It’s and Its

Yes, English is a confusing language. Yes, we have endless exceptions to the rules. But this is one exception that should be straight forward – its. When you make a contraction or a possessive, you add an apostrophe. “Should not” becomes “Shouldn’t.” “The chair of the girl” becomes “Girl’s chair.”

But, when it comes to the word “it” however, the rules change, and it’s actually supposed to make it easier to understand the word when you use the apostrophe correctly. “It is” rightly becomes “it’s.” That’s easy enough. Something that belongs to “it”, however, is not “it’s.” The proper usage would be “its”, as in “The cat licked its tail.”  That’s right – no apostrophe to show possession. Please stop adding one. It’s annoying.

 Advice and Advise

I’m not sure why these are mixed up so often, but then I’m an English teacher, so what do I know? “Advice” is a noun – it’s something you’re offering to other people. “Let me give you some advice.” You can give it away. The process of giving away that advice, however, is to “advise.”

“Advise” is a verb – it’s an action word. You can’t give anyone “advise”, but you can “advise” them, much like a resident advisor would in the old college dorm. When you ADVISE you’re offering ADVICE. Simple. It’s probably just a pet peeve, but these words drive me bonkers when I see them misused.

 Effect and Affect

Finally, the words that seem to boggle the mind of the average bear. And I’ll readily admit I have to think about them each time I use them, too. Shhhh…don’t tell, it will spoil my rep around here.

Effect is like a special effect. It’s something happening – you can see it, hear it, smell it the gunpowder when it goes off.

Affect is the response to something happening around you. How does it affect you?

This is very tricky since the two are similar in meaning as well as spelling, much like advice and advise, but there you go. Special EFFECTS may AFFECT you adversely. If you don’t like my memory tool, feel free to make up one of your own, assuming you don’t have one already!

1. You rely too much on a single client. / You don’t diversify. Freelancing is generally much more secure than a full-time job in one specific way — you have the opportunity to insulate yourself against job loss. Someone working with 5 primary clients has a more secure career than someone working for only one client. Why? Because if that first freelance writer loses a gig, they’re not losing they’re entire income. It doesn’t matter how good you are at what you do. Your one client might have their budget slashed. They might fold altogether. When you work with multiple clients, you have other income coming in while you find a new gig to replace a lost client, and you’ll also have more recent references and portfolio pieces at your disposal (to help you get that new work).
2. You don’t have a plan. While I’m a big advocate of having a business plan and marketing plan for your freelance writing business, you don’t have to go that far. Just don’t go into freelancing completely clueless about what to expect. A lot of new writers do this, and the reality check can be harsh. They’ll hit their first slow period without having set money aside. They’ll anticipate earning twice what they actually make. They’ll forget about all of the itty bitty expenses that really add up over the course of the year. You get the idea. If you’d like to have a basic plan laid out, but you’re not interested in writing a comprehensive business and marketing plan, try these abbreviated templates to at least help you cover the basics (as much as I’d love to see every freelancer have a complete business plan, I’m a realist and know many won’t): one page business plan template |  one page marketing plan template
3. You buy into the doomsday mindset. If you’re projecting your lack of success on third parties or things like the economy, you’re making a huge mistake. No one stops you from being successful in freelance writing but you. Take responsibility, and look at the overall picture. The reality is that recessions are great times for freelancers when it comes to growing your career. You’re always a more cost-effective option in general, but in a lousy economy more companies (read: clients) actually take notice of that fact. Are you blaming low-rate writers for under-bidding you? That’s just as bad, and just as wrong. If you’re being under-bid constantly and you’re not landing gigs, you’re targeting the wrong market. The right market is not only one looking for a writer in your specialty area but one full of clients who can afford you. They’re out there. If you’re not landing them, you’re just not looking hard enough (or not in the right places). Stop blaming others, and change your strategy instead.
4. You stop marketing your services when you have lots of work. There is never a guarantee that work will last forever. This is one of those things I’ve seen content mill writers do specifically — they assume nothing will change, and that they’ll continue to have that income coming in. It’s not necessarily true. I’ve watched mills can writers who have been with them for 5+ years. I’ve been there when they completely overhaul payment models, while writers’ promotional work was focused on something very different. I’ve seen mills and networks disappear. Just because a site seems great now, that doesn’t mean it will last forever. If it were to disappear tomorrow, would you have other clients coming in right away? Not if you haven’t been marketing yourself. The same applies to freelance writers working with private clients. Not only should you keep things balanced by working with more than one client, but you have to keep marketing yourself. That doesn’t mean you have to place cold calls or apply for jobs that you really don’t have time to take on (in fact, if you regularly have a booked schedule, applying for jobs is not a good idea, because you’ll spread yourself too thin). You can market yourself more subtly though to maintain visibility. Blog. Update the copy on your professional site. Issue a free report or white paper. Stay active in social media outlets. Attend networking events. Just make yourself visible to your prospective clients, and offers will keep coming in even when you’re booked (and when you can take them on, you’ll have new clients waiting).
5. You don’t set your rates correctly early on. Whether you want to hear it or not, there are right and wrong ways to set your freelance writing rates. Pulling a random number out of your ass, for example, is the “wrong” way to set freelance writing rates. While there’s no single “right” method, there is a “right” way to set rates — crunch the numbers. Those numbers will vary among freelancers, but if you’re not looking at hard numbers, you have no idea if your rates are realistic (until you learn the hard way). Here’s what I suggest: calculate the bare minimum hourly rate you need to charge. That means figuring out how many billable hours you’ll have each week (not overall working hours). It means accounting for all of your personal and business expenses. It means figuring out how much time off you’ll want during the year for holidays, personal days, vacation time, and sick days. It means factoring in the cost of benefits you want (retirement savings, health insurance premiums, etc.). It means including the minimum amount you want to have available for savings and investments. When you know all of those numbers you can calculate your minimum hourly freelance writing rates. Once you have that figured out, you can look at the value you offer to clients. Does it make your work worth more than the minimum you need to charge? Then increase your rates from there. Don’t want to charge hourly? That’s okay too! The hourly rate is ideal for calculations because it’s time-based (as is your time worked). You can easily adapt that to a per-project rate, per-word rate, or any kind of rate that you want. Figure out the average amount of time you spend on a particular type of project (or certain word count) and you can convert that hourly rate in no time.

These are far from the only mistakes people make when it comes to freelance writing jobs. Can you think of any others? Did you make, and learn from, a freelance writing mistake in your own career? If you could give new freelance writers one word of advice — one mistake to avoid — what would it be?

Unfortunately, sometimes even the best writers are awful at marketing their freelance writing services. The quality of your work matters very little if no one sees it! Rather than tell you what you should be doing to market your services effectively, today we’re going to discuss the three most common marketing mistakes I see freelance writers make. What other mistakes you commonly see in freelance writing?

1. They Don’t Market Their Work at All!- It’s hard to believe, but I still come across people who can’t bring themselves to do any real marketing of their services. They treat writing solely as a job as opposed to a business, so rather than trying to attract clients, all they’re willing to do is respond to them. They look for public job ads. They may occasionally apply. That’s it. No professional website. No really active networking going on. No authority-building. Nothing. Nada. Zip. These are also usually the writers complaining the loudest about the decreasing quality of freelance writing jobs being advertised.
2. They Market Freelance Writing Services Solely on Price – I’m not even going to begin to get into why you shouldn’t do this. But anyone with an ounce of marketing sense would slap you silly if they caught you trying. Just don’t. Take my word for it. No? Then read this.
3. They Don’t Have a Portfolio – Look… in this day and age it’s enough of a sin that so many freelance writers still don’t have their own website (especially when they happen to be Web writers). What’s even worse though is not having a portfolio. There is no good reason for you to not have one. I don’t care if you’re brand spankin’ new and haven’t got a single paid gig under your belt. You can still put together a professional portfolio. (I even showed you how.). Again, this is something you just need to do – if you haven’t, get to it already! If you do have a website, better yet, put some portfolio pieces up there publicly (just be careful not to post something you don’t have the rights to display anymore without a client’s permission). Make it as easy as possible for prospective clients to find you and see if your style fits their needs.

Don’t make one of these common freelance writing mistakes. Take control of your career by learning how to market yourself effectively. Catch up on some of my past marketing advice here to get you started, including:

• My Number One Marketing Tip for Writers
• Write a Marketing Plan
• Become an Authority
• Create a Marketing Calendar
• Use Article Marketing
• Go on a Virtual Publicity Tour