Take What You Need, Pass On What You Can

When you first got the inspiration to become a freelance writer, you scoured the Internet for information and helpful blogs that would tell you how to start. You heeded the advice, you valued the input and applied it to your freelance writing ventures. Things began to take off and before you knew it, you had clients of your very own.

Thousands more will take the same path you took, searching for advice and inspiration from people who have “been there and done that”. Now, it’s your turn to share what you’ve learned with those who have yet to experience it.

 

You don’t have to be a professional writer. You don’t have to have extensive training or degrees. You don’t have to be a famed writer with thousands of pieces in print and circulation. Regardless of your standing in the writing community, you’ve faced some of the same challenges that other writers have faced and you have experienced some all your own. All of those experiences have helped shape who you are and the direction your career path has taken.

Pass that experience along to others, no matter how trivial you think it may be. You have advice and suggestions. Share them. It doesn’t have to be revolutionary information nobody has ever heard before, but it just might be the one thing that one person needed to hear.

Twitter Apps: Just For Fun

Twitter Tools: Just For Fun

We’ve read all the hype about how Twitter can help your business and your marketing campaign, but we seldom ever hear about ways to simply just goof off on Twitter without having some “ROI” in mind. Twitter can be fun – lots of fun – and we should take time out of our busy schedules to remember that. So here are a few “just for fun” apps you can do on Twitter when you have a few free minutes to leave the business world behind.

TweetWasters

TweetWasters is a fun app that tallies how much time you have wasted on Twitter. It tells you how many tweets you’ve posted, how long it took you to make them in days, hours and seconds. How much time have YOU wasted on Twitter? (Also has a Hall of Fame for the top TweetWasters)

Cursebird

Cursebird is, perhaps, my favorite Twitter app EVER. It tells you who is cussing in their tweets and what the most popular swear words of the moment are. OMG Are you kidding me? Social media AND profanity in the same place? Giddy up!

TweetStalk

TweetStalk is a handy lil tool that lets you creep people without following them so you can see what they’re doing. Kinda like stalking, except not. Okay it might be and stalking is highly illegal so use with caution.

SecretTweet

SecretTweet is kind of like the Post Secret thing that’s been around for a while. You tweet your secrets anonymously and people comment on them.

Tweet Calories

Tweet Calories tells you how many calories you burn while tweeting. Now an excuse to do it more, yay!

Sleeping Time

Sleeping Time is a freakishly accurate app that tells you, based on their tweeting patterns, when your followers are usually asleep.

So what are you waiting for?

Go tweet some fun!

Writers, beware of freelancing job sites

If there’s one piece of advice I could pass along to any aspiring freelance writer just starting out, it would be to steer clear of third party job sites that entail dealing with a middle man. I would encourage them to work for themselves and only themselves from the beginning. My reasons for this are many and varied, but I will attempt to cull the list down to the most important points.

 

You’re paying fees without guarantees.

 

Most of these website charge you some kind of fee, whether it’s a membership fee or ‘credits’ you must purchase to use to make contact with buyers on the site. This is money out of your pocket straight out the gate and you haven’t earned a penny yet.

 

The middle man is making his living off you.

 

If and I stress if – you are able to land a gig at one of these sites, the middle man takes a cut of the final price, which will likely be lower than one you negotiated on your own. So the middle man is paid twice before you’re even paid once. Fair much? Not really.

 

You’re limited in the amount of self-promotion you can do.

 

Serious writers who have decided to make a career of freelancing know the importance of clips and having their own websites and blogs. When you’re working through one of these third party sites, you are limited in the amount of self-identifying information that you can give. You can’t tell a prospective client, “Hey – I can do this. I can prove it. Look at my website at the following URL.” Why? Because these sites don’t want you giving your contact information to prospective clients from the site because if they contact you directly to make a deal, it cuts out the middle man’s commission.

 

You have to work under someone else’s terms and conditions.

 

Anyone who is in business for themselves will create a service contract to protect themselves – themselves, first and foremost, not you. So when you are working for these third party sites, it’s very easy to get burned as a freelancer because most of the rules and protocols that are in place are soley to protect the interest of the company. This leaves you to fend for yourself when it comes to unscrupulous clients. Fair much? Again, not really.

 

Feedback is easy to fake.

 

Most of the time when prospective clients hire freelancers from third party sites, one of the first things the look at is a freelancer’s feedback. While those who are more versed in how easily any feedback system can be skewed will recognize how unreliable such a system is, others swear by it. So while you are working hard to establish a strong and proven track record on the site, others may be creating accounts to post bogus feedback on their own pages – or even having their friends do it for them. So they get the recognition because of numbers (fake as they are) while the better writers go unnoticed as buyers gravitate toward those with higher clout.

 

Regardless of what any of these third party sites promise, the truth is they are in business for themselves, not you. They are always going to do what is in their best interest, not yours. So why not brand yourself as a business and follow suit?

 

Writing E-books For Fun, Not Profit

You’ve read countless ads for e-books online, promising to reveal the secret of never-ending wealth, happiness and success. You’ve pondered writing some yourself, but were discouraged because you couldn’t find a topic that wasn’t saturated and hadn’t been “done to death”. Writing e-books is no small undertaking. Even if you’re just “borrowing” ideas to repackage and re-present them, there is still a lot of work and planning involved in the process. After a while, it can become downright tedious. So what can you do to avoid e-book burnout?

 

Write them for fun instead of profit.

 

There’s an old saying that goes, “Do what you love and you’ll never work a day in your life”. This is true for writing, too. Write what you enjoy and it won’t seem like work at all. It’s so easy to get bogged down in the day-to-day monotony that comes with stiff business writing. You need a little change of direction from time to time.

 

Pick any topic that you’re passionate about and versed in. It can be about anything, anything at all – from poems and prose to fairytales to a set of memoirs. Put it all together in an e-book and put it up on your site for people to download. You can decide to charge for it or opt not to. It doesn’t matter. The important thing is that you enjoy doing it. Not only are you creating yet another sample of your work, you might even generate a few dollars from it along the way!

 

Organize Your Home Office Day 2011

Today, March 8^th, is the official Organize Your Home Office Day. When is the last time you actually took time to do that? If you can’t remember, then it’s been too long! Yeah, yeah – we know the excuse “But it’s an organized mess!” Really, it isn’t. Even though you know just which junk pile everything is in, the clutter is still affecting your productivity. And if you aren’t productive, you don’t get paid. And if you don’t get paid – well, things tend to go downhill real quick.

We shouldn’t need a special day to remind us to tidy up our workspace. It’s so much easier to get a handle on and to establish a system that works (a system other than the junk pile one you’ve been using) if you tackle it often. Even if it’s just for a few minutes every other day, you can still make real progress. So the next time you’re about to shut down for the day, add one last thing to your To Do List and clear away some of the clutter. A few minutes here, a few minutes there – and pretty soon, you’ll notice those (un)organized junk piles disappearing before your very eyes. Hey! You might even find a desk under there. You never know!

Know When To Hold ‘Em, Know When To Fold ‘Em

In the infamous words of Kenny Rogers, “You got to know when to hold ‘em, know when to fold ‘em, know when to walk away and know when to run.” Of course, he was talking about poker games, but the same logic can be applied to freelance writing, too.

Sometimes you land a great gig with a great client – or so you think at the time. It’s going great, everybody is happy – and then something turns. You’re not sure how it happened, but little by little, all the progress you made seems to have fallen apart.

Your client starts nitpicking every sentence you write, inventing errors that aren’t there. You begin to take it personally because you know you did your best and that the material is good, but he chooses to cast a bad light on you anyway.

This is what I refer to as the Jumping Off Point.

Do you stay on the project you committed to, even though both of you are unhappy and it’s apparent – or do you bow out gracefully, cut your losses and wish him the best of luck in finding a suitable replacement?

We, as writers, should always do our best to make our clients happy. Our livelihoods depend on it. If our clients aren’t happy, they’re going to tell everybody they know and probably a few people they don’t know. Word of mouth advertising is a double-edged sword. It can be the best or worst publicity that a business can get. Too much bad publicity can have serious adverse effects on your business.

But what’s more important in the long run? Holding on to a disgruntled client or realizing when you’re in a no win situation?

Whatever you decide, there is one sure way to know whether or not you made the right decision. If you walk away from a project feeling an overwhelming sense of relief, it was definitely the right thing to do.

And I don’t regret it one bit.

Writers Conferences 2011

This year looks like it’s going to be one of the best ever for writers conferences. There are lots of regional conferences being held as well as some national ones. These are great opportunities to network with other writers and learn from some of the best in the business – no matter what kind of writing you do.

Here’s the link to the conferences that have been announced so far. If you get a chance to attend one, post back here and let us know how it goes!

Timely Payment vs Timely Delivery (Why both are important)

One of the biggest complaints I hear from freelancers and content buyers alike is turnaround time. Content buyers often run into problems with freelancers missing deadlines and freelancers often have to chase down their payment once their work has been delivered. Both of these practices can really hurt your business and cast a poor light on you to potential customers.

As a freelance writer for a number of years, I am no stranger to deadlines. I always try to accommodate clients who have a special need regarding turnaround time, but in the event that I can’t – and I know that I can’t – I tell them up front so that they have the option of hiring someone else that can work within their timeframe and get their project to them as quickly as they’d like. Alternately, things happen – such is life. If, for whatever reason, I am unable to meet a deadline that I promised or agreed to and it’s my fault – the project is free. This is a guarantee I offer all my clients – from the largest of projects down to the smallest. Knowing that I may have to work for free keeps me disciplined and focused on the project at hand, thereby allowing me to give my clients the attention their project deserves. I also know that 80% of my business is going to come from 20% of my clients – the old 80/20 rule. The happier my clients are with the service I provide, the likelier they are to, not only become a repeat client, but to refer me to their colleagues. Contrary to what any marketing guru will tell you – word of mouth is the very best – or the very worst – advertising your business can receive.

That same marketing logic applies to content buyers as well. The writing community, especially on the Internet – is quite small and closeknit. We talk to each other about our clients, recommend clients to each other, pass along job postings – and we also look out for each other (most of the time). If we have been stiffed in the past by a client that refused to pay or that getting payment from was the equivalent of pulling teeth, more likely than not, we’re going to warn our peers about that client. As the word spreads, the pool of writers who are willing to take the risk of working for that client gets exponentially smaller. The more experienced writers will usually err on the side of caution and avoid that client like the plague, taking with them some of the better content available to the buyer. The less experienced writers may decide to take the chance, but will often times produce content that may not be on par with the more experienced writers, decreasing the likelihood that the client will be pleased with the results. It’s a vicious, never-ending cycle. The more writers get stiffed, the more writers talk, the more word gets around, the worse it looks for the buyers.

We need to get back to the Old Days when a person’s word was his bond – and apply the Golden Rule to our business dealings:

Buyers – Be the kind of buyer you would give your business to.
Freelancers – Be the kind of worker you would want to hire.

 

Twitter Reciprocity: Why it’s not always a good thing

By definition, social networking sites are designed to foster interaction between people who share the common interests. When you find a like-minded person who has some traits you admire, you shoot them a friend request so they can be a part of your elite circle. In the case of Twitter, you may start to “follow” them – as in their posts, not in a weird stalky kind of way.

People who have their own business or organization often participate in social networking sites with one goal in mind – to spread the word about their company or services. It’s not about making “friends”. It’s purely one more marketing tool in their virtual toolbox. Perfectly acceptable, not a thing wrong with that. If, of course, it’s done right.

And doing it right does not mean following random people for the sake of upping your “following/follower” numbers. It doesn’t mean just because someone follows you, that you have to respond in kind. In fact, it doesn’t even mean that you should.

In order for social networking to be an effective business tool, there does have to be some degree of reciprocity. It doesn’t have to be in the form of “You follow me and I’ll follow you”, however.  People have to be reading your postings, getting something from them, and hopefully passing them on for your postings to be doing anything for you. Your message won’t be reaching the masses via social networking if it’s falling on dead – or as in the case of yesterday’s blog entry – inactive ears.

One of the most unbelievable things I have found while doing research for these Twitter-related blog entries is that some accounts have three, four, and five thousand followers….without ever having tweeted their first tweet. They are perfect examples of the blind reciprocity theory. Once those lists get past a certain number of followers, they are no longer about being a marketing tool. They become mere status symbols – even if they are erroneous. Realistically, you cannot interact with thousands of people on a regular basis. And if you’re not interacting with your followers and the people you are following - or networking, as the sites intended – what good is it doing you to have them?

Here’s the short list of what to look for when deciding whether to reciprocate a following on Twitter.

1. Date of their last post – Was it a few days ago or some time last year?

2. A name with no recent post – These are the accounts that have never posted. Go check it out. Some of them have thousands of followers, but why? These are the accounts that will clutter up your lists and give the impression that you are more popular than you really are.

3. Content of their posts – Nobody likes high pressure sales tactics. We all have things we’re trying to market and sell, but it’s annoying to shove it down people’s throats constantly. If their entire page is full of sales fodder about their “new” or “improved” product, chances are that product is all they have to offer.

Happy tweeting!

Twitter Users: You’re not as popular as you may think

Truthfully, when is the last time you sat down and sifted through the long list of followers you have amassed on Twitter? Checking the accounts one by one? When is the last time you sorted through the people you are following? What you find may surprise you.

Twitter, like most other social networking sites, is full of dormant accounts. People lose interest and walk away from them. Most of the time, they do so unnoticed. Chances are, some of these people were once your followers and vice versa. You may think you have two thousand followers and carry some degree of clout. You must, right? Two thousand people aren’t diggin’ your tweets for nothin’.

In reality, many of those “followers” haven’t been active on Twitter in months. This same reality applies to the people you are following. We get so caught up in the more prolific Twitter users that we lose sight of those who aren’t very posty. This gives us the impression that we’re more popular than we actually are.

Culling your follower and following list is a must-do for any Twitter user. Aside from giving you the chance to gauge your real popularity on the site, purging the inactive users from your list makes room for people who are actually reading and passing on your tweets.

Which is why you started tweeting in the first place, right?