Displaying All Posts in the Freelance category

7 Secrets to Faster Writing

One of the main qualities of a good freelance writer is their ability to not only write well but to write quickly.

This is especially true if you are at the beginning of your writing career. You must learn how to write faster because you need to write more; you are getting paid less.

And if you like eating three meals a day, and so does your dog, then you better learn to write faster before both of you are hungry — very hungry.

Here are a few tips to help you get started on becoming a faster writer. You and your dog can thank us for them later. Click Here to Read Article …

4 Ways to Make Money While Writing

I’ve spent a lot of my adult life fretting about jobs, having job openings called to my attention, feeling a reflexive jolt of recognition at the sight of any “Help Wanted” sign.

I’ve often felt I was re-inventing the wheel and constantly redefining what I wanted to be when I grew up. That’s a sad state of affairs for someone with a guiding passion — writing — that is as well-defined, and that I’ve followed as faithfully, as the life’s work of anyone I know.

I’ve always said writers have to have two jobs. A doctor or engineer or school teacher find that their self-realization and bread-winning vocation are one in the same.

Click Here to Read Article …

5 Secrets to Awesome New Blog Posts

blog post ideas

Blogging is a legitimate descendant of journalism. In some cases, you are chronicling the events and trends of your world for your readers, and, in others, adding your opinions. In other instances, you are offering advice and a place to share opinions, insights, and help.

The major difference between you and the observers of past decades is your potentially global audience. How disheartening, then, to encounter the same challenge that journalists, commentators, and advice columnists have always risked — a blank screen and an empty fund of ideas! Here are some ways to prompt creativity. You would not be blogging if you did not have ideas — the trick is to unlock them when you need them!

Click Here to Read Article …

How to Maximize Your Blog’s Potential

Whether you’re building a blog as a means of launching your own business, using it as a promotional tool to display your freelance portfolio, or even creating a new social media hub, it can be tricky getting the right people to see it.

It’s important to regularly accrue new visitors to your blog, and it’s even more important to keep them coming back. Having recurring visitors will transform your blog from a one-person show to a vibrant community.

Click Here to Read Article …

How to Publish Your Own Book

The advent of e-books, Amazon, and the digital adaptation of almost everything has made being able to publish your work for the world easier than ever. It seems like every other day you hear a success story about an author who made it big by publishing their books on their own terms, without a publisher.

The truth is that there is a lot of work involved when you publish your own book, and the people who have succeeded have put in the time and effort to make sure they did things right. It can be a complicated process, and you have to wear a lot of hats to successfully publish your book.

But it can be done! You just have to go into it knowing what to do. Click Here to Read Article …

How to Build a Killer Writing Portfolio

Freelance writers need portfolios of their writing. They are necessary for getting work and for establishing your status as a working, professional technician of prose.

The ideal set-up is to have and maintain a portfolio online. This can be on your own website, a professional networking site, or even a blog you establish just to post your work in the form of a portfolio.

The important thing is to have a collection that you use expressly for that purpose, not a site on which you just happened to have posted a few pieces a while ago, and not a bunch of links you e-mail potential clients. The portfolio must be created, designed, manicured, and maintained specifically for the sort of freelance work you’re seeking.

And the sooner you engineer it, the better. When you begin seeking a number of freelance assignments, have your portfolio stocked, adding and deleting as your professional life progresses.

The overarching concept guiding the building of a portfolio is to think of it as one cohesive piece. Many of the concepts below are components of this. Click Here to Read Article …

How to Brand Yourself

As a freelancer, you’re expected to wear a lot of different hats.

You’re an entrepreneur whose business and brand is yourself. You’re in charge of setting schedules, establishing financial goals, and at the foundation of it all, you’re in charge of your brand—you.

As you grow and develop as a freelancer in any field, you’ll be known by your work and your reputation. To command the amount of money that you’re worth, you’ll need to learn to build up a brand of who you are and what people can expect when dealing with you.

This concept can be one of the most difficult for people new to the industry to get invested in.

Many of the people going through this process now have grown up with the internet, making personal connections and publishing content at their discretion. It can be hard to think of personal communication as part of your business, but one must learn to think about everything one posts on the internet.

When you get started, there are a few things you should be thinking about. Click Here to Read Article …

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5 Awesome Research Tools for Freelancers (and Everyone Else)

If you are anything like me, researching a topic can take much more time than actually writing about it. If you don’t have some kind of system when you are doing your research, you can spend entirely too much time sifting through articles and data, which can really take a bite out your overall productivity.

There are more tools available to you to accomplish this kind of efficiency than you could ever make the time to look through and evaluate, so it’s a good thing I’m here to help you move in the right direction, and it’s also a good thing I’m not charging you by the hour to do it – I could really rack up a padded time sheet if I went back and added it up.

Instead, I’m going to give you my top 5 tools for online researching for the low, low price of free. My only requirement is that if you are still using Internet Explorer as your browser, you have to download Chrome or Firefox – right now, go ahead, I’m waiting. Got it? Okay, now delete IE from your computer and swear that you will never again do anything so ridiculous. Then move forward with the article, knowing that most of these tools are Chrome extensions or at least have Chrome extensions in addition to the full apps. Click Here to Read Article …