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Freelance Saturday – December 15, 2007

By Jennifer Mattern on 15th December, 2007Filed in General

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Freelance Friday - Credit: StockXpert.com I goofed and missed my Freelance Friday post yesterday, so today we have a Freelance Saturday post (but we’ll still pretend it’s Friday). Yay! Below are some links to interesting posts around the blogosphere for freelance writers. Enjoy!

Increasing Your Freelance Writing Rates in 2008 – from ChrisBlogging
Securing Freelance Writing Assignments – from Freelance-Writing-Career.com
A Friendly Freelance List – from Jessica Mousseau
Top Ten Blogs for Writers – 2007/2008 – from Writing White Papers
A Question of Ethics: Subcontracting Work – from Brave New Words
Low Paying Freelance Writing Jobs – from ChrisBlogging
Why Writing Like a College Student Will Kill You Online – Copyblogger
Sneaking up on 2008: Goals for Freelance Writers – The Golden Pencil

About the Author: Jennifer Mattern

Browse all posts from this author.

Jenn Mattern is a professional blogger and freelance business writer. She owns All Freelance Writing as well as several other sites and blogs covering PR, small business, and related topic areas. She is also currently writing a nonfiction book for freelance writers called The Query-Free Freelancer, and is the author of the Web Writer's Guide e-book series.

Diana

Thank you for the link to setting goals. I’m working on that myself right now and it helps to see what other writers are doing and how I can manage the whole thing better. Jenn, do you work on a goal list every year? Any chance you would post it here? It would be interesting to see what successful writers are doing.

Jennifer Mattern

I do have a yearly goal list, but I rarely accomplish everything on it. The way I look at it is that I’d rather overshoot and push myself to do as much as I can than aim for less to begin with. I also come up with new goals during the year that sometimes sidetrack projects I’d planned. For example, I launched a few new sites this year that I had no intentions of launching when I created my 2007 goal list.

I haven’t completed an official list yet for 2008, but here are a few of my goals:

1. To turn the primary focus of my business to my own sites, blogs, and informational products, and more away from providing services to clients (including cutting back on PR consulting). It’s going to likely mean a hit in pay this year, but in the long run I think it’s the best move income-wise as well as in trying to enjoy my work. I likely won’t be making too many changes in that area till sometime this Spring. I’d love for my primary income to come from my blogs, with informational products and other sites as a supplement.

2. To finish my e-book on pre-launch book publicity no later than the end of February – it’s already behind my original launch plans by a few months.

3. To pull my press release e-book off the market, and expand it into a much longer e-book to be re-marketed.

4. To finally finish my nonfiction book proposal to pitch to publishers.

5. To self-publish my first short book in a series I’ve been planning for indie musicians (on music marketing / publicity and running the business behind the music).

6. To create a second e-book on pre-launch buzz, but for webmasters launching new sites.

7. To create a white paper or other report on SEO for PR professionals to freely distribute through my company.

8. To re-do my business website completely and start an official company blog (half-way there already).

9. To get my indie music webzine re-launched, re-designed, etc. This will be the toughest, but something I’m completely committed to.

10. To post much more regularly on my PR blog (nakedpr.com). I tend to neglect it.

11. To get CreativeSelfPromotion.com up and going again (as a sort of prelude to the book I want to pitch to publishers, or eventually self-publish).

12. To get back on a regular posting schedule here, even if just posting daily and not specific posts for specific days like before.

There are a lot more. None of them is unrealistic. It’s balancing them all together without getting too frustrated that’s the real challenge. I’ll post an official list probably in early January or the very end of this month.

Kathleen

I think I am afraid to set goals. I always have high hopes that I don’t quite manage to attain. If I don’t set any goals then any small accomplishment is a big deal.

Jennifer Mattern

High hopes aren’t a bad thing. You can’t make big things happen if you don’t dare to dream big. Right?

Jessica Mousseau

You linked me!!! Thank you — with write-from-home & anne wayman linking me this week and now you, I might have new readers!! That’s exciting. I appreciate it Jenn!!

Diana

Thanks for posting your goals. It helps to see what others are doing. I haven’t completely finished my goal list for 2008, but I’m pretty sure it will look as long as yours.

@Kathleen — Don’t be afraid to set goals! If you are intimidated by large goals, break them down in small steps and make a list that includes those steps. That way you can feel a sense of accomplishment every time you cross something off your list. Goals do push us to work harder (even if it’s just out of fear of not being able to cross anything off the list), so I would encourage anybody to try it.

Maybe we can all share our goals here in the comments to encourage each other?

Jennifer Mattern

You can definitely break them down. What I do is set up my big yearly goals. Then each month I decide what I’m going to do to reach them, and break it down into weekly and even daily to-do lists as I go along. Baby steps are a wonderful thing, and they make it that much easier to stay motivated.

Jessica Mousseau

I think we should cheer each other as much as possible to make 2008 the year that we do BIG BIG BIG things…

Kathleen

I do make a to-do list most days, but I don’t really set bigger goals. I guess my goal is to earn enough to support my family with our working non-stop. Unreasonable? Probably. So I try not to think about it much, but it is still in the back of my head.

Diana

@ Kathleen. Making a living through writing is not unreasonable at all! I certainly make more writing than I make at my day job (there’s a reason why I’m still keeping my day job, but it’s probably too long and too boring to go into it here). When I first started writing, the idea of making a living at it sounded almost laughable. But I’m definitively the one to tell you that it’s possible.

Jessica Mousseau

Honestly the beginning isn’t easy — establishing the clientele and how you want to run your business is like a bottomless pit of decisions, once you have that, it’s just refining it continuously.

Diana

I think landing your first few gigs is the difficult part. You don’t know where to look, how to approach editors, what to say and what to avoid… It doesn’t necessarily gets easier to land gigs with time, you simply just become more effective at looking for them, so you have a lot more opportunities.

Jessica Mousseau

Yeah it’s all foreign —- you don’t have any idea what to do –and as we continue to – we have say “cover letter templates” – we have samples to follow, like when I do a PR I pull up an old one and use the same format, etc. — so it saves a lot of time — a lot of the beginning stages is time consuming STARTER tasks – like how do you want to bill — and I do electronic AND paper records —- finding what works for you is a long task sometimes.

P.S. I love our conversations Diana…. do you have a messenger program? If so, email me jessicamousseau AT gmail DOT com

Diana

@ Jessica. Email sent! Check your inbox

I think templates may be more useful to the beginner writer than just general books. Reading longer books is nice and inspirational, but you still are lost as to what to do when you need to send an invoice or write a letter. Providing a group of templates for pretty much anything a beginner needs can be not only good for the reader but also for you (I think there’s a huge market for it).

Jessica Mousseau

I agree It’s in the works — I received that email Diana, haven’t replied to anything, going nuts on this end — But I have your contact now

Diana

no problem. I’m doing a million little things too, trying to tie up all ends before I go away

Jessica Mousseau

I agree — I’m thankful I’m a super work woman so I’m still going to church tonight

Diana

Church on Friday night? Is it a special holiday service or something like that?

Jessica Mousseau

Actually it was on Wednesday

Diana

Yeah, apparently don’t know what day I live in

Jess

Hahahhaha Dates are minor details —

Diana

Yeah, seems so I have two weeks off starting on the 28th, so I think my brain is already on vacation mode

Jessica Mousseau

Good luck with that — it’s nice to kick up, enjoy yourselves and doing little projects without correspondence. I’m still doing mini projects (I subcontract), but not more than a few hours a week when I’m technically “off.”

Diana

I told you I can’t get away from internet for too long –Just stopped by today to answer some emails and comment on a few blogs/forums. This is my way of relaxing too, by the way.