An anonymous writer asks,

I was recommended for this blogging gig for a brand-new site (it launched about 2 weeks ago). I finally talked to the company president last week to discuss content, focus, all of those things. I asked him about pay. He said they’re still working on the best way to go about paying their bloggers. He said something about paying the bloggers based on the traffic they/I generate, and something about paying us with a percentage of the ad revenue? Have you ever heard of this? Is this common, and how worthwhile is it? I’m excited about my focus (green weddings and events), but I don’t want to put in a ton of work for something I may not be making much money from. Of course, since the site is so new, they may work out a better pay structure later, but I just wanted to do some initial checking.

To be honest, I don’t think the gig will really pay off for you. There are a lot of blogs and websites offering to pay writers a percentage of ad revenues these days — but unless the website already has something like 100k visitors a month, the payment works out to perhaps a few dollars per month. Another problem is that many sites using this payment model do very little promotion. They expect the blogger to do the hard parts in terms of social media and other promotions. One of the blogging networks I used to work for used this structure. A few bloggers were making a couple thousand per month through them, but most of the bloggers made about $25 per month for writing three posts a week.

Given that the site is so new, the odds of seeing much payment are fairly minimal. If you feel like the blog would be a good opportunity in terms of exposure, building a presence in the space, etc. you may still choose to pursue it. In that case, I’d recommend asking what sort of traffic they’re seeing so far, as well as what kind of traffic their other blogging projects bring in (if they have any). If the company has a proven track record for building great traffic fast, it’s up to you whether you’d be willing to take a couple of months of low payments in hopes of more money later on. You also would want to see what the company’s plans are as far as promoting the site.

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Got a question about the business side of freelancing? Leave it in the comments and I’ll answer it on next week’s Ask Me Anything!

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 agent that they are capable of quality writing
• Create excitement for their topics or stories
• Be succinct – providing the information in as few as words as possible
• Convey that they are professional authors who understand what an agent wants

To help you achieve the 1% status, I have compiled a list of query letter ‘do’s and don’ts’ gathered from my interviews with professional literary agents:

• Get to the point. Agents are busy people. They only have a limited amount of time to consider your project. If you ramble on about non-consequential things and cannot write a tight, pertinent pitch, an agent will believe you are incapable of writing a succinct and engaging book.
• Follow the correct format and keep the letter to only one page. The format of your letter demonstrates you are a professional author who understands what is required.
• Resist comparing yourself and your writing to other authors. Positioning your book alongside other published works in style, subject, or readership is acceptable but do not compare the quality of your writing to established authors.
• Finish writing your manuscript or book proposal before submitting the query letter. An agent cannot evaluate a project if the manuscript or proposal is not complete and available to review. An agent wants to be able to shop the manuscript or book idea to a publisher immediately.
• The query should fit the agent’s requirements for genre, word count, or format. Do not waste your time, or the agent’s, attempting to convince her to represent your 115,000-word fantasy novel if she does not represent that genre simply because you think it is a great book. It may be, but agents specialize in specific titles and have cultivated resources and expertise in selling those particular titles.
• Do not pitch multiple submissions to an agent. Simultaneous submissions, querying more than one agent at the same time, are acceptable, but multiple submissions, pitching more than one project to the same agent at the same time, is considered unprofessional.

Your turn: Do you have any additional ‘do’s and don’ts’ about submitting query letters?

Laura Cross is an author, screenwriter, ghostwriter, freelance book editor, and writing coach specializing in nonfiction books and script adaptation (book-to-film projects). She writes two popular blogs, www.NonfictionInk.com and www.AboutAScreenplay.com, and teaches online writing workshops www.ScenarioWritingStudio.com/workshops. Her latest book is The Complete Guide To Hiring A Literary Agent: Everything You Need To Know To Become Successfully Published. You can download a free chapter, view the book trailer, read the full table of contents, and purchase the eBook at www.GetALiteraryAgent.com.

Laura is also providing us with a giveaway! The winner will be able to take one of Laura’s online writing workshops — your choice of which one from those listed on her site — for free. Just leave a comment with a ‘do or don’t’. I’ll randomly select a winner on Friday, February 19.

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 wind up with no idea of how much I’ve really earned per hour. After all, five hundred words can be a matter of sitting down at the keyboard for an hour — or it can be a matter of conducting two interviews and spending an hour checking facts before I even start writing. But since I track my time, I can do a little math and make sure that I really am earning enough money. There are many reasons that adequately tracking your time is crucial.

1. Check if you need a raise. Just because a project was once worth the amount you were getting paid doesn’t mean that you’re still getting enough. Maybe the scope of the project has grown or maybe your bills are a little higher. If you can double check what your hourly rate really is, you can make sure that you’re getting paid appropriately.
2. Add in your own projects. If you’re working on fiction or other projects, you may need to be earning a certain amount per hour in order to free up time elsewhere to work on your own projects.
3. Decide if you can grow. If you want to take on new clients, you have to have an idea of the time you’re spending on your current clients.
4. Give better estimates. If you keep records of how long different projects take, you can make sure that your estimates for different types of articles or other writing are really in line with the amount of time the project will take.
5. Keep your work and life in balance. Working around the clock is generally not the best idea. With an idea of how much time you really need to be spending on your work, you’ll know when you can afford to cut back and do something fun.

There are a lot of options on how to keep track of your time. A simple stop watch and a spread sheet may be more than enough. However, there are also some technological options. A couple of good starting points are Klok, SlimTimer, and RescueTime. Personally, I fall into the spread sheet crowd on this one, but all three software options are good alternatives, as well.

Jen asks,

I’m starting into freelance writing (pretty casual, after my 9-5) and in order to build up clips, I contacted a local free newspaper about writing a piece for them.  In the end, I sent in a full piece (450 words) for consideration and the editor said to me it would be run in their January Issue.  (editor’s response: “Thanks. Will run it in January.”)  There was no payment, and I knew that going into it.

I checked the issue today and my piece wasn’t run.  There is, however, a piece on the same subject matter, using some of my ideas.  So, presumably, they’ve re-written my article cherry-picking from my ideas and adding some of their own. There was no credit given to me.

Personally, I don’t think that was appropriate of the paper to do.

Can you offer any insight?  Is this typical?  Is the publication out of line? Do I need to get a thicker skin?

I’d like to write the editor and say that I’m very disappointed her publication would take my article, re-write it, and pass it off as their own content.  Is that out of line?

Writing the editor certainly makes sense in this situation — but I’d suggest trying to get the full story first. Ask why the editor chose not to run the article after saying that he or she would — there may
be a reason you might not expect. I managed one of those free newspapers for quite a while and we made a point of using content that came in (it certainly beat having to write it ourselves), but occasionally pieces got lost in the shuffle or an editor might simply forget that she had an article to run. If that was the case… well, these things happen, especially when an editor doesn’t have to worry
about payment and other details.

That said, if the editor can’t give you a reason why he or she didn’t run your piece, especially after accepting it, it was certainly inappropriate for the paper to run such a similar article rather than yours. At the very least, the editor should have contacted you and told you that your story wasn’t going to run and, if they used ideas out of your article, they should have given you credit for your work. Unfortunately, there isn’t a lot that can be done. If there was money involved, I would suggest asking for a kill fee, but the best the editor would be able to offer you would be an apology and perhaps another chance to write for this paper, assuming that you want to work with this editor again.

Once you’ve written to the editor and discovered whether there was a reason your article was dropped, it may be best just to move on. While you can spend time getting an apology out of this editor, that’s time you could be working on bigger and better things. Personally, I’d write this publication off and move on. It’s not necessarily a question of growing a thick skin — it’s perfectly right to be angry if someone takes ideas out of your work and uses them in their own articles without giving you credit. But, in this particular case, getting angry won’t get you anywhere and there are better uses for your time.

Do you have any advice for Jen on dealing with this situation?

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Do you have a question about the business side of freelancing? Ask it in the comments and I’ll answer it next week.

I commented on Twitter earlier this week that I had entirely changed how I organize my email and I got a couple of requests to share how my new system works. It’s been several days and it’s working great, so I’m ready to share how I’m handling emails.

The Setup

There is some technology that I’m specifically using:

• Gmail
• Gist (I’ve written about how I use Gist before)
• OmniFocus

You can use any combination of email client, CRM tool and task management tool you’d like — in fact, Gmail Contacts and ToDo lists may let you skip going outside of Gmail at all, if that’s your preference. I use Gist and OmniFocus because they have more extensive features than Gmail’s integrated options and I’m comfortable with the way they work.

The Organization

I’ve been slowly adding folders (or, as Gmail calls them, labels) for several years now. I had one for every long-term client, different groups I belong to — I had well over 80, which made it almost impossible to use the folders to find something quickly. That lead me to rely on searching for any email I needed to find, which works particularly well in Gmail. Since you can search for senders, keywords and even attachments, it makes sense to rely on that feature, rather than building an elaborate organization system. So I deleted all of those folders and picked a few new ones.

I now have just six folders for my email, meant to let me process new emails faster, while relying on the ability to search for any past emails I need. The folders are meant to hold literally any email I receive — there shouldn’t be a single email in my inbox that doesn’t fit into one of these six folders:

• Bacon: I can’t remember exactly where I picked up using the term ‘bacon’ for a certain class of email, but it works. Bacon is all those emails that you, at one point or another, did agree to receive, like newsletters or mailing lists, but that aren’t a priority to read. It’s not spam, but it’s also not particularly important. It’s a category that, if you’re in a hurry, you can comfortably mark all as read.
• Client Work: The most important category of email I receive has to do with work I’m doing for clients. Anything in this file is the first to be dealt with when I start reading email.
• Personal Projects: My blog and other projects that are important have a folder to themselves. I consider the emails in this folder important, but a step beneath those involving client work.
• Networking: I’m pretty active on several social networking sites, which have a tendency to send out all sorts of updates on a regular basis. All of those get tossed in one folder so that I can just go through and handle tasks like accepting friend requests all in one go.
• Education: I’m still working on my MA, so all emails related to school need a folder. This is probably the smallest folder I have at this point, but I consider it fairly important.
• Home: My last folder is devoted to anything that isn’t a work matter — friends and family all go in this folder, as well as emails about my house, health and other topics.

I’ve also made use of Gmail’s filters to make the process as automatic as possible. Just about every newsletter I receive is automatically labeled ‘Bacon’, while each email from a client is automatically labeled ‘Client Work.’ If you’re a Gmail user but not familiar with filters, you can create a new filter by selecting an email and choosing “Filter messages like these” under ‘More Actions”. You can also create filters in Outlook and other email tools.

The Workflow

Each morning, I sit down at my computer and open up my email. I make sure that every email in my inbox has a label connecting it to one of my six folders. I start by reading any new emails in my ‘Client Work’ folder. Unless I can respond to an email in under a minute, I don’t take actions on anything. Instead, I note the appropriate tasks, like ‘Email John Doe regarding edits’ or ‘Research article on marketing tactics’ to my task list in OmniFocus. Side note: I love OmniFocus because I can create a new task using keyboard shortcuts without leaving Firefox.

I go through each folder in the same way. It’s rare that I’ll leave any emails unread, although I may mark bacon emails as read without looking at them if I’m in a hurry. After I read an email and create any appropriate tasks, I archive each email. I’ve discovered that if I leave read emails in my inbox, they tend to distract me every time I log in. If my inbox is empty, I have a much easier time focusing on whatever I’m there to do.

I check my email a couple of times a day, although my goal is to check it once in the morning and once in the evening. I’m working on it, but I’m not too confident that I’ll ever entirely get to that point.

Once I’m done checking my email, I get to work. When I’m working and need to send an email, I actually start in Gist, instead of Gmail. I’ll search for the person I need to contact in Gist, which automatically imports my emails from Gmail. I can see at a glance the emails we’ve exchanged, as well as information like my contact’s recent blog posts and any notes I’ve made for emailing him. I then click on the email link in my contact’s profile, which takes me directly to a new email in Gmail, with my contact’s address already in it.

Why It Works For Me

I know my email methods may seem a little unusual but I had one main goal when I put this system into place: spend less time organizing my email. It’s a matter of seconds now and I’ve got a clean inbox. It used to take me significantly longer to go through my email every day, because I had a lot more folders to try to deal with, or I would get distracted by read emails that were still in my inbox. I’m not saying this approach would work for everyone, though.

If you have an email system of your own, I’d love to hear how you got it set up and what about it makes handling your email easier. Just leave a comment below to share.

I started out the month of November a little bit behind. I spent the end of October focused on buying a house and moving, which is more distracting than I had hoped for. We got settled in and just as I was starting to get back into my routine, I got clobbered by some sort of bug. I tried to keep up, but I managed to accomplish far less from the couch than I had hoped for. I’m finally back to normal (mostly), just in time for everybody to head to my house for Thanksgiving.

I’m the kind of behind that you just can’t recover from.

I’ve managed to get most of my client work in. I’m lucky enough to work with incredibly understanding clients who have been willing to be more flexible about projects than I’ve had any right to expect. I’ve had to do plenty of juggling on my end and, considering that I’m the kind of person that just about breaks out into hives when I miss a deadline, I’ve felt pretty badly about it. I’ve got my head above water at this point, though, and I’ll still get dinner on the table for Thanksgiving.

If you find yourself in this sort of situation, there are ways to make sure that you can make it through a tough situation with your sanity and client list intact. This is not the first time I’ve felt that I couldn’t catch up and I’m sure it won’t be the last — but these are the actual options I’ve figured out by trial and error.

1. Talk to your clients as soon as you know you won’t meet your deadline. Personally, I wait until I’m absolutely sure — if there’s a chance to catch up, that’s my first choice. But the more room you can give a client to adjust dates, the more likely they’ll be able to. If you can offer up an idea of when your situation will be straightened out, your client may even be able to just wait for you to catch up.
2. Keep another freelancer in reserve. When you hit the wall and you just don’t have any way to catch up, you don’t want to leave your client in a tough situation. I keep a list of three or four freelancers who will take on the same kind of projects I do, at similar rates. The ones I can toss work to on a short notice have a gold star by their names.
3. Prioritize client work ahead of (almost) everything else. I’ve got lots of personal projects going on these days — I was even hoping to be ready to launch another ebook next week. As you may have noticed, I had to cut way back on things like blogging on my own sites in order to make sure that my paying clients were able to pay me. In a crunch I’m will to prioritize clients over not only my own work and social life but even certain family obligations.
4. Find a way to de-stress. Not being able to follow through on things I’ve promised to do stresses me out beyond all expectations. Before I could even focus on finishing any part of my work, I had to find a way to at least reduce the stress — preferably in a way that would leave me able to work afterward.

In the moment, it’s very easy to feel like you’re the only freelancer who’s ever had to juggle this many balls at once. But in reality, I think each of us winds up in a tough situation every few months as a matter of course. It’s important to remember that while we can’t always catch up, we can come out ahead.

I mentioned Gist in my list of online tools that can help writers. I’ve gotten a couple of responses that make me think that most writers think that customer relationship management software can’t help them — maybe if they work with a long list of clients, it can make sense, but what does a fiction writer need with a rolodex on steroids?

Personally, I think that every writer needs to have some sort of CRM system in place. It’s the easiest way I know of to keep track of people. Not only do I have all their contact information in one place, but I can label my contacts, search for them by keyword (instead of by name or company), and even keep notes on them:

• Editors: I have every editor I know listed in my system, with notes on what sort of topics they’re interested in and any inside information I have on pitching them.
• Sources: I’ve worked with a long list of sources, most of whom continue to be active in the fields I write about. Why should I go find new sources when I can just run a search on my software?
• Clients: If you work with other kinds of freelance writing clients, having the ability to track your communications can be absolutely crucial — and CRM software can provide that.

I know that telling someone that they should be using CRM software is one thing. Actually getting them to do so is often a lot harder: you may be worried about what it will take to get a system set up, how much it might cost or even whether you have the time to take care of it. In order to answer these questions, I’m going to go through each step I took to get my own system set up.

Why Gist?

For the purposes of this project, I’m talking about Gist because that’s the application I use. It’s set up so that it can pull in information from social media — I’ll go into depth on just how helpful that can be for a writer a little farther down. It’s also free to use (which I know is a big factor for many writers). It can automate some parts of keeping your contacts up to date.

You can manage your contacts elsewhere, of course. Gist is still in beta, so there’s always a chance that things won’t go quite as expected. It is an online application, which I find preferable to desktop software. I can access it from anywhere, without having to figure out how to synchronize my files on my desktop and my laptop.

Setting up an account with Gist is a simple matter: all you have to do is give the site your name and email address and your account will be created. You’ll need to confirm your account by clicking a link the site emails to you, but after that, you’ll be ready to go.

Getting Your Contacts In Order

Once you’ve got an account on Gist, it’s time to start getting your contacts into your profile. Luckily, Gist has a very simple import tool that works with a lot of different sites. I started with importing my email account. All of my emails wind up in my Gmail account eventually (most of my other email addresses simply forward to Gmail), so I clicked on the Gmail button to import my account. I did have to give Gist both my Gmail address and my password — for those of us who are security conscious, an easy solution is to change your password after you’ve finished importing your contacts.

Adding other email accounts is a fairly simple task. If you use Outlook to manage your email, Gist offers a plugin that will connect your Gist account and your Outlook account. You’ll need to download and install the plugin, but you’ll actually get a few tools not available to non-Outlook users, like the ability to access Gist within your email application.

With any other email address, you’ll need an IMAP connection — the same type of connection Outlook uses to download email. Your email provider will probably list information about your IMAP server in the options on your email settings page. If this is not the case, it may be necessary to contact the person in charge of setting up your email account.

To add contacts from your Twitter and Facebook accounts, the process is much easier. With Twitter, you simply give Gist your user name — you don’t need to give the application your password or anything. With Facebook, you just have to already be logged into your Facebook account: Gist uses Facebook Connect to get your Facebook contacts.

LinkedIn can take a bit more: you’ll need to visit the LinkedIn website and download a copy of your contacts as a CSV file. On the ‘Contacts’ page, scroll all the way to the bottom and select ‘Download connections.’ From there, just follow the directions to export your contacts as a CSV file. Once you have that file, upload it to Gist’s LinkedIn section. The site will process your information and add your LinkedIn contacts. You can also bring in other lists of contacts as CSV files — for instance, if you have a spreadsheet listing out a bunch of editors or sources in Excel, you can export that document as a CSV file and add it to Gist.

Tagging And Searching

Once I had all my contacts imported into Gist, I sat down in front of the television. I had a couple of episodes of Project Runway that I’d been meaning to watch (guilty pleasure) and I took my laptop with me. While the show was going on in front of me, I went through the list of my contacts in Gist and added tags to all of them. Here are just a few of the tags I used:

• editor
• source
• tech
• smallbiz
• publicrelations

You can probably figure out which contacts I tagged as editors and sources, but I also added a couple of other tags. For my sources, I also tagged them with ‘publicrelations’ if I knew that they did public relations — when I’m in a real pinch for a source, I’ll check out who I know in public relations who could possibly make a connection for me to another source.

I also tagged my contacts with their areas of expertise. If I had talked to a particular source about small business issues, I tagged him with ’smallbiz.’ If an editor works at a publication covering technology, I tagged her with ‘tech.’ You can use different tags, of course, and you may wind up with quite a few different tags.

Once you’ve got those tags in place, you’ve got a secret weapon when it comes to looking through your contacts, however. You can search for contacts by name or company, just as you might in an address book. But you can also click on a particular tag and get a list of every source you have on a particular topic or check out every editor who might be interested in a story on a particular topic. This ability alone has cut the time I spend on finding sources and pitching stories in half.

One additional tip: I’ve also tagged all of my contacts with where I met them (if I remember). If I know that I met an editor that I want to pitch at a particular conference, but I can’t remember her name, having that tag will be very helpful in the long run. To make the most of this tip, though, it’s important to add any new contacts you make to your Gist account as soon as you meet them.

The Usefulness Of A Dossier

Gist does offer another set of tools that seem custom-built for writers: the ability to bring together information about your contacts. In addition to being able to tag a contact, Gist can list their Twitter, Facebook and other social media accounts. The application can even go out and find those accounts, so you can avoid spending a lot of time on gathering information. When you’re getting ready to contact a source you haven’t spoken to in a while, you can refresh your knowledge just by looking at the dossier that Gist has created: without leaving the site, you can see your source’s tweets and blog posts, as well as news about that person on other sites. These details can also make it easier to determine just which of your many contacts will be able to help you.

I know that if the editor I want to reach out to tweeted that she’s having a bad day today, it’s probably best to wait to make contact. In the same vein, if an editor has made a comment in her blog about the types of articles she needs currently, that information is now at your fingertips.

You can also add notes of your own to a dossier. If, for instance, you write primarily fiction, you might want to make notes about a particular editor’s taste or the overall submissions process for the publication. You can bring all sorts of information together that might otherwise be scattered across spreadsheets, emails and so forth.

Gist can also pull in your correspondence with your contacts: you can see at a glance the emails you’ve sent. That sort of information can be useful for following up with an editor on an idea or checking back with a source about an interview time. As you browse through your list of contacts, you can also see how long it’s been since you contacted them — if you have a query in to an editor, that information can be invaluable. After all, if you follow up too soon, it’s possible to annoy the editor. But if it’s been too long, the editor may have forgotten all about you.

Gist Can Give You Stories

Lastly, Gist can actually find you stories, if you learn how to browse the news section of your account. For each of your contacts, Gist automatically searches for news, listing their own online posts as well as news from other sites. You can look at the news about each of your contacts on their contact page.

You can also browse through news about all of your contacts on the front page of your account. Several times, I’ve found news that I could quickly turn into a pitch for one editor or another. I’ve also found a couple of stories that spiked ideas for fiction writing. A quick run through of your news can find you all sorts of information that will allow you to turn out a couple of queries without ever leaving Gist.

Even better, you can read the news related to people you’ve tagged in a certain way. Every so often, I like to pull up the news for my ‘editor’ tag: sometimes there will be a call for submissions in there, sometimes I’ll find a tip on pitching a particular editor, sometimes I’ll find a reason to touch base with an editor just so they remember I’m out there.

There are plenty of other features in Gist, many of which come in handy for different types of freelance writers. If you concentrate more on writing for clients, you’ll still find an application like Gist helpful. This is really just an introduction to what a CRM tool can do for you.

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 more hours to writing. Maybe if you add in another hour for marketing, you can land some bigger clients. Next thing you know, you’re freelancing full-time!

It doesn’t stop there, either. Many freelancers get the bug for working on their own and want to keep finding ways to increase their income. Freelancing full-time is a fast way to catch a full case on the entrepreneur bug. You start thinking about how you can expand your writing business: how can you attract bigger clients? How can you create products and other sources of revenue? How can you put more money in your pocket?

Many freelancers avoid calling themselves entrepreneurs. There seems to be an invisible line in the sand, that makes any freelancer who uses the term ‘entrepreneur’ a little less of a writer or a creative. Personally, I think that division is ridiculous. Freelancing is entrepreneurship, stripped to its cleanest form. The only difference in thinking of ourselves as entrepreneurs, as well as freelancers, is that we’ve chosen a term that broadcasts that we plan to build our business up beyond a few hours after work.

Are you a freelancer or an entrepreneur?

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 started creating websites in 1994 but had a few problems with the business side of freelancing. Burke returned to working as an employee twice more before he got full-time freelancing to work for him.

In order to limit the difficulties other freelancers face, Burke addressed many of the common issues in The Principles of Successful Freelancing. He gives an in-depth consideration of what you need to consider before making the switch to freelancing full-time — without sugar-coating details like worrying about when your invoices really will get paid.

The Principles of Successful Freelancing devotes a full chapter to the transition between employee and full-time freelancer, covering details like creating a business plan and setting goals. The ebook also covers details like setting prices, staying productive and winning clients.

Throughout the ebook, Burke provides case studies, allowing the reader to see the realities of freelancing in action. There is something of an emphasis on web design and similar types of freelancing in this ebook, but the advice and guidance remains true for freelance writers as well.

I read The Principles of Successful Freelancing a while back, but there’s a reason to revisit it right now. You can usually purchase a copy of this ebook for $29.95 through Sitepoint. For the next five days, however, you can download The Principles of Successful Freelancing for free, just by following Sitepoint on Twitter. You can read the details of the giveaway at Twitaway.com. It is worth noting that Sitepoint teamed up with 99designs for this promotion — the free version of the ebook does have links and ads for 99designs that would not be there if you had purchased it. I’m of the opinion that a few ads are okay when you’re getting such a good resource for free, personally.

Lately, I’ve been giving a lot of thought to the different types of freelance writers: I see some major differences between freelancers, to the point where I think there are three separate stages of freelance writing. How long you’ve been in the game doesn’t really affect what stage you’re in, though: it seems to be a matter of an evolving mindset. As we grow as freelancers, we start to explore certain ideas and move towards certain goals. As I see it, these are the three major stages:

The Starting Freelancer

Freelancers in the first stage are focused on learning — while many freelance writers dedicate themselves to learning throughout the course of their careers, the starting freelancer is still a little uncertain about why other freelancers use certain tactics or charge certain rates. In a way, moving out of this level is mostly a matter of building confidence.

It is easy to get caught in the beginning stage of freelancing for the long term. I’ve seen a lot of freelance writers who chose freelancing because they had something else in their lives that needed to take priority. Whether that’s a day job or a family or something else, it’s possible to stay a little unsure of your freelancing when you spend a lot of time focusing on something else.

The Practicing Freelancer

Practicing freelancers tend to feel comfortable with the way they do business: they’re comfortable that clients are willing to pay their rates. That means that a practicing freelancer isn’t scared to pitch editors at big publications or market themselves to big name clients. One of the biggest concerns for a freelancer at this level is how to grow the number of clients he or she is working with (and hopefully the payrates as well).

I think a lot of freelancers are pretty comfortable reaching this level and just sticking with it. It’s very satisfying to keep writing and building a bigger business and many freelance writers can more than reach their financial goals at the level of the practicing Freelancer.

The Expanding Freelancer

Some freelancers move on to a third stage, based n the idea that maybe they want to do more than work for clients. It’s a definite mental shift, but I know plenty of freelance writers who have branched out into building up a bigger business. That can look like anything from hiring a few writers to work for you to teaching classes to selling ebooks, but the general idea is to build up revenue streams that don’t necessarily depend on how many hours you spend on a client’s work.

The life of an expanding freelancer isn’t a bed of roses, though. It has a whole new set of problems that a freelancer has to learn how to deal with, which don’t necessarily translate well from a freelance point of view.

Where Do You Fit?

I find that while not all freelancers want to put themselves into a particular category, most of the writers I know fit into one of these three groups. Do you think this type of classification sounds about right? And do you feel like you belong to one of the three groups? I’d love to hear some other takes on the matter.