July 2009

Day 13: Create Your Own Swipe File

In copy writing, a swipe file is just a file of phrases and paragraphs that you think work particularly well. You ‘swipe’ the structures that you find, rewriting them so that they fit your current project. When you’re putting together marketing materials about your own work, having a swipe file can speed up the process [...]

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Day 12: Plan for Querying and Cold-Calling

In the grand scheme of things, querying is pretty much the same thing as cold-calling, albeit over email or by letter. You’re contacting a potential client — in this case, an editor — and explaining how you can help them in their business. If you prefer to write for magazines and other publications, querying is [...]

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Ask Me Anything, Edition 4

What do you do about stolen content? If you write a blog or post articles online, stolen content has become a part of life. There are scrappers who copy entire RSS feeds from blogs and repost the work as their own, while other content thieves just lift individual articles. It’s a particularly frustrating situation because [...]

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Day 11: Create a Job Board Strategy

Even when you’ve been freelancing for several years, you can find some worthwhile opportunities on job boards. The problem is, though, that searching through job boards — looking for those worthwhile opportunities — can be incredibly time-consuming. You can wind up spending half the day sifting through Craigslist, freelance writing opportunities and other listings and [...]

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Day 10: Explore Your Niche

The other day, I saw a writer’s website which proclaimed that the writer in question specializes in writing about business, food, technology, books, media and general features. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but that’s not specialization. That’s called generalization — and it can make your marketing harder to carry out. I’ve [...]

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Day 9: Add A Newsletter To Your Site

Yesterday, we talked about the importance of adding a blog to your website. Today, I’m suggesting that you need a newsletter on your site — and that’s in addition to a blog, not instead of it. Email newsletters and blogs offer two very different ways to engage with your clients, making them a good combination. [...]

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Day 8: Create A Blog For Your Website

While a blog may not be a cure-all for marketing, it offers quite a few opportunities to build a connection with prospective clients. Just about every freelance writer needs to have a blog on her website — not on a free blog site like WordPress or Blogger — for several reasons. Your blog does not [...]

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Day 7: Request Testimonials and Recommendations

When you’ve got happy clients, they can be one of the best (and easiest) ways to market your writing skills. You do have to ask for a little help from your clients in order to get it, though: in an ideal world, if you completed a project ideally, your clients would tell everyone they know [...]

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Day 6: Develop Your Elevator Pitch

The idea behind an elevator pitch is simple: if you were riding in an elevator with your ideal client, could you explain what you do and how you can benefit your client before he gets off at the next floor? Now, I don’t recommend riding elevators just in case a prospective client is headed to [...]

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Day 5: Review Your Marketing Materials

Many writers limit their print marketing materials to a business card. Others use brochures, print portfolios and other tools to promote their work. There’s certainly no single right way to use print materials to market yourself, although there are a couple of wrong ways. In order to make sure that your printed house is in [...]

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