So I’ve told writers not to write cheapo blog posts, but I write these free blogs. What’s up with that?
Great question!
I believe blogging for free can be incredibly helpful to the progress of your writing career – or a total waste of your valuable time. It depends on your situation. Here’s why I do it:
1. It’s a marketing tool. I started blogging because I knew I was going to write several ebooks about the writing business, and I wanted to start building an audience for my products. I can say it’s been a big success for that – I’ve built a substantial list of potential ebook buyers by spreading my blogs through social media and attracting more viewers to my Web site. That led to invites to guest-blog on sites such as About Freelance Writing, which brought more leads.
2. I learn. Having the blog has brought me questions and comments that have really shown me what needs to be in my e-book – I learned what writers want to know about how to break in and earn more. So it’s improved my product.
3. It’s increased my productivity. I’m writing more now, and not just writing about surety bonds or venture capital or one of the fascinating business topics at which I make the bulk of my living…I’m getting to write about my own thoughts and feelings about the career of writing. And I’m just plain writing more, which means more time spent honing my craft of playing with words. That’s going to pay off in a million ways I can’t even quantify.
4. It’s awakened my passion. I discovered something about myself doing this blog and the WM blog: I LOVE helping other writers write better and earn more! I’ve been at this for a while, and now realize I really have some expertise to share. And it feels good to know I’m helping other writers navigate this tough marketplace.
5. It helped me write my ebook. Often, as I’m answering a question on my blog, I realize: this needs to be in my ebook! And I go over and add more points to my ebook draft. So the blog has been a way to break down the sort of intimidating task of writing a 50+ page ebook into more manageable chunks. If you’re planning to create information products, your blog can be a great way to write that ebook a bit at a time.
I think ultimately it depends on your writing goals whether a free blog is worth the time. The key question to ask yourself if you’re starting a blog is: Why?
Why are you going to blog for free? What do you hope to accomplish?
Maybe you need to hone your writing style, develop your voice, or explore topics to see what niche you want to write in. A free blog’s good for all that. Or maybe you have a great expertise niche (I gather tattoos rock) and want to put ads with your blog and make money, and become one of those six-figure blogger success stories.
One big exception to my rule against free blogging for others is if you can guest on a blog with a huge readership, you should do it even if it doesn’t pay. The marketing value should make it well worth your time.
I think the dynamic of writing your own free blog is completely different from being radically underpaid to write someone else’s.
The first is your passion project; the second can feel like exploitation.
But have a goal with that free blog, and keep a close eye on the clock. For me, it’s a marketing cost, so I try to make sure it doesn’t eat my whole day, as my primary business is to find lucrative clients and do their assignments.
One other thing I was asked about recently is whether blogging for free for others is “selling out.” I think to “sell out,” you have to be given money! While it’s not selling out, it certainly isn’t a smart career move.
Blogging for others should nearly always be for pay, in my view. Sure, plenty of startups and site operators are out there trying to get someone to blog for free for ‘experience’ on their site. All you have to do is say no.
If you have no clips, maybe do it for a week, or a month for some clips. But then it’s time to get paid.
By Carol Tice
Several writers have commented to me that they make $30-$40 an hour writing four articles an hour for content mills, and that they consider that great pay.
But is it? What is a good rate to shoot for in freelance writing?
My answer, in case you couldn’t tell from the title of this piece, is $100 an hour. That should be your goal.
Let’s do the math to learn why it’s important that your hourly rate be so high.
If you work 35 hours a week, $30 an hour means you’d make $52,500 a year allowing for 2 weeks’ vacation. Sounds good on the face of it, right?
But at $100 an hour, you make $175,000 a year. Wow! Big difference, huh?
I sense that you’re freaking out. Think it’s impossible? Yesterday’s pay rate? Hardly. That’s my own rate goal for my business.
If you’re saying, “I don’t need to make $175,000 a year, so $30 an hour will be OK,” I’d like you to consider these three things:
Your expenses.Costs include paying your own health insurance, which is more costly every year. Paying state, local and federal taxes, and self-employment tax. Paying for equipment, marketing, Web-site development, advertising, heat, light, paper and other supplies. Making $40 an hour at a full-time job where they pay the benefits might pencil out – but the equation changes when you’re on your own. After expenses, that really doesn’t leave much net profit.
Unbillable hours. Then there’s the downtime. You wait for interview calls to start, bill accounts, market the business, tally up your monthly accounts, have a slow week where you aren’t fully booked, and on and on. Not every hour is a billable hour. Track your time for a month to get a sense of how many real, billable hours you’ve got – it’ll probably be eye-opening.
Work/life balance. Didn’t you start freelancing so you could spend more time with family? Many freelancers get into it for the “freedom,” but end up working 12-hour days to keep it going…not that freeing in my view. A lot of us with children find we’ve got only 30-32 real, available work hours in the week unless we want to stick our kids in many hours of child care.
Put these three factors together and you’ll quickly see why your average hourly rate needs to be high in order for you to earn a decent living.
Don’t know what your average hourly rate is now?
Track your billable hours for a month to get a sense of your current rate. Then, set a goal of improving your hourly rate in 2010. You won’t bill $100 an hour overnight if you’re at $20 an hour now. It’ll take time to gradually replace lower-paying accounts with higher ones – but it’ll be worth the effort.
There’s one final reason to aim high, for $100 an hour. We often don’t achieve our goals in life. Maybe one client’s at $100 an hour, but you have another situation where it works out to less, but there’s still a good reason to do the gig — a great editor connection you want to keep, for instance, or great exposure that helps your marketing. So when we shoot for $100, we may end up with $75 overall and still do quite well. Shoot for $30 and you may end up with not enough to buy groceries.
Whatever your rate now, make a plan to increase your hourly rate in the coming year – because better-paying gigs are what truly put the “free” in freelance.
During my wonderfully restful winter break, I realized I’ve given a lot of advice about how to make a living writing without discussing the one rule that’s really made it possible for me to become a successful, well-paid freelance writer.
So I’m going to tell it to you now. Fasten your seatbelts, because this one piece of advice will be the single most powerful thing I will ever tell you. This one has the potential to completely change your life.
Ready? Here it is:
Not ever. I turn off my computer, my phone, my celphone and whatever other devices are around that might lead to working. I am not posting on Twitter, updating my Web site, prospecting for clients, filing articles, or conducting interviews.
Even more radical than not working for 25 hours each week, during that time period I don’t thinkabout work, either. I don’t plan what I’ll do when I get back to the computer. I don’t talk business with friends. I slam the door on my business life and leave it completely behind.
Each and every week, I take a complete vacation from working. It’s called Shabbat, or the Sabbath. And it’s the most amazing tool for personal growth ever invented.
Without that time away to reflect, relax, unplug…we humans tend to just grind along, slowly getting more and more burned out. We don’t progress as fast. We don’t fully realize our potential.
When Stephen Covey made “sharpen the saw” one of his 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, he was echoing a timeless truth: we need time off to recharge in order to be our best.
There’s a reason we’re not called “human doings” but “human beings.” We need time to just be. To discover who we really are, apart from our ability to earn, meet deadlines, and take meetings. To simply marvel at our good fortune at being alive in this beautiful world.
I’m not trying to convince anyone to practice my religious faith – Jews don’t seek converts. But in today’s real-time culture of 24/7 connectivity, I’m finding it’s more important than ever to carve out a big block of time away from work each week. It’ll save your sanity, refresh you, inspire you, and make you a better friend, sibling, spouse, parent…and writer.
It may sound scary to take one-seventh of your time each week and commit to making it work-free. When people start doing it, they’re often terrified they’ll earn less. But the reality is you’ll probably earn more, because you’ll be so much more effective. Either way, I guarantee you’ll be happier.
Remember, nobody’s tombstone says, “I wish I had spent more time at the office.”
All I can say is try it, you’ll like it! Maybe for you it’ll be Sundays, or Mondays, or it’ll start in the morning, or whenever. However you do it, know that you deserve a day off. Take it, and see what happens.
What are the 7 habits of highly-paid freelance writers?
1. They don’t waste time on low-paying gigs. I recently had a mentee sent me a plaintive email as she wondered how she would make more money than the $10,000 a year or so she was earning. “So, do I just say ‘no’ when people offer me $20 articles?” she wailed.
Yes. That is exactly what you do.
Say it with me. “No.”
Or better, “No thank you, but feel free to contact me in the future if you find you’re in a position to pay professional rates.”
2. They’re not neurotic. They are not spending hours a day wringing their hands over the state of journalism today. They do not need to dust their office five times daily, or have all their desk knick-knacks lined up just so to start working. They get down to business and start writing. They don’t have a lot of writing tics, either – they know how to spit out a draft, polish it up, and file it.
3. They take good care of themselves. The wan, flabby, sleep-deprived yet wildly successful writer is a bit of a myth. To earn well, year in and year out, you have to write and live in a sustainable way. Personally, I try to go walk uphill and down around my home for about an hour before I start working, or do Wii Fit yoga. I catch a nap if I need to. You have to be in good shape to be brilliant.
4. They’re always prospecting. To find really well-paid work, you have to troll a lot, sifting out all the junk offers and moving forward until you find really good clients. This requires a focused, coordinated, consistant marketing effort, not the occasional, sporadic attempt at networking.
5. They’re efficient. Well-paid writers don’t waste time applying for obviously low-paying jobs through online ads. They know how to quickly find information they need for stories. It doesn’t take them a day to write one short article — it might take them an hour or less. They prioritize their day’s tasks and then knock them out, one by one.
6. They’re diversified. I once met another writer working on a story package for a special section of the Seattle Times. I admired her work and asked her what other accounts she had. Turned out she also did copywriting for a major American automaker!
This was my first introduction to really diversifying my clients. Now I find that if you locate a well-paid writer and ask them about their client list, they’ve usually got at least one major copywriting account up their sleeve. They may write white papers as well as newspaper articles, online content, and product manuals. When one sector suffers, they have other writing types to fall back on.
7. They have goals. Writers who end up at the top of the heap usually don’t land there by accident. They have laid a deliberate course to get where they wanted to go. They break down their goal into small steps and strive to accomplish some small task to propel their career in the right direction each week. They make it a priority in their lives to work on those goals.
By Carol Tice
After recently heard from a brand-new freelance writer.
“Do you have a helpful list of suggestions for people trying to break into writing?” he asked. “I’m totally new to this.”
This got me thinking about the important habits for writers looking to break into earning and getting those first few clips. Here they are:
1. They write regularly. Develop a writing routine and try to write every day. That’s the only way you’ll be ready when you get a paying assignment.
2. They believe in themselves. Rejection letters do no phase them. If they send 20 resumes and queries and get no responses, they don’t take it personally. They don’t dwell on it – they move right on to the next step in their plan to find paid writing.
3. They are willing to market their business. Their methods may vary – they may favor in-person networking, cold-calling, social networking or sending query letters. But successful new writers are always looking for a new, better-paying client. They have a plan to market their writing and stick with it.
4. They seek out mentors. Writers who want to earn a good living attend workshops, hire mentors or coaches, or ask editors for advice. They know mentors can help them develop and get better-paying assignments.
5. They are open to criticism. Successful writers are not prima donnas who moan over ever tiny change an editor wants to make to their story. They join writer’s groups to seek feedback on their work. They are self-confident enough to listen with an open mind to suggestions for improving their work.
6. They keep learning. Whether it’s reading the newspaper to study the style of it, or buying writing books, downloading e-books, taking college classes, e-courses, or a writer’s group, successful writers look for opportunities to increase their knowledge.
7. They have goals. Vague dreams of earning a living from writing will not put money in the bank. Writers who want to move up in pay set long-term goals and break them down into shorter-range goals. They break those down into concrete to-do lists and focus on accomplishing their tasks, and track their progress. Periodically, they analyze their results and to adjust their goals based on what’s working best for them.
By Carol Tice
A Make a Living Writing blog reader asked me for more information on how to convince corporate clients to pay higher rates for your services.
“Tips about how writers can articulate their worth would be very interesting,” she wrote. “Not what does the writer NEED, but what is professional writing WORTH to the client — especially relative to other professional services they retain.”
Great question.
Here’s the speech I give prospective clients who ask me about rates. One of the things I’ll frequently say early on goes something like this:
“If you’re having a bidding contest to find the lowest price, I’d like to tell you right now I’m going to lose. I will not be your lowest bidder, and I don’t generally work with companies that are only concerned with how little they can pay for writing.
“I work with business owners seeking exceptionally talented writers who can help establish them as the pre-eminent thought leaders in their sector. They need to communicate in a sophisticated, compelling way with their target audience.
“That’s what I will deliver for you — authoritative content that communicates that you are the most knowledgeable source for information in your industry. This will attract quality clients, build Web traffic, and will pave the way for you to charge more for what you do.”
Of course, when presented with it that way, most of my prospects rush to say, “Oh, that’s me! I understand that I need to be the authority. That’s just what we need to do.” And discussions of how little they can get me to work for tend to evaporate.
They get it immediately — I’ve helped them put their finger on what it is they’re really in the market for. They need content so compelling and strong that it will enhance their brand and company reputation, and bring them more business. Not every writer can give them that — but I can.
Once you’ve framed it that way, if they balk at a rate, I tend to point out that paying, say, $1,500 for a custom-written article they can get republished in newspapers, use on their site, hand out as fliers, email to their prospect list, expand into a white paper, and otherwise use FOREVER to promote their business and drive Web traffic at no additional charge is the marketing bargain of the century.
Compare it to the cost of placing a single decent-sized print ad! To doing one radio spot, or putting up one billboard! The reality is that having strongly written information about your company is a real deal, even at prime rates.
I find most writers don’t think about their services through the client’s eyes. Writing is usually part of companies’ marketing budget — and in that context, it’s very affordable compared with many other forms of marketing spend.
So ask for a great rate, and explain why you’ll be worth it. You’ll be surprised how often you find yourself with a wonderful new client who’s happy to have you, and willing to pay you what you deserve.
