Tag Archives: freelance

Sometimes, Less is More

writing adviceby Joe Wallace

Have you noticed a social media-driven trend in writing resumes and “about me” blurbs lately? Brevity has always been the soul of wit, but thanks to social media your resume and About Me blurbs need to get even wittier.

Cutting out the flab from a resume is nothing new. Strunk & White have been shouting the “Omit needless words” gospel from the rooftops for generations. But in an age where attention spans are so short that anything longer than 140 characters seems positively Joycean, short bursts of credibility are more important than being fun to read.

If you can’t tell what a person’s About Me is all about at a glance, the feature might be missing the mark. On my Twitter page, for example, I cut out all the fun stuff about being a snarky columnist and music photographer. Yes, I am those things. But I get right to the point now, saying basically, “Joe Wallace for hire. I write finance, medical, SEO and other high-value topics. I excel at quick turnaround projects with insane deadlines.”

And that’s pretty much it. I was sad to see the snarky fun go out of my About Me, but the value of being instantly attractive to a potential client shouldn’t be underestimated.

Climbing That Freelance Ladder

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In my humble opinion, it is crucial to keep moving forward in the freelance writing biz. It is all too easy to get caught up in low-paying projects that don’t get you any further as a professional. While I understand that one needs to pay the bills, this fact needs to be balanced with the idea that some time invested in moving up the ladder is well spent. It can be scary, but it’s worth the risk.

Now. I don’t advise this in some cases. If you are just starting out, it takes time to get your legs underneath you. Keep writing. Establish contacts. Work hard. When you feel comfortable, it’s a sign that you should push a bit harder. Don’t get complacent, but don’t risk too much either. If you are just starting out as a “full-timer,” you may want to be sure you can make the bills before reaching up for higher pay.

That said, I can say that I’ve known many freelance writers who underestimate themselves and stay in low-paying gigs when they could be making better money and getting published in bigger markets. These people are good writers and they just kind of get stuck in a rut. Don’t let this be you.

Resolve to do something each week that moves you forward in this game. Send out a query to a bigger market than you normally would. Put together a letter of introduction and start mailing it out to editors. Search for new markets and new work. If you can make the time to do this, you’ll be climbing that ladder in short order. Invest in yourself and stop treading water. It really works.

The Realities of Passive Income

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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.

For Freelance Writers Only: Top Ten Writing Paradoxes

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Editors, go away. This stuff is for freelance writers, and my advice here will only make you dizzy. Go back to following the Eminem Bruno stunt or search for some Sims 3 cheat codes. This is for writers, and I’ll get round to doing some editors-only content very soon. Don’t feel all left out, just go back to reading The Onion and let the writers feel like they’re getting some secret sauce here.

Writers, ever notice the paradoxes about being a freelance writer? I’ve been making a few observations lately since I work both sides of the desk as a freelance writer and editor. Here are my top ten:

10. Editors don’t need you. The accepted wisdom is that there are people lining up ten deep to fill your shoes. So you landed a query, eh? Good one. You somehow edged out the other 100 people trying to get paid. We’re a dime a dozen, right?

9. Editors can’t live without you. This is also true. Sure, there are hundreds of people trying to get an article published at the publication you just sold a piece to–but a lot of them don’t know how to play the game just yet, or haven’t got the knack of querying effectively or just plain suck. And once you land a gig, are you a reliable and trustworthy source of articles? Or are you a flake like some of these others? Dependable, flexible, easy to work with writers are NOT a dime a dozen.

8. You charge too much. In many cases writers don’t get to set their rates. Publications who offer X per word aren’t going to haggle with a new writer. But what about when you land some kind of sweet content gig or blog posting contract? Some writers make the mistake of not scaling their income towards the type of writing they are doing and expect the same pay for the same word count, regardless of medium. That might be counterproductive.

7. You’re not charging enough. Writers are often afraid to charge what their time is actually worth. If you are a new writer with a lot of time on your hands (read–not many deadlines) chances are you can and should offer lower rates until you learn how to play the game. But if you’re a busy freelancer and your valuable time is too precious to parcel out for ten cents a word, don’t take that ten cent a word gig! Decide how much money you need to add yet another deadline to your already busy schedule and price accordingly. How much is that extra Saturday you’ll spend working to make deadline worth to you? Charge that.

6. Your work isn’t quite awesome enough. Some writers get the inflated ego that comes with a few successes and start thinking (temporarily) that they don’t need to do third drafts or double check their work for spelling errors, apostrophes or even poor usage. WRONG! Even Stephen King does many drafts…and he’s an old hand at this writing business.

5. Your work is too cool for school. Let’s face it, if you’ve been at this for any length of time and are getting paid for your work, you are DOING SOMETHING RIGHT. What you have to do now is do more of what you’re getting right and less of what you’re getting wrong. Or at lest figure out where you are going wrong and start correcting that so you can be even cooler.

4. Your editor is a dummy. How many times do they write you to revise your article with things they asked you NOT to do in the first place? How many times do they issue you a deadline then write you back asking either “Where is this very late or about to be late article” that ain’t late at all or hasn’t even been given the green light yet? How many times do we have to pester them until they pay up? We turned it IN on deadline, why aren’t we getting PAID on deadline?

3. Your editor is a genius. I have improved my writing by leaps and bounds simply by watching what my editors do to my finished pieces. Yes, you have to re-read your own work to see where they made the changes sometimes, and yes you have to accept that your precious work has been altered. But reading your writing through someone else’s eyes is the singlemost important thing you can do to improve. Read your articles and blog posts as though you were a casual reader trying to decide whether or not to subscribe. Now you’re getting the idea…

2. Freelance writing sucks, I want to be an editor. Editors don’t have to do yet another draft because there was some difference of opinion about a minor detail. Editors don’t have to put up with waiting around for weeks on end to learn whether a story idea was approved or not. Editors have it so much easier than the writers because they control who gets printed and who doesn’t. Don’t you love the idea of all that power?

1. Editing sucks, I want to be a writer again. Editing well isn’t just about fixing and scheduling stuff, it’s so much detail and coordination…you have deadlines to beat and writers are flaky, they turn in stuff late, and full of last-minute work YOU get to do to make it press-worthy. Probably over your lunch hour or off the clock. You can’t depend on them to hit the deadline you set deliberately so you could go to press on time or publish on a specific date. Editors have to comb through the bad grammar and goofy sentence construction of so many people your eyes start to burn after a full day’s worth of correcting and clarifying. I want to go back to that cushy world where deadlines don’t mean anything to me personally except for a paycheck and all that…

Dirty Little Writing Secrets

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All freelancers have dirty little secrets they won’t share because they know there are too many people fumbling around “trying to be a writer” who will stampede towards the dirty secret in question, ruining it for everybody.

This is rarely discussed on writing blogs, forums, and elsewhere, but we all know it’s true. Here are a few of mine, just because I like being a maverick–not in the Sarah Palin sense where “maverick” means “business as usual” but in the Barack Obama sense where some kinds of new ideas irritate and upset the status quo.

  • I don’t bother using online writer’s markets. I ALWAYS go direct to the source and read the magazine or website. The best way to land a gig is to read it first. This shouldn’t be considered a dirty secret, but trust me, once you learn WHY it works you’ll know why it’s my dirty secret.
  • I like to pitch to bizarre markets. If you know of a magazine or website paying for articles about cockroach wrangling, I’d be happy to take a look and make a pitch. These markets don’t get flooded with bad queries.
  • The dentist office is often a great place to find new markets to pitch to. Don’t bother with the magazines you know well. Look for the oddball ones you never heard of.
  • People blow their query letters by discussing things that have nothing to do with the query itself. Like whether or not you are a “full time freelancer”.
  • Query letters tied to current events sell. I just sold an article by riffing on those commercials on TV lately about “the Oprah Effect”.
  • The writer who is not prepared to at least consider turning in a queried article in one week isn’t thinking like a busy editor.
  • If you can’t write what you know, write what other people know. I don’t have to try to pretend I’m an expert, I simply let my interviews state the facts. But here’s my dirty secret–I never let on that I DON’T know. I state the facts with authority because my quotes did the talking for me.
  • Sometimes rattling off a list of highly technical terms makes you sound like you DON’T know what you’re writing about. Simplify. Jargon is for trade mags.

Word Choices

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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.