Freelance Writing: Increase Your Productivity and Increase Your Income

Do you want to increase your freelance writing income? The only way to do that is to increase your productivity. Let’s look at five ways you can do that.

By the way, here’s a hidden benefit of increasing your productivity: it increases your confidence as a writer. You’re far less concerned about rejections because you’re focused on your writing, rather than on matters which are outside your direct control.

1. Keep a Writing Work Log or Journal

In addition to a computer scheduling program, try keeping a paper desk diary. I have a large hardcover diary with a page to a day. As I complete a task, or get an idea, I enter it into the diary.

As a full time writer, I’m working with 30 projects at any given time. When I read over my diary at the end of the day, I know whom I need to contact, what my next step is in a project, and what I need to organize or follow up on. My paper diary gives me an overview.

2. On Long Projects, Work in Half Hour Sessions

Long projects, like writing complete websites or writing a book, tend to be intimidating. This leads to procrastination. You decide that you’ll wait until you can devote a three or four hour session to the project. This is a mistake — you waste time, and the project takes much longer than it should.

Write in half-hour sessions. When you know you’ve only got half an hour on a project before you switch to something else, your writing speeds up.

3. Get Organized: Plan Your Writing the Evening Before

You need to know exactly what you intend to accomplish before you sit down at your computer. Email, instant messaging, and forum browsing can wait. Do the writing for which you’re being paid first.

So plan the evening before. Prioritize: plan to work on the projects which are most important first. Make a commitment to yourself that you’ll complete a set number of tasks before you leave your home office.

4. Schedule Time to Enhance Your Skills: Specialist Writers Earn More

Scheduling your study time as well as your writing time is vital. I schedule an hour’s study into each day. When you enhance your skills, you become more valuable, and clients are willing to pay you more.

5. Track Your Income: Know What an Hour’s Laziness Is Costing You

How much do you make an hour? If you don’t know, work it out. If you know that you’re making $150 an hour, then spending an hour chatting on the phone, or browsing writing blogs, is suddenly much less appealing.

If you’re just starting out, and are only making $50 an hour, you’ll be taking on $150 an hour clients much sooner if you become sharply aware of how much your time is worth.

Increasing your productivity depends on your commitment, and on planning, and it’s the sure way to make more money freelance writing.

Recession-proof your freelance writing career

“Write More And Make More Money From Your Writing: Develop A Fast, Fun Productive Writing Process” gives you all the tools you need for a thriving writing career, no matter what the economic climate.

Three weeks after completing the class one student wrote:

“Thanks Angela, for all your help and advice in class. I’m quitting my job next week. I printed out my letter of resignation tonight after landing a contract writing job that will pay me more for three months part-time work than I earned in from my day job in the whole of 2007! You were right – the great gigs are out there, and now I’ve got the skills to land them. Your class opened my eyes. Bless you…”

“Write More And Make More Money From Your Writing: Develop A Fast, Fun Productive Writing Process” shows you how to thrive as a freelance writer. Would you like to write five times more than you’re writing now, and sell to higher-paying markets? Take the class.

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