• How Did You Start Blogging? - David Bridger
• From Paper to ‘Puter - One Woman’s Journey - Deb Wunder
• Blogging Start - Shelly Bryant
• How Did I Start Blogging? - Lissie
• My Blogging Genesis - Dana Prince
• Why I Started Blogging - Sheryl Adair Vanvleck
• The Born Again Blogger - Sharon Hurley Hall
• How we started working for ourselves - Alex and Justin, Freelance Twins
• How I Started Blogging - Umar Siddiqi
• How I Started Blogging, Or Ready, Fire, Aim - Brad Shorr
• In The Beginning - Deb Boyken
• WritingUp’s Failed Social Experiment - Claire Moylan
• The Joy Of Being A Blockhead - Jean Browman
• 30 Things I Didn’t Know Before I Started Blogging - Joanna Young
• How I Got My Blogging Start - Sue Jeffels
• Why I Started Blogging - Courtney Ramirez
• Why In The World Did I Start This Blog? - Joan Kremer

If your post is missing from this list, please let me know and I’ll add it.

I’ve been making a few changes on Get Paid To Write Online, and the fun isn’t over yet. For some time now I’ve thought that the blog needs a facelift, and you’ve probably noticed a couple of theme changes in the last month. I’ve actually been searching for the perfect theme (one that will do what I want, will help you find content easily and will last more than five minutes and I’ve almost made my choice.

At the same time, I’ve changed a few other things. I’ve been running a regular thank-you for people who comment on my blog, but I’ve decided that there’s a better way to thank them - two, in fact. The first is to install the top commentators plugin, which gives a monthly list of the top commenters on this blog, with a link back to their blog. The second is to reward those who comment with a link back to their latest blog post so other readers can find their content. That’s all thanks to the CommentLuv plugin and you’ll see the difference the next time you leave a comment.

This month, I plan to answer a few more readers’ questions, many of which have been to do with promotion. I’ll revisit ways that you can promote yourself for free. That series will be starting later this week. In the meantime, here are the posts that got the most attention during the month of May:

• 19 Posts Writers Shouldn’t Ignore
• WhiteSmoke Review
• How To Create A Writing Portfolio
• Freelance Does Not Mean Free
• Blogitive: The Good, The Bad and the Ugly
• Is Your Resume Looking Tired?
• Freelance Writing Questions: Setting Rates
• I AM A Real Writer

If you are interested in becoming a freelance writer, you should keep in mind that slow and steady is just as good as fast and furious. In other words, you do not have to be in a huge rush to achieve success. Sure, the faster you progress the earlier you can quit your day job, but with that being said, you also need to make sure that you are learning as you move in the right direction.

Here are five tips to follow if building a freelance writing career is of interest to you:

1. Start from the beginning. On day one, you will want to get all of your ducks in a line. This includes everything from setting up an office to buying supplies to getting your samples and resume in order. If you are doing this part-time, there is no need to rush. If it takes you a week to get setup, so be it. It is important that you lay a solid foundation so that you are in the best position to move forward.

2. When you are setup and ready to write, you will soon realize that getting in touch with potential clients is essential. After all, if you do not have clients you do not have a freelance writing career. There are several ways that you can do this as a new freelance writer:

• Use bidding sites such as Elance and GetAFreelancer.
• Cold call local businesses.
• Cold email webmasters and blog owners who may need your services.
• Query publications of interest. You can find a list of magazines that accept freelancers by purchasing a copy of Writer’s Market.

Of course, there are many other ways of finding clients. Try out the four methods above to see which ones work best for you. From there, you will have a better idea of how to progress.

3. As you begin to receive projects, it is essential that you stay organized. To go along with this, make sure that you do not bite off more than you can chew. For instance, if you are working as a part-time freelance writer you do not want to have a full-time load. If you do, it is safe to say that you will be working a lot of nights and weekends which can lead to burnout. This is not to say that you should turn down work, but you should definitely pay close attention to how much time you can devote to writing.

4. Network, network, network! Every successful freelance writer knows how important it is to receive referrals from current clients. This is not only a great way to obtain more work and increase profits, but you will also meet a lot of like-minded professionals if you put a lot of time into networking.

5. Grow your career based on your goals and your current lifestyle. Take for instance somebody who has a full-time job, but wants to navigate into becoming a full-time freelance writer. In this case, it is important to keep both jobs separate, while working to grow as a freelancer. As mentioned above, do not become over anxious. If you grow month in and month out, you will find out soon enough that your goals are within reach.

With these tips in mind, you should not have any problems slowly growing your freelance writing career. And who knows; you may have so much success that you can reach full-time earning status sooner than you ever thought possible!

Learn how Chris Bibey of ChrisBlogging.com earns in excess of $7k per month as a full-time freelance writer.

I’ve talked to a lot of writers who have nothing but bad experiences with Elance. This isn’t to say there aren’t bad things that happen, but if you know how to use the system, you can make it work FOR you rather than against you.

Getting Personal With Bidding

The main key to landing bids is how you place your bid! DUH! No seriously, bids should not be approached in a pro forma way, but in a personal way. And for heaven’s sake, use the Private Message Board (PMB) to pitch the potential client. Otherwise all and sundry (read your competition) will know what you said to land the bid.

The personal touch means talking to the person like they are - well - a person and not a client. Even if it means addressing them by their sometimes hilarious nicknames (we won’t go there!) just do it.

For instance if the nickname is a company name, just use it in your pitch. Talk to them like they were across the kitchen table from you swilling coffee. The people behind the call for bids appreciate being spoken to in a personal way. It also shows them you are approachable and know enough about human nature to take the time to personalize your bid.

When you join Elance, one of the first things they tell you is to personalize your bid. Would that more people would listen to that. I’ve read some really atrocious, stilted bids that came across like a bad infomercial. Fake even, more’s the pity. Clients aren’t so stupid that they can’t tell when the bid they get is thrown together.

Perseverance

Never underestimate the power of your bid. No, you won’t get everything you bid on for a variety of reasons: from your bid may be too high, to the client wanted someone with different expertise than you have. That happens. Just keep on bidding.

It takes awhile to get a following built up on Elance, so be prepared to work really hard for a long time. Choose categories you know you can write in and can prove it. Don’t try and wing it or that will show up on your feedback and take your percentage down.

Hidden Penalties

Having said that though, be aware that the price of the project you work on has as much to do with your feedback score as does the actual feedback received from client. More actually. If you work on a $50 project and get super feedback it actually lowers your ratings because the project amount wasn’t very high. Sucks doesn’t it? You bet it does, it means you’re being penalized for working for smaller amounts.

Don’t get me wrong, the Elance system can be your best friend if you work with it to the best of your ability. It has its glitches; for instance you can’t bid less than $50 on a job and there are jobs posted for less than that. You need to be creative to figure out the way to work the system.

Working with escrow bids is another whole can of worms that makes you rip your hair out by the roots. It’s designed to protect the buyer and the writer, but figuring out the milestones, changing terms of the business agreement, and funding milestones becomes a bit like a treasure hunt - one where you don’t always find the prize.

Paying The Price

Be aware too that Elance will charge you a fee between 6.75 percent and 8.75 percent when your project is completed. That is a percentage based on the cost of your project. This seems to be the reason why a great number of freelancers eventually opt to deal with their clients directly and vice versa.

While it makes sense for them to charge a fee, it can certainly cut into the bottom line unless your bottom line runs into the thousands of dollars. When you’re writing and doing it on your own, thousands of dollars takes a long time to become a reality.

Bottom line is? Elance is a good system that has it moments of inexplicable idiocy, but it’s better than anything else out there. Just remember to be personal. It will win you more business, and with some luck good friends who will give you repeat business.

For more information or to just drop by and say hello, Kerrie Spencer can be found hanging out on Elance or Spiritwriters. Feel free to email her on kspencer [at] sasktel [dot] net.

How long do you spend on a query? Do you use a form letter that you simply change up? Any hints on streamlining the process?

I pitch most of my work to those buying web content, and I thought it was worth replying to those questions here.

Streamlining The Query Process

I’ll start with the last question first. I found it essential to streamline the querying process. If you want to win bids, especially when you’re starting out, you have to bid for a lot of work. That means you can’t be writing bids from scratch every time. That’s part of the reason I have an online resume and testimonials, so that I can send potential clients there to look at what I’ve done. (I confess that it’s not as up to date as it should be, but I am working on that.) It also gives me a handy list of links to my work so I can choose the appropriate ones when bidding.

A Matter Of Form

That brings me to the second question - the form letter. Yes, I have a form letter. It contains a paragraph which outlines my experience, a paragraph with examples of the writing I can do, a bid amount, a paragraph with links to my resume and testimonials and an invitation to contact me for more information. That’s the basis of every bid. However, I do change it depending on what I am bidding for. I change the examples and I highlight different parts of my experience.

Starting From Scratch

Sometimes I throw out the form letter altogether and start from scratch. In some cases, that’s because the form letter doesn’t meet the criteria. Some potential clients ask you to bid in a particular way, in which case I do. Sometimes something comes along that I’m so enthusiastic about that I want a fresh start. Only you will know when it’s right to do that. As an example, today someone posted a job about articles on house moving. As a serial mover, I have the personal experience as well as the writing experience and I wanted my bid to reflect that.

Taking Some Time

Allena’s first (or final, depending on how you look at it) question was about how long I spend on a query. Again, that varies. If I have bid template and only need to change a line, then I can have a bid ready in a couple of minutes. If I am starting from scratch and the stakes are high, then I may spend 20 minutes (longer, if I have to include samples or other supporting material). Here’s a tip, though. Whenever you do a bid, query or proposal that you think is really great, save a copy in a bids folder on your computer so that you can use the format again. And make a note of which types of bids work best for you.

Today, I’m answering a freelance writing question that one of the writers on my writing team didn’t quite get around to asking. The situation was that I had written some articles for a client based on original research. The client needed rewrites which I didn’t have time to do, so I asked a writer to do them. When they came back, some of the articles were so different that they were practically new articles, and that wasn’t what the client was looking for. I realised then that it can be difficult for writers to know what clients want when they ask for rewrites.

Here are some of the types of rewrites I’ve been asked to do in the past:

1. Rewrites where the titles and subheads are based on the same keywords, but are different, and where the first and last paragraph and one of the middle paragraphs is different.
2. Rewrites where each individual sentence must be rewritten so it means the same thing but says it in different words, but using the same keywords.
3. Rewrites where you put the same information in the same order as the original.
4. Rewrites where you put the same information in a different order from the original.
5. Rewrites where you have to change sentences AND substitute keywords.

It’s no wonder that people get confused. As usual, the thing to do before you start is to clarify the brief, so that you can deliver what the client wants first time. Rewrites rarely pay well and if you have to make revisions, then you generally end up out of pocket. And watch out for No 5. I did this once, and went back to the client and argued for a rate increase, because I was effectively writing brand new articles.

Although I wouldn’t want to spend all day doing rewrites, doing simple rewrites (such as No 3) can be a great way to boost your income if you have done the original research and are a fast writer. It’s not creative, but it can help to pay the bills.

There’s one final point about rewrites. Some clients think nothing of asking writers to rewrite other people’s content for their sites. All I’m going to say is that using several sources is research; stealing from a single source is plagiarism. Nuff said!

Technorati Tags: writing,get paid to write,freelance writing,help me write

Good planning is the bedrock of a successful freelance writing career. In contrast, running your career in panic mode will leave you overworked and stressed out - and probably earning less than you think.

The Panic Mode Scenario

When you run your writing career in panic mode, you start to worry every time you don’t see a steady flow of work. If you happen to be the main breadwinner, then this panic can escalate to paralysing levels. You’re so busy thinking about the absence of a bottom line that you end up doing something that will make your working life even harder.

Grab Any Job That Moves

Once you start to panic, then you feel compelled to take any job that comes along., even if the pay is low. After all, earning something is always better than earning nothing, isn’t it? I’ll come back to that question later. You only start to relax when you see a pleasingly full diary in front of you. Now all you have to do is do the work.

Overbooked And Underpaid

I’ll give you an example that happened to me a couple of years ago. Once, in this same situation, I took on a couple of jobs that I knew would bring in some funds. They were below my usual rate but they were bulk jobs, and I figured I needed the money.

My wake up call came when I put all the jobs into my diary, allocating a time slot for each of them. What I found was that I had booked up most of each working day with jobs that would only bring in half the money I needed. This was the direct result of panicking about an empty diary. Worse still, I had to spend so much time writing that I had less time for bidding and promoting. So, what could I have done instead?

An Alternative To Panic

Well, my strategy of taking a job below my usual rates was only half wrong. What I should have done is only take ONE of those jobs, not several. That would have given me:

• some basic income coming in so I wouldn’t need to panic
• time to bid on other, more lucrative jobs
• time to promote my writing services

In the long run, promoting myself and bidding on better paid writing jobs would have been a better move. So that’s my advice. The next time there’s a shortage of writing work, redouble your promotional efforts and put your bidding on steroids. You’ll soon ride out the slump and put your freelance writing career back on track.

Technorati Tags: freelance writing,writing career,get paid to write

The first one was entirely my fault. Remember when I reviewed GetAFreelancer? I said at the time that the only flaw was the strange extended process for your first withdrawal. What I should also have realised is that my gold membership was set up to automatically renew. So what happened? GAF took my membership renewal and when the time came for the funds to be transferred to Paypal, there wasn’t enough money in the account. So I’ve just had to start the process all over again. Lesson learned.

E-Checks Can Bounce Too

The second incident came when I had to chase a client for payment. This is a client who guarantees to pay within ten days of receiving the work. When I first chased, it had been 40 days or more. I heard nothing for a while, then a few days later I got notification of an e-check for the full amount. I relaxed, prematurely. As I’ve discovered, e-checks can bounce too. And they take a heck of a long time to do it. It took about 10 days for me to get the notification that the client hadn’t had enough funds to cover the e-check. So although I thought I had money, I didn’t - the client still had it and I had diddly.

I fired off an email and the client has just responded with a new payment, and this time it’s not a rubber check. However, he’s still interested in having me write for him. I’m wondering if it’s worth the hassle of having to chase for every payment. It’s not the first time a payment has been late, but it’s the first time a payment has bounced. I’m considering my options. The question is, how many chances do you give before it’s time to fire the client? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Of course, if you’re going to make money, then you have to get visitors, so you might find it useful to explore 20 Ways To Promote Your Freelance Writing Services Using Forum Marketing Techniques. Problogger Darren Rowse tells us How To Write Posts That Set StumbleUpon On Fire, which is definitely worth studying, while Daily Blog Tips advises on Extending Your Reach From Blogger To Influencer.

As always, I’m interested in what’s going on in the freelance world, so I was fascinated by the results of the FreelanceSwitch survey. One of the cool things there is information on average charges for different types of freelancing work. The report is available if you make a donation. There were also plenty of useful posts on writing including:

• Who Owns Your Words?, a guide to the rights you might be asked to give away.
• Top Five Tips When Bidding For Freelance Work (my favorite piece of advice is ‘watch out for pirates’)
• 8 Ways To Kick Start Your Freelancing Career (I found a link to a new bidding site)
• Getting Creative With Your Content (if you aren’t reading Men With Pens yet, why not?
• Are Your Words Like A Tornado? (all about having energy in your writing)

Finally, here are a few posts I bookmarked to blog about later (I guess the time has come):

• Wayne Gretzky’s 8 Tips For Freelancing Success
• Who’re They Gonna Call? Ghostwriters!
• Why Freelance Writers Should Have Blogs

Enjoy.

Technorati Tags: blogging,freelance writing,get paid to write,make money online,ghostwriting,monetize

You have to make a decent wage to feel good about yourself. While we may all occasionally take on projects we wish paid more, there’s no reason to do it day in and day out. So, if you’re working in a sector that doesn’t pay well, don’t be afraid to stop doing it and look for work in other – better paying – sectors.

Agreed, and Yuwanda outlines strategies that anyone can follow. Also worth checking out is All Freelance Writing’s tip on finding high paying gigs.

On Freelance Writing Gigs, two posts caught my eye. The first was a post about paying for writing work (as if!), while the second gave advice on how to deal with clients who pay monthly.

The Hidden Writer has a great post on ghostwriting success, and where it’s at (or not at) for ghostwriters in 2008:

For new ghostwriters Elance is definitely not going to be the place to be anymore. There was a time (up until December 2007) when I would have encouraged all wannabe ghostwriters to sign up with Elance but not anymore.

I left Elance behind some time ago, in favour of a combination of a DIY approach and some of the other freelancing jobs sites (FWJ being the best, IMO).

Freelance Parent talks about how not to be intimidated by getting paid what you’re worth:

Most good freelance writers I know consider themselves worth every penny of $50 an hour. Many of them really are worth that much. Not very many of them actually hit that mark. So when we landed this job, Lorna and I were obviously ecstatic.

Freelance Switch talked about professionalism, including having a good pricing structure. Mason Hipp’s advice is:

Set up your pricing structure early, and know it completely before pitching to a prospect.

Have you recently written a post on freelance writing and income? If you have, please leave a link in the comments. I’d love to do an update on this topic in a few weeks.

Technorati Tags: get paid to write

Planning does not have to be elaborate, but for me it’s a necessary part of the writing process. If you’ve ever taken a novel writing or creative writing course, then you’ll know that they teach you how to create an outline that makes the final writing process almost intuitive. This discipline works well for non fiction writing as well.

Starting To Plan

I often begin the planning process by writing down what I know about the topic. Rather than a brain dump, a mind mapping approach works well, so that you link up related concepts as soon as you think of them. That also helps you to identify what might be missing.

Where Are You Going?

When planning, think about the end point. You will take your reader on a journey, and just like a real life journey, you should have some idea of your destination when you begin. I decide what my main point is, based on what I already know, or what I think I ought to include. Then it’s time to consider how to get there.

What’s Missing?

At this stage, I make a list. The early part of the planning process has given me a number of points to cover. I try to arrange these in logical order and to group related points. When I have my initial outline, I think about what my readers might want to know. It’s essential to put yourself in their place - or in the place of someone who has no idea what you’re talking about.

Where Should You Put It?

Once you’ve thought about the gaps, identify where that information will fit into your plan. By now, you should have an outline that you’ll be able to work to. That’s only the first part of the process, though, because this is the plan you make before you complete your research. Once you have researched the topic, you will need to revise the plan to take account of any new information.

Starting To Write

Then it’s time to start writing. I find that the plan is a good guide to how to write the body and the conclusion of a piece. However, it’s up to me to craft the lead in a way that will draw readers in. If I know where I’m headed, that’s quite easy.

That planning process works well for most types of writing. If you write a lot, you can also create a template based on a structure that works well. Article templates are great for writing dozens of articles on the same topic. How to make them different? Well, that will be the subject of another post.

Technorati Tags: freelance writing,writing career,writing business,get paid to write

Freelance Folder discusses Nine Things Learned This Year while All Freelance Writing helps you get organized with Free Business Forms for Writers. Although it’s not a writing blog, I regularly tune into Bootstrapper, which offers 100 tools so you can Be Your Own Virtual Assistant.

We all wonder how we’re going to get paid. Two good posts on the topic are How to Present your Freelance Writing Fees from ChrisBlogging and All Freelance Writing’s post on Changing Services and Writing Rates in the New Year

Also worth checking out are a post from JCM Enterprises on dealing with clients, titled How Long Would You Wait? and a post from the Writing Career blog on starting your writing career if you live overseas. This topic is close to my heart and I plan to write a post on this topic early in the new year.

Technorati Tags: freelance writing,get paid to write,writing

Technorati Tags: christmas

However, I couldn’t help feeling that some of my own personal favourites were missing. That’s why I’ve collected this list of 12 posts that I was happy with, one for each month of the year. I don’t think they need much introduction, as all the titles are self explanatory.

If you’re an existing reader, there may be something you missed, especially before Get Paid To Write moved to its own domain in June. For new readers, I hope these will encourage you to browse further into the archives. Here’s the list.

• January - How Writing Reviews Helped Me
• February - Why I Blog
• March - Making Sense Of Writing It Down
• April - Finding Balance In Writing
• May - Time To Fire The Client?
• June - Writers, You Need To Get Out More
• July - The Joys Of Juggling
• August - How Have You Promoted Your Writing Today?
• September - Are You Sabotaging Your Goals?
• October - Why Write For Free?
• November - My Two Year Adsense Experiment
• December - Blog Your Way To Writing Success

Technorati Tags: get paid to write,freelance writing,writing,blogging

1. How to Pick a Publisher - guest post from Suzanne James
2. Get Paid To Freelance - highlighting a great post on this ever topical issue
3. How To Build Your Own Buzz - self promotion for newbies
4. The Value Added Writer - how to give more to your clients so you get more from your career
5. How Have You Promoted Your Writing Today? - easy ways to promote yourself
6. How To Create A Writing Portfolio - exactly what it says on the tin
7. Inspired Author Relaunches - new life for an excellent writing resource
8. Is It Time To Quit The Day Job? - a life changing and career changing decision
9. The Eco Friendly Writer - a wry take on being environmentally friendly
10. The Get Paid To Write Mega Link Love Fest - more links than you can shake a stick at.

Technorati Tags: blogging,get paid to write

One of my new ventures this year was to start working more with other writers. I put a small team together, increasing the number of writing commissions that I could accept. That’s proved successful, though there are challenges in working with writers whom you don’t know that well. Overall, I’ve gained a few good friends and several colleagues whose work I respect from around the world.

This year, I was more selfish. What I mean is that when I accepted jobs I thought not only about whether they were good for my clients, but about whether they were good for me. Sometimes you have to know when you should turn down a new writing job or say goodbye to an existing client. I also thought about what happens when clients leave and you need to replace that income.

While managing my freelance writing career, I was also supervising occasional house repairs and dealing with other essential tasks, so it’s probably not surprising that I had a short term burnout. However, it was soon time to get on with other projects, such as launching this blog on its own domain in June. Within a week or so, the blog was listed on Google.

In July, I took a short break in Orlando, and left the blog in the hands of some very capable guests. One of them, Suzanne James, contributed one of the year’s most popular posts, How To Pick A Publisher.

August saw me considering some of my usual preoccupations of promotion, research and the writing life. I’ve continued with all of those for the rest of the year with posts such as: Are You Sabotaging Your Goals?; The Reluctant Expert and How To Build Your Own Buzz.

In October I took part in Blog Action Day with an eco friendly writing post. In November, I wrote a number of posts that I was proud of, including My Two Year Adsense Experiment; Is It Time To Quit The Day Job? and Are All Your Eggs In One Basket?

This year I’ve increased my income from blogging , in part by gigs on Daily Writing Tips, Piggy Bank Pie, Writing White Papers and others. This has led to posts on other sites, and I’m hopeful that this will continue in the coming year. I’m now thinking about setting out my goals for 2008, but that will be another post.

Technorati Tags: get paid to write,writing,freelance writing,blogging,get paid to blog