You’ve got your goals in place, so now it’s time to consider how you’re going to reach them. Writing is a pretty varied field. Maybe you’re primarily interested in blogging for hire, or writing brochure copy or creating articles for print publications. What’s your first choice? What’s your second choice? What writing projects will you refuse to touch, even with a ten-foot pole?

Creating a Service List

You may notice that I don’t have a service list posted on my website. That doesn’t mean I don’t have one — mine is just for internal use only. I refer to it so that I don’t have to decide on the fly what I really think a project is worth. Creating such a list is surprisingly simple and it’s the next step in moving towards a marketing plan. I recommend using the spreadsheet of your choice in order to organize the information you’re about to compile.

1. Start by writing out the projects you enjoy working on. On my list, for instance, I have projects like ‘article writing,’ which I’ve actually broken down into sub-categories based on the word count.
2. Add in the price you typically charge for such a project.
3. If you’ve got an idea of how long it takes to complete such a project, add that information as well.
4. You’ve got the option here to raise your rates. How high your rates should work out to depend on your area and experience, of course, but if that number works out to less than $10 per hour, you definitely need to raise it.
5. Repeat the cycle with projects you don’t necessarily enjoy but that you are willing to work with. You can add a little to your rates as a premium for taking on a project that doesn’t interest you as much.

Your service list gives you at least a hint of exactly what you’ll be marketing. If you prefer writing articles for magazines, your marketing efforts are going to be directed in a very different manner than if the top section of your list is made up of copy writing services.

It’s worth noting that your service list may include a few non-writing services, such as social media promotion, photography or page layout. That’s cool — just stick it in there and add the appropriate information.

Taking Your Service List to the Next Level

In many cases, you’ll get a project that has multiple parts. With a blogging project, you may be writing multiple posts of differing lengths. You might also be promoting the posts elsewhere. If you prefer to put together bigger projects — and there are definite financial reasons to do so — this is your opportunity to consider whether you can charge a special rate for them. Maybe you’re prepared to cut a client a deal with a client for five press releases for the price of four or you’re ready to offer an editor a photograph for free to land a big article.

Knowing in advance how far you’re prepared to adjust your rates allows you a lot of latitude in your marketing: you can use techniques like coupons and discounts to bring in new clients, as well as incorporating those discounts into other opportunities, like advertising and email newsletters.

What package deals make sense for you? What kind of services have your clients needed over the course of one project?

If you missed yesterday’s post on setting goals, you can still catch up!

You can leap into marketing, hand out business cards like crazy and try out every new tip. Sometimes it will get you new business and bring in additional income. More likely, though, is that you won’t really be sure if it’s done any good. The problem is that without a clear idea of your goals, as well as a plan to reach them, it’s hard to tell if your marketing efforts are working. That makes setting your goals a crucial first step.

Goals Fit for a Writer

As a freelance writer, you’re in luck: it’s surprisingly easy to set concrete goals and even to figure out a course of action that will get you where you want to go.

Financial Goals: We’re writing for a living here. We need to make sure that we’re bringing home the necessary level of bacon. I’m willing to bet that you’ve already got a good idea of just how much money you need to make in a month in order to be able to pay your bills. That number right there is a minimum goal — some of us are still struggling to reach that number consistently. For others, goals may be a little more ambitious. Either way, you need to write down the amount you want to earn each week, at least for the next couple of months. You can, and should, revise that number upwards as soon as you’re hitting it consistently.

Why weekly? It’s easy to tell yourself that you can catch up at the end of the month, but that tends to turn into just another form of procrastination — the same thing happens when you set yourself a goal like completing an entire novel in one month. On the other hand, if you focus too much on what you want to earn every day, it’s easy to get discouraged if an off day trips you up.

Client Goals: Setting goals about your clientele goes beyond just increasing the number of clients you work with. Instead, it’s a matter of deciding what kind of clients you want — perhaps you want to focus on copy writing and building up your clientele in that area. There’s also a question of quality — if you’ve got a couple of low-paying clients on your plate, it’s time to consider whether you can trade up to some better paying projects. Think hard about the type of clients you want, and what kind of pay rates and projects would induce you to leave any of your existing clients.

Do you have a market you’d absolutely love to write for? Or perhaps a potential client you’d love to work with? Putting those ideal projects into your goals can provide you with an example to weigh other projects with, to help you decide if pursuing them matches your aims.

Project Goals: While having an idea of your project goals isn’t absolutely necessary to your overall marketing plan, it can make sense to include a general idea of what you want to accomplish — this sort of information can help you make sure that you aren’t spending too much time on marketing, or too little. For instance, I have a word count I try to meet every day. I’m okay with part of that word count going towards my marketing effort, such as writing a blog post, but it’s important to me to meet that goal consistently.

Your goals can include getting a certain number of articles published or completing a certain number of other writing projects. They can also include goals beyond working for a client, such as any efforts you’re making towards passive income.

Where Are You Now?

As you’re planning your goals, consider where you are now. In fact, it’s worth writing down where you are now, in terms of finances or clients and then writing down where you want to go. Putting goals like these into writing can make them concrete and give you a reminder to work towards them.

If you don’t have a very thorough understanding of where you are, you may need to create a baseline. If, for instance, you can’t tell me right now what your average hourly wage is from writing, it’s important to start tracking how you spend your time along with your income.

What are your goals? Do you have any goals beyond earning more money? Tell us where you want to be in terms of clients and projects.

P.S. The first email on the newsletter is going out today. Sign up for the newsletter and get even more marketing information.

For the next 31 days — the entire month of July — we’re going to talk about ramping up your marketing.

I know, I know: writers are in business to write, not to market. But marketing isn’t evil, especially for freelancers. Good marketing can make the difference between increasing your income in the middle of a down economy or fighting tooth-and-nail to keep the gigs you already have.

We’re going to take it one day at a time, building a marketing plan that each of us can maintain long after July is over.

I’ve added in a new resource for this month. I’ve created a newsletter separate from the blog, through which I’ll send extra information about different marketing techniques. I plan to keep this newsletter around after July is done as a resource beyond the blog (though the blog will definitely still be here!), but if you just want the additional information about marketing, you’re welcome to unsubscribe at the end of the month. You can sign up below.

Deborah, from ClickWisdom, asked:

…do you recommend any software that will allow me to post to more than one blog? I am looking for software that reduces the number of times I have to log in to every blog for which I wrote. I used to use Qumana for this purpose. What do you recommend these days?

Personally, I’m a big fan of Scribefire for posting to several blogs without having to log in and out of my blogs. Scribefire is a Firefox plugin that, as long as you use Firefox as your web browser, allows you to compose blog posts within the browser. I’ve got mine set up to split the window, half browser and half writing field. This lets me easily do research and write without having to switch back and forth between windows.

Scribefire isn’t the only option, of course. There are several stand-alone software packages that are equally good. If you work primarily in Windows, Windows Live Writer comes particularly well-recommended. It’s surprisingly similar to Microsoft Word but instead saves your posts to your blog. For Mac users, MarsEdit is also very good.

Whichever option you choose will require a little set up: you’ll have to put your user name and password into the software so that it can access your blog. You may also have to adjust some settings for your particular blog, and depending on which blogging platform you use (WordPress, Blogger, Typepad, etc.), you may have to change settings on your blog as well.

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Every so often I see an offer for a freelance writing internship — almost always unpaid. I have to say that these sorts of offers offend my delicate sensibilities. With a few very rare exceptions, these ‘internships’ are just a way to get free work out beginning writers. Magazine, newspaper and marketing internships can truly help a writer (albeit they don’t focus on freelancing at all), because they bring you into the office and teach you the ins and outs of the business. In fact, I think an in-office internship can be a good way to learn more about writing as a career and can quickly show a person whether she really wants to freelance full-time or not.

In contrast, a freelance writing ‘internships’ typically involves little more than someone sending you article descriptions and you cranking them out. There’s no education or other benefit beyond grinding out articles. It so happens that you can grind out articles on your own, and even make at least a little bit of money through content sites or by putting them online with Google Adsense.

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I wanted to highlight Jen Halloran’s comment on my post, Spend Money to Make Money. Jen said:

…in addition to highlighting these points on the Web site and cards, another “spend money to make money” tactic might be having a simple logo created for your brand. Agree?

For some writers, I definitely agree — there are many freelance writers with very effective brand identities, with a logo that ties together their websites and business cards. But there also plenty of writers that don’t have logos and don’t seem to miss them. I think having a logo is useful, but isn’t an absolute requirement.

I’m not a big fan of spending much money to get a business off the ground, at least when it comes to freelance writing. There really aren’t that many expenses that are actually necessary before you’ve been up and running for a while. Just the same, there are a few cases in which it is necessary to spend money in order to make money. In a way, these are less expenses and more investments — they’ll make a major difference in how fast you can start getting clients and bringing in the money that will pay your other expenses.

A Website

Every writer needs a website these days. It’s not even necessarily a question of marketing — it’s a way to show off your writing skills, make it easy for potential clients to reach you and even to make your availability known. Even better, you can get your own website set up with WordPress pretty much immediately, even if you don’t have any technical know-how. Including a year’s hosting, you can get a website set up for between $50 and $100.

I know more than a few writers who take the free website route. It’s an option — but in my opinion, it’s the option of last resort. Having myname.blogspot.com tells a prospective client that I can’t even earn enough from my writing to purchase a domain name. It’s less than professional, and considering that we’re not talking about a major capital investment to start a new business, I think it’s worth the time and money to get a website of your own going.

Business Cards

Even though I get most of my business online these days, I think having a business card is absolutely necessary. That little piece of card stock is all it takes to convince a prospective client that you’re serious. If you use one of the many online printers, you can pick up 100 cards for $10 — and 100 is usually enough to tide you over until you land at least one project.

A Computer of Your Own

I’m a bit on the fence with this one, honestly — but if you can manage it, picking up even an older machine that will be only yours is worth it. If you’ve got anyone else in the house who needs to use the computer while you’re working, it can turn into a major headache quickly. The main requirements for such a computer is that it has a keyboard you can comfortably work with, the ability to handle your needs for online research and your word processing software of choice.

Expenses You Don’t Need

I don’t recommend subscribing to bid sites, buying books or anything like that — at least at first. I don’t have any use for bid sites, personally. I’ve never gotten a job through one, although I know a couple of people who have.

Buying books can wait, although reading them doesn’t have to. I routinely request books on writing through my local library. They have thousands of them and I can check them out for weeks at a time. There are a few books I’ve picked up my own copies of after I’ve gotten them from the library, but I don’t need most of them for reference after I’ve read them.

There are plenty of other potential expenses out there, and some of them can make a major difference in your writing career. But even the most useful of resources can probably wait until you’ve got at least a few dollars coming in.

When it comes to your writing business, you are the Chief Executive Officer. It’s that simple. You set policies, decide how you’re going to reach your goals and make sure that your business is doing exactly what you need it to do. Making sure that you handle the responsibilities of a writing CEO can make a world of difference in just how well you do. Just because your business is made up of just you doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t take your position as the head of your business seriously.

So, what are your duties as a freelance writing CEO?

• Set goals and decide how to reach them. Whether those goals are a certain level of income or a certain number of bylines, having a strategy that makes them possible is well worth your time.
• Identify the biggest opportunities and problems in a business — and handle them. It’s possible for a writer to struggle with the business side of freelancing, and it’s crucial that you are up to the opportunities coming your way and able to eliminate the problems that face each of us.
• Make sure that all financial statements are current. From invoices to time-tracking, taking time to update and review your financial statements offers a chance to make sure that you’re on track for your goals.
• Ensure that your business complies with the law. It’s pretty easy for a freelancer to fly under the radar when it comes to local business licenses and even bigger obligations like taxes — often because we’re not always aware that those obligations are out there. It’s up to you to check out just what the requirements for operating a business in your city or state are.
• Decide on expansions. Do you focus in one particular niche or on a very specific type of writing? It’s up to you to consider if (and when) to expand to other niches or types of writing. This can include doing some heavy-duty research into what you’re making, and what other writers are making from these other opportunities.
• Know the competition. While many freelance writers don’t compete in the ways that big corporations might, it’s still important to have a good grasp on the big names in your niche and area. They can be resources and a support network just as easily as competition.
• Decide whether to delegate. If your business is growing, it can make sense to hand some tasks or projects over to other people. Maybe you want a bookkeeper to handle your books or another writer to handle some of your article-writing.

How long does it take you to research and write a 500-word article? What about a piece of copy for a website? Knowing how long it takes you to complete a particular piece of project can make it much easier to increase your income:

• You can tell quickly if you’re charging enough for a project.
• You can focus on those projects that you can complete quickly in order to bring in more money, faster.
• You can tell if a particular client is using more of your time.
• You can tell what you’re really making per hour and decide whether you can cut back or need to work harder.

My tracking system is simple enough: I have a timer and a spreadsheet. I keep track of how long it takes me to write each article or otherwise handle a project and record that number on my spreadsheet, along with the name of the project, the pay and the client. I’ve played around with Excel enough that I can get my spreadsheet to compute how much I’m making per hour, per client and other useful information.

There are also quite a few pieces of software that take my simple spreadsheet to the next level. Harvest is particularly useful: it tracks time and expenses, as well as handles invoices and estimates and analyzes just how you’re spending your time for clients. It’s just a matter of clicking a button when you stop and start work on a particular project. You don’t have to record any numbers or otherwise handle information — and if you have an iPhone, there’s actually an iPhone application that lets you track your time when you aren’t at your computer. Harvest offers a plan geared towards freelancers that is priced at $12 per month, with a 30-day free trial.

Such a system definitely makes processing the all the information that comes out of tracking your time much easier. And the easier your time-tracking system is to use, the more likely you’ll be able to just get into the habit of using it.

Do you use a different system to track your time? If so, it would be great if you could mention it in the comments and tell us what you particularly like about it.

I’ve found lately that I wind up with questions and ideas that I want to discuss a little more in-depth than I might on Twitter, but aren’t probably enough for a full-blown blog post. I want to try out lumping them all into one blog post for the end of the week, which means that the blog carnival is going on indefinite hiatus.

This also means that if you’ve got a question, I’d love to hear it! You can comment on this post, email it to me, DM me on Twitter — I’ll take it in just about any form except carrier pigeon. If you’d like me to post the question anonymously, just let me know.

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I heard several very interesting questions at the AIW panel I took part in last week, including the following:

How can you write blog posts so quickly compared to print articles and still claim that your posts are high quality, with correct information and clear writing?

This is a particularly interesting question to me in part because of the other answers I’ve heard. More than a few bloggers choose to write about topics they know very well because it reduces research time — which is a big factor in how long it will take to write a piece. But on the various sites I’ve been hired to write for, I’ve written about topics I don’t know very well at all, and still managed to keep my research time to a minimum. That is because of the great research tools around today. Help A Reporter Out is a great example: even five years ago, it would have taken me days to track down just a handful of sources that might have something to do with the topic I’m writing about. Today, I can get sixty emails from relevant sources based on a request that took me five minutes to write.

Yes, it’s still crucial to vet those potential sources and you shouldn’t automatically take their information at face value. But even adding in time to check up on sources, I still spend a fraction of the amount of time on research that I used to.

For a couple of other takes on last week’s panel, check out my co-panelists’ write-ups: both Beth J. Bates and Mayra Ruiz have posted on their own blogs.

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One article popped up on my radar this week that particularly caught my attention was Article Submissions – Should You Offer Them as a Service? from Web Writing Info. I’ve never offered article submission services personally, although I do know that several of my clients routinely submit articles I’ve written for them to a variety of article submission sites for marketing purposes.

If I was to offer submission services myself, one alternative to spending much time on it would be to outsource that part of the work. It’s a very repetitive task: I could easily find someone who’s willing to take on the project at a price just below what I might ask from clients, freeing me up to go back to writing.

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How do you define a professional blog, considering just about anyone can start a blog?

When it comes to blogs, I think there are two separate standards for what constitutes a professional blog.

1. Quality: If you want to be taken seriously as a writer — no matter where your writing appears — it absolutely has to correctly written, including punctuation, capitalization and correct spelling. Considering even browsers have built in spell check these days, I think it’s very hard to make a case that a writer needn’t bother.
2. Content: To be entirely honest, I don’t want to hear about most people’s day-to-day routines. Sure, there are some bloggers who I truly enjoy reading about how they interact with their kids or even what their pets did today (ThePioneerWoman.com and Dooce.com come to mind) but it is very difficult to keep that sort of thing interesting for very long. For most blogs to seem professional, I expect some content that goes beyond family life and delves into another topic.

I don’t necessarily consider whether a blog actually relates to your current profession or whether you’re making money off your blog to be so much of an issue. There are so many great blogs that would be considered ‘unprofessional’ under those criteria that I think it’s practical to be a little looser.

For a writer building a professional blog as a marketing tool, I think it’s even more important for your writing to be high quality. I don’t think that your blog must be about writing — in fact, I think it’s worth focusing on the niche you’d like to write about — but your blog should show a prospective client or editor that you know how to write well.

Landing that first big client or market can be tough for a beginning freelancer — you put out article after article, spend hours on marketing and even try some cold calling and it still doesn’t seem to snap. But sticking to it is an absolute must. After all, you won’t ever land a client or market if you don’t try. There are a few ways to make the process a little less stressful, however.

1. Remember the 1:10 Rule: My dad has been working on a new real estate deal just about every week since before I was born. They don’t always go through, and when I asked him why he always seems to be working on a new project, he explained the 1:7 rule. In real estate, for every seven deals you try to put together, one actually goes through. I used to track how many queries and estimates I sent out very closely, and I noticed that I landed about one in every ten projects that I tried for. The ratio gets better as time progresses. That number isn’t because a writer doesn’t have the necessary skill, by the way — it’s more often a question of which freelancer precisely nails what a client or editor is looking for.
2. Make Querying A Habit: Whether you’re sending out queries to print publications or trying to find clients interested in brochures, you’ll get a lot farther if you’re working on it a little every day. If you’re in position where you can freelance full-time, that might look like devoting a full hour every day to the process. If you are going part-time, sending out a query letter each day may be more realistic. But it needs to be something you work on every day — it’s a business, after all, and not just a hobby.
3. Market Your Writing: If you were starting any other business, you’d get business cards, network with other businesses and work hard on marketing your product or service. Why should freelance writing be any different? Think about the best way to connect with your ideal client. It may be time to get a website up or you may want to start attending networking events in your area.
4. Write Anyway: Just because you don’t have a market or a client lined up doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be writing. There are plenty of places that you can submit articles on spec, as well as sites that sell ’stock’ content — you can still build up at least some income from writing without a big client. It may not be your end goal, but it’ll keep you in practice for when you land that ideal project.

I’ve covered personal branding fairly extensively for one of the sites I routinely write for, but I’ve been hesitant to cover the topic here. For many career choices, like sales, personal branding is seen as a simple process: put up a website, network at meetings and generally do a good job at work. But for freelance writers, personal branding is far more complicated. But in light of a few discussions on personal branding that I’ve recently taken part in, I think it’s becoming an increasingly more important question.

No Such Thing As A Non-Personal Brand

For freelancers, the idea of a brand can’t be anything but personal. Even those of us who outsource projects or tasks are still ultimately responsible for everything within our own business — and that’s a good thing. It inspires us to take our work seriously. Our names are on each paycheck and contract and our reputations reflect the quality of the work we do. Anything that goes wrong with a client is just as personal, making it even more important to get things right the first time.

Just because ‘personal branding’ seems to be the buzzword of choice with job hunters right now doesn’t mean much to those of us who have been freelancing for a while. For us, those tips on how to build up our brands just sound like marketing tips — and we’ve (hopefully) been doing plenty of that.

But there are some things we can learn from personal branding. While I don’t necessarily agree with the idea that with a little work on your brand, you can control everything anyone sees about you online, the idea that you should have some say in the matter becomes more important everyday. Type your name into any search engine — even if you can’t make sure that every item on the first page is a link you have some say in, you should still have some high-ranking pages in there.

Luckily, as a writer, you probably have more opportunities to improve your search results than most people. A good bio with a link to your site in the articles you’ve written can be enough to bump you on to the first page. If you take a look at my results, you’ll see article after article of my own work showing up as well — if you write for several websites, you’ll likely see similar results.

Taking Marketing Tips From Personal Branding

As writers, our motivation for building a brand is very different than someone looking for a full-time job. I don’t think that the idea of ‘building’ a personal brand works nearly as well for us as ‘earning’ a personal brand, but — and this is a big but — I do think that taking some of those personal branding tips to heart can make a difference in our marketing efforts.

Towards that end, there’s one resource I’d like to particularly recommend: Me 2.0: Build a Powerful Brand to Achieve Career Success. This book is only recently out from Kaplan Publishing, but the author, Dan Schawbel has already built a whole list of online resources on the topic. A bit of disclosure: I’ve actually had an article in Personal Branding Magazine, of which Schawbel is the publisher.

It may take some careful reading to reinterpret some of Schawbel’s more career-oriented tips to be useful to a freelancer, but in my reading of the book, I was able to make a whole list of ideas I wanted to try out in my marketing efforts.