September 2009

Freelancing: The Gateway Drug to Entrepreneurship

Many freelancers start out just thinking that they’re going to make a few dollars on the side: they’ll work their day job and just put in a couple of hours writing articles on the weekend. But freelancing can tempt you to keep moving forward. You can earn a little more if you dedicate a few [...]

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Ask Me Anything: How Do You Know Which Clients Are For Real?

I’m working with a freelancer who’s absolutely new to the game: she’s just finishing up her first project and she asked me to coach her as she looks for more work. She’s been looking around online and she asked me a an absolutely crucial question: How do you know which companies are reputable? There are [...]

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Do You Have to Have a Client to Make Money?

Freelance writers bring in the majority of their income by working with clients, earning money for the hours we spend on specific projects. But clients aren’t the only way to make money — and I don’t think we should rely entirely on them. Writing as a Product The client-based business model relies on the fact [...]

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What Jobs Do You Refuse To Take?

Earlier this week, I asked freelance writers on Twitter to tell me what jobs they turn down. Their responses provide a clear picture of the types of projects any smart freelance writer should avoid. Here are selection of those responses, in the words of the writers who shared them: Laura Spencer: Laura Lee Moss: Sharon [...]

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5 Tips for Productive Writing

When you’re freelancing, your income directly relates to the amount of time you can spend banging away on your keyboard. That makes time management a particularly important skill for any writer. These tips can help you make the most of the time you can spend working. Set clear priorities: If you can narrow your work [...]

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How Much Education Does A Freelance Writer Really Need?

There are freelance writers with a whole string of letters after their names and there are freelance writers who haven’t gone to college. The variety in academic credentials held by writers can lead someone to go a little crazy in trying to decide just how much education a writer really needs. As Much As It [...]

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Ask Me Anything, Edition 11

During the launch of the Market Your Freelance Writing in 31 Days ebook, a website designer contacted me to suggest that I’m pointing to a lower-end website option with WordPress — especially since I recommend that it’s okay for freelance writers to use fairly inexpensive themes. He suggested that a cheap website cannot be professional [...]

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You Are the CFO of Your Business

As a freelancer, just about everything falls in your lap. That’s doubly true of your finances. After all, you can probably get away with some older software and even if you don’t spend hours on marketing you can probably make a little money at some content site — but if you don’t make sure that [...]

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Review: The Principles of Successful Freelancing

There’s a lot of information out there on how to start freelancing. For some new freelancers, though, hunting down all that information can be a bit time-consuming. That makes an ebook like The Principles of Successful Freelancing, by Miles Burke, a great resource. Burke started from his own experience as a web designer — he [...]

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Ask Me Anything, Edition 10

Heiddi Z asks, How do you get through writer’s blech (not wanting to write at all)? It’s been 2 months for me. I’ve had writer’s blech more often than I’d like to admit, as well as writer’s block. Unfortunately, there isn’t a one-solution-fits-all, but I can give you a couple of tips that have worked [...]

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