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!Â
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.Â
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.Â
