I’m Thankful To Be a Successful Freelance Writer

I was a little bummed that it’s nearly 4 A.M. here and just got finished with a project I needed to turn in before my short holiday break. I’m pulling an all-nighter on Thanksgiving and I still have a ton of non-writing things to do before dinner. Then, I saw a post in my RSS feed from All Freelance Writing. Jenn talks about being thankful for being a freelance writer.

Though, I’d much rather be sleeping now, I think about all the days I spent in a cubicle wishing I was doing something else. Now, I’m doing that something else and, late night or not, I wouldn’t trade it for anything. Well…except a lottery win. Even then, I’d probably still freelance write, but you know what I mean. I’m living my dream and that I am extremely thankful for. I agree, Jenn, we are lucky!

Change it Up Before You Become a Writing Zombie

I’m sure we all have days when hours of writing gets absolutely boring. I know I have them. It’s not that the work is boring. It’s more of staring the same white screen and the same black letters for hours after hours. If you’re like me, you get pretty unproductive during times like that. I start looking for things to break the monotony - and they’re always things that have absolutely nothing to do with finishing the project, like browsing the internet or checking email.

Here are some things I do to change it up, without losing focus or momentum.

Change the font.

Change the font color.

Change the background color.

I’ve never counted, but I’m guessing Microsoft Word has at least 75 fonts, maybe more. Switching to a new font, color, or document background brings newness to the screen and helps get me through at least a few more articles. When I get bored with one setting, I just change to another.

Get familiar with your document processor so it doesn’t take you too much time to change the settings and make sure you change everything back to the format that your client expects. Sending your document in magenta Comic Sans might not go over too well.

What do you do to break up the monotony of document processing?

5 Signs You Have Too Much Work, How To Fix It

Theoretically, there’s no such thing as “too much work.” That’s like saying there’s a such thing as “too much money.” When your output is limited by time there can definitely be a such thing as too much work and here are some signs that you have too much.

You keep missing deadlines. Missing deadlines could be a sign of poor time management, but it could also mean that you have too much work to give yourself enough time to complete projects by the deadline. A single missed deadline here and there is conscionable, but frequently missed deadlines is unacceptable. If you’re missing a lot of deadlines, take a look at your workload.

You’re living assignment to assignment. If you finish one project only to start another with no break in between, you could have too much work. I tend to worry when I have some downtime between projects, but a short break is a good thing. It gives you time to relax and take your mind off client work for a little before getting back into the swing of things.

You have to schedule work far in advance. Of course, regular work will have recurring deadlines that could happen weeks, even months from now. When you have to give new clients deadlines that fall weeks and months from now, it could be a sign of a problem, especially if the work doesn’t take weeks or months to complete.

You can’t take a day off, not even a weekend or holiday. All work and no play is a destructive combination. Every person needs some “me” time. If your schedule is so booked up that you can’t take a day off, especially a holiday, it’s a problem.

You’ve cut back on sleep so you can get more work done. Again, this could be a sign of bad time management, but if you’re spending most of the day working and you have to sleep less so you can do more work, you’re doing too much. Your body needs a certain amount of rest to function properly. If you don’t get that amount, it will catch up with you sooner or later, Red Bull or not.

What do you do after you’ve turned yourself into a machine? First, figure out why you have so much work. Is it because you have to work that much to make ends meet? Or did you simply overbook yourself? Do you have a problem saying “no” to work? Figuring out why you have so much work will help you come up with a plan to cut back on the work.

If you can’t afford to work less…

Consider increasing your rates and moving to a higher-paying market. You might also take a look at your expenses to see if there’s anywhere you can cut back to make living more affordable.

If you don’t know how to say no…

Learn how. Come up with a list of requirements that each job must meet for you to say “yes” to it. Then, compare every job to that list. If the job doesn’t measure up, say “no.” If you find that you’re still saying “yes” a lot, make your job requirements stricter. 

If your demand is high…

Scale back the marketing. Don’t stop marketing all together because you want to keep your name out there. You just want to reduce some of the work coming your way.

Have a list of referrals to whom you can send clients who don’t meet your “yes” list or those who you just don’t have time to work for. This way, you still get the client’s needs met, without overworking yourself.

If you regularly overbook yourself…

Come up with a better scheduling system. Put your work on a calendar and always refer to it when you’re scheduling work. When you have a day that’s filled up, mark it off your calendar so you don’t give out any new deadlines on that date. You might also mark off some of the days preceding your booked up days.

Should You Raise Your Rates in 2009?

As you evaluate your progress in 2008 and plan your goals for 2009, your freelance writing rates is one of the things you should think about. Is it time to increase your rates?

Here are some questions you should answer as you consider raising your rates:

• Has the demand for your services increased?
• What will allow you to command a higher rate?
• Can your current market pay you a higher rate?
• Can another market pay you a higher rate?
• Are you having a hard time living on your current rates?
• Are you providing exceptional value at your current rate?
• Will you continue doing an exceptional value at your new rate?
• Do you meticulously keep deadlines and make sure your clients are happy?

Increasing rates isn’t for everyone. Freelance Folder has 3 reasons you shouldn’t raise your rates. In a nutshell, if you’re not being the best freelance writing possible, you should probably keep your rates the same until you’ve improved your services.

If you decide to raise your rates, then you need to decide if the rate increase is going to apply to both old and new clients. You might keep some of your old, loyal clients at the same rate and apply the new rate only to new clients. Or, you might allow your old clients to enjoy the old rate for a few months before applying the new rate to their orders. In either case, it’s a good idea give old clients at least a couple months notice before applying the new rate.

Increasing your rates isn’t mandatory. There’s nothing wrong with continuing to charge the same rate throughout 2009 or increasing them on some other timeline. The important thing is that you evaluate your rates and take action where necessary.

Prep for Your Holiday Work Schedule

While I’m sure no client expects you to be working at 2:00 pm on Thanksgiving Day, you might end up working at that time if you’re not careful. The portability of our jobs makes it hard to break away, even on the holidays. So, set your holiday work hours well in advance. Write it down if you have to, just make sure you stick to it.

I’ve blocked out my calendar for the days I’m not working. That way, when I look at my calendar to schedule deadlines, I know not to schedule anything during or shortly after those days. I’m going to stop working mid-day Wednesday (pre-Thanksgiving) and probably work a few hours on Saturday and Sunday mornings before I go back to “full-time” work on Monday.

Make a must-do listof things you absolutely have to get done before you stop working for a few days. Prioritize your list and indicate which things can wait until after the holidays. If you have a long list or some time-consuming tasks, get started on them earlier so you’re not rushing to get them done at the last minute.

Set your blogs to drip. Wordpress’s drip feature is the best thing that ever happened. I’m going ahead and writing my Thanksgiving day & day after posts this week and setting them to drip. It’s one less thing I’ll have to worry about Wednesday as I prepare to completely shut down my laptop for a few days.

Send assignments to your clients. If you happen to have deadlines that fall during your planned offtime, send that work in early. That way you won’t have to try to remember it after you’ve entered “off” mode. Some email clients will delay message sending to a preset time, but you might have to have your computer on for that to work. Make sure you understand how that function works deciding to use it.

Let your clients know you’ll be away. If you have clients who you correspond with on a regular basis, you might let them know how often you’ll be checking emails and IMs (if you’re going to be checking them at all). That way, they won’t think you’ve disappeared.

Set your out of office auto-responder. Don’t take for granted that everyone who contacts you will know there are holidays. Remember, we work in a global market and not everyone celebrates Thanksgiving. You don’t want client prospects to go away thinking you’re not responding to emails. Make sure your OOO message says when you plan to return and when you plan to return email messages.

Enjoy your time off! When you work for yourself, time off is a rarity. You’ve managed to workout a few hours to yourself, so make sure you enjoy it!

Are you planning to take time off for the holidays? What things are you doing to get your business ready for the break?

One Thing That’s Vital to a Freelancer’s Business

I’m not supposed to be typing right now. A week ago, I mistakenly bent my left hand backward in some weird way. Now, my knuckles are swollen and swore. I can’t even make a fist. Every time my hands are close to getting better, I type something and it just gets worse. I’m addicted to my laptop and my livelihood depends on me working.

Windows Vista has gotten a lot of negative feedback and, though I’m ok using it, I didn’t really care for it until this incident happened with my hand. I realized Vista has built in voice recognition software! Yes! I can talk my articles instead of typing them. The only drawback. I’m new at this and there’s a learning curve. It takes 2-3 times as long to talk an article than it is to typing it. So I went back to typing, just long enough to warn you guys not to take your hands for granted. Oh, and if you have voice recognition software, get acquainted with it before you actually need it.

Satisfied With Your Workload? Market Yourself Anyway

Having a steady workload is a freelance writer’s dream. It’s can also be his nightmare. It’s easy to get complacent when you have enough work and become lax on your marketing efforts. You think the work’s going to last, so you’re pretty shocked when it dries up. You have no new projects on the horizon and you’ve got to go extra hard on marketing to get some work lined up quickly. Hope you have some money in an emergency fund because it might take you some time to get some projects (and pay) rolling in.

That’s why it’s important to continually market yourself no matter how comfortable you may be with the work you’re currently doing. You never know when a job is going to end. Contract or not, things happen, Murphy’s law ruins the best laid plans. Don’t ever put marketing on the backburner. Always do something, even if it’s something small, to let clients know about you and what you can provide.

Stay on Top of Your Niche

If you’re a niche writer, it’s your job to know what’s going on in your area. It’s not enough to know just the basics. If that’s the case, you’re just a generic web writer and don’t have much to offer your clients. It’s important - imperative, even - that you’re always aware of latest developments in your niche.

I’m a personal finance writer, so I’m always reading news and press releases to figure out what’s happening in the financial world. Not only that, I talk to people about what they’re experiencing with their finances. And I visit personal finance forums on a frequent basis. I even take a look at competing websites to see if they’re covering a topic I might have missed.

To get news, I’ve signed up for Google Alerts to notify me once daily about news for certain keywords. I also visit some of the top news sites like MSNBC, USA Today, US News, Newsweek, Business Week, CNN Money, and the NYTimes. Those are some examples, you might have different news sources for your niche. You could find news in your niche by doing a search for “your niche keywords+ news.”

Press releases are harder for me to find and I tend to stumble upon them. I do visit the press section for some of the service providers in my niche, like the credit bureaus and top banks. Another great source of information for me has been some of the government sites like the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), and the Federal Reserve Board (FRB).

Sometimes I find out about news quicker from visiting forums than I do from visiting news sites. It works for me. I found the forums I frequent by doing a Google search for “niche + forums.”

What do you do to stay abreast of what’s going on in your niche?

5 Gigs You Should Turn Down

You don’t have to say “yes” to every writing that comes your way. I’m so tempted to do this sometimes when gigs are slow, but I have to remind myself that there are certain things to think about before taking on a writing job. If the job doesn’t fit the criteria, then I have to say no.

If you’re wondering which jobs you should say “no” to, here are five of them.

1. The one with paltry pay. You have rates because you have bills to pay and financial goals to meet. Taking jobs below your rates will keep you from doing both of those. Don’t accept jobs that outside your acceptable rate range, unless you have a very good reason for doing it.

2. The one on the topic that bores you to tears. During my days of article milling, I had some assigments that made me want to ram my head into a wall. They were so drab and uninteresting I could barely make it through them. That’s no way to work. If you’d rather lick sandpaper than write on a topic, then lick sandpaper, don’t write on that topic.

3. The one with the ridiculously short timeline. Don’t make promises you can’t keep and that includes accepting gigs with impossible timelines. You can try to talk the client into something more reasonable, but if he won’t budge, there’s no sense in depriving yourself of sleep and food just to complete an assignment with unreasonable expectations.

4. The one where the hiring client thinks you should be grateful to write for their start-up publication for absolutely nothing. Writing for free is one thing. Writing for free for a website no one has ever heard of is entirely different. I’m doing some gratis work right now for a friend of mine who’s launched an online magazine. Had she approached me like she was doing me a favor, I might have second-thought the position. I’m not going to say never write for free, but make sure you’re getting something out of it. Clips for unknown publications don’t count.

5. The one you really don’t have time for. You should be giving your all to every assignment you take. It’s how clients keep coming back to you and telling their friends about you. If you don’t have time for a gig, chances are you won’t do your best. You risk letting down a client and missing out on future work. If you like the assignment, but don’t have the time right now, ask if the client would be willing to wait. If not, you could always refer him/her to someone in your network.

Do you know what you’re selling?

When you buy a product or pay for a service, you’re not just buying that product or paying for that service, you’re spending your money on something more.

When I bought a new laptop a few months ago, I wasn’t simply buying a laptop, I was buying a vital tool to guarantee my income.

When I paid the movers to ship my furniture a few months ago, I was paying for the peace of mind knowing my things would get to their destination safely without much work for me.

What are your clients buying from you? They’re not just buying articles or web copy or press releases. They’re buying something beyond that. If you want to convince clients to hire you, you have to know what you’re selling.