Marketing

Your Free Trial is Killing Me

I’m a sucker for free trials. I’ll sign up for anything and then go in to start playing with it. Even when I have a perfectly good option already in use for my business, I’ll try something new — and it’s going to drive me up the wall. Too Much Information Can Be a Bad [...]

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Make Sure You’re Signed Up for the Newsletter, So You Don’t Miss Out on the Free Resources

I just want to give you all a head’s up: I’ve been working on those resources that we discussed a couple of weeks ago. How to find new ideas on old topics Time management for writers Gig finding strategies for writers Making money off your writing online I’m getting ready to release them and I [...]

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Why Do Most Writers Not Have Newsletters?

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I spend plenty of time looking at other writers’ websites — call it competitive intelligence. I want to know what everyone else is doing, what’s working for them and where there might be room for improvement. I’ve noticed one thing that is missing from most writers’ websites: newsletters. I think that the absence of a [...]

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Content Marketing: Another Path for Writers

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The amount of work out there for a writer is only going up. That’s because more and more businesses have found content marketing to be an effective strategy for selling their products. Content marketing includes blogging, offering ebooks and generally making a huge amount of content available online. Someone has to write all of that [...]

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Don’t Blog About Places You Want to Get Hired

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Is there a client you’re trying to land, or even a day job that lets you use your writing skills? It may seem like an obvious rule, but you shouldn’t blog about those places, especially if you’re considering saying something less than pleasant. There’s the obvious chance that you’ll lose out on the deal to [...]

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The Writer as Brand

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J.K. Rowling is a brand. So is Stephen King. So are you. In writing, along with most creative pursuits, the brand has to be a personal matter — no matter how many marketers you can afford to hire. Editors hire writers because one individual writer is very different from another. The same holds true when [...]

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3 Things a Nine-Hour Drive Taught Me About Writing

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Over the weekend, I went to Fan Expo in Toronto, which required a nine-hour drive up from Maryland. The drive wasn’t bad and, over the course of the weekend, I made some observations about writing that are going to be worthwhile. They Did It First, We Do It Better We drove through Buffalo, New York, [...]

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I’m Writing an Article on Spec: Why I’m Not Scared

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I used to absolutely refuse to ever write articles on spec. If I didn’t have a contract in my hands, I wasn’t going to write the article. This is not uncommon: many freelance writers have gotten this advice from on high (freelance writing blogs, forums and so on). I’m not really at a point where [...]

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Pitching Magazine Editors on Twitter, Plus 80+ Editors on Twitter

Over the past couple of months, I’ve made a point of friending the editors of publications I’d like to write for on Twitter. I’ve landed several assignments through Twitter, including a few where the editor sought me out, rather than the other way around. That’s because Twitter is an ideal tool for building connections: when [...]

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Keeping Your Last Name: Can Freelancers Afford to Change Names?

When I married my husband, I didn’t even think about changing my last name. He asked once or twice, just to make sure we were on the same page, but it was a non-issue for both of us. Of course, both my family and his address all my mail to Mrs. Swenson, but no one [...]

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