Get Creative, And Sell Your Ideas (Editorial)

The success of your freelance writing career depends on your ideas, the effective implementation of those ideas, and then the sale of those ideas.

Writers get stuck in the implementation and sales areas. They have great ideas, and they may even make a start on implementation, but then they get stuck. They procrastinate, and an idea which might have added substantially to their income dies. That’s sad.

This week, let’s look at:

* How to track your ideas;

* How to test your ideas using blogs; and

* How to sell your ideas.

Testing ideas used to be difficult. You could spend a year or more writing a book, and then discover that no one cared. These days, you can test your ideas on blogs. Within a week or two, you’ll see whether a particular idea is viable, or whether you need to keep looking.

You can use blogs to test ideas for:

* Books and ebooks;

* Blogs and websites;

* Articles, when you’re moving into a new area (for example, if you’ve been selling articles in the health area, and want to move into selling business articles);

* New writing services you want to provide… anytime you want to offer a new service to your current and prospective clients, create a blog just for that service.

Everything starts at the idea stage, so you need an efficient way to store your ideas and expand on them.

Get creative: keep and track your ideas in an Ideas Journal

You need a way to track all the ideas you want to check out for their viability. The easiest way, is with an Ideas Journal. Over the years, I’ve tested many methods for tracking ideas: keeping ideas in text files, or in databases, or in paper notebooks. I’ve never been satisfied with any collection method until now.

I’ve finally lucked into a great system which works for me, because it encourages me to create action steps to implement my ideas, right on the page.

I’m using a Behance Action Journal, which is perfect as an Ideas Journal. You write down your ideas on the dotted grid, then add tasks into the column on the right hand side.

The pages are perforated, so that you can tear them out easily, after you’ve transferred the ideas and actions to your computer. (BTW, I have NO connection to Behance: I just think their Action Method is pure genius. )

Of course, it doesn’t matter what you use to keep track of your ideas. What matters is:

* Keeping a record of your ideas;

* Creating tasks to implement the ideas; and

* Working through the tasks – ACTING on your ideas.

Everyone gets ideas, and your ideas can remain just ideas, or you can put them into action, firstly by checking the response to an idea on a blog.

Testing your ideas on blogs

You can test ideas for anything at all, but let’s say you’re thinking of providing a blog writing service, and you want to see whether anyone wants it.

You could of course just add a page to your website offering this new service. There’s nothing wrong with that approach. It works. You can promote that page in various ways. The best way is to contact your current clients, and let them know about your new service.

But what if you don’t have any current clients? Or if your current clients are just not interested?

It doesn’t matter. Whether you have clients or not, and even if you do add a page to your current site, you should still test the idea on a blog. Here’s why: you’ll use the exact keyword which someone will use to find your service on the blog, and this means you’ll get traffic within hours.

So it’s time to create a blog.

Start by going to Google’s AdWords keywords tool, and enter “blog writer” (if you want to provide a blogging service, for example), as in the image below.

Next, just choose a keyword which seems appropriate, and for which there is traffic. You’re not concerned about the traffic numbers at the moment. You just want a “buying” keyword which you can use as the title for your blog. In our example “blog writer” or “freelance blog writer” might work.

Once you have a title, click to the Blogger site, and create a blog, using your keyword as the title. You may not get exactly the keyword; if it’s popular, chances are that someone’s already snagged it. Create a variation: “best freelance blog writer” or “top freelance blog writer” or whatever.

Now write a post offering your blog writing service, and link the post to your site.

Selling your idea, once it’s on your blog

Over the next few days, write several posts on your blog, and link back to your website’s contact page, or to your profile page. You need some content on your new blog so that visitors have something to check out.

Your final step is to sell your idea, now that it’s on your new blog.

Selling it can be simple:

* Link from your site to the new blog;

* Add the blog’s RSS feed to blog directories;

* Write a press release announcing your new service (or whatever idea you’re testing), and link to your blog, using the keyword you chose as anchor text;

* Advertise the blog (CraigsList offers free ads).

Within a week or two, you’ll know whether your idea is a good one, or whether it’s a fizzer.

What if your idea is a DUD?

Dud ideas aren’t duds once they’re on a blog. You may think that your idea’s a washout because you get zero responses in a week or two, BUT the blog nevertheless provides a link back to your site, and links are always good.

Some ideas take longer to catch fire than others. If you’re testing an idea for a book for example, you may get no interest for a month or two, and then suddenly you do.

Here’s what’s important: you’ve learned to put your ideas into action. If you’re like most writers, you have lots of ideas, and rarely implement them. Or, if you do implement them, you get stuck, and your initial enthusiasm dies.

The above method: of capturing your ideas, implementing those ideas on a blog, and then selling your ideas, works. It can have amazing effects on your career as a freelance writer. It’s a method I teach on my new blogging course, and I commend it to you.

Questions? Feel free to ask them in the Comments.

Happy writing.