If you want to succeed as a freelance writer, you need to have a plan. It’s a point frequently driven home here. But how do you get to that plan? How do you know what strategies are most likely to work? How do you know what your target clients really want? How, exactly, are you supposed to know what to do? Before you come up with a business
Whether you’re launching a new freelance writing business or wondering why you struggle to attract the “right” kinds of clients in an existing business, your branding is something you can’t afford to ignore. More than that, for most freelancers, your brand is you. Instead of a traditional business brand, you’ll focus on personal branding — where your professional image revolves around who you are, what credentials
Having a client-focused blog on your freelance writer website is a great idea. That’s especially true if you’re new to freelancing and need a boost in search engine and social media visibility. But what kind of blog should you run on your professional site? Should you share tutorials? Advice? News? Or should you take a more personal approach with storytelling? That’s what Meghan Coughlin wanted to know
This week on the All Freelance Writing Podcast, I tackle a question from Jeremy Tarrier. He was curious about how a writer might protect gender anonymity when writing under a pen name (or if it’s really even a problem). Listen now. This was an interesting topic for me because I actually have the opposite problem: I write under an ambiguous pen name that could easily
One of my current projects is assembling a new media kit. As you might know, I have a background in public relations. So I’m keenly aware of the importance of earned media, and have been securing coverage for my clients for quite some time. While I’ve also secured my fair share of coverage for myself, with changing professional ambitions in my future, doing even more
Every week I receive dozens of guest post pitches across all of my blogs, and it’s not uncommon for that to creep over 100 in a week (and those are just the ones making it past my inbox filters; imagine how many bigger blogs must have to sort through). Yet I respond to less than 10% of those pitches. Even fewer result in guest posts
Maybe you’re writing your first book. Perhaps it’s off with your editor. In either case, you still have a ways to go before your book is in the hands of readers. That means it’s much too early to worry about setting up an author blog, right? Wrong. You don’t need to wait until your book launch to set up an author blog. In fact, you
When it comes to book marketing, I frequently mention that promotion is something authors need to think about early — even before your books are published. A part of that is building your author platform and gaining visibility (and an audience of readers anxious to buy your book when it’s released). This year one of my biggest projects involves building visibility under my horror author
This post was originally published on November 13, 2015 and has been updated and expanded. We’re kicking off the year-end holidays in the U.S. today with Thanksgiving, which leads into the unofficial start of the holiday shopping season. That’s great for retailers. But did you know it can also be great for you as a writer? Even though the New Year will be here before you know
If you’ve ever distributed a press release to promote one of your books, chances are you did it wrong. It’s not your fault if you did. I’ve seen all the nonsense authors are exposed to online. This ranges from claims that press releases never work unless you’re already famous (utter BS) to “advice” that equates to spamming your press release to every free distribution website you