Tag Archives: freelance

advice

What Freelancers Can Learn From a Severed Pinky

t1larg.pinky.regrowth Photo courtesy CNN.com

There’s a fascinating story at CNN.com about a women who lost the tip of her finger in an accident at home. She went to the hospital and asked them to reattach the severed portion. All the doctors told her she was crazy, but she didn’t give up.

She told the ER doctor to get stuffed, in so many words, when she was told it would be impossible to do. Likewise for the orthopedic specialist that was brought in for a second opinion.

Deepa Kulkarni spent the day after her accident trying to get somebody to listen to her when she ran across Dr. Stephen Badylak at the University of Pittsburgh, who was working a new tissue regeneration technique. Five weeks or so later and Kularni had herself a new, restored finger.

Lessons?

Freelancers, don’t always take the advice of the first professional you see who tells you your ideas won’t work. I’m of course talking about freelance business ideas, book concepts, article queries, designs, etc.

The lesson of this story is mostly about persistence. Freelancers should know that even the experts called in to give you a second opinion can be wrong. After all, wasn’t it Rudyard Kipling who got that famous rejection letter telling the author that one magazine wasn’t the place for Kipling to “practice his writing”?

Continue reading What Freelancers Can Learn From a Severed Pinky →

advice

What do you call yourself, freelancer?

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editorial services firmBy Jake Poinier

What’s in a name? When it comes to freelancing, I’d argue: A lot.

What to call ourselves is a matter of frequent and sometimes heated debate on LinkedIn, as Planet Word brought up in a post today, “Are you a consultant or a freelancer?” My first recognition that “freelancer” isn’t always the best word to use was back when I first read Peter Bowerman’s The Well-Fed Writer back in 2001. He uses “commercial writer,” which is a useful distinction, particularly for those of us who focus on business writing rather than exclusively writing for publications.

The problem is, “freelance” can carry some negative connotations—fly-by-night, can’t get a real job, in-between-jobs—and I’ve learned over the years that there’s a benefit to using the right phrase at the right time. Here’s how my thought process has evolved:

  • Freelancer (or freelance writer and editor) is reserved for when I’m talking to people within the industry: graphic designers, web designers, ad agencies, magazine editors and other people who are hip to the concept. It’s useful shorthand, and immediately implies “I’m for hire.”
  • I’ll use commercial writer or corporate copywriter if I’m talking to someone who’s in a business field. For example, a marketing director or business owner that I’m confident has some experience in marketing/advertising, but might be wary of (i.e., may have had a bad experience with) freelancers.
  • Finally, when I’m talking to someone who might not be familiar with the creative industry, lately I’ve been using a complete phrase: “I run an editorial services firm.” I find that it puffs things up a bit, and will usually provoke a follow-up question.
  • Personally, I never use consultant. I suppose there might be a circumstance I’d use it someday, but I haven’t come across it yet.

So….what’s your favorite term for describing what you do? Please share your ideas in the comments!

Jake dispenses business prescriptions for freelancers at DoctorFreelance.com—no matter what you want to call yourself.

advice, blogging, travel

Freelance Travel and the Perils of Being a Road Warrior

IndieWax Youngstown Ohio record storesI’m sitting in a hotel room in Pennsylvania watching a news report about a situation I just missed–the bomb squad was called out in Pittsburgh after a suspicious package was discovered somewhere in the city. I shudder to think of what might have happened to my deadlines if I had gotten caught in a horrific traffic snarl that probably followed. But that’s not among the perils of being a freelance road warrior I’m thinking of…

I knew this week that the second I pulled out of the driveway to go on my Chicago to New York City road trip, I’d get hit six ways from Sunday with things I had hoped to avoid dealing with until I got back. Freelance-Zone.com got several requests from potential sponsors for rate cards and other information, an interview I’d been waiting on finally came in from the cold, and I even got an offer for some additional freelance work writing copy for one of my previous clients.

Naturally all this stuff came in when I was in no-signal areas, doing my travel reviews of record stores and restaurants, or trying to write up material to make deadline for the clients that I did NOT put on hold during all of this travel and discovery.

23 record stores later, I am still trying to catch up with all the e-mails and requests for my time. And I’m STILL on the road!

The perils of freelancing from the road range from the mundane–trying to get a seat in a coffee shop next to an outlet so you can deal with a dying laptop battery and make deadline…to the serious–trying to avoid having my travel budget dinged by gotcha charges, excessive fees and highway tolls and other expenses.

Lessons learned?

Essential road warrior gear for freelancers should include a wireless headset for your cell phone, a spare battery for your laptop, and a cell phone capable of using Google Maps with the Location Services feature. I can’t tell you how many times I would have gotten hopelessly lost without the Location Services function of the iPhone displaying the little blue dot telling me exactly where I was on both my route AND in terms of the directions I had gotten from Google Maps. On or off track, the little blue dot tells all and it shows you in SECONDS whether you’ve zigged when you should have zagged.

I’ll do a complete post on essential freelance travel gear later, but for now, suffice it to say that you should always expect your battery to die when you need it most, you should always count on getting lost just when you NEED to be in a certain town on time, and never make plans to stay longer than absolutely necessary—you’ll find a way to need to be someplace else on that day you were planning to sleep in. Continue reading Freelance Travel and the Perils of Being a Road Warrior →

advice, blogging, editorial

Freelance Travel–Beware The “Gotcha” Clause

Vinyl Road Rage 2 on the road

by Joe Wallace

I am still freelancing on the road–I’m filing reports this week from all over the place. Yesterday was New York, today it’s Pittsburgh, tomorrow, who knows? It all depends on the road and how good it is to me. Today I had trouble getting my clients their daily dose of freelance deliverables because of another unexpected wrinkle–did you know Starbucks in those truck driver rest stop areas don’t always carry wi-fi? I thought the whole idea behind the success of Starbucks was standardization…but apparently not.

All was well that ended well, as I managed to meet my deadlines by stopping off in a local bar and grill in Pittsburgh before time ran out, but there’s another assumption that’s not safe to make as a road warrior–even the most (recently) dependable sources of free wi-fi can’t be depended upon for one reason or another.

But there’s a much more important issue I want to discuss today–the detestable business practice known as the “gotcha” fee. What’s a gotcha fee? Glad you asked… Continue reading Freelance Travel–Beware The “Gotcha” Clause →

blogging, editorial, travel

A Freelance Travel Writing Experiment

Travel Writing Destination NYCby Joe Wallace

I love travel, and I love travel writing. So why haven’t I done that much in 2010? Because I let myself get tied down to a freelance gig that required me to show up onsite several days a week or take meetings that tied me to the company’s secure site which was tricky to access even ONSITE.

So I wound up being tied to a desk. It was worth it financially–I built up my war chest and was able to finish the project, choose not to renew with that client and concentrate on my own work after the project was done.

And now I’m taking full advantage by doing some travel and travel blogging.

Specifically, I’m doing a cross country trek to blog about indie record stores between Chicago, Illinois and New York City. It’s called Vinyl Road Rage, and I’m taking a dozen days on the road, blogging the whole way for Turntabling.net.

But I’ll also be posting along the way for Freelance-Zone.com because the issues I’ll be facing on the road are travel writing issues. How do I connect on the road? How do I juggle my travel with my other clients–who I won’t be putting on hold during the trip? How will THAT work out? I will give reports along the way about the trials, tribulations, almost-busted deadlines and much more.

After all, the idea of being a freelancer is being FREE. If I’m true to the freelance ideal, I should be able to travel for nearly two weeks, make my freelance clients happy AND post about it all here…right? Let’s take this journey together and see what happens. My road trip begins today, Thursday August 12, 2010…time to hit the road!

–Joe Wallace

blogging, editorial

Does Your Hobby Blog Eclipse Your Pro Blog?

dangers of assuming on freelance jobsby Joe Wallace

If your hobby blog is overtaking your professional blog, getting more hits and more attention, ask yourself a couple of important questions. After all, we all want our pro blogs to do well and make money–but some people find their pro blogs lagging behind the ones they do for fun.

And there lies the answer, I suspect.

Hobby blogs are often more informal, more fun to read, and definitely more fun to write than pro blogs. I think pro blogs could take a lesson here–at least the ones that don’t seem to be able to compete. I run Turntabling.net, which is a lot more snarky, informal and goofy than Freelance-Zone.com. While Turntabling isn’t a hobby blog per se–I do try to earn some coin on it–I don’t worry nearly as much about content there because it’s far more opinionated and as such is easier to write. While there are opinions here, I find striking a balance between information and opinion more crucial to the success of FZ in general.

If your hobby blog is outpacing your pro blog, ask a few questions of your work:

  • What makes the hobby blog fun to read? What is it you do there that you DON’T do on the pro blog?
  • Is your pro blogging work too long? Too densely packed with information? Or is it “skimmable”?
  • What is the central idea of your pro blog? Can you sum it up in two sentences or less?
  • Look at the visual presentation of your pro blog. Is it easy on the eyes? Or is it a cluttery mess?
  • Give your blog the Who Cares? test for all your most recent posts. The So What? test is also a good one.

These are only a few of the things you can try, I’ll cover some additional ways to give your pro blog a good, hard look in another post. Continue reading Does Your Hobby Blog Eclipse Your Pro Blog? →