Freelance Writing

From time to time, I am going to post miscellaneous freelance writing tips. They may not be full of in-depth details, but they will be quick, efficient, and helpful in your everyday career.

For today: make sure that you know your day’s work before you get started. When I began my freelance writing career I worked on projects from emails that I received from clients. As you can imagine, this got quite sloppy, and as I obtained more work, things got even worse.

Now, I always have a sticky note next to my keyboard outlining all of the jobs that I have to complete for that day. When a project gets completed I simply scratch it off the list. This is much easier than trying to remember what needs done, and hoping that I don’t forget something important.

If you are not already doing this, try it out on Monday. You will be surprised at how much easier it makes your job!

Regularly keeping in touch with past freelance writing clients is sure to increase your future earnings. The old saying “out of sight, out of mind” definitely holds true. In other words, if your past clients do not remember you they are not going to call on you when they have a new project available. This is why you need to make it part of your business to keep in touch and follow up with them every so often.

First things first, you need to remember that you should always be friendly when following up. This is in contrast to coming across as a bother, or using high pressure sales tactics. If you begin to get on your client’s nerves, they are simply going to ignore you from there on out; and that is never a good thing.

How can you keep in touch with your freelance writing clients?

1. Believe it or not, calling on the phone is a great idea. Even if you primarily use email to communicate, a phone call can take your relationship with the client to the next level. Just make sure that you keep the conversation short and sweet, and as mentioned above, don’t pressure the client into giving you more business.

2. You can send a simple, and to the point email. For most freelance writers this is the easiest way to keep in touch because it is quick and efficient. Although email is a great way to follow up, you should remember that a generic note is not nearly as good as one that has a personal touch. In other words, do not write one email and then BCC all of your clients.

3. Put together a newsletter that explains what you have been up to, etc. This is a great way to stay in touch with clients in a non-direct way. The nice thing about a newsletter is that you do not have to personalize it to each recipient. To go along with this, you can use either snail mail or email for distribution.

This is a subject that I have touched on time after time. The reason that I do so is that following up and staying in touch is a great way to take your business to the next level. Repeat business can go a long way in helping you to reach your goals. And with the proper follow up schedule in place, your chances at repeat business are a lot better.

As you may have noticed, I added an advertising page to the top of ChrisBlogging. Although this blog is not extremely popular, it does attract 100 to 200 visitors per day and boasts an RSS feed count of 125 or so. The most beneficial feature to potential advertisers is that the blog is trending upwards in terms of traffic, RSS count, page views, etc.

During the month of December I received several advertising offers, but since I did not have any prices in place, I decided to pass. At this time, I do not want to overdo ChrisBlogging with advertising. For this reason, I am only offering ads that are unobtrusive such as reviews, sidebar text links, etc. For now, you will not see any banners or 125×125 blocks. I feel that providing content is more important; after all, I am a writer!

As a bonus to regular readers, I have decided to add a special advertising deal. If you write a post touching on my advertising options and link to ChrisBlogging, you will qualify for a 50 percent discount on your first two months of advertising! This deal is good for any and every type of advertisement. All you have to do is email me your post including my link, as well as your advertising information, and payment.

If you are interested in advertising on ChrisBlogging check out the advertising page. Prices are cheap, and exposure is increasing as each month goes by.

If you tried to access ChrisBlogging this morning, you probably noticed that it was “down and out.” I was met with this surprise several hours ago, and just recently got to the bottom of the problem.

To get to the bottom of things, I first contacted BlueHost. Unfortunately, they told me that everything looked good on their end. As you can imagine, this scared me a bit because of all the blogs that have been hacked over the past few weeks.

Since I have no technical skills of my own, I was at a bit of a loss. I already noticed that my stats were suffering, and in the back of my mind I knew that some of you guys and gals were trying to access the blog. For this reason, I wanted to get things fixed sooner rather than later.

The next step I took was to get in touch with my tech guy. He helps me with everything from working out bugs to SEO and much more. After only a few minutes of rooting around, he noticed that a recent plug-in had a bug. After deactivating it, everything was restored to normal for the most part.

Although everything worked out in the end, this situation got me thinking. What would I have done if my blog was hacked beyond immediate repair? No matter who you are or how serious you are about your blog, make sure that you always back it up. This may sound time consuming and tedious, but it is well worth it.

To all my readers, sorry for the downtime this morning. Hopefully this will never happen again, but if it does, you can be rest assured that I will be working hard to figure out the problem. In the meantime, make sure that you protect your blog! 

As I have mentioned in the past, there are an endless amount of freelance writing opportunities for you to look into. If you have never considered writing newsletters, you may want to consider this option. Believe it or not, a lot of companies both big and small have a newsletter that they send out to employees, clients, etc. With that being said, not every company has the time, money, and skills to properly put together a high quality newsletter; this is where you come into play.

Right now, I write all of the copy for a monthly newsletter for a company within the health insurance industry. I must admit that this was a difficult job to get used to at first. After all, I had to write about the going-ons within the company, but of course, I was not in the office everyday. Over time I began to settle into what I was best at writing, as well as what the client was looking for. Now, this is one of the projects that I look forward to the most each month.

Believe it or not, writing one newsletter a month can be a lot of work. Although I am only responsible for six pages of the letter, this is still quite time consuming. Imagine if you were to land a gig in which you had to write a 20 page newsletter each month; I have a few friends who are in this position.

Researching and writing newsletters may be a lot of work, but these projects can be quite lucrative. Although you could charge by the word, for newsletters I prefer to quote a per project fee instead. For the most part, every client I have had of this nature has also preferred the per project method.

If you want to get started with newsletter freelance writing, begin to get in touch with local companies. Remember, they do not have to be big in order to have a company newsletter. In fact, smaller companies are often times your best bet because they will need an outsider to handle this task from them. This is the case because nobody on staff has the time to devote to such a project.

All in all, newsletter freelance writing can be both profitable and fun. It is a safe bet that there are plenty of companies in your city that need help in this area. 

The first year of my freelance writing career I did not receive many inquiries from potential clients. Obviously, this had a lot to do with the fact that I was unknown at the time. But since then, I usually receive three or four sales leads a week. They come in the form of email, phone, or referrals from friends in the industry.

It is very important that you properly track and organize your freelance writing sales leads. If you don’t, you will find that following up with them is next to impossible.

Generally speaking, you do not need any special software or system to keep track of leads. Personally, I use nothing more than an Excel spreadsheet that is set up with some basic fields.

The fields that I include on my sales leads spreadsheet are as follows:

• Where the lead came from – email, phone, etc.
• Date of inquiry
• Date and method of my response
• Lead’s name
• Lead’s phone number
• Lead’s company name
• Lead’s email address, website address
• Type of project that they have available
• Miscellaneous information

Of course, you can tweak your fields to best suit the way that you have your freelance writing business set up. Over my years in the industry, I have found that the above fields are most important to keeping me organized; they may or may not suit your needs.

If a lead turns into a project, I always make note of this. After all, you do not want to follow up with a lead thinking that you have never worked for them. This can be quite embarrassing to say the least.

It is up to you on how often you will follow up with the leads on your spreadsheet. Some freelance writers like to do so once per week, whereas others do so once per month. I always base my follow-ups on what the client initially told me, as well as my workload at the time. From there, I have a better idea of how often to get in touch with a potential client.

How should I follow up with a lead? In my opinion, you should do so in the same manner that you were contacted. In other words, if a client emails you for information, you should follow up with them via email. The way that a client gets in touch with you the first time is usually their preferred method of communication.

Always make sure that you log your freelance writing sales leads. These leads are potential clients that could lead to more work. 

A lot of my freelance writing business comes from referrals. In other words, I do a good job for a client and they in turn pass my name along to their clients, colleagues, and contacts. Believe it or not, referral business is one of the best ways to grow your freelance writing career. The nice thing about this type of business is that you do not have to go find it for yourself. Instead, it will find you if you do a good job.

In the same thought as referral business, you should also consider what references and testimonials can do for your freelance writing career. When it comes down to it, these are two more ways for you to increase the number of projects you secure and the amount of money you earn.

First off, let’s take a closer look at references. Generally speaking, a reference is somebody that you can have a potential client contact before they hire you. As you probably know, you want to make sure that you choose references that will put you in the best possible light. After all, your references will be telling potential clients about the benefits of working with you.

It does not take a lot of hard work to secure a reference. After you have completed a project for a client, send them a quick note asking if you can use them as a reference in the future. In most cases, clients are more than happy to help you out. Keep a list of your best references handy so that you can send them to those who ask without delay.

Testimonials are similar to references, but not exactly the same. A testimonial is more or less a few nice words about you and what you have to offer. The nice thing about a testimonial is that you can put it on your website or in the sales material that you have on file. A testimonial is words that you already have from past clients, whereas a reference is somebody who a potential client will have to contact on their own.

Consider how references and testimonials can help your freelance writing business. By using both of these tools to your advantage, you will find that you are securing more work than you ever thought possible.

Every so often I receive an email about how my freelance writing rates are lower than the industry norm. While this may be true in some cases, I always find it hard to believe that others get so caught up in what their competition is charging. The way I see it, you should set your freelance writing rates based on your experience, feelings, and career goals.

Making money through small freelance writing projects is more than possible. This is how I started my career, and it has helped my freelance writing income to increase big time since my first day on the job. This is not to say that you only want to take on small jobs, but they can add up over the course of a month.

Take this scenario for example. You could spend the entire month chasing two feature article opportunities that pay you a total of $500. This would be a great accomplishment, but since these jobs can be hard to land as a beginner, you may be wasting a lot of time.

On the other side of things, you could attempt to write 50 articles at $10 each. These types of articles are commonly purchased by webmasters who need content for their site or blog. Sure, you will have to put in more work because you are writing 50 articles instead of two, but in the end you will have the same amount of money. Then if the feature article projects come through, you are now sitting at $1,000/month.

The above scenario is similar to what I faced as a new freelance writer. Everybody wants the fun, high paying jobs. But they are not the only ones out there. Remember, small paying freelance writing jobs usually take up less time than high paying ones; it is all relative.

Instead of spending day after day chasing jobs that may not come about, you should also take some time to look for smaller, more attainable projects that could put a little bit of money in your pocket. I don’t take on these jobs nearly as much as I once did, but they definitely helped me to get to where I am today.

Being an excellent writer will not do you any good if you have no clue on where to find work. You need to decide what markets you are most interested in. When it comes to finding freelance writing markets, there are several market options that you will want to consider.

1. Get in touch directly with corporations both large and small. There are tens of thousands of companies in the United States that are in need of writers. Sure, some of them have people on staff that can help, but this is not always the case. Believe it or not, many Fortune 500 companies use freelance writers from time to time. And this definitely holds true for smaller operations that cannot afford to hire a full-time writer. 

2. Advertising agencies can supply you with a lot of work. To get started within this market, contact agencies in your local area; this will give you a leg up on the competition from the start. Tell the person in charge that you are a freelance writer, and that you would be more than happy to work with them on any projects that they have coming up. It can be difficult to get your foot in the door, but once you do, make sure that you do a good job. From there, you will be sure to get the first call anytime a new project comes into play. I have only worked with a couple of advertising agencies, but anytime they get a new client I usually get a phone call.

3. Online freelance writing is very popular. Webmasters are always looking for writers to provide them with fresh content. After all, search engines love new, unique content. You may not get paid the best rates working online, but the money can add up. Of course, bigger companies also look for web writers as well.

These are three common freelance writing markets to tap into. There are others including but not limited to public relations agencies, government organizations, and non-profits. You may want to look into some of these markets as well. Once you begin to call on the above markets, you will get a better feel for what niche you want to concentrate on.

If you are like most freelance writers, almost every project is different from the next. This holds true with the project itself, as well as the income that you will earn. After looking over my stats from last year, I noticed that I completed a wide variety of jobs. They ranged from short descriptions that paid no more than $5 for 50 words to longer feature articles that paid in excess of $1,000, as well as many others. While it would be nice to only dabble in the larger freelance writing projects, we all know that this is not always possible.

There are two ways that you can categorize your “biggest” freelance writing projects. First off, you can do so by the actual size. For instance, a project that requires you to write 1,000 SEO articles would obviously be bigger than one feature of 500 words. On the other side of things, you can categorize projects by how much you will get paid by the client. For me, it is important to keep both the size and payment in mind. This allows me to make sure that I am getting paid enough money for the size of the project that I am taking on. You may think that $1,000 is a nice sized payment, but it is quite small if you have to write 500 articles to get the money.

So you are probably wondering what my biggest project of 2007 looked like, right? For me, it was work that I did for a large insurance company. It consisted of writing several press releases, a few SEO articles, and some miscellaneous content here and there. Not only was this my biggest job of the year in terms of income, but it was also one of the most enjoyable. This was the case because I enjoy writing about insurance, and the client was a treat to work with. In the end, this one project earned me a little more than $3,000 via PayPal. As you can imagine, the PayPal fee on this project was huge!

What was your biggest freelance writing project of 2007? You don’t have to give exact figures or data, but any information is sure to be useful to all of us.