By Carol Tice
…I wondered if there was any benefit to having a separate blog and website. I have a blog (mostly to save money and time because I have a full-time job as well as freelance writing). Any thoughts on this? Thank you, I’m trying to ramp up my game a little.
As it happens, I am the perfect person to ask.
I began with a free site just like you, in my case a ZoomInfo profile I took control of.
Then around 2008, I got it together and with help from a teenage Web developer I found in my local high school’s digital-design class for $12 an hour, I put up my own Web site, caroltice.com. Then I added a blog to it about the business of writing, which became the Make a Living Writing blog. The blog lived under a tab, while most of the site focused on getting me new writing gigs.
But things started to evolve and change. I found I loved blogging about writing, and had a lot of experience to offer. I quickly found a substantial, enthusiastic audience.
Eventually, I spun MALW off to its own, separate Web site.
Why did I separate them? And why, in turn, might you want to think about separating your blog from your writer site? The answer depends on what you’re trying to do with your blog, and what you’re trying to do with your author site.
I think a lot of writers don’t ask themselves: Why do I blog? What is my goal? Why am I doing this free writing?
If you can answer those questions, you’ll know whether your blog and writer site belong together or apart. Simply, if the blog and your resume site serve the same goal, they will likely be happy on a site together. If they’re going in different directions, they may do better apart.
For me, I soon realized I was going to want to write e-books that expanded on the Make a Living Writing blog. Then I’d want to set up a shopping cart and a promotional page and sell the ebooks. I also wanted to be able to recommend books, friends’ ebooks, classes and other items to visitors to MALW in an effort to turn MALW into a small business of its own.
At the same time, site-monetizing strategies were totally inappropriate to my resume site, which is mainly for prospective clients to come and see my resume and clips. I didn’t want them to think of me primarily as someone flogging an ebook. I had come to a fork in the road.
I also wanted to be able to be brutally honest about my writing life — the problem clients, the pay rates, the negotiation strategies. I soon realized I didn’t want these entries to be the first piece of mine a prospect saw!
So now MALW is for new and developing writers, while caroltice.com is for business owners and magazine editors. Two audiences, two sites.
One final thought I’ll throw out there — I notice that on many new-writer sites, the blog predominates on the home page, while the resume and other clips are hidden down the margins or under tabs.
I always wonder if that’s the best strategy, if the main point is to get writing gigs. Interested to hear some other opinions on that. I did mine the opposite way — mostly about the resume and clips, blog on the side.
This post originally appeared on the WM Freelance Writer’s Connection.
Photo via Flickr user Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com
By Carol Tice
Many writers have a problem: They get a prospect and get so excited, they jump at the first offer that’s made.
Often, this means they end up with a lower rate than they might have secured if they’d explored the client’s needs and budget a bit.
This process should have some give-and-take to it as you hammer out what you’re going to do and how much you’ll be paid. It’s also an opportunity to display your knowledge of what will best help the client meet their goals for growing their business. A recent conversation I had with a prospective small-business client went like this:
Prospect: I looked at your site and I love your writing! I have a new Web site I’m launching that will have an audience of private-equity investors and small companies looking for funding. I was thinking about having you blog for me once a month for a couple months. I also need a press release written.
Me: I could certainly do that for you, but I have to tell you I don’t think it’s going to be effective in drawing enough traffic to help your business get rolling. You need more frequent posts – at least one blog a month. I have a minimum contract for startups that’s four blogs a month for $500 that I think would start getting you meaningful traffic.
Prospect: That’s a little high for my budget…
Me: What if I throw in the press release? I’d do that if you signed on to a minimum three-month contract.
Prospect: That sounds good.
—
So what happened here? I took what was likely just $200 or so of blogging work and maybe a $250 press release and turned it into a $1,500 minimum contract. Because what I proposed is more likely to succeed in building this client’s business by drawing more prospects, I also upped the likelihood this will turn into a long-term gig.
Throwing in the press release made the client feel he was getting a freebie, and sealed the deal. In reality, his blogs were easy to put together, and he was willing to let me write them ahead of time all at once, which was very time-efficient for me. Even with the press release, my hourly rate for the project stayed in the neighborhood of my target $75-$100 an hour, so it wasn’t much of a sacrifice on my part.
As with all truly successful negotiations, it was win-win.
Of course, if you make a suggestion and the client doesn’t like it and wants to stick to their original idea, you can always agree to it and take the work that’s offered.
But remember, it never hurts to negotiate a little and see if the client might commission a bigger, better project. I’ve never lost a gig because I did a little negotiating to see if I could get a better rate or more work into the assignment.
By Carol Tice
Are you in a job-ad rut? I hear a lot of complaints from writers that there are no good jobs advertised online.
What writers who say that often mean is they keep going to the same two or three online job boards every week, or even every day. The jobs are all super low-paid junk from Craigslist…and they’re getting depressed.
If that’s you, I’d like to gently remind you that insanity is sometimes defined as doing the same thing every day but expecting a different result. If you don’t think you’re seeing quality job listings, it’s time to shake up your online job-search routine.
Some different places I look for writing jobs:
• Niche sites. Since I’m kind of a financial dork, I get great leads from Gorkana alerts, which seems to attract a lot of financial publications. I got a gig blogging for BNET through Gorkana, and I did not see that job anywhere else. Somewhere, there’s a site for an industry specialty you have that might list related writing jobs. Find it and bookmark it. Realize that employers are sick of getting bombarded with 200 resumes when they place an ad, and they’re seeking out smaller-circulation places to put out the word.
• LinkedIn. If you haven’t looked for jobs on LinkedIn, check it out! It’s a growing, busy place for listings, and has a sophisticated search engine so you can filter jobs a number of ways. While I don’t see a lot of freelance gigs on LinkedIn, I’m impressed by the number of writing-sector full-time jobs I see on there, every day.
• Indeed. This is a powerful job-oriented search engine that searches across many other portals. It has interesting statistical capabilities too, and can tell you trends in job listings. Great way to toy with search terms and turn up jobs you might otherwise miss. Want to cheer yourself up? Look at this chart for jobs with “writer” in the description — and you’ll see ads have stayed fairly constant straight through the downturn!
• Twitter. Search on twitter for “writer jobs” and take a look at the number of sites that are streaming their job offers on there! Build yourself a nice list where you can look at your customized jobstream — or just follow my list if you like.
• Your desktop. I don’t often go on job-search sites anymore, because I’ve dragged most of the sites with jobs that interest me onto my desktop through RSS. Great way to save time and get to the jobs you want as soon as they’re posted.
• Industry association job boards. The Society of Professional Journalists is among the professional writers’ organizations with their own job listings. When’s the last time you checked them out? The National Writers Union has a job hotline for members that enforces decent-pay standards.
• Morning Coffee. I just discovered this list recently, and it’s one of the ones on my desktop, along with Writer’s Weekly. Morning Coffee seems to have a more extensive range of writer jobs than I find on many writer-job sites. I found a smokin’ hot lead for me on Morning Coffee that needed my insurance expertise and was offering up to $60 an hour.
Of course, the best jobs aren’t waiting for you on an ad on the Internet. You get them by prospecting — getting out and meeting new people, sending query letters, or however else you reach out in the real world. Don’t forget about in-person networking and cold-calling, as they can’t be beat for meeting new clients.
But if you are looking for jobs online, think about new ways to approach your search if you’re not seeing quality leads — they’re out there.
Here’s a growing writing niche that’s a bit off the beaten trail — community moderating. In a recent search I did on Indeed.com, I turned up 83 job listings for community moderators, both for free local forums and for pay, moderating online forums for companies — Allstate, Fox Entertainment, and many others.
What does a moderator do? Corporate moderators learn to be the “voice” of the brand to their online community.
As it happens, I know someone who got a paid moderating gig — my awesome Web developer Tony Kehlhofer. After six months of freelancing, Tony, who’s an experienced programmer, started a couple of Web sites he’s monetizing, Maps4Kids and TotalCraigSearch (lets you search Craigslist across many cities at once for jobs, check it out!)…and was recently trolling for more freelance work.
He answered a Craigslist ad — NOT kidding! — and several rounds of interviews later found himself moderating building-block giant Lego’s new massive-multiplayer online game for tweens, Lego Universe. They flew him to Denmark for training…can you say dream job? He reports it’s decent, steady money and there’s growth potential aplenty. His edge: They wanted someone bilingual-German, and Tony lived in Austria for years. I was dying to hear the details:
CT: Tony, what did you say to Lego that got you this amazing gig? Did you have any moderating experience?
TK: I didn’t really have any. I said I’m familiar with online tools and gaming, I’m willing to work as a contractor, and I spoke the required language, German, which is the second language they’re going to roll out. I interviewed on Skype in English, then on Skype in German and took a written test in German. They flew me to Denver to meet the hiring executive, and then to Denmark.
CT: What did you learn about moderating in Denmark?
TK: We went through extensive psychology and policy meetings. We talked about trademark issues — you can’t be “Luke Skywalker” on Lego Universe. We learned how pedophiles groom children online so we can spot them. There were up to 20 people on my team there, who’re based everywhere, Spain, Italy. I’m one of the oldest members (laughs)…by far.
CT: What-all do you moderate within the game?
TK: Everything, even the usernames. The conversations the players have when they get in an area together. There are also community forums.
CT: What kind of hours do you work for Lego Universe?
TK: I’m working 16-20 hours a week now, and it will ramp up to 24-32 hours a week when it goes live. I was in the program, which is in beta, last week and had to approve over 300 new usernames in a few hours. My afternoon is the middle of the night in Germany, so I save them having to pay third-shift overtime.
CT: What sort of future opportunities do you see now that you’re in moderating?
TK: I think there’s a whole career path here in moderation that is pretty incredible. For me, the neat thing is there’s another company involved with Lego, eModeration.com. They do a first level of screening out problems. Their client list is exceptional — MTV, Disney, Canon. So I’ve made a connection there.
CT: Any final advice on finding unusual jobs such as this one?
TK: Search widely. I have eight or nine regular search terms I use to find jobs on Craigslist in Seattle, and I would never have found this one if I hadn’t decided to also search on “German.”
This post originally appeared on the WM Freelance Writer’s Connection.
By Carol Tice
I got a new client recently that I was very excited about. It was an ongoing account for eight short articles a month, from a decent-sized, established company. They had a big list of topics ready to go. I thought it sounded just great.
Then I started trying to work on the account, and everything changed. This client turned out to be a crisis-creator.
And even though it represented more than $1,500 a month in income, I dropped them.
It turned out the client didn’t really want short blog-type pieces, they wanted full-blown reported articles. They also wanted me to interview their experts and ghost some of the entries for them (a fact they hadn’t mentioned up front).
Their experts weren’t very readily available, I’d have to try and try to reach them before finally getting an interview time, so deadline panic became the norm.
Also, the services they really wanted I would have billed at three to four times the rate I’d quoted them for the “quick blog pieces” they originally claimed to want.
Some writing clients are really dysfunctional and tend to create crises in your schedule. If you end up with a crisis client, you have to decide if it’s worth hanging onto them or not.
I have another crisis client right now. They pick their topics v e r y s l o w l y…then they take forever to OK a story outline. Then…the minute they approve it, it’s due in one week flat. Kinda crazy.
But they’re paying me $1 a word, and I’ve decided they’re worth it. Which brings me to my main rule of crisis clients: They need to pay a lot.
Often, you get the deadly combination of crisis-creating client AND they pay sorta crummy. Those two do NOT go together!
When I worked as an entertainment-industry secretary back half a lifetime ago, I saw that the production office often had a sign posted on the wall. It was a triangle with the corners labeled “Good,” “Fast,” and “Cheap.” Below it would say: “Pick any two.”
Clients who want good work done fast because of their crisis-creating proclivities need to pay top dollar. Otherwise, you’re letting them turn their crisis into your crisis.
Don’t let that happen! My philosophy is that your crisis is my opportunity. I happen to have the ability to turn around complex stories fast — if you need that, pay the freight.
One of the comments I get a lot from writers who started at content sites is that they can’t imagine how they could write fully reported stories and still earn well. They take so much time! Finding sources, setting up interview times, talking to live humans. How can it possibly pencil out?
Well, I’m here to testify that when done right, reported articles are a far more lucrative way to write. Here are some tips on how professional writers earn well writing reported stories.
1. Keep your interviews short. Unless you’re doing a 3,000-word profile of somebody or something similar, I try not to spend more than 15-20 minutes talking to any particular source. This not only keeps your hourly rate for the story up, but keeps the source from entertaining delusions that they will be the whole article. Respect sources’ time and yours, have your questions ready ahead of time, and keep it brief.
2. Think before you drive. Before you get in the car, adding hours to your reporting time, ask yourself whether this needs to be an in-person interview, or if it would do just as well as a phoner. Many roundup stories don’t need in-person work. If you do need to travel for a story because you really need to see things and people to write it properly, take a single day and line up all the interviews the story needs, so you go straight from one to another. That’s my M.O. with stories that need field work.
3. Double-down on your sources. While you’re talking to sources, think about other stories you’re writing for other outlets, and whether you could use them for those pieces, too. Also pick their brains for additional stories you could pitch elsewhere. Recycling your experts really saves time, and it’s legit as long as it’s different topics for different markets.
Example: Recently, I interviewed the head of a niche recruiting company for a career story on a major jobs portal. I learned her company had gotten certified as a Beneficial or “B” Corp, which I thought was interesting so I sold that idea to a corporate business-information Web site. She was a woman business owner, so I also got her into a story for the online site of a national magazine about women who owned her business type. Total pay: more than $1,400. Not bad for a half-hour of interview time with her, plus a few other short interviews thrown into the roundups.
4. Find sources fast. Learn how to use HARO, Profnet and other source-finding tools. Find expert authors fast on Amazon books. Become a Google pro. Tweet or tell your LinkedIn crowd about your sourcing needs. You have to find exactly who you need, pronto. If you have to interview three people to find one good expert, you can’t make this pay.
5. Resell, resell, resell. Once you’ve done a topic, think about noncompeting markets you could rewrite it for with a slightly different angle and reuse your experts. A classic one: once you’ve learned about a business, ask your source where they went to college, and sell a profile about them to their college alumni magazine. If it’s a daily paper piece, see if it could be resold to dailies in other markets. Crack that Writer’s Market and find more places that could use your idea.
6. Build relationships. Don’t be a news zombie, sucking the information out of a source’s head and leaving them a dry husk by the roadside. If you think a source is articulate and knowledgeable in their field, make friends! Often, if you’re friendly, respectful and don’t waste sources’ time, you can come back to the same sources over and over for various stories — sometimes even for the same outlet. Just ask your publication if it’s OK if you use someone you’ve cited for them previously.
You don’t want to overuse this — keep finding new sources, too. But when you get stories with rush deadlines, it’s great to have built a rolodex of sources you know will return your calls.
If you need tips on how to be a crack interviewer, there’s more here on that topic.
This post originally appeared on the WM Freelance Writer’s Connection.
By Carol Tice
Like many of you, I set goals for my writing business.
Personally, I often get that sinking feeling of behinder-ness when I see myself not meeting all my goals. I want to be steering the direction of my writing career, not floating along like a leaf on a stream, staying in a rut of familiar clients.
If you’re like me, your to-do list tends to be pretty ambitious. I don’t take things into account like spring break, and kids underfoot, and power outages…all of which can happen in the same week around my house.
I don’t imagine I’ll ever get a bad night’s sleep or be too tired to write. I forget I’ll need to hem my kids’ pants, help them get a science fair project ready…in a word, life will keep happening.
But all those things happen, and the goals start to slide. I also saw my list sort of upended this year by one major goal that I unexpectedly met very early in January by finding a big new ongoing client. But that dreamed-of new account, while thrilling and lucrative, turned out to need WAY more ramp-up time than I imagined.
So I find I haven’t sent anything like the queries to my targeted new national magazine markets that I thought I would…one of my big goals.
But a lot got done. Great new clients were signed up. I paid a lot of bills, and had a record-breaking month. The groundwork is starting to pay off.
Now’s the time to forgive ourselves for what we haven’t gotten done.
The goal list may need a little judicious pruning — but that’s OK.
Breathe and let go of the feeling that we’re behind, that we’re failing.
Instead, let’s celebrate the progress.
Every day we can keep freelancing and make enough that we don’t have to look for a job is a day of precious freedom.
As I struggle to steer my writing ship where I want it to go, I’m going to try to remember to enjoy the trip, setbacks, bumps and all.
By Carol Tice
In this bloggy, Web-based, insta-posting age, interviewing sometimes seems to be a lost art.
But if you want to move up and get better-paying writing assignments, you’ll need to conduct interviews with people. You’ll need to not just do them, but to utterly rock at interviewing.
The difference between ho-hum and great writing is often in getting wonderful quotes from sources rather than blah ones.
A lot of new writers are getting started at content sites writing quick articles that don’t require any interviews. Then suddenly, an editor or business client will call wanting to assign you a great article or project — but it requires talking to actual live humans to gather information.
Don’t let interviewing be a roadblock to growing your writing business. Here are ten tips to get you started interviewing:
1. Research your topic and your interview subject, and prepare a question list prior to your interview time.
2. Shut up. People hate silence, and if you’re quiet, they will likely say more.
3. Take copious notes, and consider bringing a digital tape recorder so you can go back over the interview.
4. Take a little time to make small talk and put the source at ease.
5. Remember your fact basics, and find out the who, what, when, where and why. Then, go beyond these to capture a few more details that bring the story to life.
6. Consider your written list only a starting point. As sources talk, what they say will bring up more questions.
7. If you have questions that may upset your subject, ask them at the end of the interview, so that you get as much info as you can before they shut you down.
8. Ask, “Who else should I talk to about this?” “Where can I learn more about this?” and/or “Who disagrees with you on this?”
9. Ask, “Is there anything else you’d like to say on this topic that I haven’t asked about?”
10. Always conclude with, “Where can I contact you later to check facts or ask followup questions?”
By Carol Tice
No clips.
That’s right. You go to a writer’s Web site and they’ve got a bio, and maybe a photo…and then there’s either a vague list of places they’ve written for, or there’s a bibliography-type list of the titles and markets of previous published articles, like for a college paper or something. Or just a list of places they’ve been published.
And no links I can click on to read the stories.
So I have a question for new writers: Why do you think people are coming to your writer Web site? Hint: It’s not to read about how you were staffer for three years at the Podunk Daily News five years ago.
Visitors want to read your clips so they can decide whether to hire you.
I’ve heard every excuse for why writers don’t have clips on their site.
1. “None of my clips are currently available online.” Then get a few of them turned into PDFs and linked to your site. Yes, I do mean pay a pro to do it if you don’t know how to format and code that yourself. Your site is a complete waste without clips.
2. “I ended on a bad note with that editor, so I’m afraid to post my stuff with them.” Get over it. Nobody’s going to quiz you about how it worked out with that rag. They just want see if your writing is compelling and/or shows familiarity with the topic they want you to write about.
3. “I can’t decide which ones to put up.” Pick a dozen of your favorites on a variety of topics you’d like to get additional gigs writing about, and start there.
4. “I don’t have my site up yet.” Then put links to clips in your LinkedIn profile, or take control of your ZoomInfo profile and put them there as a way to get started with an online portfolio.
5. “Well, once I start doing that I’ll have to keep updating it when I have new articles published.” Yes, indeed, you will. I try to update my “favorites” area of my site daily, or at least weekly, with something new to keep its rankings up and to make the clips prospects see as fresh as possible when they visit.
6. “I’m too shy to brag about myself by putting clips on my site.” Aw, honey. Let me send you a hug…and then buck up and put your clips on there. You want to make a living at this, right?
7. “I just can’t seem to get around to it.” In this Internet age, there is simply nothing more important you can do to market your writing than to get a decent set of your clips linked and organized in a single spot. It just says, “This writer is a pro.” No links says you’re not.
This post originally appeared on the WM Freelance Writer’s Connection.
By Carol Tice
I got a question about SEO writing from freelance writer Gina:
Carol, I’m curious what you think of SEO writing. There are many SEO companies that charge big dollars to provide readable SEO articles and content to clients.
How many upscale online writers do or don’t write with keywords in mind?
I know search engines are becoming less keyword driven, but they are still a reality. Just wondering what your thoughts are on copywriters and SEO.
Let’s start by saying there’s SEO writing, and then there’s “SEO writing,” as in all the ads you see that are looking for an “SEO writer.”
In my experience, this latter title in an ad usually means “I’m looking for someone who will quickly cobble together something from a few other similar topic pages they find online and use a lot of key words to help our rankings. We don’t care if the writing’s very good.”
A threat that all content will be run through Copyscape to make sure you’re not plagiarizing is the hallmark of this genre.
And the pay is crap. And established, professional copywriters have names for what this is — names like “retyping” and “article spinning.” When you say it’s “readable,” in my experience that doesn’t mean it’s usually something anyone would ever actually want to read.
These are articles created primarily for search engines to read. Whether people ever read them seems to be a sort of secondary consideration.
I know what you want to tell me, Gina — you’re different and special. Your SEO writing is great copy. If so…you’re being ripped off and underpaid for what you’re delivering.
Stop writing for SEO houses if you want to earn more.
Well-paid copywriters sell themselves as capable of delivering knockout information in compelling ways, so that customers of their client Web sites will be excited by what they offer, come back often, and buy products and services.
These articles are written for people first, and search engines second. That’s the difference. Not everybody can write something people want to read…the pool of possible writers is smaller…and pay is better.
Do top-flight copywriters care about SEO and use keywords in online content they create? Absolutely.
We try to work them into our headlines and first paragraphs, for sure. But we’re not looking to use them at some crazy ratio where they’re every third word of an article.
I’m often given keywords to use by clients. The key word there is “use,” not overuse.
As you note, search engines are getting smarter about keyword-dense text. Keyword density isn’t most important to most good-paying clients — their top priority is to have mind-blowingly helpful information on their site and compelling sales materials that establish them as the authority in their sector and helps them sell.
As far as the “many SEO companies that charge big dollars,” I’m not sure that’s a reality. It’s a very cutthroat industry and I think their markup isn’t that different from that of any other type of copywriting agency or middleman.
Stop worrying about how much profit SEO companies are making off you, and find your own clients to earn well.
