freelance-zone.com

Note: After a few horrified responses to this post, I should point out that I am wearing the pointy hat for much of this screed…that is to say I may have actually DONE this, but remember that all editors are slightly crazy and I’d never expect anyone to seriously take this advice unless they are as much of a rabid workaholic and certified nutter as I am.

There is no one tried and true way to make the jump from part time to fulltime…except possibly ONE method, the one I tried myself with great success. (How egotistical is THAT? There’s no way to make it except MY way, HAH!) Yet, when I think about it, this is the only method I know that makes any sense at all IF you have a day job you need to dump with extreme prejudice, and want to get yourself into a freelance situation where you wake up and tell yourself that your job is getting in the way of your career.

Naturally it’s a painful, isolating and downright masochistic path to follow to fulltime freelance success, which is why many people shy away from it. And who can blame them? Do you really want to suffer for your dream? You’ll find out just how committed you are when you contemplate doing “the Crazy Joe Wallace Method”. Also known as “Leaving Las Vegas, For Writers.”

What you do is decide, sort of like Nicholas Cage in that uber-depressing movie, that you’re going to write yourself to death.

Well, not quite. The actual trick is to write so hard that you WISH you were dead, but manage to take care of yourself in the meantime enough to maintain your madness. What madness would that be? (more…)

I used to write and talk in analogies…a LOT. Now, analogies feel like a pretty tired as a way of explaining things, but I’ll resort to one here because Dave Navarro’s Rock Your Day really does feel like a quad espresso injected directly into a vein.

This motivational site has a LOT going for it, and in particular Navarro’s willingness to buy and try books by other freelancers with sensational-sounding claims and try them out to see if they give the results they claim.  Check out The Freelance Smackdown and see what I mean. You will feel at least slightly more caffeinated just reading this blog, or I’ll eat my hat.

I found this site courtesy of Freelance Folder, where Navarro has a guest post called Three Uncomfortable Ways to Make More Money as a Freelancer. Nice work…

I have been looking for more and more outrageous ways to sucker people into reading these screeds. While it’s true that there’s plenty of advice to dispense, there’s also a dire lack of (fun) sensationalism in the freelance writing blog community, so I thought I’d up the ante a little bit by injecting a bit of it here.

Today, in pursuit of said eye-grabbing sensationalist fun, I did a Google search on the term “the naked freelancer” just to see what would come up. I wasn’t expecting much, to be honest, but I found several entries that made me laugh. For a start, somebody posted a gig on GetAFreelancer.com with the headline “Naked Nude Porn Picture Detector”. Believe it or not, this person (who would only pay up to $250 for such a thing) was actually looking for a “naked nude porn picture” BLOCKER. Or so the ad says.

Another bout of laughs–on purpose this time–came by way of FreelanceSwitch. Mary Beth Ellis posted a pictorial and essay called Day In The Life Of A Freelancer. Mary Beth exposes the REAL life of an experienced freelancer in this hard-hitting tell-all. Newcomers will be shocked by both the wake-up times AND the images of the kinds of research fulltimers get up to around 2PM. Mary Beth, you’ve outed us ALL. Except mine’s the Heineken, not the Chardonnay. (more…)

If you aren’t getting any responses in spite of sending query letter after query letter, it’s time to examine the root causes of the problem. There are three basic issues that could be roadblocking you:

1. The publication isn’t interested in your ideas.

2. The publication isn’t using freelancers at this time

3. Your query letter sucks and the editor is laughing at you.

The first two you can’t do much about. To fix #1, you need to read more of a particular magazine or website and try again once you’ve got a better idea of what they print. To fix #3, we need a closer look at your work.

“To Whom It May Concern” or “Dear Editor” is your first mistake–and probably your last with that particular query letter. It shows a basic lack of research. What’s worse, it shows a lack of INTEREST in that research. An editor can spot your lazy ass coming a mile away. Yeah, it’s harsh of me to say, but it’s true. Now you know. (more…)

In the early days of my career I cut my teeth reading Robert Bly’s books on freelance writing, and while I daresay that most of the people who read this great book will NOT make $100,000 a year, they CAN earn more than enough to keep the beer and chicken wings flowing freely thank you very much.

For my money, the real value for books like these is as much about showing you that other people can and do earn a living doing nothing but freelancing as it is giving you the advice on queries, research, taxes and all the other stuff. One day somebody will write the definitive book on how to avoid writing, blow off deadlines and ignore your creditors, and we can all learn some lessons in reverse. For now, I highly suggest books like Bly’s, but please take that dollar amount with a grain of salt until you can look back on your career from the time you first cracked this book open and laugh about whether that figure applies to you or not.

Maybe I am a bit biased against dollar amounts on the cover–if only because I keep finding used books with titles like “How to earn $25,000 a Year as a Photographer”. HAH! How dated is THAT one? Why not just call it “How To Take Pictures While Starving.”

Buy for $11.56