Reminder

Our contest ends tomorrow – December 31st. Enter now by following the instructions below for your chance to win our first prize package worth more than $290!

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Okay. I’ve been promising that you’ll see all kinds of new features, tools, and fun stuff between down and early 2010. It’s time to don my cute little Santa hat and start delivering. Let’s kick it off with a December contest!

Background

You know how I feel about the importance of networking and marketing your freelance writing services if you want to be successful. They’re not optional. An elevator speech is one tool every freelance writer should have in his or her arsenal. To win this contest, you need to write one (don’t worry, they’re only a few sentences).

What is an elevator speech (sometimes called an elevator pitch)? Imagine you just bumped into your dream client. You both walked into an elevator. It’s only traveling a few floors. You have a matter of seconds to introduce yourself and let the client know what you do. You have to intrigue them in that brief elevator ride, enough that they’ll invite you to continue the conversation later or express an interest in hiring you. Can you do it? If you can, here’s what you might win:

The Prizes:

These prize packages are designed to give you not only business resources chock full of information to help you improve your freelance writing career, but also a bit of cash to apply what you learn. The books included are some of my personal favorites and ones I regularly recommend, so even if you don’t win the contest I hope you’ll pick up one or more of these great freelance writing books to help you grow as a freelance writer.

• 1st Prize (Over a $290 value!)$100 in your Paypal account*, a copy of Michael Meanwell’s The Wealthy Writer (an $18.99 value), a signed copy of Peter Bowerman’s new version of The Well-fed Writer (a $19.95 value), including a CD that features three of Peter’s e-books, and a signed copy of two books co-authored by Linda Formichelli and Diana Burrell — The Renegade Writer (a $14.95 value) and The Renegade Writer’s Query Letters That Rock (a $14.95 value). I’m also tossing in a print copy of the Writer’s Market 2010 Deluxe Edition which includes 1-year of access to WritersMarket.com (a $49.99 value). You’ll also receive a free copy of my original Web Writer’s Guide e-book (a $37 value) if you don’t already have a copy, and you’ll be one of the first to receive copies of both the Web Writer’s Guide Marketing Workbook for Freelance Writers (a $27 value) and my 30 Day Marketing Bootcamp for Freelance Writers (a $9.97 value) e-book on their release around the New Year.
• 2nd Prize (Over a $150 value!)
  
  $50 in your Paypal account* and a regular copy of both Renegade Writer books. You’ll also get copies of my own three e-books mentioned above.
• 3rd Prize (Over a $110 value!)
  
  $25 in your Paypal account* and a regular copy of The Well-fed Writer (book only). You’ll also get copies of my own three e-books mentioned above.

*Please only participate in the contest if you have a Paypal account and can accept a payment in USD. No other payment processors will be used, and the prizes will be forfeited to the next highest rated entry if the winner does not have an eligible Paypal account. Sorry.

Submission Guidelines

The idea here is to get you thinking more about effectively marketing your services in the New Year. Sure, we could run a contest for whoever posts the most comments on All Freelance Writing, or I could randomly pick winners from those of you who sign up to follow me on Twitter. But that would be about helping me or this blog, and this contest is about helping you!

I don’t even want you submitting your elevator pitch here in the comments. I want to keep them private until we have our three winners, and then we’ll share them in a post early in the New Year as examples to help others improve their own. Submissions in the comments won’t be eligible for review when winners are picked.

Here’s how you can submit your entry:

• Send an email to contest@allfreelancewriting.com.
• The body of your email (no attachments!) should include your name and a 4-5 sentence elevator pitch, no shorter, no longer. Also confirm in the email that you do have a Paypal account and can receive the prize (you don’t have to give me your Paypal email address unless you’re contacted as a winner). I would also appreciate it if you could let me know what country you’re located in, so I can anticipate any shipping problems for the books up front if you happen to win.
• I don’t intend to review any submissions until it’s time to choose a winner. I probably won’t even check the email account in the meantime. So please don’t include any extra information or questions. You can post questions in the comments of this post instead.
• Submissions must be received no later than 11:59 pm eastern time on December 31, 2009. No submissions received after that point will be eligible to win — no exceptions.
• Writers currently blogging for All Freelance Writing are not eligible for the contest. Sorry guys — I love you, but that might lend a bit of unwanted bias to the judging.
• NOTE: By submitting an entry to the email address above, you grant me permission to publish your name and entry if you’re chosen as one of the winners.

How Will Winners be Chosen?

I plan to seek the help of at least two other freelance writers so we’ll have an odd number of “judges.” We’ll each evaluate a list of submissions independently and assign point values to our top five picks. From there I’ll add the point values together and we’ll hopefully have a top three. If there are any ties, we’ll vote again, specifically on the two tying entries — the odd number of judges will ensure there are no second level ties to contend with.

Approximately one week after the close of the contest, when voting is completed, I’ll email the winners to deal with prize distribution and I’ll publish the winning entries for everyone to see.

How to Write an Elevator Pitch

I was going to include a brief elevator speech tutorial in this post, including a simple example. However, I think you have enough to digest here already, so I’ll be publishing that separately tomorrow (and I’ll come back and link to it from this post).

I want to give a HUGE thank you to Linda Formichelli and Peter Bowerman for contributing books, e-books, and their time to send us signed copies for this contest. Check out their blogs if you’re not already a reader at TheRenegadeWriter.com and WellFedWriter.com/blog. (Disclaimer: the signed copies of the Renegade Writer and Query Letters that Rock, and the CD with three e-books were all provided free of charge by the authors — all other prizes are completely and solely sponsored by All Freelance Writing.)