freelance-zone.com

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 

Me.dium is something I recently discovered. It is a browser that allows you to search with your friends–in real time. It also recommends sites to you depending on what sites you browse. It can be a little hard to explain, so hop on and check it out for yourself when you have a minute…

Bloggers use social networking sites like MySpace for self-promotion all the time. But how can a struggling freelance writer take advantage of the same type of strategies bloggers use? It’s easy. Here’s the breakdown in five easy steps:

1.  Cultivate lots of “friends”. The law of averages says the more MySpace friends you have, the higher the response rate will be when you post a link to your material or send a bulletin saying “Hey, look at this!” The extra eyeballs on your work means the greater likelihood that your article will get comments and feedback. The more activity on a given article, the better you look in the eyes of an editor who has to decide whether to use you again.

 2. Add “targeted” friends. Got somebody else in the biz you want to make friends with? Maybe an editor or a publication you want to get published has a MySpace site. Add them as friends and start up a casual “relationship” with them by sending the occasional message or posting a nice comment. This is standard MySpace behavior, but when it comes time to strike up a conversation with someone at that publication you won’t be such an unknown quantity at a medium-sized or smaller operation. The key here is to be a semi-regular MySpacer, posting and commenting without mentioning your own work–until you need to.

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