February 2010

Ask Me Anything: Getting Started and Copyright

Mike Dougherty asks, How does one get started? Meredith Eaton asks, How do you get established as a freelancer? Do you start by contacting publications or writing articles? I’m answering Meredith and Mike’s questions together — I hope you two don’t mind! The first thing you should do if you’re considering becoming a freelance writer [...]

Read the full article

Ask Me Anything: Networking for Clients and Setting Rates

Kristina Viera asks, How do you know what to charge? Deciding how to price your work is one of the hardest part of freelancing. There are so many different factors that can affect your price — your own experience, your location, what type of clients you’re interested in working with — that it’s impossible to [...]

Read the full article

Literary Agent Secrets — Query Letter Do’s and Don’ts from Laura Cross

Today, we have a guest post from Laura Cross, the author behind The Complete Guide to Hiring a Literary Agent. Agents review thousands of queries each year searching for talented writers and material to present to publishers. Yet agents say they reject 99% of the pitches they receive because the writers fail to: Show the [...]

Read the full article

Ask Me Anything: Building a Portfolio

Isao asks, To build our writing portfolio, is it more important to write in places other than our own blog (and write many) or to pick a place with reputation (and keep the standard high)? Writing somewhere other than your own blog is critical to building a portfolio that will interest clients and editors: they [...]

Read the full article

Adding On to Your Base Rates: Sources of Additional Freelance Writing Income

When you walk into a car dealership to buy a new car, you’re thinking in terms of a set price. But the salesman is thinking in terms of what he can add on to that base rate: heated seats, an extended warranty and all those other add-ons that you’re offered before you actually get around [...]

Read the full article

Are You Tracking Your Time? 5 Reasons Every Writer Should

I think in terms of how much I make per article or per word most of the time, rather than about how much I make per hour. That can prove to be a problem, though. Since most articles aren’t automatically a matter of working a certain number of hours to complete, it’s very easy to [...]

Read the full article

Ask Me Anything: First Steps and Contracts

We have two very important questions this week. Scott Cheatham asks, What would you say is the best first step for someone wanting to enter the world of freelance writing? There are a lot of first steps that I could suggest for getting started as a freelancer: picking a niche, setting up your bookkeeping… Plenty [...]

Read the full article

Templated Writing: One Way to Speed Up Your Writing

Writing is a creative process. Every client gets a different end result and pays you accordingly for your time. At least, that’s what we like to think. But the truth of the matter is that some certain types of writing can look very similar from client to client. You could even create a template for [...]

Read the full article

Is There Anything You Refuse to Write?

In general, there’s very little I will refuse to write. There are certainly types of projects that I prefer to take on. I also know that there are certain kinds of writing that I’m just not particularly good at, so I tend to avoid them. But there aren’t a lot of projects that I simply [...]

Read the full article