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It is difficult to convince a prospective client that your ability to write Sell-Sheets and Landing Page content is at an Expert Level, with an Acquisition Rate of 3% for your own sales on Guru. Since Guru.com began posting the Freelancer’s and Ghost Writer’s acquisition rates in the bidding list table, this can even be more of a problem for writers who are just starting out; while talking with clients, several of them tell me they don’t even bother to read a bid for Sales Pages if the writer’s acquisition rate is below 7%.
Continue reading >> Freelance Writer tip #11 – Client Acquisition
Freelance Writer Tip #10 — Get a Service, Keep a Service
As a freelancer, you want to work with a service. During your endeavors you will learn quite a bit about SEO, how to attract people to your web site, how to find customers, and how to keep them … because you are going to be writing a stack of articles on these topics, many times a year — despite this, your web site isn’t going to be the major point of sales for your own freelancer service.
There is a very good reason for this, which you will learn over the years as well, but I’ll go ahead and let you in on the secret now.
Continue reading >> Working with a Service
Freelance Writer Tip #9 — Keep a Blog
There are few objects on the Web which are more effective for SEO purposes than blogging. While I haven’t spent much time on SEO writing yet (which I will in the next few days), as a new freelance writer, you will probably receive offers for SEO writing before any other type content. Understanding how to blog, and how to use the main blogging programs will make your bid for work in this area, that much more attractive.
Blogs are useful areas to spend time on even if SEO writing wasn’t so prevalent in the industry. They are fairly simple to use (for CMS type programs), using some of the available tools, blogging and micro-blogging is fast, an a way to storehouse comments, quotes, notes, scenes, ideas and just about anything else you can produce.
There are two main free blogging areas, and you should know how to get around both of them The first is WordPress.com, the second is Blogger. There are others, such as LiveJournal.com, and MySpace has a weak little blogging area inside its “space” area, but knowing WordPress and Blogger will get you up to speed with those, as well as most of the others as well.
I use to be far more appreciative with WordPress, than any other blogging system, because you can export your content from the blog, and move it to another system if you wish to; recently Blogger added this functionality to its tool set as well. Exporting is a required feature for any serious blogging area. There is nothing worse, than posting two or three posts a day to a blog, for a couple of years, and then finding out that you can not get your content off that system to move to another, or even your own web site.
“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us.’ We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we’re liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.” (A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of “A Course in Miracles”, Harper Collins, 1992. From Chapter 7, Section 3])
I just like posting this every once in a while… to keep it all straight
Freelance Writer Tip #8 — Writing for a living is exactly that — writing.
I was listening to an interview with Stephen King back in the 90’s and he mentioned during the conversation that he wrote 5k words every day, no matter what was going on. Monday through Friday he sat at his desk and wrote 5k words.
At the time I thought that was a large amount of writing to be doing every day, but since that time I’ve learned it really isn’t that much. More importantly I do write that much every day. Whether I have a freelance job to work on or not, I always write my goal-set amount of words.
Continue reading >> Write every day
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