How to Break Into Freelancing

I’d like to introduce you to Nikolas Baron, who’s guest-posting today on Straight From Hel. Nikolas discovered his love for the written word in Elementary School, where he started spending his afternoons sprawled across the living room floor devouring one Marc Brown children’s novel after the other and writing short stories about daring pirate adventures. After acquiring some experience in various marketing, business development, and hiring roles at internet startups in a few different countries, he decided to re-unite his professional life with his childhood passions by joining Grammarly’s marketing team in San Francisco. He has the pleasure of being tasked with talking to writers, bloggers, teachers, and others about how they use Grammarly’s online proofreading application to improve their writing. His free time is spent biking, travelling, and reading.

How to Break Into Freelancing

Breaking into freelance writing can be challenging. With the plethora of blogs and online publications, it may seem as if everyone is writing online. Job boards can make the writing scene seem even more depressing, with ridiculously low rates offered for high word counts. Freelancing is a business, and like any other business, it requires commitment, dedication, and a certain level of expertise to achieve success.

The writer who approaches freelancing as a business will succeed more readily than one who is passionate about writing but doesn’t understand the difference between writing for one’s self and writing for publication. Writing for publication requires the ability to channel one’s passion into topics that others want to read and create valuable content. Professionalism requires a constant pursuit of quality in the craft. Using tools like writing courses, books, critique groups, and an online spelling, grammar, and plagiarism checker can help the writer improve his or her technique to the level of producing publication-worthy material regularly.  

Writing every day is important to success. Guest blog posts are an excellent way to get started. The aspiring writer should seek out blogs that are open to guest posts and send the owner a query, or a “pitch”, asking about the possibility of writing a guest post for the blog. These jobs don’t often pay well, or sometimes at all, but they can be an opportunity to collect writing samples to use when querying larger markets. Most freelance writers spend about half their working time actually writing and the rest on seeking out markets for their work. While it is possible to write first and sell later, it’s more economical to write queries and secure approval from an editor before beginning to write. By using queries, the writer can save him or herself a lot of time writing generic articles that don’t capture the fancy of any one blog or publication.  

A solid query is a valuable asset. After all, the editor is evaluating the writer’s skill in putting together words into coherent sentences. If the query is sloppy, poorly written, or not carefully checked for grammar and spelling, the editor is unlikely to be interested in the writer’s work. The query should receive as much attention and care as the actual article or blog entry in order to make a solid impression. Even if the first query is turned away, a writer who presents a professional image is more likely to have a later idea picked up.

Pricing is one of the most challenging aspects of running a freelancing business. There is a strong temptation to accept very low pay in order to establish a presence online. Although it may be wise, occasionally, to write for little or no pay, this should be done very judiciously, either in support of a cherished cause, or for the chance at significant exposure. Freelancing is about earning a living by writing. It’s difficult to pay the bills with likes, comments, and online interactions with readers. While the fanfare that comes with a well-received blog article is gratifying, it doesn’t buy groceries. It’s important to set a reasonable price on work done.

Building a freelancing business, just as with any other enterprise, requires an investment of time and effort. Maintaining professionalism requires attention to detail and a dedication to constantly making personal improvements. In addition, deadlines are critical to the freelancer. Competition is fierce, and writers who do not meet deadlines will soon find themselves out of work. Writing is also a passion for most aspiring freelancers. As such, keeping a regular schedule helps keep deadlines under control and also creates a sense of purpose. The schedule should include both regular, focused writing time and time for marketing, reading, and seeking out new markets and clients.

Freelance writing can be a fulfilling career for the one who is able to maintain focus, self-direction, and motivation. Certainly, passion for a particular subject may be the driving force that motivates a writer to begin freelancing. However, sustaining a career as a writer demands knowledge of running a business, an attitude of professionalism, and a firm dedication to quality.

Leave a comment or question for Nikolas. Have any of you used Grammarly’s online proofreading application?

Citizen Journalists

Slyvia Forbes, publisher of Bylines Writer’s Desk Calendar, sent me the link to an article on the Stinky Journalism site about the tax responsibilities of Citizen Journalists. Sylvia is a full-time freelance writer in Missouri and has published over 400 non-fiction articles. I’m not a Citizen Journalist, but if you give (not sell) content to newspapers and sites that then make a profit off your material, you may be hit up for taxes. Even though you made no money on the material your wrote. Even if you received no credit or byline. Even though it was the paper that made the profit, not you.

Here’s just a tiny snippet of what Rhonda Roland Shearer and Danielle Elliot have to say in this article:

While not all citizen journalists are celebrities, many are producing reports, videos and photographs that are viewed around the world. For profit-seeking media companies, it's literally the gift that keeps on giving. As the number of hits any individual content generates increases, so does the ad revenue and the overall asset value of the media web site. The amount of visitor traffic the content generates is a direct measure of the site's asset worth to investors. Web sites themselves are appraised as part of due diligence for investors that accesses the aggregate asset value of all the articles and videos. Hence, the site value is directly dependent on the donated content value when that is the business model employed.

The article was posted back in January. It’s quite long, with lots of contrary comments at the end. But if you are preparing your taxes and have contributed to for-profit papers or media without being paid, you’ll want to look into this. And read the comments as well, since most of them argue with some of the points made in the article. On the other side, the article quotes a lot of professionals.

And if you’d like to learn more about Sylvia’s Bylines Writer’s Desk Calendar, a planning tool for writers, visit that site. I’m hoping to talk about it here soon.

Four More Interviewing Tips

Did another interview for the TSTC project I’m working on. This time in Dallas, specifically at the Methodist Hospitals of Dallas.

If you read the previous post, then you know that the interview I talked about was in Bryan. From my house, the drive should have been about two hours, so I allowed two and a half. But with traffic, I only just barely made it in time for the interview, but with no time to pull myself together. This time, I was told by the friend whose house I’m staying at to expect the drive to be about an hour and a half, since it would involve morning commute traffic. To be safe, I left a little before seven for the nine o’clock meeting. And got there in 35 minutes. Hard to predict travel time.

In that previous post, I listed two things to remember when interviewing:

Be prepared for the unexpected.
Check your tape recorder and know how to use it.

While I was doing this interview (which actually turned into two interviews), I thought of other tips, the first one I mentioned briefly but should have stressed.

Listen.

Simple as that: Pay attention. Yeah, sure, you’re going to have a list of questions you hope to get answered. You may have those typed out to refer to, or, in my case, I write keywords at the top of my notepad that will remind me of my questions without having to have a typed page to hold onto. That way I have the questions in my head, but if need be, I can glance at the keywords. And if you have them on your notepad, you can look down, ostensibly to write a note, but really to check your cues. By knowing your questions ahead of time, you don’t have to be plotting what to ask next. And, as a result, you can … listen.

Very often what the subject is saying will lead you right into one of your prepared questions. Just as often, the words will lead you into an area you hadn’t even thought of asking. If you have time, follow the trail. It can lead you to information or quotes you can use. It may even lead you in a new direction for the article.

By following the lead of the subject, I got new information, material different than what I’d gotten in other interviews. By listening I got a tour of the facilities. By taking advantage of an unexpected offer, I was able to interview another person in the department. And I still got all my questions answered.

Second tip:

Be accommodating.

They’re giving you their time, which is precious, and their knowledge. If something happens during the interview, for example, a phone call they have to take, pick up your recorder and leave the room.

And another tip:

Leave your business card.

By leaving your contact information, you give that person a way to contact you if they think of something they want to add. Usually, they will give you their card so you can follow up with them, if you need to.

And finally:

Send a thank you note.

This is your opportunity to thank them for taking time out of their schedule to sit with you and share their expertise and information. If you didn’t have business cards with you at the interview, include one in the note.

Listen, don’t intrude, leave your contact information, and follow up with a note. Happy interviewing!

Writers of all Kinds

Yesterday, I had lunch with a very good friend of mine. In addition to a busy career as a marketing consultant, she’s also a writer, doing both short stories and articles. With many years of experience in the marketing field, including as vice president of a nationally known advertising firm, she could easily write the book on marketing. But it seems the articles she likes to write focus on the individuals, the human interest aspect of whatever the subject. She was telling me about a great idea she has for an article. She’s currently researching and putting it together. I won’t say the subject here, though. She’s already targeted a local magazine and at least one national magazine to pitch to.

Listening to her, I was thinking, wow, it’s sort of scary to do all that work, then pitch the idea, only to have it possibly turned down. Then, of course, I thought, duh, that’s exactly what novelists do, only they write out the entire three to four hundred pages. Both types of writing involve a lot of research, planning and sweat. And both can suffer rejection.

It seems that no matter what kind of writing you do, a writer has to be organized, committed, passionate, skilled and thick skinned. Definitely thick skinned.

Friends

It is so wonderful to have close friends. Had lunch today with a couple of good friends. What fun. The older I get, the more appreciative I am of friends.

One is an ESL teacher. ESL stands for English as a Second Language. She hasn’t told any “stories” about students, but it’s easy to imagine an ESL teacher as a lead character in a novel. I could see how such a protagonist could get into funny situations, thus a romping comedy. Or you could write a mystery with an ESL lead. Perhaps a romance.

The other friend is a freelance writer. She’s definitely into the writing scene. It was fun to hear about an article she’s working on now and the research she’s doing for it. There’s such a quick turnaround on articles. Quite different from working on a novel. I would think that would be rewarding, being able to see your words in print within a relatively short time after you’ve gotten the assignment or after you’ve finished writing the piece.

I would advocate for a Be Thankful for Friends Day, but I’ve decided that will be an everyday occasion for me. Thank you to all my friends, those close, those far, those new, and those who’ve stuck with me all these years.