Archives for September 2010

How to Make a Living as a Writer

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You want to make a living writing.
Here’s how I do it.  It may not be a good way for you to do it.  Then again, it might be advice that transforms you from a feast/famine disaster into a consistent earner.
I wake up and work.  I work until I earn a predetermined sum.  Then, I can decide to work on speculative projects, engage in marketing or watch re-runs of old sitcoms and marvel at how many technical schools buy ad time on afternoon broadcast television.
I thought some of you might find my approach interesting.
So, here it is, my system for making a living as a writer.

Get a Number Part One: How much money do you need to make per month?  Do the math and get the number.  Don’t forget to consider taxes.  Don’t use a budget that’s hopelessly optimistic or stupidly inflated, either.  You want THE number.

Get a Number Part Two: How much money do you want to make per month?  Most of us would prefer to have an income that exceeds our current needs.  Assuming you have some desire for upward mobility or increased stability and security, you feel that way, too.  Come up with a goal number.  Leave the billionaire daydreams behind for now, though.  Think in terms of what would really satisfy you.

Some Simple Math Part One: Add your need number and your goal number together.  Now, divide by two.  Let’s say you need to clear $5,000 per month and the idea of making $10,000 really resonates with you.  $5,000 + $10,000 / 2 = $7,500.  We’ll call this your target number.  It’s more than you need, but less than you want.

Some Simple Math Part Two: Take your target number and divide it by 22.  That’s the approximate number of working days in a month.  If we use the hypothetical target number above, that would equate to roughly $340.  That means one would need to make $340 every working day to hit the target number.  We’ll call this your daily number.
Hit Your Daily Number…  Every Day: Wake up in the morning and start working.  Keep working until you hit your daily number.  Once you hit the number, feel free to do more or to focus you remaining time on marketing efforts or other endeavors that will make it easier to hit that daily number in the future.  If you do earn more than your number, resist the urge to apply the difference to the next day’s mark.  You want to create a habit of hitting your daily number every day.

Don’t Apply Overages: So, you had a day that exceeded your daily number.  Congratulations.  Don’t start carrying over that “surplus” and applying it to future days.  Every day is new.  You wake up zero and you don’t stop until you hit your daily number.

Don’t Count Pre-Payment: You landed a gig that supplied you with $1,000 up front.  That’s great.  However, it does NOT wipe out your daily number.  It doesn’t touch your earnings requirement at all, because you haven’t done the work yet.  Think in terms of the actual value of the work you’re doing every day, not in terms of how much you’ve been paid already or how much you may earn at completion.  Writers have a nasty tendency to mellow out for a few days after they collect a nice payment.  That’s understandable, but it throws things out of whack in the long run.  You must train yourself to hit your daily number every day (or as close to it as humanly possible).

Do Correct Deficiencies: You called it a day even though you fell $100 short of your daily number.  It’s okay.  It’s going to happen.  Life is like that.  This system forgets overages and starts new every day.  That’s because it’s always nice to end a cycle with more money than you planned to earn.  The system is less forgiving of deficiencies.  If you fall short, distribute the deficiency over the course of the next three working days.  In the hypothetical case of being $100 short on a $340 daily number, that would mean you’ll need to generate $377 per day for the next three days.  Make the adjustment every time you fall short.

Don’t Count Potential Income: Don’t count chickens that may or may not decide to lay eggs.  If you’re spending time on a personal project that you believe COULD be eventually be worth $X, so be it.  Feel free to dive right into it AFTER you hit your daily number with activity that WILL put money in the bank.

In Case of Massive Failure. You missed your mark by $100 one day.  The next day, you missed it by $80.  The following day, you were $100 short again.  Then, you completely screwed up and had a day that fell $200 short.  Now, the amount you need to earn in order to cover the deficiencies is huge.  You’re screwed.
That can happen.  If it does, revisit the amount of money you’ll need to make per day to hit your goal number for the month.  If the resulting figure is reasonable, proceed using it as your daily objective.  If the number isn’t reasonable–and that can happen if you have several bad days–do the same thing with your need number.
If that isn’t reasonable…  Well, you’re going to have a short month unless you managed to put together a few overage days (remember, we don’t count any daily surpluses) earlier in the month.  If you never exceeded your daily goal and you’re not going to hit your need number, it’s time for some serious reflection about what you’re doing and how you’re doing it.
You may need to find ways to tighten your budget.  You may even need to consider making your living in some other way.  If you can’t consistently meet your needs with your earnings, you’re either going to be living on the street or in deeper debt.  Neither option is particularly wise or attractive.

Why This System Works
  • It forces you to realistically assess the amount of work you’ll need to do.
  • It breaks down income generation into manageable, easy-to-understand chunks.
  • It prevents you from inadvertently resting on your laurels during good times and it doesn’t let you off the hook when things are tough.
  • It encourages you to earn more than what you need to squeak through life (both by establishing a daily target in excess of expenses and by refusing to allow you to get soft just because you had a few days with overages).
  • It gives you a legitimate shot at your “dream” number because you don’t use daily surpluses to relieve the daily “pressure” to hit your mark.
  • It helps you to train yourself to be a consistent earner and eliminates the dreaded feast and famine cycle.

Challenges to Working the System

Sometimes, you might not have enough work lined up.  The solution?  Find it fast.  Then do it.  Some days, you may need to resort to unattractive millwork or other low-paying efforts to hit your mark.  You might think that sucks.  Maybe it does.  Nonetheless, it’s necessary.  It insures that you’ll earn what you need to earn and won’t leave you short of money if you spend time on pursuing new opportunities that don’t come to fruition.
You’ll need to figure out how to determine the value of the work you do.  In some cases, that’s easy.  If an article pays $50, you know that you can put $50 toward your number upon its completion.
In other cases, it’s tough.  Bigger projects require research time and other elements.  You’ll need to estimate the total amount of time necessary to complete those projects and then estimate the equivalent hourly earnings associated with them.  That way, if you put in two hours on a larger project, you’ll know how much it’s “worth” when computing your daily earnings.
It’s hardcore.  It’s unforgiving and it’s relentless.  I guess that makes it a little like life, huh?
What about Moving Up?

If you’re spending chunks of light days churning out cheap stuff to hit your mark, how are you ever going to escape the rut?  How are you going to move up the ladder to better paying jobs?
Basically, you’re going to pursue those better opportunities and you’re going to market yourself after you earn your daily bread.  That might make for some long nights in the beginning.  However, it’s going to produce a series of days that allow you to pay all of your bills, too.
If you’re moving up the pay ladder, you can expect things to get easier as time passes because those efforts will pay off.  Eventually, those tough days of grinding will begin to disappear.
I know some people wills say one is better off doing more self-promotion, gig hunting and marketing on the front-end in order to make it easier to hit the daily number in the future.  That can be true.  Unfortunately, those efforts don’t always pay off quickly, if at all–and you still need to eat until they do.  By setting a daily objective that you WILL meet every day, you eliminate the risk of freelance famine.  In time, you’ll even build up enough of a cushion that you’ll be able to cut yourself a little slack now and then, if you’d like.

So, FWJ amigos…  Opinions?  Insults?  Accolades?  How do you do it?  Discuss.

The Power of ” ”

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“I didn’t say that.”

“My words were taken out of context.”

Two phrases no writer, nor their editor, want to hear. Quoting sources is not as easy as people make it out to be. There are rules to quotes and too often those rules are ignored.

” ” Means Exactly Said

First big point. When you put a person’s words in ” ” you are telling the reader that the words within the quotation marks are written exactly the way the person said them. Word for word. No fudging. If you miss words or add words you are then changing the quote. The quote is now a lie. It doesn’t matter if you think they meant to say something. If they didn’t say it, it doesn’t belong there.

[ ] Comes in handy

Now, I just said you cannot add words to a quote. Actually you can, but I really wanted to drive the point home first 🙂 [ ] – these handy little brackets can be used to clarify a quote. Sometimes, actually quite often, when people are talking they’ll skip words or give a good quote, but within that quote they don’t mention the subject. That’s when you can add words with a bracket around them. For example:

“I really hated it [cooking with chefs], but it gave me the experience I needed to grill a great salmon.” or “It’s an important time in [a] teen’s life, getting their license is so exciting.”

The brackets either help clarify who or what the person is talking about for the reader or inserts a minor word that doesn’t change the scope, meaning or intention of the quote. Back in the day, one of my journalism teachers said, if you have to add too many words to make the quote make sense, it’s not a good quote.

Great advice – and did you notice how I didn’t add quotations? It’s because I’m not sure of the exact wording he used.

Brackets are also used in conjunction with [sic]. The term, without getting into the Latin behind it, means – the information you just read had something wrong with it, we know it, but to keep it as a direct quote we didn’t change it. You’ll see this often when someone is quoting a written source that has an error, but it can be used at other times. For example: The note found in the gag read, “All teachers must have a hall pass and a note from their students to use the retroom [sic].”

In writing, little things mean a lot. Take extra care with your quotes to prevent bigger headaches for you and your editor later.

Can you ever leave words out? Yep, but you’ll have to check back on Tuesday to find out more! I’ll also cover when to use quotes. Let’s have a little fun – leave your favorite quote below!

Building Your Freelance Writing Brand – Part 9

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The next section of the Building Your Freelance Writing Brand series is about positioning your brand and comes in two parts — 9 and 10.  Part 9 teaches you about the three most basic positions a brand or business can hold in the market place, which I’ll expand on in Part 10 next week.

In simplest terms, your brand position is the place in the market where your business sits in comparison to your competitors in consumers’ minds.  Knowing where your brand is in relation to your competitors in the eyes of consumers is a critical part of developing the overall marketing plan for your freelance writing business.

At the most basic level, there are three positions that your brand can hold in the marketplace — market leader, market challenger, and market follower.  Each position is described in more detail below so you can determine where your brand is positioned today and where you’d like it to be positioned in order to reach your goals.

Market Leader

A market leader is creative and innovative and offers a new solution that no one else is offering.  The market leader is often called the pioneer brand because it is the first-to-market.  In other words, the market leader is first to come to market with a product or service and typically that business holds the majority of market share in its category (meaning, the market leader is the most popular).

Later entrants can compete against the market leader, and they may even surpass the market leader’s market share as they steal customers over time.  However, the pioneer brand will always be perceived in consumers’ minds as the market leader.  In fact, some pioneer brand names become generic names to describe an entire category or product line (think of Band-Aid, Kleenex, and even Google).  Something drastic typically has to happen for the pioneer brand to lose its stronghold in its category.

Market leaders need to invest a significant amount of resources and funds to build awareness, recognition and sales, but if they’re successful, market leaders can reap big rewards.  A perfect example of a market leader is Microsoft.  Of course, a negative effect of being the market leader is becoming too big (or too arrogant) to be able to shift strategies and respond to consumers’ changing needs and wants (a good example of a company with this problem is AOL).

Market Challenger

A market challenger is innovative like the market leader but in a different way.  A market challenger recreates the product or service first brought to market by the market leader.  A market challenger brings something new to the table and reinvents the category.

Market challengers promote their brands and products as completely different from the market leader and often attack the market leader by calling attention to the leader’s weaknesses.  This strategy requires a significant investment in advertising and promotion to drive awareness, but the strategy of differentiation used by market challengers can pay off very well.  For example, Apple has been very successful in taking a market challenger position with its Mac computers.  There is a reason why the Mac Guy vs. PC Guy commercials work so well.

Market Follower

A market follower nearly copies the market leader.  In other words, a market follower simply jumps on the bandwagon and tries to get their piece of the action in a category that has proven to be successful (a Sham-Wow or Snuggie knock-off would be a good example of a market follower).  Market followers use a strategy of differentiation where their products are positioned just far enough away from the market leader so they appear to add value while still delivering what customers who are familiar with the market leader expect.  This is the least costly position for a business to pursue in brand positioning because the market leader does the majority of the work.  The market follower simply goes along for the ride.

Before you commit to pursuing one of the general brand positions described above, it’s important to understand that your business can shift from one position to another or you could offer a variety of products or services that hold different positions within their respective categories.  What you need to determine as the owner of your freelance writing business is what your brand position is now relative to your competitors and if that’s where you want to be in the long-term.  Consider your long-term goals for your business then decide which market position will best help you meet those goals.  Once you know where you want your business to be, you can make the necessary changes in your marketing plan to get there.

Keep in mind, there is nothing wrong with any of these brand positions.  What’s important is to determine which position is right for you and your freelance writing business.  Once you make that decision, you can develop a plan to meet those goals and then be sure to stick to it.  Remember the three key steps to brand building that you learned in Part 1 of the Building Your Freelance Writing Brand series – consistency, persistence, and restraint.  Apply them to your positioning strategy, too.

Stay tuned for Part 10 of the Building Your Freelance Writing Brand series in which you’ll learn about building a stronger brand position through focus and owning a word in consumers’ minds.

Read Parts 1-8 of the Building Your Freelance Writing Brand Series

Newbie Freelance Writer Needs Advice

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Hi Jodee,

I am very new freelance writing. Writing has always been a passion for me, and I finally decided to publish some stuff online. I have published an academic dissertation on scribt.com and received good feedback.

I have written on Hubpages purely for fun and recently I have started ghost writing, as well as writing for an article directory.

Of course, the income is very low, but it gives me pleasure to research and write. Despite the low income, I ensure that what I write is of high quality.

I have three questions:

1. How to make that step-up form being a content and directory writer, to a freelance writer?

2. What do I need to do to increase my income?

3. Sites like Demandstudios.com ask for a resume- if new to the business, will a covering letter do?

Thanks,

Iva

Hi Iva,

To answer your first question, you already are a freelance writer. The number or type of projects you take on or the size of your pay check doesn’t determine when you get to use this expression to describe yourself. You write and you work for yourself: you are a freelance writer. Congratulations!

If you want to increase your income, start applying for better-paying gigs. The leads posted here at FWJ on weekdays are a good place to start. Get some business cards made and start telling everyone you know that you are a writer and that you’re always happy to talk to prospective clients.

You can also make a list of prospective clients you would like to work with and start pitching them to hire you for their writing needs. Setting up a blog or a web site is another way to get the word out about your writing services.

One thing you do need to do if you want to get hired for writing gigs is to follow the client’s instructions to the letter. If you are asked for a resume, you will need to send one in. Failing to do what you are asked to do will lead to your application being discarded.

Here’s some tips about freelance writers and resumes:

Do You Need a Freelance Writer’s Resume?

How to Translate Previous Work Experience onto a Writer’s Resume

Functional Resume Format for Freelancers

What would you add to Iva’s questions about how to increase your freelance writing income? Do you have a question you would like to get answered in an upcoming column? Tell us what you are thinking in the comments section.

Lessons in Copywriting – Part 2

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In Part 1 of Lessons in Copywriting, you learned the first tenet of marketing, which is essential for you to understand before you can begin to craft effective marketing messages.  In Part 2, you learn the seven steps of advertising success, which you need to understand in order to determine the types of messages that will help you deliver the required results for a business.

Think of it this way — each marketing piece that a business develops has a purpose.  Whether the goal is to raise awareness of a new product or encourage repeat purchases, there is a goal in mind before any marketing messages are crafted to motivate an audience to take specific actions.

[Read more…]

Blogging Secrets to Power Your Community – Part II

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Technology can help enhance and serve your community if used properly. Some of the more technological techniques I use when developing my blogs are:

  1. A nice clean blogging theme is a must. There are lots of free themes that can be customized – but investing in a trusted theme package such as Thesis or Revolution can and will save you headaches later on.
  2. Make it easy for people to subscribe to your post. Most blogs have a big orange RSS button up in the corner but that’s not enough. Get creative in providing multiple ways and methods for subscribers to sign up.
  3. Claim your blog in Technorati. You don’t have to like Technorati, you don’t have to be a fan or even think it works well – but time has proven Technorati does provide some functions you need.
  4. Change the permalinks structure. (In WordPress, this is in Settings/Permalinks.) Change the structure to custom and put /%postname%/. If you click on any post, you’ll see it all written out in plain English without extra junk that is really not needed. (This is a personal preference).
  5. If you worry that a post might get copied or if you encourage people to repost your work with proper attribution (which is often encouraged), include a few links in the original post that will politely and non-evasively show people where the content came originally from.
  6. Learn how to make links, how to add photos, how to bold and italicize things, and a few minor tweaks that can make your posts more visually appealing. If you’re unclear on how to accomplish a certain technique, Google or “view source” on blogs that do what you want to accomplish.
  7. Don’t force people to register in order to post a comment on your blog. Lots of people won’t. Blogger proved that a couple of years ago.

What are some other “technical” suggestions you can think of that may help to enhance your community?

Help! I’m stuck on my lead!

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The lead (lede). It’s an essential part of an article. It’s the hook that brings readers in, it’s the flag that sets the tone for the rest of the article. A reader’s road map…I could go on and on.

There’s nothing more frustrating than doing the research, conducting the interviews, gathering your cup of joe and sitting down to that blank page with a blinking cursor. An article’s lead is important – which is why it is often the hardest part of the article for writers to write.

So what do you do when you’re stuck?

Reread your notes.

There’s gold in them there notes! Go through your notes and research and pay attention to things that jump out at you – statistics, quotes, anecdotes, etc. A lead is supposed to set the tone and tell readers where the article is going. Find a point and build the article around it.

Create an outline.

Sounds old-school, I know, but many writers like to let the article flow organically from their brains through their fingertips and out onto the screen. Well, when your lede has a Kung-Fu grip on your organic process, its time to structure a way out of the roadblock. Outlines go a long way in helping writers organize their ideas and find their main point.

Revisit your angle.

There are times when an article takes a different turn than expected and writers will find themselves trying to fit a round article into a square editorial angle. If it doesn’t work, don’t force it. Revisit the angle with your editor and explain what works and what doesn’t. Be sure to have a viable, alternative angle prepared for the discussion.

Do more research.

Lack of a lede can indicate a lack of information to present – which means you have to go back into the research phase. Hopefully you haven’t left the article until the last minute! Sometimes writers can get away with holes in their articles, but when the hole is in the lead…Yeah, not good.

Take a break.

The blinking cursor, the blank screen – they are just big ole bullies. They sit there expectantly, waiting on you to do something… So, skip out on the pressure and take a break. Take a walk, eat a snack, open a window, or play some music. Do whatever you need to do to recharge your brain. Writing is a creative process, but it’s also a lot of work. Make sure you are giving yourself enough opportunities to reboost!

What do you do when you’re stuck on a lede? Tell us below!

Book Writing and Publishing FAQ – What Types of Publishing Options Are Available to Me?

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After reading Robin’s great post last week about writing ebooks and publishing my comparison of traditional vs. self-publishing, I wanted to take a step back to further explain the types of publishers that are available to aspiring book writers.  Bottom-line, I don’t want anyone to be confused about the options available to them to get their manuscripts turned into books.

There are three primary types of book publishing — commercial publishers, vanity publishers, and self publishing.  Each type is described in more detail below.  Keep in mind, the descriptions below are generalized, and of course, there are exceptions to every rule.

Commercial Publishers

Commercial publishers (sometimes referred to as traditional publishers) are at the top of the publishing food chain.  These publishers pay writers an advance to write a book as well as royalties on sales of the book.  They handle editing, marketing, printing, distribution, cover design, and so on.  Some commercial publishers leave the copyright of the work in the writer’s name while others hold the copyright.  Commercial publishers ensure your book is available through Amazon.com and other online and offline booksellers, and provide the writer with a supply of author copies as well as a discount on additional copies.  Commercial publishers include well-known companies like Macmillan, McGraw-Hill, Wiley, and so on as well as many smaller publishers.  Writers are not required to pay fees of any kind to work with a commercial publisher.

Vanity Publishers

Vanity publishers may or may not be print-on-demand publishers (meaning they print copies of your book as they are ordered).  With a vanity publisher, you cover all of the actual expenses to print and distribute your boos, and those books may or may not be available through major booksellers.  Furthermore, vanity publishers may or may not leave the book’s copyright in the author’s name, and they may or may not offer editing, cover design and other services for a fee.  Vanity publishers also take a percentage of sales earnings to cover their overhead and other management expenses.  When your book is published through a vanity publisher, it may or may not be distributed to major booksellers such as Amazon.com but it’s unlikely to get the level of widespread distribution that a book published through a commercial publisher can get.

The majority of vanity publishers are not very particular when it comes to choosing books to print that are submitted to them.  There are many reputable vanity publishers (many romance novels are published by vanity publishers) out there, but unfortunately, there are also many dishonest vanity publishers.  Avoid vanity publishers that don’t disclose fees up front, instead presenting themselves as your “partner” or labeling their service as a “joint venture” or “co-op” because those descriptors are often used to make fees sound more palatable.

Self Publishing

When you self publish a book, you retain all control (including copyrights) and pay all expenses.  You must find a company to print and bind your book, create the cover design, ship it, and so on.  There are some print-on-demand services that can help writers self-publish and sell their books (such as Lulu.com) by providing the equipment and technology to do so in return for a percentage of sales.  It might also be possible for you to have your book listed on Amazon.com when you self-publish, but getting it into other book stores is unlikely.

There are pros and cons to each form of publishing, and each writer must decide for himself which option will best help him meet his goals.  The important thing is to understand the differences between publisher models and know what to look for, particularly if you’re choosing to go the vanity publishing route.

A Complex World: Language Families

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Many writers are interested in learning more than one language and not just stick to good ol’ English. Often it can be easier to learn a new language because many languages belong to the same family and use similar base rules. The evolution of language is also undeniably linked to economic shifts in global integration, as seen in the emergence of Credit Loans.

I’m sure everyone knows many examples of Anglicisms used in other languages such as offshore or Germanisms used in English, such as Schadenfreude. Another very popular example, especially among freelance writers, is the Gallicism Resumé or for nostalgic souls your Curriculum [Vitae]. These terms are also called loanwords.

In this new infographic, we have a look at the different language families, their spread and popularity- really a very complex and controversial topic in the classifications of such families.

Did you know that every 14 days a language dies?

Thanks to the crew at Infographiclabs.com for another awesome infographic.

How to be an Internet Job Miner

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The Internet is a wonderful resource for people who are looking for work, including freelance writers. If you are interested in picking up your next gig, you have many options and places to look available to you.

Many people who are looking for jobs check employment web sites looking for listings for “freelance writer.” This is an effective strategy, to be sure, but you can also get some great leads by looking at postings for editors. Read through the job description to see if it mentions something about the client looking for someone who can “supervise the work of freelance writers” or something to that effect.

You now have a lead for a potential client and you are less likely to be competing with multiple applicants for a writing gig. Whether you choose to pursue the lead right away is a judgment call; you may want to put it on the back burner until the new editor has been hired before making a pitch.

Another way that you can mine the Internet for job leads is to check out the metasearch engines like Indeed.com. What I like about these resources is that they pull results from other search engines, but they also display where the ad originally appeared. These are the sites you want to check out.

Not all opportunities for freelancers or job seekers in general appear on the big job boards. Some clients are not prepared to pay the fees they charge for listings or prefer to post their ads on specialty web sites instead. You may not find your dream job posted in the first few minutes of your search, but if you are prepared to roll up your sleeves and do some digging, you can find some hidden gems that are worth applying for.

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