Tag Archives: freelance advice

advice, lifestyle

More Freelance Writing Secrets

dirty-secrets-writing-freelance-articlesby Joe Wallace

There are plenty of dirty little secrets in the freelance writing business. The first dirty secret is that most writers won’t tell you their dirty secrets. They find ’em and hang on to them jealously out of fear that their fellow freelancers will act just like zombies–all swarming desperately to get their grubby little undead fingers on another piece of the freelance writing pie.

That’s dirty secret number two–freelancers WILL swarm about like extras in a George Romero movie.

Which leads me to dirty secret number three. Freelance writers only let their dirty little secrets out when they don’t need them anymore. Feeling a bit cynical yet?

It’s all part of the game, and for those who like to play, it’s just something you have to get used to. No worries, we’re all in this together and all that. Here are a few of my own personal dirty little freelance writing secrets that I actually still DO use, but I don’t mind sharing:

  • I am a freelance editor as well as a freelance writer. When I need to hire writers for various projects, the first criteria I judge them on is how well their cover letters match their writing samples. Are the writers inarticulate boobs in the cover letter or are those first impression communiques just as finely crafted as their writing samples?
  • When a writer tries to pretend they know something they don’t, it seems glaringly obvious to me as an editor. I never work with these people again once I’m sure they are talking out their backsides. Sorry, gang, but if you don’t know your subject matter, don’t try to write as an authority. Appeal to someone else’s authority instead. Write from a more neutral point of view and let your quotes do the talking. Continue reading More Freelance Writing Secrets →
advice, resources

Freelance Writing is Easy and Anyone Can Do It

sheeplancerby Joe Wallace

I just read an article by Allison Boyer lamenting yet another “freelancing is easy and anyone can do it” type article, so I wanted to throw my two pence in.

If you’ve spent any time freelance writing at all, you know by now just how easy it is. After all, all you need to do is write well, do research, be disciplined enough to follow a regular schedule, remember to file your articles on deadline, send invoices, keep all your publications and editors straight, be a subject matter expert on something or other, and market yourself until the sun doesn’t shine.

Easy peasy.

Of course, I’d be remiss in my snark if I didn’t throw in something about not abusing the comma and the apostrophe, but freelancers know how easy it is to catch all those spelling errors and bad word choices. Simple, right? And how about those paychecks? Every magazine and website pays on time, generously, and always throws you more work. They care about you personally and how high your rent is, they really really do.

I don’t really know what Allison Boyer’s complaining about.

Oh, and lest you think this post is snark for snark’s sake, here is a list of five ways you CAN make your freelance life a little bit easier:

5. Buy a STURDY and COMFORTABLE office chair the FIRST TIME AROUND. Don’t skimp on that damn thing thinking you’ll get used to it later. Trust me, you won’t. Continue reading Freelance Writing is Easy and Anyone Can Do It →

advice

Top 5 Things You Never Knew About Editors

freelance-writing-advice-3

by Joe Wallace

Ever wonder what it’s like on the other side of the desk? Here’s a little list of things you never knew about editors, written from my own personal experiences as one. I won’t presume to speak for others, but you can’t tell me some of these things aren’t common experience among my peers:

5. Sometimes we read queries, cover letters and resumes before coffee. On Mondays. Try to connect the dots here.

4. Stephen King on Harlan Ellison; “The man and his work have become so intertwined that it is impossible to pull them completely apart.” Editors get like that, too. Especially when reading the malformed prose of people on the Internet.

3. We make more than you. Sometimes. Did you know some editors actually look at their freelance staff with envious eyes because the freelances actually make more than the editors harassing them? Again, try to connect the dots here. Envy, jealousy, and then…we read your work. Are we LOOKING for an excuse to use our red pens? Sometimes, hell yeah.
Continue reading Top 5 Things You Never Knew About Editors →

advice, editorial

Freelance Pro vs. Freelance Punk

writing advice

By Joe Wallace

Want to know the secrets of freelance writing? Want to know how some of us earn 90-100k or more in a year? For some freelancers, $90 thousand is the equivalent of four years of work. That was certainly true of me in the early days of my game, but it’s not anymore. Why is that?

This reads like advice but all this really consists of a few simple things I actually DO that brought me up to where I am now.




It’s important to note that I started out as a part-time freelance writer, getting pieces done between my day job and performing in bands in the San Antonio area. No trust funds or handouts here, just trying to squeeze in a bit of writing wherever I could. Here’s what I did–and still do to this day:

1. Read and Follow Instructions. I am still shocked at how few writers pay attention to the instructions on a freelance project. If you have questions about the requirements, always ask the editor. You’ll always get respect for trying to get it right the first time.

2. Learn to Love Deadlines. This is your golden opportunity to shine. The freelancer who beats the deadline by two days tends to impress. The freelancer who busts the deadline by five minutes does not. Editors love work turned in early and you can really make a good impression–especially on the first project.

3. Let the Editor Bring Up Pay. This one’s aimed at magazine writers only–I believe it’s bad form to bring up payment issues until it’s accepted that you’re going to do some work for the editor. For all other freelancers, negotiation of fees are important earlier in the game, obviously…but for print mags, get an acceptance first.

4. Keep Records. Some writers track every single phone call, the duration, and topics discussed. I don’t feel the need to get quite that complicated, but I do make a file of any sources I might quote, their contact information and any other info an editor might surprise me with needing later on. Sometimes MUCH later on.

5. Be Flexible. When the editor calls up and asks me to add a section or could I please turn the piece in a few days early, I hate having to say no. So I try to set myself up to be in a position where I don’t have to.

6. Let ‘Em Know You’re Still Alive. I like to drop my old editors and other colleagues a note every once in a while just to shoot the breeze. It reminds them I’m still in the game and it lets them know I am available without being too obvious about it.

7. Know when to walk away from a project. If all your time and energy go into something with little return for you, what’s the point? Find a better paying or more rewarding gig.

8. Be the most reliable, available person in the room. ‘Nuff said.

advice

The Realities of Passive Income

2 Comments

freelanceswitch

I enjoy FreelanceSwitch on a semi-regular basis (when I come up for air in the middle of deadline hell). I think this is a great site that offers relevant material for all kinds of freelancers. That said, some of the advice in this post about creating passive income falls into the “easier said than done” category at best.  Several of the ideas in the post are far from “passive”, but good advice regardless.

5 Passive Income Opportunities for Freelancers really hits the mark with “Create Niche Resources”. There’s nothing more valuable to a freelancer than taking advantage of specialized skills and expertise. I’ve got nothing but warm fuzzies on this part of the blog post because I’ve seen this principle at work again and again.

Not so warm and fuzzy is the advice to sell subscriptions. I think for a select few freelancers, selling subscriptions to newsletters or websites could turn into a stream of income–but there’s nothing passive about having to create new content for that newsletter or website, and unless your offerings are first-rate, asking for subscription money in the current economy is counter-intuitive. I think for the average freelancer, selling subscriptions will result in disappointment and a waste of the time invested in trying to make that model work.

The advice to sell side items to your list of current clients is a much better use of your time than trying to hawk subscriptions. Here again, the blog gets it right on the money–you already have the attention of your clients, they are already used to paying you money. Getting them to sign on for some extras may not be EASY, but it is much easier than doing another cold call.

My biggest gripe with the post is the advice about selling merchandise. Not that advice in general, but the encouragement to use Cafe Press as an alternative to actually running a merchandise operation with all that packaging and mailing. For starters, Cafe Press charges a base price that’s practically full retail–try $14.99 for a woman’s t-shirt. You have to add the markup from there. Does that sound like an easy sell? Large mugs have a base price of $11.99. Thanks, but no thanks.

What a lot of proponents of passive income don’t tell you is that there’s really no such thing–it all requires some effort on the front end. Even if you plan on selling stock footage, using Associated Content, or installing Google Ads, you still have to put in the time to get it running and sustainable. Experienced freelancers with a large portfolio have a much easier time getting passive income streams up and running because they have a base of material to draw on. New freelancers don’t have that luxury in many cases.

I hate to offer criticism without also offering advice on how to get it right, so here’s my two cents–when writing pieces like this, I find specific advice much more helpful. Does the writer know something about using Cafe Press that could make it profitable and viable? Cafe Press seems like a bad idea at first glance. Is there a specific technique or strategy that can be used to sell additional services to a client? What about the benefit of  your experience when it comes to selling stock?

It’s easy to write an article or blog post in the style of that old Monty Python joke where the TV presenter shows you how to play a flute. “Blow in at the far and and move your fingers around like this.” Properly explaining how to do something has infinitely more value. You don’t have to go step-by-step every single time, but specific advice is quite valuable and worth the effort.

advice, editorial

Word Choices

freelance-writing-advice-3

Good word choices are tricky, even for experienced writers. In my day-to-day editing duties I find a wide range of mistakes that should make good writers cringe–once they are hip to the error. Do you know the difference between a credit report and a credit rating? What about the meaning of “affect” versus “effect”?

These are common errors that give editors grief–but they cause problems for writers, too. Imagine the look on a prospective editor’s face when they read a query that talks about “the affects of the electrical storm” or when you ask the editor to “bare with you.”

I’ve ranted on these issues before, but there’s a good reason. If your query letter is full of holes, it doesn’t inspire confidence. Why should an editor take a chance on an untested writer who starts off with issues like these?

The trick is to put yourself in the editor’s shoes and try to think like them. Look at your query letter with a critical eye and try to remove linquistic land mines before they blow up in your face.

That last line had some cheesy alliteration in it, didn’t it? As an editor, I once took a pass on a writer who got too cute with alliteration in one of their published clips. It made the piece read like a high school book report, and it clued me in that the clip itself was published in a college newspaper. Not the end of the world all in itself, but definitely a warning flag.

You might think that too cynical, but that’s the kind of thinking you work against when you query.