if you are presented an opportunity to do work, and you have the time, you should consider accepting. Of course, if the job does not meet your requirements in areas such as pay, you will want to pass. Again, this all depends on what career stage you are at.

Keep this in mind while you are shaping your freelance writing career: search for jobs that do not take a lot of time to complete, but pay the most money. Are these jobs easy to find? No way! But there are tens of thousands of them out there. It is jobs like this that have allowed me to make a good freelance writing income without having to work much more than four to five hours per day.

When it comes to my freelance writing career, I very rarely seek out the help of others. This is not to say that I can do everything on my own, but I am not the type to outsource my work. If I were to do this, I would be putting my good name on the line because clients believe that they are working directly with me. But on the other side of things, when it comes to blogging, hiring help is what I do. Since I am only good at writing content, I often times hire people to help with design work, coding, and much more.

At this time, ChrisBlogging is achieving more success than I thought it would. This success has not come in a monetary sense, but more in the way that I am helping aspiring freelance writers.

No matter what field you are working in, keep this in mind: do what you are good at, and hire somebody else to do the rest. Sure, you can attempt to learn on your own as well, but in order to keep things moving forward hiring help is always a good idea. I have read conflicting opinions on this, but I strongly believe in concentrating on your core competency and then getting help for everything else.

In many cases, you may even be able to trade your services with somebody else. In the past, I have written website copy for clients who have in turn designed a new website for me. This way, neither one of us has to pay in cash.

With my new theme on the way (hopefully within the next two days), there is one last thing that I need help with to take ChrisBlogging to the next level; that being search engine optimization. I am getting a decent amount of direct traffic each day, but my search engine numbers are lagging behind.

That leads me to this question: are there any SEO professionals out there? I would much rather work with a loyal reader than anybody else. If so, send me a quick email and we’ll chat.

In the meantime, keep doing what you do best; anything else you need help with can be outsourced.

Earlier today I made a post about freelance writing deadline do’s and don’ts. Shortly thereafter, I spoke with a past client about a rush job that they need help with. In this case, the word rush really meant rush. They wanted me to complete a batch of SEO articles for them by tomorrow night. As you can imagine, this means that I would have to work a lot of the day today, as well as some of tomorrow.

Should you take on weekend deadlines? In the case outlined above, I said yes. There are a couple of reasons that I did this. First off, I was able to negotiate a higher price since they wanted the work done on a rush, weekend basis. Additionally, they have been good to me in the past, so it will definitely work out to my advantage in the future.

When accepting a new project and discussing a deadline with a client, make sure that you are aware of the weekends. There is nothing worse than agreeing on a delivery date, and then finding out that it lies on a Saturday or Sunday. You may not have any problems with working the weekend, but this is not something that a lot of people like to do.

Although I had no plans on working long hours this weekend, you never know what will change when you are a freelance writer. In the end, it will be nice to receive the extra money!

As a freelance writer, it is important to learn how to deal with deadlines. After all, these deadlines will more or less tell you when you are going to work, as well as how much time you are going to have to put in. To many, having to deal with deadlines is too much like having a boss. But if you are going to get involved with freelance writing, this is something that you better get used to.

To make things easier, here are two do’s and two don’ts when it comes to freelance writing deadlines.

Do’s

1. Make sure that upon starting a new project that you get a firm answer on the deadline. If a client says that they are open to when you turn in the work that is fine. But even then, you want to at least get an idea of when you are going to be turning the work in. Open deadlines can often times lead to the project being put on the back burner for weeks on end. You would be much better off knowing when each client wants their work delivered.

2. Do write down all of your freelance writing deadlines. If you only have one or two projects this may not be necessary. But in a situation like mine, where I have five to ten deadlines at a time, it is important to write all of them down as a way of staying organized.

Don’ts

1. If you want to keep your good reputation, you can never miss a freelance writing deadline. There is no other way of saying this: never means never.

2. Do not agree to a deadline that you have no chance of meeting. Some freelance writers get so excited about landing a job that they will tell the client that they can have the work complete whenever they need it. Of course, this leads to either killing yourself to meet the deadline or missing it altogether.

Deadlines are what freelance writers live by. Use the two do’s and don’ts above to your advantage. 

It is a dream of many freelance writers to break into large, nationally distributed magazines. These are the big name publications that many associate with a high level of prestige. After all, most will agree that writing for Sports Illustrated is much better than a website that nobody reads. So how are you going to break into these competitive markets?

Personally, I have never freelanced for any of the “big name” publications that are out there. But with that being said, I have picked up a few gigs with magazines that have a national reach. My work is not read by millions, but national exposure is always a good thing. Not only does it give you a chance to show off your work, but a couple good features could lead to projects with other like publications.

If you want to freelance for these types of magazines, consider the tips below.

1. Many of the largest magazines do not accept a lot of freelance work. Since they are popular and have a large budget, they instead employ a full-time staff to handle most of the work. But with that being said, every publication is different. Even if a magazine only uses freelance writers for 5 percent of each issue, this still gives you a chance to get involved. There have been many writers who started out freelancing, and were then offered a full-time staff or editorial position. While you may not strive for this, it shows that breaking in wherever possible is important.

2. Do not set your sights too high early on. As I mentioned above, I have done some work for large magazines, but even then, none of them would be considered extremely well known by the masses. They may have national distribution channels, but they are far from main stream. In most cases, it is these publications that are easier to break into because they more commonly use freelance writers.

3. Put together a killer query letter for each magazine that you are interested in writing for. Make sure that you never use the same generic letter for each publication. This will show that you are more or less lazy, and editors will not tolerate this.

Most people who want to freelance for nationally distributed magazines have two things in mind.

1. They want to be featured in these magazines because they are read by a lot of people, and as mentioned above, are perceived as prestigious. There is nothing wrong with this, but do not get caught up in the “ego” of the situation.

2. Of course, money is always better when writing for the bigger magazines. They have the cash to pay, and the subscription base and advertisers to back it up. There are quite a few large magazines that pay $1/word or more. Can you imagine having a couple of clients like this? Talk about a great way to make a full-time freelance writing income.

The best piece of advice that I can give is to go for the gusto. If you have experience and work samples, you might as well start sending query letters to nationally distributed magazines. Remember, the worst thing that can happen is you lose a few minutes of time, and sometimes money for postage. 

My freelance writing rates have changed a little bit over the course of my career. This is not to say that I am always making changes, but from time to time I definitely look at what I am charging. Not only do I need to keep my freelance writing rates high enough to make good money, but at the same time they need to be stay competitive with the rest of the industry.

In my first month as a freelance writer, I completed just a couple small projects. You may not believe it, but I was writing 500 word articles for $1 to $2. As you can imagine, this was a lot of work for just about no pay. But as I have said in the past, every freelance writer needs to start somewhere.

Within a couple of months, I began to discover the markets that paid solid rates. This included web based clients, as well as regional and national magazines. As you can imagine, as I began to work for clients in these markets I was no longer earning $1 for every 500 words.

At this time, I have a set of standards that I follow when a client asks for my freelance writing rates. This helps to ensure that I quote every potential customer the same price. Do I ever make an exception to this rule? Sure do. Sometimes I will lower my price for a client if I think that they have long term potential. Additionally, when a client offers bulk work I usually tend to offer a lower rate.

Most magazines that accept freelance work have standard rates that they pay first time writers. They may also have different rates for the type of article that you are writing for them. For instance, I used to do a monthly feature article for a gaming related publication. For feature articles, they paid me at a rate of $.15/word. This usually worked out to somewhere around one 2,000 word feature for a paycheck of $300; not the best rate, but good for me at the time. After a few months of working with them, they also asked me to compose some filler pieces for them. Since these were shorter and quick to write, I was only offered $.10/word.

While you can negotiate with magazines over the pay you will receive, this is not something that you want to do as a new writer. Generally speaking, you should know the pay scale of a publication before sending a query letter. This way, if they do want to work with you, no negotiations need to take place. Of course, as you work with them more and more, you may either be offered a pay raise or ask for one on your own.

As you gain more experience and clients, you have every right to increase your freelance writing rates. But remember, this should be a natural progression. Personally, I am not going to charge $150 for a particular project today, and raise that to $300 by tomorrow.

I know that a lot of bloggers write their posts in advance, and then use the WordPress timestamp feature to their advantage. While I do this from time to time, I prefer to write each post and then make it live within an hour or so. This has never been a problem for me, but I can see how it could be an issue. I definitely think it is a good idea to always have a standby blog post that you can call on. This way, if something ever comes up you can make the post live and never miss a beat.

Here are three things to keep in mind when writing a standby blog post.

1. Make sure that your standby blog post is not time sensitive. After all, you never know when you are going to use the post. If I write about a current event and don’t post it until next month, it is safe to say that nobody is going to care.

2. If you use one standby post, write another one shortly thereafter. You do not have to rush to do this, but it is something that you should add to your to-do list. Even though you may not have to use the post for several months, you will always know where it is at when the time comes.

3. If you use WordPress, you may want to save the article to your dashboard as a draft. This makes it easy for you to sign into your account and make the post live within a matter of minutes. This is much more time efficient than having to dig up the article on your hard drive, and then paste it to the WordPress feature.

At this time, I have a few standby posts that I can call on in the future. I don’t have any plans for using these posts, but you never know when an emergency will force me into doing so.

Do any of you bloggers do the same? If so, what are some tips that you follow when composing these standby posts?

If you are going to become a freelance writer, you should learn what it means to invest in your business. But before you do that, you need to look at what you are doing as a legitimate operation. Even though you may not have a company name or products to ship, you are still running a business. And in order to achieve success while continuing to grow, investing in what you do is very important.

What does it mean to invest in your freelance writing business? For me, this means taking a certain amount of my profits and throwing it back into my freelance writing career. How can do you this, you may ask? Here are three ways to invest in your freelance writing business.

1. Buy magazines, books, and memberships that will help you to succeed. This can include everything from books on copywriting to a membership to your favorite freelance site.

2. Invest money in bidding websites such as Elance. This may look like a waste of money at the onset, but as you begin to win jobs you will quickly make up your investment.

3. Take the time to set up a legal entity such as an LLC, corporation, etc. This is not mandatory if you are a freelance writer, but it is something to consider. At this time, I am looking strongly into doing this not only for my freelance writing career, but also for other opportunities that I am developing.

When investing in your freelance writing business, it is important to be careful. You want to make sure that you do not invest too much money as to leave yourself empty when it comes time to pay the bills. Additionally, you only want to invest in areas of your business that will help you to achieve a higher level of success. In other words, be smart about how you spend your money.

There is nothing wrong with putting money back into your freelance writing business. After all, this is how you will grow your operation over the years. Do you think that the biggest and most successful companies keep all of their profits for themselves? No; they invest in new employees, new technology, and much more.

As a freelance writer, consider how you can invest in yourself. Once you do this with success, you will find that your business is in a much better place.  

Doesn’t the title say it all? My new theme is very close to going live, and I wanted to give my readers a chance at some free advertising. Anybody who is lucky enough to take advantage of this offer will get a free advertising spot on ChrisBlogging until December 1, 2007. At that time, you will have the ability to keep your spot for a monthly rate, or of course, give it up with nothing being asked of you.

First things first, let me give you a breakdown of what is available.

1. Six 125 x 125 buttons. These are located above the fold in the right sidebar.
2. 10 text links in the right sidebar.

These are the free advertisement spaces that are available for the remainder of November. With that being said, there are some other spots that have already been taken. But don’t worry; they may become available in December.

When the new theme goes live, I will include information on available advertising and future costs. This way, you can get a better idea of what to expect when next month rolls around.

The question is: how do I get a free advertising spot on ChrisBlogging? Generally speaking, I am not asking for much!

1. A link back to this post using the anchor text freelance writing. For example, “Check out the free advertising post at the freelance writing blog, ChrisBlogging.”
2. Email me the link to your post, as well as what type of advertising space you are interested in. If you request one option and it is not available, I will add you to the other. My email is info@chrisblogging.com
3. In your email, provide the appropriate information for your advertisement. For the 125 x 125 buttons send your ad. For the text links, send your anchor text and URL.
4. As I only have 16 spots available, the free offer will end when they are all taken. As soon as this happens, I will make a post to let everyone know.

Although you probably don’t need any incentive for free advertising, I wanted to include a couple of stats anyway. At this time, my RSS count fluctuates between 70 and 80. Through the first four days of November, I am averaging just about 350 unique visitors per day.

I hope a lot of you guys and gals take advantage of this free advertising. And hopefully when you see how low the prices are in December, you will stick around!

If you like this post, be sure to Stumble it. I am sure a lot of people could use a bit of free advertising to boost their traffic stats!

A few months ago I added Google AdSense to ChrisBlogging. The main reason for doing this was to see how it would perform. I have used AdSense in the past on other blogs and websites, and my success rate varied from average to extraordinary.

So what is the verdict? Simply put, AdSense is not performing that great on this blog. There are a couple of reasons for this.

1. I do not have enough visitors to generate a large number of clicks.

2. Since most people who visit this blog are web savvy, they are not prone to clicking on the AdSense ads. I have found that AdSense is best for sites that are not related to making money online, etc. In other words, sites or blogs where the majority of readers are not aware of what AdSense is all about. They simply see an ad that they are interested in, and click.

Am I going to keep AdSense active for much longer? While I have yet to decide for sure, chances are that when my new design goes live, that AdSense will get kicked to the curb. There are many other monetization methods that are much more profitable for a blog of this kind.

There is nothing wrong with using AdSense on all your sites and blogs if you are interested in quickly setting up a mode of monetization. But remember, some niches are more profitable than others when it comes to making money with Google AdSense.