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Freelance writers don’t plan to fail.

May 27, 2019 by Donna Freedman Leave a Comment

Planning to become a blogger or freelance writer? Plan well.

While some people do strike gold quickly and make a ton of money, it’s best to assume that these folks are outliers. Entrepreneurship is chancy at best and sometimes downright frustrating.

For part of my own freelancing career, two words too often applied: feast, famine.

Too much work, not enough work. A fair amount of work but knowing that in a week’s time I’d be finishing up my final assignments – and no editors seemed interested in my current pitches. More rarely (and usually at the beginning of this journey) I’d have no work at all for weeks at a time, and be mighty glad that I had some side hustles.

Then again, I started freelancing full-time way back in 2002, when blogging wasn’t a big thing and when companies didn’t have to have major online presence. I’d get some magazine or newspaper gigs, and then a whole bunch of rejection slips. Again, thank goodness for alternate income streams (and a super-frugal nature).

“To break in you need to be willing to be broke,” notes Lamine Zarrad in the Freelancers Union blog.

Zarrad suggests that would-be entrepreneurs (including freelance writers) become “scrappy and creative.” He also offers some pretty useful tips for doing so. I’m listing some of them here, along with a few of my own.

 

[Read more…]

Filed Under: General Tagged With: best practices, freelancing, self-care, writing for pay, writing ups and downs

Online writing jobs up by 500+ percent.

February 3, 2019 by Donna Freedman Leave a Comment

Want to write? Good. Someone wants to pay you to do it, according to Freelancer.com. Between 2017 and 2018, the number of online writing jobs posted on Freelancer rose by 535 percent.

To be clear: Freelancer.com doesn’t necessarily post the best-paying jobs. But it does post jobs. And if you’re trying to get going as a writer you need clips.

The focus of my online course is not just writing your own website. It’s writing a blog people will read. Whether that’s a personal blog or a blog that will pay you to write is up to you.

For some people, getting their own thoughts published is the main goal. But I’m here to tell you that you can also bring in some decent coin – or even make a living – as a freelance writer. I haven’t held a square job since November 2002.

In order to get hired, though, you need to know what you’re doing.

 

[Read more…]

Filed Under: General Tagged With: blogging, Earn More Writing, freelancing, work at home, Write A Blog People Will Read, writing for pay

Freelancers: Jury duty can cost you

July 21, 2018 by Donna Freedman 2 Comments

Earlier this week I spent six hours at the courthouse, listening to multiple potential jurors be dismissed and anticipating every moment that the next name called would be my own. Jury duty seemed inevitable.

Fortunately, it wasn’t – and as a freelancer, I was mightily relieved.

To be clear: I know how important jury duty is in a democracy and I do take it seriously. It would never occur to me to try and weasel out, e.g., to make up a story about how I didn’t trust lawyers and could therefore never be impartial. I’ve been called for jury duty several times and actually served once, in a robbery trial.

But the very words “jury duty” make even conventionally employed people flinch. They grouse about the hassle of parking, the boredom of waiting, the bad coffee in the jury pool room. (That is, if there even is coffee.) A much bigger potential problem, though, is the potential loss of income.

If you’re lucky, your employer will keep paying you even if you spend a day or two (or a week or two) serving on a jury. I got called in the late 1980s, when I worked at a newspaper, and my pay was not docked.

Freelancers don’t have that option. Back in 2010, when I got called to a Seattle jury pool, I sent a letter explaining my situation: How could I do interviews and research if I were in a downtown courtroom all day?

They ordered me to report anyway. And when I got there, I found people who were a lot worse off than me.

 

[Read more…]

Filed Under: General Tagged With: best practices, freelancing, writing for pay, writing ups and downs, Your Playbook For Tough Times

The flexibility of the freelance life.

February 17, 2018 by Donna Freedman Leave a Comment

Sometimes the freelance life is frustrating: isolation, long hours, dry spells between assignments, no paid time off.

Sometimes, though, the freedom to order your own days makes it all worthwhile.

A few days ago I was just about to tackle a current deadline when my teen-aged nephew, M, called from the school counselor’s office. He’d just learned that a friend had committed suicide, and was too shaken to finish out the day.

His mom had okayed his leaving but could not break away from work (she’s a teacher) to come get him. Was there any way that I could?

You bet there was.

 

[Read more…]

Filed Under: General Tagged With: best practices, freelancing, self-care, writing for pay, writing ups and downs

Get a discount on ‘Earn More Writing.’

November 17, 2017 by Donna Freedman Leave a Comment

One of my personal finance writing buddies has an online course designed to help earn more writing. Starting on Black Friday she’s offering a short-term, 20 percent discount on her Standard and Pro packages.

Why take the Earn More Writing course? Because Holly Porter Johnson knows what she’s talking about.

“I make my living as a freelance writer, not selling courses,” Johnson says.

In other words, she practices what she preaches. Rather than spend all her time promoting her course and selling webinars, she’s a workaday writer who routinely bills five figures per month. Last year she earned $225,000 as a freelancer.

Interested yet?

 

[Read more…]

Filed Under: General Tagged With: Earn More Writing, freelancing, writing for pay

Make sure you get paid to write.

May 11, 2017 by Donna Freedman Leave a Comment

My subconscious is very active while I’m sleeping. Often I wake up with thinking of stuff like the need to send a birthday card, or the perfect lede for an upcoming article.

Recently I sat up straight in the morning and said, out loud, “Did I ever get paid for that (publication redacted) gig?”

In early March I delivered an assignment to a freelance client who pays via direct deposit. Checked my account and nope, the payment never showed.

When I brought this up (politely, via e-mail), the very-busy editor was a very-embarrassed person. The result: an apology, and a slightly higher payment than usual.

There’s a lesson here for me, and for you.

 

[Read more…]

Filed Under: General Tagged With: best practices, blogging, freelancing, writing for pay

Win a ticket to FinCon17.

March 15, 2017 by Donna Freedman Leave a Comment

The Rockstar Finance site is giving away a free ticket to the 2017 Financial Blogger Conference, which will take place Oct. 25-28 in Dallas.

Someone has to win. Why shouldn’t it be you?

Note: You don’t have to be a personal finance writer to enjoy FinCon17! In fact, you don’t even have to be a writer at all. Some people go because they’re interested in topics like FIRE (financial independence/retire early), paying down student loans, conquering consumer debt, video production, podcasting and awards travel.

But if you are a writer, or planning to be one, you’ll learn plenty about that, too.

 

[Read more…]

Filed Under: General Tagged With: blogging, Financial Blogger Conference, freelancing, writing, writing for pay

No. 1 on top-jobs list? Writing.

February 26, 2017 by Donna Freedman 2 Comments

Each year the Freelancer.com website puts together a list of the 10 most in-demand services. Derived from the 10 million job opportunities posted on the freelancing/crowdsourcing website, the list is designed to give entrepreneurs a heads-up on what’s needed the most.

The top job opp? Writing and content.

Let me say that I really don’t like the word “content.” In fact, one entire chapter of the Write A Blog People Will Read course is titled, “Stop calling it ‘content’!” Fact is, that’s what lots of people call it – and if you’re a writer then this list should encourage you.

 

[Read more…]

Filed Under: General Tagged With: best practices, blogging, writing, writing for pay

A blogging success story.

January 15, 2017 by Donna Freedman Leave a Comment

Sometimes a blog can become a full-time job, as people like Holly Johnson or Steve Chou can attest. Or a personal website could get you nationally known, e.g., Chris Hardwick.

Today I’m going to talk about a guy whose personal blog turned into his dream job – a gig that was not running a blog.

As the Alaska Dispatch News headline puts it, “Anchorage man turns hobby into NBA front office job.”

Seth Partnow, 39, told the newspaper that his job “feels, to some degree, almost like a fantasy camp.”

Not bad for a guy who started blogging about basketball because he was a total stats nerd.

 

[Read more…]

Filed Under: General Tagged With: blogging, freelancing, inspiration, writing, writing for pay

What I learned from writing ‘Your Playbook For Tough Times.’

September 5, 2016 by Donna Freedman 2 Comments

YourPlaybookForToughTimes3DFirst it was five months of researching, writing, self-editing, having friends read the manuscript and paying a professional proofreader. Next came weeks of tech glitches and waiting, waiting, waiting for review blurbs. But my long-simmering project is finally done.

“Your Playbook For Tough Times: Living Large On Small Change, For The Short Term Or The Long Haul” ate up a ton of my time, most of it in hurry-up-and-wait mode. By the time I hit “publish” I was nearly snatching myself bald-headed with frustration.

Oh, and then I had to un-publish temporarily. More on that in a minute.

But you know what? I’m going to do it all over again, probably within a few months. Knowing what might go wrong during self-publishing will, I think, make it easier the next time.

 

[Read more…]

Filed Under: General Tagged With: books, writing, writing for pay, writing ups and downs

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