Five tips to revive a dying freelance writing career

This post was inspired by an excellent post on Six Figure Writers,“5 Reasons Your Writing Career is Going Nowhere”. Solid well-made points.

I especially like #2:

No one knows who you are. Being able to write doesn’t make you a writer. If you want a real career in this industry, you’re going to have to wear several hats: that of writer, entrepreneur, salesman, marketer, and more.

So if your freelance writing career is dying or dead, here are five tips to bring it to life.

Five tips to revive a dying freelance writing career

1. Treat freelance writing like a business

Develop a business plan. You need to include: how much capital you have to invest (yes, you need to spend money to make money); what markets you’ll target (Web sites? magazines? companies?) how you’ll market (advertising? blogging?); and mostly importantly HOW MUCH money you intend to make.

The HOW MUCH is vital. You need to know.

2. Schedule your time – every day

If you’re working, look on your writing career as your second job, until you can write full-time. As with any job, you show up on time, and you do your job – whatever writing and marketing you have planned for the day.

3. Introduce yourself to people who can hire you

This strategy won’t work for novels – if you’ve never published a novel, you’ll need to write the novel before you can interest a publisher. However, it will work for Web writing, magazine/ newspaper writing and copywriting.

Introduce yourself to people with whom you wish to work – send a letter, with some clips.

4. Be persistent – take massive action

I guarantee you that even if you’ve never written anything for money, if you’ll pick up the phone and call 50 businesses, you’ll get writing gigs.

Enough said: whatever kind of writing is in your business plan, MASSIVE ACTION works for getting writing gigs.

5. Develop the confidence to say “NO”

Reject writing gigs which don’t fit into your business plan. If a gig doesn’t pay enough, reject it. Spend the time marketing so you’ll get gigs which DO pay enough. You can’t write for everyone who asks you.

This is difficult for some freelancers to accept. They’re inured to accepting every offer; then they complain they’re not making enough money.

So there you go: five tips to revive a moribund career. Follow them, and in three months you’ll be amazed at what you’ve achieved.

Technorati Tags: freelance writing, writers, make money writing, career

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