Quite a while ago, I wrote an article about web typography, “10 Web Typography Rules Every Designer Should Know, for WebDesignerDepot.com. To be frank, I’d forgotten about the article for the most part — while it’s a topic near and dear to my heart, it’s not one that I’ve written about recently.

But a few months ago, I got a pleasant surprise. A student studying web design in Australia emailed me, explaining that she had used the article in a design project. Not only that, her whole class had received the same assignment, using my article for the basis of a layout.

It’s a funny feeling, knowing that something I wrote is used in educational materials. A mostly good kind of funny — partially curiosity about how my article was chosen, but also partially that feeling you get when you hold a new baby and wonder if you’re going to absolutely screw up the poor kid’s future.

Image courtesy Celeste Watson, a graphic design student who I am sure we’ll hear great things about soon.

Offering the four free ebooks I’ve published here over the past *ouch* two months has been a learning experience. I’ve published ebooks before, usually for a set price, but this was a very different experience.

In short, it took a lot longer than I expected. The individual facets of the project — writing, design and so on — weren’t particularly difficult, but life got in the way, as it tends to, and there were certain things that simply didn’t go as I had planned.

That’s not necessarily a problem, in my mind. It just means that a little more planning is necessary up front.

What, Exactly, is a Great Response?

I didn’t necessarily promote these ebooks the way that I’ve promoted those projects that I expect to earn me money directly. I want people to read and download these ebooks, but there isn’t any sense of urgency that I need them to do it now. When selling an ebook, I’ve found that since I know that most sales come in the first few days or weeks a product is available, I’m constantly in a rush — I want to get the word out to as many people as possible. But with these ebooks, I was more concerned with creating a lasting resource.

Nonetheless, I feel like I’ve gotten an incredible response. I’ve received incredibly positive emails and tweets, telling me that the ebooks that I released were exactly what people needed. Each ebook answered a very specific question — one that any writer could probably have come up with an answer for if she was willing to go through a couple of months of trial and error. But these ebooks seem to have sped up the process for quite a few writers, making me very pleased with the response.

What You Should Take Away from My Ebooks

I hope that you’ve learned some ways to make your freelance writing path a little easier to follow, but there’s another message that I hope you take away from these ebooks.

I wrote and edited and designed and promoted these ebooks all by myself. I had a little help: I forced my husband to read through each ebook even though he isn’t a freelancer. He’s good at catching typos, though, and he can’t easily escape. I also asked a few friends to read through them (a special shout out to Ali Luke for her incredible attention to detail).

But creating an ebook isn’t out of reach for any writer who can at least read up on the mechanics of offering an ebook. It’s a long process but it isn’t particularly difficult. If I can do it, I don’t see any reason that another writer can’t manage the same. After all, I learned about all of this stuff by being downright nosy and reading everything I can get my hands on — it’s not hard.

I’m finding my own business headed more and more in this direction, as well. While I love working with (most) of my clients, I’m a lot more passionate about my own projects. I like putting together ebooks and websites and all of that, and I’m making an effort to make that a much bigger part of my business. It’s not for everyone, but I have to encourage you to think about the options that are out there and see if you’re interested in more than just client work.

Image by Flickr user Thomas Favre-Bulle

The second of the four free ebooks I’m creating is now available! This ebook covers time management strategies that will help you make sure that there is room in your calendar for your writing.

I’ve written a lot about productivity (several of my clients have been productivity blogs) and, as a result, I’ve tried a lot of different strategies to make my work more efficient. Some have worked and some haven’t. This ebook represents what I’ve seen work over the years, including exactly the system I use. It offers a lot of information that will help you find the methods that work for you and your writing style.

I’d love to hear what you think of the ebook!

You can download all four ebooks at this link.

This week is Thanksgiving, at least in the U.S. In addition to thinking about all the amazing food I plan on eating on Thursday, I’ve given a little thought to why I’m so thankful to be able to make a living off of my writing.

1. There are no limits on what I do, except those that I create. If I was working for an employer, I would be able to get a raise of a few percentage points every year, if I was lucky. As a writer, though, there have been years where I more than doubled my income from the year before.
2. I really can work from anywhere. If I want to spend a month or two in another country, all I need to do is make sure that I can get internet access. Packing is probably a good idea, as well.
3. I hate working in a traditional office environment. Wearing office appropriate attire was the bane of my existence during the different times I’ve held down such jobs — and the fact that going barefoot in offices is a provlem for most employes was a major issue for me.

Not to be particularly maudlin, but I appreciate that not everyone is willing or able to work like I do and this seems like a good time to think about the matter. Is there anything about writing for a living that you’re particularly thankful for?

Image by Flickr user Sugar Daze

I write on plenty of sites: I have a client list that keeps me hoping, this blog, the blog for my consulting and a couple of other projects. That means that I write — a lot. This morning, Chris Brogan published a post titled, How to Write Three Blog Posts a Day. I commented with a few thoughts from how I’ve organized my workflow, which Chris followed up with a comment that he’d be interested in seeing how I write as much as I do.

For the longest time, I thought the amount that I write is fairly normal. I shoot for between three and four thousand words a day and, more often than not, I hit the 4k mark. I know now that isn’t so much a normal amount as a little odd. A lot of that, though, I attribute to how I write. So, here we go.

Generating Ideas — and Lots of ‘Em

Everything is a potential post topic to me. I read, watch movies and even hold conversations with my friends, all with a tendency to stop in the middle and scribble down some spark of an idea. Some of them are usable, some aren’t — just be glad that I never followed up on my idea of ’10 Things Writers Can Learn from Veronica Mars — but they all wind up in the same place: Evernote.

The biggest reason I use Evernote is because adding new notes is extremely easy. I have an app on my phone so I can just type things in, a plugin in my browser so I can clip articles I come across and I can even log in and type directly into my account if I’m away from all my own gear. I keep a notebook for every blog I’m currently working on, as well as for blogs I’d love to start in the future. I even have a couple dozen ideas for posts for a gardening blog if I could ever find the time to start one.

In a lot of cases, these notes are just short phrases. I try to write down my notes in a format that could be used as the headline, but that doesn’t always happen. I also try to include the keywords for the potential post’s topic, so that if I want to write a couple of posts about the same theme, I can quickly find ideas that I’ve had around that topic.

Evernote is free, for a certain level of usage that — even with having more than a thousand potential topic ideas saved — I haven’t come close to hitting. However, it’s a tool that I’d be happy to pay for. I’m considering upgrading to a premium account so that I can dump files (like a press release sent to me in a .doc format) directly in. I’d also like to support the creators of such a wonderful tool.

Planning Multiple Editorial Calendars

Once a month, I sit down with my folders full of ideas and start planning out my editorial calendar. I like to have my calendar planned out two months ahead when possible. That far out gives me a couple of opportunities:

• I can work ahead if I’m planning to take a couple of days off
• I can arrange for interviews and resources for my posts
• I can get someone to help me with any research or images I need, or even subcontract work to another writer
• I can run post ideas by clients and get approval with enough time to make changes

My editorial calendar isn’t iron-clad, though. I build in flexibility and I’m always willing to add something extra in. For instance, my editorial calendar did not say that I was going to be writing about my own workflow. I bumped the post for today and removed a post that I haven’t gotten around to writing about down the line (the removed past was going to be about entrepreneurial journalism, if you’re curious).

I use two Google Docs spreadsheets to manage my editorial calendar. One is dedicated to my own projects and one is dedicated to client work. It’s not just posts on those calendars, either. If I have long term projects, I’ll break them up into chunks and add them in. I also include plans for newsletters, articles for publications I don’t write for regularly and so on. I’ve got things organized so that I can see at a glance how a week will go. If it looks too busy, I’ll move things around as necessary. I also include dollar amounts on work for clients. It doesn’t have anything to do with my overall planning, but it gives me a little extra motivation to keep going.

Writing Means Rear End in Chair

The easiest way I’ve found to get all my writing done is to sit down and do it. I plan on writing for four hours every morning — I don’t make appointments during that time when I can help it. I do my best work in the morning, about an hour and a half after I wake up. I spend that first hour or so doing puzzles, eating breakfast and generally getting my brain going again. I’m a complete zombie when I first get out of bed so immediately writing just doesn’t work for me. Furthermore, four hours of solid writing can be pretty draining. I’m almost never able to come back to writing after lunch and that’s okay.

I use a timer to keep myself focused. I typically set it for fifteen minutes, after which I get up and stretch and move around. I hurt my back, so I’m not really supposed to sit for more than fifteen minutes straight anyway, and I’ve found that the fifteen minute slot pushes me to get as much done in that time as I can. I just write the next thing on my editorial calendar that hasn’t been completed yet. No fancy prioritization system is needed, because — for me, at least — the deadline is everything.

Even when I’m traveling, I try to do my writing in the morning (and I try not to skip it, assuming I’m traveling on a weekday). There are times when that simply isn’t an option, but I find that if I’ve taken a few days away from writing, it’s harder to get back into the swing of things. I tend to write, although not as much, on the weekends, as well. I enjoy my work and I’m happy to do it. Interruptions in general can throw me off my game, though. I’ve had dental appointments first thing in the morning: I go in at 8:30 a.m. and I’m back at my computer by 10. But those days are pretty much a lost cause for me. I can get a little writing done, usually, but it’s like pulling teeth.

Thinking Beyond Blog Posts

I do more than just writing blog posts every day and my system reflects that. I’ll just as often write a section of an ebook as a new post. I keep ideas for new writing projects in Evernote, I slot them into my editorial calendar and write them during my dedicated writing time.

This is the system to me. I’m not necessarily a slave to the system, but I’ve arranged things to be as simple as possible, so that I can get in and get my work done. After the day’s writing is done, there are still plenty of other tasks to do — emails to send, images to find and so on — and I’ve got different systems in place for those tasks. My way may not work for you, for what it’s worth. It took me a good deal of experimenting to figure out exactly when my best writing time is, for instance. But I do heartily recommend Evernote and, when in doubt, try using a timer to keep yourself focused.

If you saw my post on Wednesday, you’ll know that I’m looking for your big questions — the stuff about running a business based on writing that I can’t answer in one short blog post. Please click back to that post and let me know what questions you have.

Last month, Ali Hale and I had the pleasure of launching The Creativity Toolbox. It was only on the market for one week — we were looking for a few initial buyers who, in exchange for a lower price, would help us put the final polish on the resources we created. Well, we’ve done just that and, next week, we’ll be bringing The Creativity Toolbox back. It will be available for $47 and has even more resources for a creative professional who needs to amp up her productivity.

Real World Answers

One of the most useful parts of the toolbox, as it turns out, has been the calls we included with four creatives who actually make their livings from their creativity. To build on that, we’re adding four more phone calls — this time with coaches who work with creatives on a regular basis. All of this adds up to information on how other people are doing things in the real world — something that isn’t always easy to come by.

We are including transcripts with each call. I realize that not everyone makes use of transcripts, but I feel they’re crucial — at the very least, when I want to refer back to the information in these calls, it is a lot easier to manage looking it up in a transcript than listening to the full session again.

Not Just for Writers

I spend a lot of time talking about writing — after all, I consider myself first and foremost a writer. But this toolbox is not just for writers. It’s for anyone who has to be creative in her work, day in and day out. We’ve talked with graphic designers, web developers, marketers — even costume designers. If you need to be able to keep your creative work humming along, it takes a lot of work. It may seem like you should be able to produce on demand, but we all know that the reality of the situation is that we can run through creativity faster than we can run through the hours in the day. So Ali and I have worked hard to put together resources that let us take better advantage of our creativity and maybe make ourselves a little extra creative at the same time.

I haven’t been spending as much time writing for this blog as I would like over the course of this summer. This isn’t an excuse — just a simple fact. That’s because this summer hasn’t been as simple as I’d hoped and, when things get crazy, I have to focus on work for clients first.

That’s sort of the freelancers’ credo: clients come first. We’ll skimp on our own projects, kill off our social life and do anything else it takes to make sure that the projects we’ve contracted for get finished. After all, we want to pay our bills, eat something other than ramen and generally have a respectable income. Our clients are the only ones writing us checks.

When crises hit, we bunker down — we get through the client projects that we can and everything else can quickly fall to the wayside. And that’s been the story of my summer. No one wants to hear the litany of whining that goes along with a retelling of my summer and I’m not after sympathy, but it’s worth admitting that as freelancers, our priorities are not exactly what they might be if we held jobs.

How to Make It Worse

While I haven’t been active here as much as I’d like, I did find a way to make my life even more complicated. I’ve been working on some of my other side projects, and had some pretty interesting partnership opportunities come up. Of course I said yes — why make my life easier?

There is a light on the other side of the tunnel, of course. My business is growing by leaps and bounds and it’s (hopefully) going to reach an equilibrium soon. I’ve been able to find some great help and I’m not exactly going it alone. And, if my side projects work out the way I know they can, I’m going to have a little more financial freedom in my writing career.

Coming Back from the Crazy

This summer, if nothing else, has given me some opportunity for reflection. I have a much better idea of where I want to take my writing in the future and I think I have some valuable information to share in the future.

I’ve rearranged my priorities and I know where I’m headed. Just to give you a head’s up, you’re going to see that reflected in the content here.

You’re going to see more about several topics:

• Going beyond freelancing
• Building up passive income stream
• Turning writing from a service to a product
• The project management side of writing
• Creating partnerships to earn more money
• Hiring staff or subcontracting to expand a writing business

In short, I want to talk about writing as a business — without the assumption that freelancing is the only way for a writer to run her business. It is a question I’ve been struggling with, especially when I’m not in a position to put in the sheer number of hours that tend to go along with a good freelancing career.

I don’t think I’m the only one, either. A lot of us get into freelancing because we are looking for flexibility and, yes, it does provide a lot more flexibility than an employer ever would. But there are other constraints, often on income and time. There has to be a way to build up great income without giving up flexibility or constantly working ourselves to the edge of burnout.

I’m Not the Only Crazy Person

The entire profession of writing is undergoing some interesting upheavals right now, and there aren’t a lot of clues to where things are going. We know that the Internet has created an incredible demand for new content. We also know that outsourcing to countries like India or the Philippines (where many people speak English fluently) are changing the types of work that we are seeing. Big batches of SEO articles routinely get outsourced, while a writer from the US or the UK will be hired to ‘localize’ those articles.

It’s easy to see the changing economics as a problem — as a sign that the world has gone crazy. But it is just as easy to find opportunities. It takes almost nothing to start an online publication or to act as a content marketing consultant. Well, nothing for a writer who pays close attention to what is going on online. We have to embrace those opportunities.

Image by Flickr user Stuart B Pilbrow

As you might have guessed from my recent ebook, I launch projects of my own every so often. Sometimes, I have the opportunity to work on a particularly cool project with another freelance writer. I’m launching just such a project today, with the incredible Ali Hale. Ali is a freelance writer and operates her own blog, Aliventures. She also has an interest in creating passive income projects, as well — she’s the author of the Staff Blogging Course, among other things.

Constructively Productive

Ali and I both write about productivity on a regular basis. Both of us had some concerns about the perspectives that dominate productivity blogs and other resources. Those perspectives tend towards a macho, power-through-it mentality and, more often than not, aren’t as helpful as they could be to creative types (like writers). We wanted to bring more perspectives to productivity.

So was born Constructively Productive, the blog we’re launching today.

A Few Thoughts on Finding a Partner

I live between Baltimore and Washington, D.C. Ali lives in London. We have different styles, different resources and different times of the day when we’re actually up and about. All that adds up to a great partnership. The time zone differences could have made for a problem, but we’ve managed quite well. We’ve had the opportunity to meet once in person (this spring, at SXSW), but all of the planning for this blog was done in Google Wave and with just one Skype conversation.

As the blog was coming together, I noticed one major benefit of working with a partner that hasn’t been present in the other projects I’ve done. I felt accountable to Ali throughout the whole process, just like I might if I was working for a client. That accountability kept things humming along at my end — not because Ali would complain if I hadn’t done the work I said I would, but because I would have felt badly if I didn’t get things done.

Reaching for New Projects

I like projects that let me try new things. Constructively Productive will definitely provide me that opportunity: among other things, it’s on a topic where I feel comfortable being a little more controversial. Even here, on my own blog, I try not to rock the boat too much.

Well, Constructively Productive will be rocking the boat. Our first big post is 36 Secrets the Productivity Gurus Won’t Tell You (But Our Heretics Will): it’s got advice from some very successful folks (including some amazing freelance writers like Deb Ng) that goes contrary to what many productivity experts will tell you. I hope you’ll check it out.

As a freelance writer, there are days when I feel like I’m banging my head against the wall. No matter how many new clients I land, there’s an upper limit on how much I’m going to earn. There are only so many hours in the day and, honestly, I’d rather not work all of them. Don’t get me wrong: I like working with my clients, but I don’t like having them as my only source of income.

That fact lead me to go looking for alternatives. I’ve built websites, sold ebooks and created a variety of other income sources that work with my freelance writing career. These income streams have not only improved the amount of money coming in, but made me a heck of a lot less susceptible to the issues of feast and famine that many freelancers face.

Since many freelance writers face similar issues, I’ve put together a new ebook: The Freelance Writer’s Guide to Passive Income. I interviewed other freelance writers who have created income sources that are at least less passive that working with clients and pulled together the resources you need to start exploring passive income opportunities. I also focused on the opportunities that are most likely to both appeal to the average freelance writer and make good use of your skillset.

What’s Inside This Ebook?

This ebook is 80 pages of information about how to add a passive income project to your freelance career, as a discussion of a variety of different income sources:

• Newsletters
• Blogs
• Magazines
• Books
• Ebooks
• Niche Sites
• Syndicated Columns
• Offline Products
• Personalized Writing
• PLR
• Model Projects & Templates
• Teaching

Who Shouldn’t Buy This Ebook?

If you’ve been exploring the idea of creating income sources other than writing for clients in some depth, this ebook isn’t going to be as helpful. It offers a thorough introduction to a variety of different income sources, but if you’ve already done something along the lines of releasing an ebook of your own, you may simply find the material in this ebook too introductory.

If you read ‘passive income’ to mean an income source that you can set and forget, this also isn’t the right ebook for you. Every project discussed in this ebook requires time and effort to get off the ground. From building niche sites to teaching classes, you can build up solid income sources, but only if you put work into it. The only passivity really present is that you won’t have to go out and chase clients to get your income streams off the ground.

Getting the Ebook

The Freelance Writer’s Guide to Passive Income is available for $27. You can purchase a copy here: