Should you merge two of your blogs into one? How about combining your professional site and niche blog that are currently on different domains? Is it time to simply change the domain of your site for branding reasons? I’ve gone through a lot of site mergers and re-branding efforts over the years, and I’m going through another one right now. Today let’s talk about making
One thing I have found to be true is that freelance writers will negotiate with certain groups of people, but shy away from this when it comes to others. For example, you may have no problem hashing out a better deal with a webmaster in need of online content. But when it comes time to deal with an editor at a magazine, you work for
Let’s pretend for a second that I’ve heard tales of a child who was home-schooled for years and just joined a high school last year. So long as we’re pretending, we should also pretend that his mother is trying to “help” him graduate at 16 so a very close, practically inseparable, friend of mine now has a 13-year-old freshman. It’s a good thing y’all are
I made a comment on Twitter last week about blog posts. I mentioned how my titles for client blog posts tend to be much better than those for my own sites, and how maybe I should start treating my own projects as I would a client’s. Others chimed in with similar sentiments and LaToya thought it would make for a good blog post idea. Let’s
Throughout the time I’ve been freelancing, I’ve worked with several different clients. I’ve encountered all types of payment situations. While some clients have sent payments on time without a hassle, not all clients payments have been ideal. As you work with clients, you’ll notice their payment habits fall into one of several categories. “The check’s in the mail.” This is the client who claims they’ve
We’ve talked a lot about using e-books as platform pieces for freelance writers. And we’ve looked at how they can be used as residual income streams to complement your freelance writing work. But they can do more than supplement your writing income. If you find yourself stuck in a low pay rut, e-books might even be your ticket out. Let’s look at a somewhat extreme
I just spent more than thirty minutes looking for an example to use in this post. The original plan was to take a comment or sales thread from a popular internet forum and point out some areas where the English phrasing could be improved to make this series a bit more “real-world”. I’ve abandoned that plan for the moment because I noticed a bigger problem
As you know I don’t only blog for myself. I blog for clients as well. And on some of those client blogs I cover topics that apply to business owners — just like you. So today I’m going to be a bit of a self-promotional whore. I realized that I had plenty of articles up on client blogs that weren’t specifically written for freelance writers,
Last week was an interesting one for me in terms of responses to query letters. Two editors got back to me via email, both with the same response: we like your style and ideas, but have done too much like this in the past. Do you have any other ideas that we can run with? While some freelance writers may see this as a bad
The modern woman is supposed to have it all! I have it all, for the most part anyway, and I can tell you that the joy and satisfaction that is supposed to be encompassing my very being right now is nonexistent. Having it “all” is a bunch of bullshit. Do I hate my life? Nope. I like it. But I fully realize that my life
Today we have yet another post inspired by @vcmcguire (you can ask your own questions which will appear on the blog by tweeting @queryfreewriter or emailing jenn@allfreelancewriting.com). She wanted to know how freelance writers can make time for pitching their services to new prospects, especially when they already have a fairly full schedule. First let’s talk about why you might want to keep marketing (or
One of the biggest debates on the freelance writing range is the debate about whether it is better to be a specialty writer focusing on one niche or a generalist writer with a diverse selection of topics to possibly cover. A lot of people straddle the fence on this topic to avoid pissing off their friends and mentors. They say, “Oh, there is no single
We’ve talked about how freelancer / client relationships can be a lot like dating. And with those relationships occasionally comes the need to call it quits. How exactly do you handle a client breakup though? And how do you know when it’s time to walk away and take your freelance writing services elsewhere? Today (at Yo’s request) let’s talk about the why and how of
When you’re a freelancer, your money comes in spurts. You might get $500 this week, $200 next week, and $1,500 the week after that. Some money comes by check, others direct deposit, and others through PayPal or maybe even wire transfer. And you have to keep up with all of it. Managing a freelance income is hard enough. If you’re spending money as it comes
Here’s one you don’t think about all the time – do your pronouns match your antecedents? Consider the following sentence I used today in class: The squirrel attacked him, and he was frightened. Yes, yes – the old attacking squirrel trick. Subject aside, the pronouns are words like him and he. The antecedent in this case is the squirrel or an anonymous him. That’s the
Let’s get to this month’s book club discussion about The Wealthy Freelancer. As usual, I’ll pose 10 questions below. You can respond to all or just some of them in the comments below if you’ve read this book. You can also ask questions of other readers in the comments if you feel these don’t cover something that was important to you. The discussion will remain
Today we’re going to talk about rejection. Sensitive subject, I know. Truth is—if you want to write for magazines, you’ll get rejected a lot. Be prepared for this. The Good News Much of this won’t be your fault. Sometimes you’ll submit an idea that they just assigned to someone else. Other times the editor may have a backload of things to publish and won’t even
In what I’m hoping is the end to my recent long line of technology issues, I’m changing my ISP. Phone service should switch tomorrow with no problem. But there might be a several day gap between that and when the new company actually gets my modem kit to me to hook up the Internet connection. Why that would happen in this day and age (and
Crafting a winning query letter is not always a simple task. To make things worse, even if your letter is perfect there is no guarantee that it will lead to a job. Over the years, I have sent hundreds of query letters. While they are all unique, they generally follow the same layout. Even though I urge you to create your own letters, I know
I read a comment on a financial blog written by a woman who resented her situation in life. She hated being the primary breadwinner and having almost sole responsibility of her child. She hated that her husband (who she didn’t actually hate, by the way) couldn’t seem to get it together and didn’t have the ability to support her while she stayed home. She had
At 22 years old, I was making $55K per year and I was the envy of all my friends. But I was still broke and I couldn’t figure out why. For months, I was unhappy about my job partly because I wasn’t enjoying the money I was making. Then, it dawned on me – the money’s going somewhere, I just had to figure out where
When you began your career as a freelance writer, you probably did so knowing that you were giving up some level of job security (assuming you left a full-time job to pursue freelancing). But if we’ve learned anything in recent years it’s that very few “real jobs” are actually secure. That’s often a myth. You’ve probably also heard that working as a freelance writer will
It’s easy to get frustrated with the complexities of the English language, especially when it becomes clear that many native speakers still struggle with certain words and phrases. How is a non-native speaker supposed to handle herself with the language when the supposed experts can’t? So native and non-native English speakers alike – be aware of this (very) common usage problems: “Their” means MORE than
Stacey Abler contacted me recently with a question about a new prospect. In her email she mentioned that she was considering offering a discount just because the contract could be a long-term regular one. My reaction was shock, followed by a “no, no, no….” Offering this kind of discount to a brand new client is a recipe for disaster. At the same time, I can
Yesterday I talked about how to increase blog traffic — specifically how we increased All Freelance Writing’s traffic by 80% in less than a year. One of the things that had a big impact for us was reformatting our category archive pages. Rather than making people browse through page after page of posts (they never do get to the really old gems that way it
Let’s turn back the clock to the fall of 2009. I was the sole blogger here at All Freelance Writing. Traffic was already fairly significant. But my posting was sporadic at best. I’m a busy person. I had multiple sites to manage (the ones that earn more and help support AFW so we don’t have to completely whore out to advertisers here), client projects to
A funny thing happened to me last week. I received three call backs from companies I cold called in late July. While this happens from time to time, getting three call backs in one week was a unique situation. Of course, I am not complaining. Why did they call back? All three companies wanted more information on what I could do for them. Fortunately, I
A few days ago I considered cussing out anyone who would listen, grabbing some beers and sliding down my boy’s plastic slide to enjoy the temporary benefits of being totally irresponsible and free. Of course this was not really an option – I don’t have beer in the house and the plastic slide wouldn’t hold my weight. However, I did do something about being overwhelmed
Yesterday I asked on Twitter what All Freelance Writing’s readers wanted to learn about here. Courtney Ramirez responded saying that she wanted to learn more about breaking into newer and better freelance writing markets. It’s something I talk about a lot on this blog — setting higher freelance writing rates and how that often involves re-targeting your market. Now let’s talk about how to make
Recently I busted the myth that Web writers don’t get paid as much as print writers. Today let’s tackle another one — the issue of freelance writing rates between Web content writers and business writers (like me) who happen to focus on writing for the Web. Often when I or other business writers talk about earning more money as a freelance writer, people comment with