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…
Tag: freelance writing advice
6 Revealing Freelance F-Ups
Ah, December. A time in which you’re either refreshing your email constantly looking for client work or so busy you forget to wrap presents. Or buy them. No matter what camp you’re in this year, let’s start December with some fun facts. Freelance tells, let’s call them. Observations from some of the shit that’s been…
Freelance Shorts: Random Advice to Improve Your Writing Biz
With summer bearing down, it’s a great time to reassess your freelance writing business. Anytime is a good time, but if things are slowing down or you’re needing to step away, use the time to find better footing within your business. Since it’s also a time when my life goes into vacation mode and utter…
1 Move That Can Increase Freelance Income (and it’s not what you think)
On a former teacher’s Facebook post recently, I was bemoaning how I’d been writing in my specialty area for 22 years and how I still get sources — typically men — overexplaining the industry to me. You know, the industry about which I’ve written articles that they’ve read. In one hilarious case, an over-explainer actually…
How to Lose –and Win– at Freelancing
I call this post A Tale of Two Writers. A friend of mine knows of a writer who, on the surface, should have made a serious killing the last two years. The writer in question –let’s call her Writer #1 — has a background in healthcare, senior care, aging, wellness, and medicine, among other things….
The 2022 Freelance Writing Career Reboot
I hate resolutions. But many of you know that already. Why they suck — Resolutions are promises, empty ones at best. We promise to lose five pounds. We promise to get a better job. We promise to find more clients. Notice anything about these promises? Not one of them is a plan. Not one thing…
Freelance Writers Behaving Badly
It happened again. Who am I kidding? It happens continuously. In forums, in email, in groups. People everywhere are committing the same sins that label them all. They act like lazy little shits. I was researching markets for a client pitch. A website I located had a list of markets for that particular niche industry….
A Freelance Decision You Don’t Want to Make (but should)
Something happened a while back that’s been sticking in my mind. It’s not one of those “Look what that nasty client did to me” events, either. It was subtler than that. If I hadn’t been paying attention, I wouldn’t have noticed. It was when the work outpaced the pay. The client was a fairly new…
Your Freelance Biz’s Biggest Legal Threat
Struggling freelancers, freelancers who are doing well — let’s talk. In an unsettling exchange that another freelancer shared with me, a beginning writer was asking for some advice and feedback. Normally, those “feedback” requests get ignored because if every one of them were answered, who would get any paying work done? But because my friend…
6 Ways to Sabotage Your Freelance Career
A friend of mine asked me the other day what I knew about a certain freelancer. It was someone who crossed her email, and there was some evidence I was connected to her. “Oh, not that freelancer,” I said. That response was telling. I hadn’t heard from said freelancer since 2015. And yet I still knew…