Tag Archives: queries

To Query or not to Query: Part Five

By on June 22nd, 2009

This week we’ll be finishing our series with successful freelancers, where we’ve been talking about queries, platforms, and finding freelance writing jobs. A major aspect of query-free freelancing is building a writer platform–your visibility and demand. There are many possible elements to a writer platform such as blogs, a professional website, published books, microblogging (Twitter), and speaking engagements. (If you’d like more examples, check out our past post listing 30 ways to build your writer platform.) I asked our guests what they considered to be the most important aspect of a writer platform, based on the most effective elements of …

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To Query or Not to Query: Part Four

By on June 19th, 2009

In part three of our series, our guests told you flat out what they thought of querying, and how important they considered the query process in building freelance writing careers. Before that, we found out how our guests land most of their freelance writing jobs these days. And today we’ll turn back the clock and find out how each of these writers landed gigs during the early parts of their careers (yep, they were newbies too!). I asked them whether or not they spent much time early on thinking about things like building a platform or networking, or if they …

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To Query or Not to Query: Part Three

By on June 18th, 2009

In the second part of our series, our guests shared with you the type of writing they most often do for clients and how they personally get most of their freelance writing jobs. I hope you’ll notice the recurring mentions of things like repeat work and referrals. No matter how you choose to start out, these are the kinds of things you should always strive for–having work come to you, so you aren’t forced to continually look for new clients (or at least not as often). In this part of our interview series, you’ll find out how important each of …

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To Query or Not to Query: Part Two

By on June 17th, 2009

In part two of our interview series with successful freelancers, we’ll take a look at the different types of writing they do and how they personally land most of their writing gigs. Why is this important? As I mentioned previously, query-free freelancing isn’t the only option available to you as a freelance writer. While the Web 2.0 world makes it much easier for new writers to build a platform and their visibility early on, other tactics still have a place. You’ll get a glimpse of what other pros are doing, and how some things changed over the years for a …

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To Query or Not to Query: That’s a Question for the Pros!

By on June 15th, 2009

I announced previously that we would be hosting a sort of round table interview series here with 9 (now 7) successful freelance writers to discuss querying, platforms, networking, and the process of landing gigs. While I fully support the query-free way of doing business because of my own background, I know it’s not the only way to manage your freelance writing career, and I’ll never pretend here that it is. It’s just one option (and a great one if I will say so myself). But I don’t want you to do what works for me. I want you to know …

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Query-Free Freelancing Means Creating Your Own Demand

By on May 26th, 2009

If you want to become a query-free freelancer, you can’t just wait around hoping clients are going to find you. You need to create demand for your work. Today I’m going to share a story about how I not only did that, but how I created demand in a relatively new market by identifying a need and choosing to fill it. Those who have known me for a while know that my most popular service over the last few years has been press release writing, especially for Web-based clients. Here’s how that came about, and you can use a similar …

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Posted in Marketing |

Kristen King on Queries and Rejections

By on January 31st, 2008

Continuing our series of short interviews with freelance writers, I picked the brain of Kristen King (of InkThinker) on the issues of queries and rejections: What motivated you to create the InkThinker Query Challenge? What’s the most rewarding aspect of it for you personally? I wish I had paid closer attention to my early thought process, because I can’t remember as much as I would like. It was one of those moment-of-brilliance things. I was sitting there thinking to myself, “Jeez, I wish I could find some way to get motivated to write more queries. I wonder if other people …

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