One thing you'll learn in The Web Writer’s Guide to Launching a Successful Freelance Web Writing Career is that being a Web writer can be about much more than taking on articles, copywriting, or other writing projects from clients.
Something I like to talk about when I'm chatting with new writers is moving beyond that client work and writing "for yourself."
What is "Writing for Yourself?"
When you write for yourself, you're not being contracted to create something based on the needs of a client. You become the client! You have absolute control and complete freedom, and rather than a one-time payment, in many cases you'll earn recurring income over time.
E-books as a Form of "Writing for Yourself"
E-books are one of my favorite things to work on as far as my "me" projects go. As you know, I'm soon launching the first e-book in the Web Writer's Guide series. I also previously wrote and sold a short e-book called Press Releases Made Easy (which is now available for free through ProBusinessWriter.com).
Both of these projects have been completely different for me. My press release e-book was created at the demand of my clients - some simply wanted to better understand press releases. I spent a "whopping" 5 hours writing it - yep, that's it! At that point it was just 18 pages (the updated version available on the site listed above is now 20 pages). It earned me far more during the time it was being sold than I would have earned by billing out those 5 hours to clients - and the income kept coming in. When you aren't expecting it, it's like a pleasant little surprise every time you see a new payment rolling in (you'll learn to love that feeling).
The new e-book is over 80 pages (it will likely be closer to 90-100 pages when the edits are complete). It took me months to put together (a big difference from the first e-book). I ran a 14 Day E-book Writing Challenge at my freelance writing blog a while back. At the end, I felt my work was too general, and that it would be better served as an e-book series. So I spent further weeks separating that information, expanding upon parts of it, and weeding things out to target the more narrow niche of freelance Web writing. That's how the Web Writer's Guide series and this blog were born.
My point is this - when you write for you, you get to decide how much time you want to put into a project, what you want that product to "look like" after the fact, and how much you want to earn from it (you'll get there with a combination of the right pricing strategy and the right marketing plan). The only deadlines you'll face are the ones you choose to set for yourself, and a little bit of discipline will go a long way in letting you work your own writing projects around client work that pays the bulk of the bills in the meantime.
Pick up a copy of Launching a Successful Freelance Web Writing Career to learn more about residual income streams available to Web writers.