Most of these places are already well into their 2012 budgets; Fave Ed and the glitchy client have hefty freelance budgets, so it's not a budget crunch for either of them – they're honest and won't make assignments they can't pay for. (Late Payer, not so much.)

Off topic: How can four separate clients ALL have bookkeeping glitches stalling my payments in the same month? One is the chronic late payer, one is a long-time client with bugs in a new direct deposit system, a third is a new client, and the fourth is a long-time reliable client who apparently misplaced the invoice during the post-Thanksgiving pre-Christmas rush; luckily I thought to contact the lone editor on duty this week and he's pushing payment through ASAP. Seriously, what are the odds?

Paula, I've seen some of the same marketing mistakes. Writers at mid-level can certainly sell their webinars, but to beginning writers, not people who have been in the business for years.

I've also seen self-proclaimed writing experts I know through LinkedIn pitching me their not-so-cheap webinars, online classes and coaching services. Fine, but try marketing to people with less experience than you, not more. Why would I want someone with fewer (and lesser) credits than I have teaching me how to break into "lucrative" markets that I surpassed a decade ago? (I guess this gripe fits better with the Know Your Audience topic.)

Sharon, I'm much more into the self-paced stuff, too. I like that I can continue working on projects – because they ALWAYS come in by the bucketloads the minute that nonrefundable fee is paid – and get to the course as I have time.

Devon, the difference between your course and the one I took – you let everyone know in several ways that it was an intensive course. This other woman billed this as more of a fun time. Sorry, it was not fun, nor did she have anything useful to say in those reams of daily lessons. Not only was she verbose, she was boring. I've attended any number of webinars and online courses and hers was the worst. Ever. Her one lesson on editing and brevity was ridiculously long and poorly written. I nearly offered to edit her course lectures for a fee.

If you want poor work habits enabled, if you want to be told it's okay not to meet deadlines — go somewhere else.

I'm a tough teacher, but my students leave with something tangible, and, in the last year, a solid number landed contracts and/or sold pieces started/worked on in class.

I don't use my classes as a sales pitch. I have a section with links to other workshops and other materials, but, I know from my experience as a student, nothing makes me feel more cheated than going to a workshop/webinar and being given 1% of the information promised, and expected to pay additional monies for the rest of what the workshop supposedly covers.

To me, that's a scam. And I see it frequently in workshops. You're offered a tease, and actually only get the information if you pay extra.

I took several classes this past year that were a disappointment. The teacher wasn't around much, we were talked AT instead of given the opportunity to practice putting theories into practice in the safe environment of the classroom with guidance, and additional materials for additional dollars were dangled in front of us. If I can't trust you to cough up what I believe I've paid for now (according to the way the workshop was marketed), why would I pay additional money for other material that's also bound to fall short? My trust has been broken.

I also can't stand it when a teacher/workshop leader renames the same class and uses the same material while pretending it's something totally different. Even when I'm asked to give another section of a workshop, I tweak it depending on the energy of the room. No two workshops are ever identical. I think it's really important — be in tune to the moment, don't use the same material over and over because you want to prep once, get paid 27 times. Be attuned to the students and what's happening in the moment, and adjust accordingly.

You'll have a sore butt and sore fingers and be exhausted after one of my classes — but you'll have a solid piece of work.

As far as skills, I have to figure out what I want to learn next, where I want to spread my wings a little. I want to shake things up a bit.

Some were great investments and paid for themselves many times over. Others were pretty disappointing. I know video is all the rage (and I AM a visual person), but when I am learning some online techie or software thing, I need a written step-by-step as well.

I tend to go for the freebie webinars because of the time investment. I have no qualms about jumping off early if it stinks. Of course, with many of those, what you are getting is a sales pitch for something much more costly. I don't mind that if it's not obnoxious selling.

I also paid the bigger $ for a white paper boot camp. It was definitely worth it and white papers became an anchor of my business writing.

I tend to steer away from the big $ webinars like the Summit coming up for small businesses. I know it has tons of top names and I am sure there will be good things to learn, but between the $ and the time, for me, the negatives outweigh the positives.