Web Writer: To Find Writing Jobs, Go To Where the Clients Are
You’re a Web writer, and you’re looking for clients. Luckily, your services are in high demand.
However, some writers think too small. On the freelance writing blog, I’ve been writing a series of posts on making $500 a day from your writing.
Read that series, and if you’re having problems with finding jobs which pay more, read this article on thinking small too.
Now let’s talk about finding Web writing jobs. If you’re looking for writing jobs, you may well be looking in the wrong places.
Go to where the clients are: Web development agencies
I encourage my SYWON (Sell Your Writing Online Now) students to go to where the clients already are… that is, to agencies.
As I said in this blog post, Writing for Money: 5 Tips for Making Sales | Sell Your Writing Online NOW Blog:
“Advertising agencies, graphic design agencies, and marketing agencies all use freelance writers. They use freelancers when there’s too much work, and they don’t have staff to handle it.
It’s a good idea to get onto the books of as many agencies as you can. The work you receive from agencies may be sporadic, or it may be regular. You may even find that you become a quasi-member of staff if an agency discovers that you can manage the projects they’re working on, and are reliable.”
From my own work with clients, and from talking with other Web creatives, I know that Web development agencies are hugely busy. They need writers.
When you work with an agency, you’re acting as a sub-contractor. That has benefits, but it also has a downside. The big benefit is that someone else finds writing jobs for you. The downside is that you’ll make less money than if you found your own gigs. However, since marketing takes time, and time is money, it all balances out.
The simplest way to find Web development agencies is to look in your local Yellow Pages, or to look on the Web.
Introduce yourself to as many agencies as you can, and stay in touch with them. Make them aware of your specialties. You won’t need to wait long for projects, because more and more businesses are using the Web as part of their marketing. They’re also buying a lot more Web content.
Go to where the buyers are, and get to work.
By the way, check out today’s Monday Madness offering.
NEW: Coaching Workshop (offering closing)
Just a quick note about the “Make Your Website Sell: Coaching Workshop” — the special offering closes shortly.
Who this workshop is for
* If you’re a technophobe, this workshop is for you;
* If you’re nervous about selling online, this workshop is for you;
* If you’ve been making plans, but haven’t put them into action — now’s the time.
I’ve been meaning to offer a workshop just for websites for a couple of years. The skills you learn will stand you in good stead your entire career…
And of course, if you want to create sites to sell, you can do that too.
The offering closes on January 12.
Web Writing: 3 Easy Ways to Get Clients by Becoming Known
Every Web writer needs writing jobs. However, for many writers, getting those jobs is more frustrating than it needs to be. You can save yourself the trouble of constantly hunting for new clients when you become known.
When I start working with a writing coaching student, I often ask: “How many people know that you write for money?”
It always shocks the writer when he realizes that he’s keeping his profession a secret. This isn’t good strategy. The more people who know you write, the more can hire you. Common sense, right?
Therefore, the first thing you need to do to get more clients, is to let your circle of acquaintances know that you’re open to any and all Web writing jobs that they can find for you.
Once you’ve done that, you can widen the circle. The first way to do that is to start introducing yourself to those people who can hire you.
1. Introduce Yourself: Say Hello to Prospects
Remember, the more people who know you write for the Web, the better. Start introducing yourself around.
Use email. If you’re braver, pick up the phone. Either works.
Here’s a little message you can send out to agencies, as well as individual prospects:
“Hi ___ (whoever)”
“My name is ________. I’ve recently set up shop as a Web writer…” Etc.
Your message doesn’t need to be long. In fact, the shorter the better. Close your message with: “I’ll call you within the next week or so, to discuss your needs for Web content.”
2. Become Visible: Clients Need to Know and Trust You
Once you’ve started introducing yourself, focus on building your visibility. Hunting for Web writing jobs is a pain. You want clients to contact you.
Create a blog, and use social media marketing, as well as content marketing, to build your visibility. You’ll be doing this for your clients, so you need to do it for yourself, as well.
If you’re having a “yes, but…” moment, and think that you can weasel out of this, think again. In Web writing, being visible is essential. Whenever someone types your name into the Google search query box, there should be many references to your name.
3. Use Blogs and Social Media to Best Effect
In addition to using blogs and social media to build your name and get known, there’s another reason for using them, and it’s this: to educate both your clients, and your prospects.
Few of your clients know much about how the Web works, and how it can help their business. You need to educate them. Rather than educating them one-on-one, which takes time, educate en masse.
Education is a form of content marketing, and it works.
So there you have it; three easy ways to get Web writing clients by becoming known. Not only are these methods easy, they’re fun, too.
Writing for Money: 5 Tips for Making Sales
You’re a professional writer, so you write for money. Many writers struggle with this. They find it hard to split their creative side from their business side. If you feel this way, the five tips in this article will help.
1. Use Loss Leaders
Loss leaders are used by supermarkets and many other businesses to increase sales.
Supermarkets offer specials each week, with new specials each day. They promote their specials, and this brings customers into the store. The customers buy the specials, and they buy additional items as well. New customers will become regular customers.
All businesses know the value of loss leaders. Think about how you might use this strategy in your own business.
2. Write for Agencies
Advertising agencies, graphic design agencies, and marketing agencies all use freelance writers. They use freelancers when there’s too much work, and they don’t have staff to handle it.
It’s a good idea to get onto the books of as many agencies as you can. The work you receive from agencies may be sporadic, or it may be regular. You may even find that you become a quasi-member of staff if an agency discovers that you can manage the projects they’re working on, and are reliable.
Remember that the market for your work is global. You can work as easily for an agency on the other side of the world as you do for one in your city.
3. Write for Passive Income
I’m always encouraging my writing students to develop sources of passive income. This is because as a writer, you’re trading hours for dollars. If you become ill, or are otherwise unable to work, your income stops.
Develop ebooks and other material which you can sell over and over again. Amazon’s Kindle bookstore was made for writers; it’s a goldmine.
No matter how busy you are, you can spare 20 minutes a day. Spend that 20 minutes developing passive income streams.
4. Set Writing Goals for Each Day
Goals are essential. They make you stretch, and prevent procrastination. If you don’t have goals, create some today.
Create both longterm, and short term goals. Think five years ahead, and work towards those goals now.
5. Focus on Writing Every Day: the More You Write, the More You Earn
If you double the amount you’re writing each day, you’ll double your income. Think about how you might accomplish that.
On those days on which you find that yourself procrastinating, use a timer. Set a countdown timer for 25 minutes, and start writing.
Get the Sell Your Writing Online NOW (SYWON) Free Report
Want to make money writing online? Get the free report. You can cash in on your words today. “Write and Make Money: Cash In On Your Words Today” is an 18-page PDF containing a series of articles to help you to make money online, just by writing.
How to Write and Develop Passive Income
The goal of every writer should be to create passive income. You can do it, as long as you plan for it. Let’s look at how you can do that.
You may be wondering just what “passive income” is. Often it’s income that’s derived from the licensing of your writing in one way or another. You license the rights to your writing to someone else, and they publish your writing. When the book is bought, or people go and see the movie, you receive a royalty.
Royalty payments are the original form of passive income.
These days however, writers have many more opportunities for creating passive income than depending on book royalties from traditional publishers, or from movie sales.
You can self-publish your own books, and keep all the profits for yourself. Beyond books, you can create websites, which make money for you in various ways.
Here’s a simple process for getting started on creating passive income.
1. Decide What You’d Like to Write
Do you want to write ebooks or books? This is the simplest form of passive income creation. You can do this quickly, you don’t have to spend a year writing a book; your ebooks can be very short, when compared to traditional books.
You can write fiction, or nonfiction. Currently on the Amazon Kindle bookstore, fiction outsells fiction six to one. Therefore, if you like writing fiction, just get started.
2. Create a Publication Schedule
The most successful creators of passive income are those people who have a schedule. They treat creating passive income streams like a job. They make plans, and carry them out.
Therefore, once you’ve decide what you want to write, create a schedule for your projects. Add the starting dates, and the deadlines, to your calendar.
3. Expect That Some of Your Attempts Will Be Duds
You may create a best-selling ebook, or a high-income generating website the first time you try to create passive income.
However, chances are that you’ll stumble the first few times, and your early attempts will be duds. Don’t let this faze you.
Everyone fails their way to success. Look on everything you do as an experiment. Some of your experiments will be highly successful, others less so.
You will learn, even from your duds. Sooner or later, because of everything you’ve learned, you’ll create something which will go on producing passive income for you for years.
Why not get started creating your first passive income project today?
Turn Your Words Into Gold: Write and Sell An Ebook In Just Eight Hours
Here’s what I love about writing ebooks: you write them once, and they keep on selling forever.
I know several writers who’ve taken to the Kindle platform like the proverbial ducks to water. One writer friend turns out a new Kindle ebook every month, like clockwork. The last time we spoke, she had 11 ebooks selling — and her income is rising month by month.
Another writer friend mixes writing her own ebooks, with writing ebooks for others. Currently she’s been commissioned to write a biography, and a family history, for the same client. She’s finding it huge fun, and she’s making more money than she’s ever made.
The benefit of writing and selling ebooks is that once written, they can keep on selling forever. Would you trade eight hours for an income stream?
Want to Join Our Novel-Writing Challenge?
Kindle ebooks are hot. I know five writers who are making $40,000 a month on the Kindle ebook store, selling their novels. Although all have been writing for several years, none has a backlist. This is new fiction, which they’re self-publishing on Amazon.
Kindle self-publishing is a HUGE opportunity for writers. Look on it as auto-pilot income. Once you’ve written your books, they will sell for years.
I’m working on several Kindle novels myself, and found that I was allowing myself to get into bad habits — I allowed urgent tasks to crowd out important tasks, the most important being working on my novels.
So I decided to challenge myself. When I wrote about it to ezine subscribers, many were interested in joining me.
I created a mailing list, A 30-Day Novel-Writing Challenge:
“How the 30-Day Novel-Writing Challenge Works
Join the mailing list — enter your name and email address.
Each day, you’ll receive a short motivating tip/ advice to help you with your Kindle fiction.
You can share your progress using the Twitter hashtag: #30novel.”
You can join the Challenge at any time. Writing Kindle fiction is yet another way to make money writing.
Writing for Money: Preparation Is Everything
Are you a beginning writer?
In this article, Write Articles For Pay: Beginners Start Here | Angela Booth’s Fab Freelance Writing Blog, I said:
“Here’s the thing: each and every professional writer started as a beginner. There’s no way around that. Experience makes you a professional. So, as a beginner, your only goal is to get that experience.”
Please take that seriously, and WRITE. Don’t think, just do. I have an acronym which reminds me of what I’m supposed to be doing. Here it is: DDT. (Do, Don’t Think.)
New writers tend to over-think things — in their head. Your thinking should happen on the page.
New writers also imagine that writing just happens. You get a great idea, and it magically flows from the tips of your fingers to the page, just like magic.
Au contraire, dear writer. Writing requires preparation, especially if you intend to do a lot of it. And you should. Writing is money… the more you write, the more you get paid. (As long as you’re not writing silly material that no one wants, or that many people want, but will only pay $3 for.)
Writing prolifically requires preparation
There’s no magic — the reality is much more gruesome.
Writing takes planning, and thinking, and you plan and think by writing.
I journal at the start and end of each writing day. I journal to think, and to plan. For me, and for many writers, journaling is a necessary step between your brain, and your writing. Writers who journal seem to be more productive than those who don’t.
You not only capture your ideas in your journals ( I have several journals), you also work them out — this preparation makes it much more likely that your ideas will actually appear on the Web, or in print — or as contract work for a client.
Why prepare? You do it because writing is HARD (I’d say impossible) if you don’t prepare.
If you prepare, by pre-writing, by journaling, by free writing and by mind mapping — you don’t need to use all of these strategies, but I do — your writing becomes EASY.
Your writer-friends who don’t prepare will look at you as if you’ve grown an extra head when you blithely say: “writing is easy…” Let them. If they’re too lazy to prepare, they can sit and stare at the computer monitor until blood flows from their eyeballs, if they wish. You, on the other hand, prepare, by journaling etc. and YOUR writing flows onto the page like water.
If it helps, think of yourself as a chef. A chef gets up early, and goes to the marketplace — consider reading your “marketplace.” Then the chef does a couple of hours of prep work: he slices and dices the raw food, prepares sauces, and pastries… Writers prepare too, by journaling et al.
Finally, the chef prepares meals. After your preparation, you write. Cooking is a performance. So is writing.
If you want to write for money, and do it well, prepare. Your preparation is everything.
Want to write for the Web? Sell Your Writing Online NOW (SYWON) gives you all the information and practical training you need. You can go from zero income to making $250 per hour in just a year. Does this sound like a long time to you? Consider that you’ll be making money quickly, and that your income will build month by month. Writing for the Web, the SYWON way, is fun, and exciting, and you get personal coaching from me, Angela Booth, right throughout your training. Join us — you’ll love it, I promise. 
SYWON: Your Free ContentBee Blurb
If you’re a Sell Your Writing Online NOW (SYWON) member, please don’t forget to send us your blurb for ContentBee.
It’s a free link, and will kick start traffic to your site. The info is in Lesson # 3, so please do it, if you haven’t done so.
Further on your blurb, you can use it in many ways.
* As a byline (shortened):
* As a profile (anywhere on the Web, particularly Google and forums, or offline);
* As a signature file;
* As part of a press release.
Your blurb may take you a few minutes to write, but those few minutes pay off big over time.
Enjoy SYWON…
If you’re not yet a member of SYWON, here’s are what one member said:
“Sell Your Writing Online NOW (SYWON) is the best thing I have found anywhere. I am up to lesson 9 and really underway. If I had found this earlier, I would have saved myself a lot of money, time and frustration.” – Evelena Hudson
Write For The Web: Content Writing When You’re Not An Expert In a Topic
Want to write for the Web? Web writing can be very lucrative indeed.
You’ll be writing in many different areas, often on topics which are totally unfamiliar to you.
So — how you do write about something when you know nothing about it?
Big tip: realize that you don’t need to be an expert. You simply need to familiarize yourself with the topic.
In a recent article, I said:
Before you start writing, you need to become conversant with your topic — familiar with it, in other words. You certainly don’t need to be an expert.
It’s fine to cover a topic if you’re a beginner. Journalists know this. They aren’t experts in most of the areas they cover, and they don’t need to be. They do ensure however that they know enough so that they can ask intelligent questions of experts.
You can do the same: become conversant with a topic before you write about it. If you’re a total beginner in a topic that’s fine; most of your readers will know less than you do.
Curiosity is your most powerful weapon. Ask questions, and find the answers.
Let’s see how this works. You’ve taken on a content writing job: writing articles about anti-aging cream.
You know as much about anti-aging cream as you do about marine corals, but you’re game. You’ll familiarize yourself with the topic. Expect to spend at least a couple of hours, maybe more, on this. If you’re aiming to write quality content, you’ll research more.
Start by estimating how long this research will take you.
Tip: sometimes a writing job just doesn’t pay enough for you to spend time familiarizing yourself with it; the client doesn’t want to pay for your research time. Pass the job by. Not every writing job is for you.
How to become conversant with a topic
1. Start by asking questions. Write them down. Use Who, What, Why, When, Where and How.
2. Find the answers. Check the Web, forums, Amazon, company websites… I encourage you to place a time limit on your research. Remember, you simply want to become conversant with the topic.
3. Write down the answers you’ve found. Writing them down ensures that you’ll remember the answers.
Another tip: remember your aim isn’t to become an expert. Usually, you’ll be writing for general readers, who know little about your topic.
On the other hand, if you’re writing for experts, you’ll need to interview experts. Don’t try to become an expert. Becoming an expert in anything takes years. You don’t have the luxury of time.
In your Web writing career, you’ll write about hundreds of topics. You don’t need to be an expert. You can write for the Web, and write well, simply by familiarizing yourself with a topic, and writing for a specific audience.
Build your writing career, step by step
Sell Your Writing Online NOW (SYWON) web writing training gives you highly marketable skills which will build your writing career for a lifetime.
You discover how to:
* Make great money writing simple Web articles
* Develop sites and blogs (using easy, free tools) which you can sell for 12 times their monthly earnings. (For example, if you create a small site which makes you $500 a month, you can sell it for $6,000 and more)
* Create ebooks which bring you in a passive income for years to come
* Develop a successful writing services practice — charge $250 an hour for your writing services
* and much, much more.
Start your new writing life today.
Product Creation Success: Develop a Powerful Product Funnel
If you’re growing your product creation business, you need to develop a powerful funnel. Your ebooks and other materials are more powerfully attractive to your customers if they fill their growing needs.
Your marketing funnel also keeps your customers loyal to you.
If your funnel has been properly constructed, your customers will buy not just one but many products from you. Let’s look at how you might develop a powerful product funnel.
Think about what the funnel looks like. It’s quite broad, slopes down, and then narrows quite sharply. This illustrates that when you develop your funnel, you need to have one or several low-priced, popular ebooks to offer your customers. These ebooks (or other materials) should provide great value.
Here are some tips which will help you to develop your funnel.
1. Go Beyond the Obvious: Add Value
When creating your funnel, especially the first products which will be low-priced, you need to go beyond the obvious and make those products huge value.
Buying the your ebook should be a no-brainer for your target market.
There are various ways to add value. For example, you can add a video program to any book, or you can create the entire package as a course and send it out on DVD and with hard copy as well.
You wouldn’t make very much money on this initial offering. However your aim with these high-value initial offering is not to make a huge profit. It’s to build your funnel.
2. Your Next Product Helps Your Customers Take the Next Step
When you’re constructing a funnel, you want as many customers to enter it as possible. All your customers should be in the same niche. That is, if your first ebook is in the health area, you wouldn’t expect those customers to be interested in a business ebook.
Ideally, you’d plan your entire funnel before you created the first product. However, most product producers don’t think in terms of creating a set of materials.
If you’ve already created several ebooks, think about how you could convert them into a product funnel.
3. Boost the Value With Coaching
Many people buy information in ebook form and never get full value. They find the ebook too challenging, and because they don’t have someone who’s willing to help them, they give up on their dream.
Therefore, customer service needs to be a huge part of your business. Your customers are buying your materials for a reason, and you need to help them to get the results they want.
Have your customer service set up well so that you respond in a timely manner to any enquiries. Add additional materials to help your customers, and your customer list will grow.
All your materials can work together. Once you’ve got your funnel set up properly, you’ll just need to promote your initial offerings to ensure huge success.
Create the perfect writing business: become an ebook entrepreneur
Stop trading hours for money. You can remove the blocks on your income with my ebook-creators package. You discover my secrets, developing over years of writing and selling information products.
Ebooks and other information products are HOT. If you can write, you’re golden. Get started creating your ebook empire today.
SYWON
