Welcome to the new chapter of your freelance writing career. I don’t care if you’re reading this on January 2nd or October 22nd — every single day of your working life is as good as any to turn the corner on your freelancing. If you want to use the calendar as a jumping-off point, be…
When a Client Breaches a Freelance Contract
We’ve all had our share of flaky clients. By flaky, I mean clients who: Disappear at payment time Reappear three months later to complain about quality (oddly about the same time you’ve threatened litigation/collection) Change the project parameters after you’ve done the work Revise more than twice (my record is 12 revisions) and get farther…
Guest Post: Crafting a Freelance Writing Portfolio That Gets You Hired
Sometimes a great idea lands in your email. This guest post is a prime example, in fact. When Jenn Mattern told me to expect a message from Monica Shaw, little did I know that the message would result in this great little post you’re about to read. The back story: Monica runs WritersResidence.com, a site…
How I Boosted my Freelance Career (and how you can, too)
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the freelancer I was and the freelancer I am now. They are two different people, my friends. The old me was a hit-and-miss freelancer. I lost my job suddenly and had two kids to support. So my freelance career back then was pasted together. I’d take whatever gig…
How to Fail at Freelance Writing
If you’ve been freelancing for a while, you’ve seen a lot. I’d bet you’ve seen something like what Randy Hecht shares with us today. Randy is the moderator of the popular LinkedIn forum LinkEds & Writers, which has a large population of working freelance editors and writers — the site’s target audience. As you might…
How to Lose $$ with Bad Freelance Marketing (and how to fix it)
Freelancers, are you killing your chances of gaining a client or a network connection? Do you know if you are? Hint: you are if you do anything like this: Writer Jane submitted a thread to a writers’ forum. The moderator, another writer, turned it down because it was promotional, which is against the forum rules….
The No-nonsense Freelance Negotiation Tactic
If you wait long enough (five minute usually), the universe will hand you a blog topic. In this case, it was a fellow writer who sent along her own scenario that serves as a reminder to all writers that you can — and should — stand up for your freelance writing business. Here’s the scenario…
When is a Freelancer Not a Freelancer?
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: Looking for writers with a background in digital news reporting to write for us on a freelance basis. We would need 40 hours per week and the hours would be 9-to-5. See anything wrong with that? You should. And your obvious follow-up question to the job poster…
Freelance ‘Anti-Niche’ Niche Boost
I’m going to say something that’s a little controversial — We’re all niche writers. We’re also all generalists. No matter what you start out writing, you eventually end up with two things happening: You start to write a lot of the same topic or writing form (blog posts, ghosted articles, case studies, etc.) You write…
AI and Freelancing: The Good & Bad
I was on YouTube the other day and I saw a series of videos about the glories of AI and how this “new” technology is going to revolutionize work and the way we live. And of course, the comments were doomsday-style warnings about how it’s going to kill freelancing. Here’s my thought about AI: AI…