How Freelance Writing For Free Pays

Freelance Writing Is Not Easy

Freelance writing is not an easy job. You have to spend time writing things you are not interested in because you're getting paid, and you are always worrying about where the next gig is coming from, at least at the start. And if you're ghostwriting, you don't even get the credit for your writing. That's why promotion is so important for freelance writers. It keeps your name out there and keeps the freelance writing work coming in. I'm always saying that writing for free isn't writing for free if you get something out of it - and now I have a concrete example to show you.

Freelance Writing History

When I started freelance writing, I wrote an article called Freelance Writers - Five Reasons Why You Need A Website. Some of you may recognise it as Freelance writers - four reasons to get on the net. I didn't get a dime for this article. It was picked up by freelancewriting.com and has been read by more than 3,000 people. It has also resulted in 120 visitors to my site in the past year. That's 10 a month since I wrote the article.

Freelance Writing Promotion

That's one freelance writing article. I know that's not a lot on its own, but I have about 50 articles out there, at least 33 of them unique and all with links back to my site. That's potentially a lot of traffic and may be part of the reason that I'm now getting more than 1,000 unique visitors a month to my freelance writing site. I am also getting Adsense money because some of those visitors like what they see. And people are starting to contact me about writing work (in fact, some of them are contacting me FOR freelance writing work, but that's another story). My point is this, one free article has made a big difference to my profile and to the money I make from freelance writing. Why not try it yourself?

Blogitive: The Party's Over For WritingUp

I was an early user of Blogitive, back in the days when it used to be fun. I made up rhymes and other bits of nonsense and included a link as well. It was good for creativity and gave a few people a laugh as well, but it looks like the Blogitive party is over.

It seems that blogs on WritingUp, BloggerParty and a few others are no longer going to be accepted from today. If you have a blog on one of those sites and have already had your post accepted, you will be paid, but they're not planning to issue any more offers. Here's the post that lays it all out.

I have mixed feelings about this because it started as an easy source of income, but it's not so easy now. I haven't been posting as many Blogitive posts here because of two of their rules (the 'only write about the press release' rule and the 'two posts in between rule'.) Apart from that, I haven't had much time, so writing three posts to make $5 is less cost effective than writing one. I know some people can do it, but it's been difficult to fit it in with my other writing work. Other paid posting sites don't impose those rules (at least not yet, and I can write a fun post in five minutes and get paid).

Maybe Blogitive has done me a favour. I won't waste time looking for WritingUp offers that I have to reject. It may also be the kiss of death for my BloggerParty blog. Who knows? On the plus side, I've still got a couple of other blogs they will accept, if I can be bothered to write anything for them. I hope you do too.

(Thanks for the heads up, abi.)

I Was Unfaithful To Adsense

I was unfaithful to Adsense. I admit it. My faith wavered in the face of suspected click fraud and I removed my Adsense ID. I was seduced by other advertisers, too numerous to mention, but I have learned my lesson. I have gradually replaced all the false tempters on my blogs and sites with my Adsense ads. I have turned away from temptation and I have had my reward ...

... or at least I will, in about two months. That's how long it takes to get your money after you have racked up the magic $100 figure. I could have had it earlier, if only I'd believed.

I still don't think it's the be all and end all. Frankly, I make more money from paid posting. But I've noticed something. It's about a year since I started blogging. Now that I have hundreds of posts and have done lots of promotion, I'm starting to get some clicks. So I've concluded that it's all about being patient, something I've not been that good at in the past.

Shameless self promotion
The new edition of Writing Lab News is out on Thursday. It's got information for writers and tips and tricks that anyone can use to promote themselves. Check out sharonhurleyhall.com for the back issues and sign up to get your copy of the December issue.

Recent articles include:
* How To Get Fair Pay For Freelance Writing
* How To Promote With Article Marketing
* Get Relevant Links For Your Website
* How To Write Money-Making Copy

Freelance Writing: Trading Pennies For Dollars

As a freelance writer, there comes a time when you have to start chasing dollars instead of pennies. When you start out as a freelance writer, every commission is important, no matter how little it pays. That's how you get contacts and get a selection of clips that you can show to anyone who asks. It's also how you learn to write fast, because at 1 cent a word, you have to do a lot of writing to pay the bills.

To give an example, I had one task that I do that consisted of writing about 3,000 words a day. It's news, which meant minimal creative effort, but it still took time to write. When I started the contract, it took me half a day to write that amount. By yesterday, when I ended it, I was able to do the same amount in two hours. That was important, because it didn't pay very well and I needed to leave myself time to get some jobs that would make some money. There was also a small problem of successive late payments. (My golden rule is, don't let someone get away with that too often or it could become the norm.)

Don't get me wrong - I still do some low paid jobs, because it keeps the cash flowing, which is what cash flow is all about :) but I am also on the lookout for jobs that pay better. One of my recent opportunities gave me the chance to double what I usually get for ghostwriting, but I want to do better than that.

That's why I'm trying to change the balance of my writing. I have a couple of jobs which keep me going and I do a lot of paid blogging for various blogging ads places. But getting rid of one contract means I now have time to look for a few higher paid jobs (Deborah NG tries to have a $10 minimum payout on the jobs on her site). And replacing it with something that paid more means my bank balance won't suffer while I'm doing it. For me, this is all about working smarter, with the ultimate goal of freeing up more time to write my books, play with my daughter and go to the beach. I'll let you know how it goes.

So, I'm interested to know, as a freelance anything, how did you make the move from the peanuts jobs to the ones that really paid?

Freelance Writing Hub

A Hub For Promotion

I'm always on the lookout for somewhere new to promote my writing and other skills, and a few months ago I made a couple of Squidoo lenses, one on SEO and another on freelance writing. Lo and behold, one of my current clients actually followed me around the web before contacting me through one of the lenses. So I'm a firm believer in trying lots of new forms of promotion, because you never know which one will pay off. Of course, that can make it difficult to identify the really effective ones, but I'm working on a way to solve that. A few weeks ago, I got a lead on a Squidoo like site, which I bookmarked and forgot about till last night.

It's called HubPages. Like Squidoo you add modules which you can fill with text or images. I haven't explored all the options yet, but it doesn't seem to have as many advertising options as Squidoo. The interface is clean and it works fast. It took me only a few minutes to make my SEO hub, which is similar to my Squidoo one. Even if I'd had to do it from scratch, I don't think it would have taken more than half an hour.

You can also earn money through your hub with Adsense, Amazon and Ebay. This didn't work as well as it could have. I couldn't get my Adsense account to talk to HubPages and my Amazon affiliate account is with the UK site, which doesn't seem to be supported. But for those of you in the US it would probably work well. There's not much more to say about it so far - I've only been on the site for a day. I'll keep you posted on what kind of traffic it brings.

Working on Self Promotion

I spend a fair bit of time on self-promotion - or at least I did before I got so busy writing. One of the things I find is that I try things and create profiles, then lose track of where they are. So I created a little ready reference for myself, which I plan to add to as I take up new writing and promotion opportunities.

The other good thing about this list is that when I go to a new site, I can create a profile in seconds. I use the intro from my main site and this list to let people find out more about me while I'm filling in the details. It's in three sections. The first is a list of the places where people can see my work. Of course, since I do a lot of ghostwriting, almost half my work isn't there.

Where I Write:

• doublehdesign.com
  
• Sharon's Writing Lab
• Freelance writing advice blog
• Writing Life blog
  
• Lifetips.com
• Freelance writing on Inspired Author
• My freelance writing lens on Squidoo
• My SEO lens on Squidoo
• Ifreelance profile
• BloggerParty blog
• Free to reprint articles on EzineArticles

The second section is my recent publications. Of course I've got articles going back nearly 20 years in other publications, but people want to know what's up to date.

My Books and Publications

• SEO Tricks
• Prepare To Die
• Writing Lab News
  

The final section of my quick ready reckoner is borrowed from gracepub, who suggested somewhere that this was an easy way to let people find your stuff. This is where the benefits of article marketing really pay dividends.

Search For Sharon

• Find me on Google
• Find me on MSN
• Find me on Yahoo
  

This doesn't have all my work by a long shot - and after this week's efforts I'll need to do some updating, but it's a useful promotional tool.

MySpace For Business

I'm always on the lookout for new places to promote myself as a freelance writer - and I found another one this week. I'm a bit of a sucker for email newsletters, though I'm trying to break the habit. Anyway, one of them passed on the following information about a new place to promote yourself and make contacts.

It's called Bizfriendz (affilate link). It bills itself as 'MySpace for business' and it is remarkably similar in the way it works. Like MySpace, with BizFriendz you can set up a profile, including personal, education and professional information. Like MySpace, you can add multimedia to the account. Unlike MySpace, you can earn money by referring people, and more money when your referrals refer other people. I haven't earned a dime yet, but I've only been there a few days.

Bizfriendz has only just gone live, so there's no way of telling whether it's going to be huge or another flash in the pan. I've had a couple of friend requests so far and I'll be monitoring my site traffic to see what it brings. Check it out for yourself and see what you think. And if anyone knows more about it than I do, please feel free to add more info in the comments.