Fab Freelance Writing Blog

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When freelance writing is your business, you must find time to write. Otherwise you don’t get paid.

Writing as a career involves more than just writing, however.

The many tasks you need to fit into your writing week include:

* Finding ideas

* Writing queries and proposals

* Marketing your freelance writing business

* Following up with clients

* Invoicing clients and generally taking care of getting paid

* Networking with prospective clients, current clients and other writers

* Developing and extending your skills

You’ll notice that none of the above include writing. You can spend hours “working” - answering email messages, talking with clients on the phone, and posting updates to clients’ Web sites, without writing a single word.

The concept of billable hours - making sure you get paid sooner or later

“Billable hours” is a very useful concept for writers. Freelance writers only get paid for completed work, so it’s vital to build as many billable hours into your writing week as you can.

If I suspect that I’m spending too much time on writing which isn’t billable, I start logging my writing time in a Numbers spreadsheet to find out exactly where the time’s going. I log time in 30 minute portions, and I make sure that I “bill” everything, including the time I spend surfing the Web.

When you assign all your time to a particular billable project, you become much more aware of where the time’s going, even when you’re working for your own projects. If you’re writing a book, blogging, or creating content for a Web site for example, that time is billable too. You bill yourself. This helps you to work out how much a project is worth to you, when it comes time to set a price for the book or the Web site.

Try the billable hours concept: time really is money.

(If you’re finding you’re procrastinating OTOH, I’ve just written a post on my writing blog which may help.)

Technorati Tags: writing, freelance writing, get paid to write, make money writing

Pet owners are crazy; in the nicest way. Viz icanhascheezburger, a site for lovers of humor and cute cats.

Also viz huge bestsellers like John Grogan’s Marley & Me: Life and Love With the World’s Worst Dog, which has more than 3.2 million copies in print. That book is everywhere, in every bookshop you go into.

A new dog book is at # 12 on the New York Times bestseller list, and “New memoir nips at heels of other canine-based hits” says that:

“Traditional publishers are seeing the tremendous sales of these [dog] books. It’s kind of made them sit up and take notice,” says Dick Donahue, a senior editor at Publishers Weekly. “There are [dog] psychology books, there are [dog] health books, there are [dog] training books, there are even cookbooks [for dogs]. They’re everywhere. The trend’s not going to die down anytime soon.”

So if you’ve got a dog and you’re always talking about him, why not write about him? You never know, you could be headed for bestseller-dom.

Technorati Tags: books, writing, publishing, freelance writing, bestsellers

Freelance writing in 2007 is a vast field. You can write for newspapers and magazines, for the Web, and of course you can write copy for businesses. You can also focus on books - nonfiction and novels. It’s very much up to you: follow your own inclinations.

You’ll know if an area is right for you, because you will feel excited at the prospect of writing for a particular venue, and you will also feel a sense of “I can do this!”

I’m often asked what’s the best way for a new freelancer to get started making money as soon as possible. For the past year, my answer has been: BLOG!

Your blog gets you known, and gets you writing gigs

I wish I were starting out my writing career today. There are so many ways to make money, and you’ve got the easiest way ever: blogging. I love blogging for many reasons, but the chief one is that it gets you writing gigs without effort.

Blogging has an added benefit for writers, both new and established: it’s writing without pressure. You can get practice writing on your blog, and all writers need practice. Only writing will improve your skill, give you ideas, and enhance your creativity.

You can also experiment on your blog: you can create new blogs on topics which interest you, and of course you can make money too. Blogging is a dream come true for writers.

Resources

* Read my Blogging For Dollars ebook; and

* Blogging for Dollars Blog

Technorati Tags: freelance writer, freelance writing, get started, make money writing