Fab Freelance Writing Ezine: Issue # 10 - Diversifty, and build your writing career



Publisher: Angela Booth.

Copyright 2006 Angela Booth

All rights reserved.

Blog: http://www.fabfreelancewriting.com/blog/

Site: http://www.fabfreelancewriting.com


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* Issue # 10

* Date: December 13, 2006

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Includes:



* Editorial: Diversify To Build Your Freelance Writing Career And Income

* Freelance Writing Tip Of The Week: Your Career Depends On Marketing

* Writing Resource: Don't Write, Speak

* Article: Diversify To Increase Your Freelance Writing Income

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** Happy Holidays! Holiday Season Writer's Gift Pack **

Here comes Santa, and his sleigh is packed with gifts for all good writers.

This holiday season, for three weeks only, until January 1, 2007, all four of my current Special Reports For Writers are available in one pack at a very special price- it's my season's gift to you, dear writer:

http:////gift/holiday.html

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[Editorial] - Diversify To Build Your Freelance Writing Career And Income



Have you read the book Who Moved My Cheese? The book shows that you can become much too set in your ways.

It's fatal to your writing career to become too comfortable. You can and should aim to diversify, to increase your income and to build your freelance writing career.

However, diversifying is more difficult than you would think. When I first began my freelance writing career I started out by writing romance novels. My picture of myself as a writer at that early stage was VERY limited. According to my image of writers, they were novelists, and that's all. But then suddenly I had a major block. I could no longer write romance, BUT I could still write. This was a revelation - I could write, and I did. I wrote copy for businesses, articles for magazines, and business books.

As you might imagine, this is not the ideal way to diversify, to wait until you're completely blocked to change what you write. However, many writers find it hard to diversify. This is because each new writing area takes study. Starting out in a new area is challenging, you need to study, and be willing to make mistakes.

If you're wise, part of your free time will be devoted to increasing your writing skills by studying how to write in new areas. For example, you might be writing magazine articles and in your spare time learning how to write novels. Or, you might be writing technology articles and in your spare time learning to write on health topics. Or do might be writing magazine articles and in your spare time learning how to write for the Web.

Please don't wait until you're blocked to diversify. This week's article, Diversify To Increase Your Freelance Writing Income, will help you to get started diversifying, so that you can increase your writing income.

All best wishes

Angela

P.S. I hope you have a wonderful holiday season. When you need a moment alone, enjoy my Holiday Season Writer's Gift Pack. It's packed with goodies to ensure that 2007 is your best writing year ever AND it helps you to diversify -

http:////gift/holiday.html

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* Freelance Writing Tip Of The Week: Your Career Depends On Marketing



When you're a freelance writer, you never know where your career will take you. Your writing career depends on your marketing skills so you should market each and every day.

This can be hard to do when you have plenty of work coming in, but keeping up with marketing at all times is essential. Everything you do is marketing. Even the prices you charge are marketing. Pricing is a marketing tool because of what it says about you and your business. The tendency online is to under-price your services. Try not to under-price, because you're harming yourself in the long-term. Writing is tiring. If you're writing for a lot of cheap-skate second-rate clients, you're too exhausted to keep learning and developing connections with top-tier clients.

When you continue to market even when you have plenty of work, it means you can cheerfully turn down low-paying work.

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** Your Blog: Your Vital Sales And Promotions Tool For 2007 **



Gotta blog? My ebook, Writing Success with Blogs by Angela Booth, helps you to take the first steps into the new world for writers: instant publishing on blogs.

Your writers' blog is your must-have branding tool. It also has a very practical use - it's a writing portfolio. From the ebook: "Before editors will pay you to write, they want to know that you can write. They want clips - copies of material you've published. This seems like a Catch-22: you can only get published if you've been published. Your writing on your blog can be in lieu of clips. Your blog lets editors gauge your abilities and style, before they put down the cash."

The book helps you to create your own writer's bog:
http:////page11/Blog%20book/page16.html


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* Writing Resource: Don't Write, Speak



Many writers dictate their words, for various reasons. Barbara Cartland, one of my writing heroines, dictated all her novels.

Now with the upcoming Microsoft Vista operating system for Windows, voice recognition is an integral part of the OS software. The ability to dictate rather than type, should increase your productivity, and of course, a productive writer is a well-paid writer.

I've just started to use Dragon NaturallySpeaking (http://nuance.com/ ) again after a hiatus of several years. It's too early too tell how much more I'll be able to produce using this program, but I'll let you know. And of course, as I develop some hints and tips, I'll pass them along to you. :-)

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* Article- Diversify to Increase Your Freelance Writing Income



(c) Copyright 2006 Angela Booth. All Rights Reserved.


Diversification is vital to any writer. The more areas you can write in, the more ways of selling your writing and the more opportunities you will have. If you're just starting your freelance career, get established in one area, and then look around for areas into which you can diversify.

Diversification is vital, because as a freelance writer, you're vulnerable. If you put all your writing efforts into one area, when the market for that work dries up, you're sunk, because it always takes time to get established in new areas. I learned this at first hand in 2000, when the market for technology articles died. Although I still had copywriting clients, writing for tech magazines had formed the bulk of my income. Suddenly I had to make a major push into copywriting, and it took around three months to get re-established.

This taught me a valuable lesson: never, never let one area of writing form more than 30 per cent of your income - it's too risky. Also, never let a major client dictate more than 20 per cent of your income, that's risky too. If they go down, you sink with them.

The areas you choose to write in depend on your own interests and inclinations. Make a list of writing areas to which you're drawn. Your choices include novels, writing articles and other short material, writing nonfiction books, and writing for business, also known as copywriting. Of course all of these writing forms include many categories and subcategories.

Many writers choose one or two forms. For example, you might choose to write novels and choose to write health articles too.

Tip: your enjoyment is a good indication of whether or not you will have success in a particular form. If you love reading mystery novels, chances are good that you can write in the form. On the other hand, if you hate mysteries, and have to force yourself to write, it's doubtful that you'll succeed.

Writing in a New Form Takes Time



How long does it take to learn a new form? That depends on the form. It may only take you weeks if you're learning to write articles, but it can take you years to learn to write novels. Because it does take time, it's wise to only take on a new writing form if you're passionate about it.

As I suggested above, your enjoyment and passion for a particular form is a good indication that you'll have success at it. When you're learning a form look on rejections as feedback rather than indications that you're failing. It's impossible to fail at writing, unless you stop writing.


Diversifying And Staking Out Your Territory in New Writing Areas



Many writing markets, like article writing, are competitive. Try to find new forms in which you can write, where you'll be in demand.

For example, one of the big major areas for writers is writing for the Web. Writing for the Web is a completely new territory. The Web has only been around for around a decade. If you can become an expert in writing for the Web, you can significantly increase your income. Since the writing for the Web is a new form, if you become established in this area now, you will be sought after as a writer, because the Web-writing market isn't yet saturated.

Check out my ebook, Writing For the Web at http://www.//Web_Write/Web_write.html for all the info you need on this major new market.

So there you go - diversify. If you're a new freelance writer, this is the best advice you'll ever get. And if you're a pro, who hasn't diversified, extend yourself now to not only enhance your income, but also to safeguard it.


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* The Unlimited Writing Market, The Web **



When you write for the Web, you're never out of writing work. All Web sites need writers, and as the competition online grows, site owners hire writers to improve their sites.

The writing world in general hasn't caught up with the Web. Now, YOU can -- and you can cash in. Freelance writers just don't realize how much money there is to be made by writing for the Web: many writers use the Web as a research tool, they don't see the Web as a mass of millions of markets. They don't realize that Web sites are STARVED for good writers.

Want to get paid REAL money to write? How does $120 an hour sound to you? Discover how to write for the Web today:

http://www.//Web_Write/Web_write.html

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Get the latest freelance blogging news on Blogging For Dollars at:

http://www.dollars2blog.com/blog/

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Your privacy is important. You've signed on for this ezine in good faith. Thank you. I will never betray your trust by making the subscriber list available to others.

Contact Angela at: angela.booth@gmail.com

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