There is a lot of trial and error in blogging — it’s the way that most of us learn what works and what doesn’t. The only chance we get to speed up the learning curve is when we can sit down with bloggers who are further ahead of us in some way. Of course, convincing big-name bloggers to sit down and give us an hour of their time, free of charge is not exactly an easy proposition. If you’re interested in either launching your own blog or taking on more work for clients that involves blogging, wasting time to learn the information you need just ins’t practical.

There’s a great website that offers up a lot of the information we need in a much faster format. While we can’t always sit down one-on-on with bloggers we want to learn from, BlogcastFM offers incredibly informative interviews with a variety of bloggers. Srini Rao and Sid Savara sit down with different bloggers each week and conduct an in-depth interview, focusing on what they’ve done that has worked and what has failed. Because Srini and Sid are bloggers themselves, the interviews tend to be full of information that is incredibly useful. Some of the past interviewees include:

• Leo Babauta
• Peter Shankman
• Dave Navarro
• Johnny B Truant
• Thursday Bram (yours truly)

Each interview digs into the blogger’s own experiences and lets you get a sneak peak at their process. Interestingly enough, I believe that Ali Luke and I are the only bloggers who came from a freelance writing background that BlogcastFM has interviewed. While you can skip over some of the struggles other bloggers have had with actually writing their content, though, there is a wealth of information on the mechanical side.

Listening to BlogcastFM

There are hundreds of hours of interviews on BlogcastFM and a mountain of information. Assuming that you do go back through and listen to each interview, I have some suggestions to make. First of all, these are not interviews that you want to listen to while doing something else — they are definitely not background noise. I can manage to listen to them while walking, because I can stop moving and take notes, but listening to them while driving is out of the question.

Second, be prepared to take notes. Each of the interviewees offers plenty of advice. Even if you’re listening to an interview with someone in a very different niche than your own, you’re likely to find something you can implement in your own work. Srini and Sid have made it possible to skip note-taking as of this week, with the addition of BlogcastFM Premium (D). While the interviews remain free to listen to, if you join the premium program, you’ll have access to worksheets and mindmaps from each call. These resources can speed up your ability to implement all the advice contained in each phone call.

The Upcoming Webinar

BlogcastFM is offering a free webinar tomorrow: “How I Grew a Blog to 20K Pages Views in 60 Days – My Secret That’s More Important Than Content.” Srini will be talking about his experiences and how quickly he’s grown his own blog, which is sure to help any blogger looking to increase site traffic. That includes writers who need to bring in more traffic to your professional sites.

I know that one of the toughest parts of blogging for many writers is handling the stuff beyond writing. We’ve got great content that is worlds beyond what folks without our backgrounds can produce. But if we can’t get what we’ve written in front of an audience, what’s the point?

Every so often, new words creep into the list that writers have to know. Over the past two years or so, ‘content marketing’ has been one of those terms — the act of using well-written online content, such as blogs, to interest potential customers and keep ‘em coming back. ‘Content monetization’ hasn’t developed the traction that ‘content marketing’ has, but it’s likely to be even more important to writers. While writers offering content marketing have picked up huge numbers of clients, content monetization — the process of making money directly off of content you’ve written — lets you sell a product, rather than a service, removing the limits on just how much you can make in a given day.

This little vocabulary lesson may not be telling you anything new. Many freelancers, as well as authors and other types of writers, have been exploring opportunities to put your work up online and start selling it as an ebook or another type of informational product. But the fact that we’re putting a name on it means something important: you can see the trend edging upwards.

Riding the Wave

The content monetization field is just barely visible; I see it only because most of my projects involve creating online content. I’ve gotten clients coming to me with requests to create ebooks and other materials that they can turn around and sell — and the numbers are going up. More importantly, I’m getting a few of those requests from clients that are already selling physical products. Information is a commodity — something to make money from.

This isn’t to say that there won’t always be ways to get information for free. Personally, I love my local library. But the trend is that more businesses and individuals will be selling content in some format.

A Matched Set

Content marketing and content monetization go hand in hand. The easiest way to market premium content (the kind you charge for) is with more, free content. That is, of course, good news for writers. Not only do we have an easy entry point if we want to practice a little content monetization on our own work, but there are that many more clients out there for us to make money off of.

This is the intersection that I’m focusing myself and my business on in the months to come. This is where I firmly believe the money is coming from — and how I’m going to make gigantic piles of cash for myself. But I think that we’re going to need a few new tools to make it work. We’re headed in the right direction with easy-to-use content management systems and the ability to create PDFs easily, but there are some gaps.

Have you seen the same trends? Do you think content monetization offers you any good opportunities?

See-ming Lee

Julie Rains asks,

How to organize teams with social media and technical expertise?

As freelancers, we often work on teams. It’s not out of the question that we’ll wind up putting together and leading our own teams. As a writer, it’s not uncommon to have a client bring you a project that may need some technical expertise (like adding new content to an existing website) or other skills (like promoting content in social media. There are a variety of different ways to handle these situations, but I break the process down into three parts: recruitment, management and execution.

I find that having the right team is especially crucial. I have very specific people I go to for different skill sets: I try to avoid asking another freelancer to take on projects that are outside of his or her key skill sets. I want to work with pros who can go in and get their part of the project done. I also try to avoid bringing in team members as a favor or because I personally know they need some work. It just never works out.

Management is the next key to organizing a team. There needs to be a central location (a project management tool, wiki or somewhere else) where every team member can see what he or she is responsible for, as well as deadlines. As long as you’re working with professionals, the more information you can provide, the better they’ll be able to handle the project. (If you’re working with someone who isn’t actually comfortable with the task you’re asking them to handle, too much information can actually be a big problem.) Say the project involves submitting links to a social news site: each member of the team should be able to see what has been already submitted.

Once you’ve got your team executing their tasks, as the team leader, you need to have a way to check that the task has been accomplished. Continuing with the social news submission example, you need your social media helpers to provide you with the link that shows an article has been submitted. While it’s important to have a team that you trust to get their work done without a lot of supervision, especially if you’re working on a contract, you have an obligation to keep track of what has gotten done.

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Got a question about the business side of freelance writing? Submit it in the comments and I’ll answer it next week.

Laura Renegar asks,

If asked for work samples, how many should you send?

My standard number for sending out work samples is to send three top-notch pieces, along with a link to my portfolio so that if a client wants to browse through and look at more of my work, he can. I try to make those samples as relevant as possible. If the new project is something of an odd duck or something that I haven’t done a lot of, I may only send two samples (assuming I only have two truly relevant pieces. If I don’t have any relevant work samples, I still send three, but I try to choose three samples that are as different as possible, so that I can demonstrate my adaptability.

For most of the projects that I work on regularly, I have set samples that I send out each time they’re requested. That way I don’t have to worry about the question every time I get it. I’ll update my samples every couple of months to show what I’ve been working on recently.

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Got a question about the business side of freelancing? Post it in the comments and you’ll get an answer here next week.

An anonymous freelance writer asks,

I’ve been writing for a website for over a year (technically). At the end of last year the site was being overhauled and apparently there was a huge hiccup that still hasn’t been resolved. I typically sent my articles in batches, and the site hasn’t been updated in several months. With this in mind, I have quite a few articles sitting somewhere doing nothing when I could be re-tooling them to try to sell elsewhere. Is it appropriate to ask about the status of the site and if I could possibly re-pitch those articles to other markets, or is that material (although unpublished) now their property and there’s not much I can do about it?

It’s certainly appropriate to ask about the timeline that the client has in mind for relaunching the site, especially if you’re supposed to be paid on publication. If you have a contract in place, you will have to ask for your client to release you from the contract. If the client has already paid for the articles, either as a work for hire or for first rights to publication, it’s still reasonable to ask about the timeline, but you have less room to take those articles elsewhere. Unless you’ve signed an agreement that the articles in question are work for hire, however, they are never the property of the client — instead, you’ve licensed that content to them.

If the website doesn’t look to be fixed and active any time soon, I would use the following approach: I’d tell the client that while I’m happy to write more articles for him just as soon as the website’s status is resolved, I’d like to go ahead and get these particular articles out there. If these articles may become stale soon, due to the information they contain, I’d point that out as well. Not every client will be happy about your request, but if you’re willing to write new content as soon as they’re ready to move forward, it can be an easier fix.

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Got a question about the business side of freelance writing? Share it in the comments and I’ll answer it in next week’s ‘Ask Me Anything.’

When Susan Johnston offered me a review copy of The Urban Muse Guide to Online Writing Markets, I got pretty excited. Part of the reason was that Susan is a phenomenal freelancer, with bylines all over the place. But there’s another reason — she was writing specifically about online markets. I like print markets as well as the next freelancer, but more and more, I’ve found that the opportunities I find online are proving to be far more helpful than those that are offline. In the past, the problem has been, though, that every guide to landing gigs or writing query letters focuses primarily on print markets. Few show tips for getting more work online.

In The Urban Muse Guide to Online Writing Markets, Susan breaks down not only the benefits of writing for the web — faster turn around, shorter pieces, different writing styles — but also the tools that a freelance writer will need to land web only gigs. She even dips into her own files and pulls out queries that she used to land her own writing gigs. In case you’re wondering about the success of the query emails Susan has included, she also links to the articles they lead to, live on clients’ sites. In this ebook, you can get an inside look that just isn’t possible elsewhere.

Just as it can be intimidating to try to break into writing for print publications without know the jargon, it can be tough to translate from editor to English. Susan has broken down a glossary that can help you through the emails you’ll be swapping with editors as you query them.

There’s a true gold mine hidden in the second half of The Urban Muse Guide to Online Writing Markets. Not only does Susan tell you how to go about landing online writing opportunities, but she gives you pages of markets you can query and, quite likely, write for. I even saw a few markets that I regularly write for in there — they’re good folks. Susan even breaks down those markets by pay rates, so you can start at the top.

If you’d like to increase the number of good online writing gigs — and we’re not talking about writing for pennies here — The Urban Muse Guide to Online Writing Markets is an excellent resource that I thoroughly recommend. You can pick up a copy of The Urban Muse Guide to Online Writing Markets for $15.99, and that includes emailed updates to the markets directory.

I know there are some creative writers around here and, while it’s short notice, this contest may be up someone’s alley. There’s only a few days left before your tax return needs to be in the IRS’ hands — but if you’ve got a great reason why your 1040 won’t be ready, Outright is offering a chance to win $500. The absolute best excuse wins.

I’ve heard some doozies from freelancers in the past, including one guy who simply forgot to file his quarterly estimated payments all year long. By the time April 15th rolled around, he was considering a new identity and a move to Mexico, just to avoid dealing with the IRS.

With the peaks and valleys that go along with the freelance lifestyle, it’s not unusual for something to happen with your taxes. Even one client sending a 1099 late or revising your 1099 after the fact can make a mess of things. But you can request an extension from the IRS, which is pretty much automatic as long as you’ve paid the IRS what you expect to owe for the year.

Personally, I’m just grateful that my CPA does my taxes. I don’t think I would get them in on time otherwise, and I wouldn’t even have a great reason to submit to Outright.

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 refuse to take as an entire category. There are only a few things that I won’t even consider.

Essay Mills

Of the writing projects that I’ve been offered over the years, the only one that really hands down made me angry was an offer to write essays for an essay mill that would sell work to students who would then turn it in as their own. It’s not only an unethical practice in my book — it’s downright stupid. At the college level, a student is paying for an education, so why would he want to do anything that would diminish the value of the money he’s spending. There’s also an element of ‘I worked my butt off in school, so you should, too!’ in my refusal.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m happy to help students improve their writing: I worked as a tutor in college and still take on the occasional student as long as I know the person. But I’m not about to do any student’s work for them, no matter the price.

Pure SEO Writing

I’m talking about the stuff where you have to hit specific word densities and even include misspelled words on occasion. It’s bad writing, hands down, and I never want to get used to writing that way. I’m pretty sure it will ruin me for just about everything else.

I like writing content for the web in general, and I have no problem working with keywords. But, ultimately, I write for human readers rather than bots. I have no beef with anyone that would rather have machines read their work, though.

Adult Content

There’s nothing wrong in my book with writing content for adult sites. I realize that some writers are against such projects on a moral basis, but if it isn’t a problem for you, there’s decent money to be made. You may want to use a pseudonym in case Grandma is surfing the web, but beyond that, use your own judgment.

Personally, though, I just flat out can’t do it. I can’t take that kind of project seriously and often wind up giggling like a grade schooler just on the basis of project descriptions.

What About You?

Is there any type of writing project that you just won’t do? Something bothers you on an ethical level or something you just can’t wrap your head around?

Sara asks,

I have a question about finding contact information for websites. I suppose I never really gave much thought to who contributes the content to websites, but now I realize that writing for sites can be some nice extra income. The problem I’m running into is finding contact information for submissions. I’ve tried using the generic “Info” button or “info@…” email address, but I haven’t had much luck. How do I track down this hard-to-find info? I might be missing out on some additional opportunities–help!

It’s been my experience that a lot of websites already have a plan in place to create content. This can be both good and bad for freelancers: if we can become part of that plan, we can earn money. But if we aren’t part of that plan, it can be hard to convince a prospective client to add us.

Personally, I’ve had the most luck getting work on sites with blogs or newsletters — sites that routinely need more content. If a site is static and the owner doesn’t need to keep adding lots of content, it can be harder to get a good paycheck. With blogs, even if you can’t find more than generic contact information on the site, you’ll at least find the name of the blog’s owner. That can be enough to help you connect through LinkedIn or another social networking site. I’ve even contacted someone through a direct message on Twitter to ask for a full email address.

It’s not a perfect system, unfortunately. Sometimes the reason that a site doesn’t list any submission information is because they aren’t currently taking any submissions. IYou’ll never find out if you don’t ask, but be prepared for a fairly high number of negative answers.

Landing that first big client or market can be tough for a beginning freelancer — you put out article after article, spend hours on marketing and even try some cold calling and it still doesn’t seem to snap. But sticking to it is an absolute must. After all, you won’t ever land a client or market if you don’t try. There are a few ways to make the process a little less stressful, however.

1. Remember the 1:10 Rule: My dad has been working on a new real estate deal just about every week since before I was born. They don’t always go through, and when I asked him why he always seems to be working on a new project, he explained the 1:7 rule. In real estate, for every seven deals you try to put together, one actually goes through. I used to track how many queries and estimates I sent out very closely, and I noticed that I landed about one in every ten projects that I tried for. The ratio gets better as time progresses. That number isn’t because a writer doesn’t have the necessary skill, by the way — it’s more often a question of which freelancer precisely nails what a client or editor is looking for.
2. Make Querying A Habit: Whether you’re sending out queries to print publications or trying to find clients interested in brochures, you’ll get a lot farther if you’re working on it a little every day. If you’re in position where you can freelance full-time, that might look like devoting a full hour every day to the process. If you are going part-time, sending out a query letter each day may be more realistic. But it needs to be something you work on every day — it’s a business, after all, and not just a hobby.
3. Market Your Writing: If you were starting any other business, you’d get business cards, network with other businesses and work hard on marketing your product or service. Why should freelance writing be any different? Think about the best way to connect with your ideal client. It may be time to get a website up or you may want to start attending networking events in your area.
4. Write Anyway: Just because you don’t have a market or a client lined up doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be writing. There are plenty of places that you can submit articles on spec, as well as sites that sell ‘stock’ content — you can still build up at least some income from writing without a big client. It may not be your end goal, but it’ll keep you in practice for when you land that ideal project.
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