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Manage Your Freelance Writing Career While Writing What You Love

4 Reasons Why Every Writer and Blogger Should Use Twitter

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Twitter

 

Twitter is important for your business. It is not about regular Joe’s or Jane’s online popularity although it might be a indication of it. But it is mainly about how you make use of social media, how strong a personality you are online, and how well your business is making use of the web. Sure, twitter isn’t the only micro-blogging platform out there but it is still one of the most popular and influential. Books are written and e-books are published every single day about this medium. This article is about the reasons why writers can’t afford not being in tune with it either.

1)  Promotion. You have a blog and/or a website. Or maybe you have a website with a blog, or maybe you are running several blogs. Whatever your situation is, if you are writing, you need to have a Twitter account.

You also should personalize that Twitter account by providing a relevant & attractive background image, a full profile and relevant Tweets. If you don’t want to deal with tweets every time you post an article, there are tools for automating the process. However, you can’t neglect to reflect your persona, and your expertise on your Twitter profile. Like-minded people will follow you, retweet stuff that they enjoy, send you messages…In short, Twitter is a great medium to share your business, opinions, posts and passions with others.  The traffic (and the relationships) you acquire through Twitter are great perks.

2)  (Brand) Image. It is of course much more essential and practical to have relevant people (and/or companies in your list). But to the untrained eye, 2000 followers look better than 200. On a similar note, 20.000 followers look even better. Are there bloggers you like? Follow them. How about writers? Entertainers? If you are in advertising, following advertising blogs and companies is a good idea. Because more often than not, people follow you back. Not only you look more popular and important, but you also have a whole new medium to catch up with the events and industries you are in. Instead of skimming a whole website of news and ads, you will read tweets. You are not allowed to write more than 140 characters so you can choose to be informed about the most interesting stuff.

3)  Improving the ability to write better. As mentioned above, you have 140 characters you can use, including a link if you need to use one. Since you have such short space and an impatient audience, you are forced to write better in shorter forms. What better exercise is there?

4) Making connections without much effort. I told you needed to work to promote yourself, but the beauty of Twitter is that others are trying to socialize or get their names/brands out there as well. So people will start following you too. It is your call whether to follow them back or not, but it feels good that your list might end up growing even when you are not actively working on it.

Yes, a lot of people are using Twitter for unnecessarily insignificant updates about their lives. So? Don’t follow them. But don’t let your prejudice about twitter block your success.

I tweet @zoeyclark. What’s your Twitter handle? Share away in the comments.

 

The Truth about Passive Income: It’s not usually such a passive way to make money!

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passive income
Image via michaelkwan.com

I recently earned a commission through a sale (that came from my review of) of Paul Cunningham’s How to Be a Successful Freelance Blogger e-book. On the surface, I made money through a link on my website, while somebody else wrote a great e-book. You got to love passive income, right?

Not so fast, folks! I didn’t just randomly drop a link for Paul’s book. I bought it myself, because hey- the title and the content really appealed to me. I read, re-read and studied the book. His content went into 3 categories for me: 1) stuff I already knew and applied, 2) stuff I knew yet I needed to be reminded of to apply, and 3) stuff I learned from him.

So in addition to keeping this e-book near to serve as a guide at all times, I wrote a review and then posted on my blog. Then, I promoted the post. Then, I promoted the blog. Then, I kept promoting the blog, because when you have a blog, you have to keep promoting it.
So, while passive income is one of the most attractive terms of making money online, trying to make it happen is definitely not a passive activity. Passive income streams do not get formed overnight and it usually takes a lot of time and effort, until you start making money “passively”.

Some of the most popular (passive) income streams:

– Revenue from your web writing:

Content Farms: The concept almost all writers hate: When you first start out, you only make a few pennies. The more articles you publish, the better chance you stand at getting more page views and ending up making more money. But writing for the web is not a passive activity, especially if you want to make the most of your material. You write, edit, format, optimize, publish and promote. As more content is published, you will realize that your earnings are increasing.

– Writing for other blogs & websites: While many writing jobs pay by post, some offer an additional revenue share bonus (where you get a percentage of their advertising revenue), and/or a popularity bonus which grants you extra bucks if your blog reaches a certain traffic/bookmarking level, etc… So when you are supposed to get a revenue share, it helps if the blog you write gets extra traffic. Oh, and to reach a level of popularity, you need to promote it yourself.
Supposedly, you sit back and watch your revenue & popularity grow. In reality, a post hardly makes it very big without any effort from your end. And remember, it is usually also up to you to create that great content, optimize it for the search engines, and then let the world know about it.

Affiliate Marketing:

Making Money through Other People’s Products (& Services):
Sometimes, making money from affiliate marketing can be as simple as leaving your own affiliate link in an article. But not everyone who reads that article will sign up. Also keep in mind that some affiliate sign-ups or clicks don’t make you any money, unless there is a purchase involved. So not everyone who does click will make a purchase, no matter how popular you and your articles might be.

You need lots of readers, and many readers that will take the necessary action. In order to make the article popular, you need to reach your target audience. You need to make the necessary research to know where that target audience hangs out and hopefully develop a relationship with them. So after these conditions are met, maybe you will start making passive income from those affiliate links, products and services. Until then, a lot of effort awaits you. You might even need to spend money too, for marketing, hosting, autoresponders and other related activities.

Making Money through Your Own Products (& Products): Don’t even get me started on how much work goes into creating & promoting your own product. Yes, it is the favorite income stream of many probloggers. But this time you are not an affiliate. You have to have your own sales page, e-mail list, your own affiliates, money you pay to the merchant site (such as e-junkie), the relationships you manage with the other people who become your affiliates, relationship with your customers and paying your affiliates…The list of your tasks goes on.

If you create a great product for the right target market, and make a good job marketing it, it is true that you will make a good deal of money. You will also work very hard. And then you will work some more.

– Advertising:
Placing advertising on your website or blogs is a great way for making some passive income. However in order to make money from advertising (direct advertising, PPC, CPM, banner advertising….) from your own sites, or from the sites you share the revenues of, you need to have an audience. You need to have a large enough audience to be able to make money from ads, and hopefully that audience will be targeted enough to click on some of them.

And building an audience is a lot of hard work. It takes social networking, link-building, guest-blogging and/or many other actions before you can even reach the payout level of your advertising networks or your sponsors.
While watching that advertising income to grow might be passive, it takes a lot of activity to get to that point.

**

Yes, it puts a smile on your face to watch your advertising revenue grow, and to see your affiliate income increase. It is also nice to make money from articles you posted on the web months ago. But it doesn’t happen overnight. However, what makes passive income really attractive is that you can see that you made money from something you promoted (and then forgot about) some time ago. The truth is, the pros of passive income overweigh the cons. Just keep in my mind that you are not going to be very passive in the process.

7 Great Query Letter Resources: A List of (E-)Books, Articles and Blog Links

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Carol Tice has posted one of her assignment winning queries.

 

The pros: You get to see how to craft a compelling query. And you get to see how you can pitch multipe ideas professionally in a single page query letter.

 

The con: Many magazines look down on multiple pitches, especially if you are not a yet established author, or you don’t have a relationship with that editor. Still, you can study and learn a lot from Carol’s sample.

 

Plus, she has a whole section of posts that feature “the tag” query letters. These posts might not be directly on query letters, but they do include valuable information on your relationships with editors.

 

  • Query Letter Clinic – (Mini) E-Book

 

Writer’s Market is an online resource for writers where they can find info about magazine. In order to be able to access these markets, you need to be a member- which requires a fee. I am a member, so Query Letter Clinic was already on my dashboard. However I don’t remember if this e-book is available to non-members. You need to check.

 

 

  • The Writer’s Digest Guide to Query Letters – E-book, Paperback

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Writer’s Digest Guide to Query Letters has over 200 pages of information: it starts with the basics of a query, then gives you the specific elements of different query letters, such as: querying to an agent about your novel, non-fiction book, querying about your articles to magazines. It tells you how and when to follow up, where to look for the necessary information and understanding writer’s guidelines, managing your relationships with editors, and agents and so much more. Yes, it is a lot of information to digest, but it is worth it. It is a must-have query source for any writer.

 

 

Anne Wayman has posted a good sample of a magazine query on her blog. She also explains which information is included where, and why. The rest of her blog is also full of useful and applicable tips for freelance writing and blogging.

 

 

You don’t need to be Writer’s Digest magazine subscriber to access the vast  content on their website. While having the magazine is also helpful, you can always read the articles on the web for free.  I bookmarked 2 query letter articles I liked. While these articles were mostly written with the novel writer querying the agent/publisher in mind, you can easily adapt, and use the information for magazine article queries.

 

These articles are:

Basics of a Solid 3-Paragraph Query

 

10 Query Letter No-Nos

 

  • 12 New Things Writers Must Do Today to Make Money – E-book

Wooden Horse Publishing’s Meg Weaver’s e-book Twelve New Things Writers Must Do Today to Make Money is not solely about query letters, but it teaches you more about understanding the magazine (understanding its target audience and slant, and voice) than any other book around. And trust me,  I devoured more than my share of e-books and books, both free and unpaid, on the subject of magazine writing. And since you understand that particular magazine perfectly, your chances of writing a terrific query letter becomes much higher. But she doesn’t just leave you with the understanding of magazines. She teaches you how to create queries from scratch as well. Oh, she also goes on to give you information about what extras will go to the article (such as decks and photographs), how to arrange them and so on. At $14.95, it is really worth it.

 

*By the way, the link for this e-book is NOT an affiliate link.

 

  • Power Queries – E-book

 

Filbertpublishing’s Beth Erickson has written a 20-page e-book on query letters called “Power Queries”, and it is a free gift to the website’s e-mail subscribers.

Here, Erickson talks about the many ways you can start your query letter, gives examples and explains the reasons why those examples might be attention-worthy. Seeing examples, and not just sentences about how-to-write-queries, makes it much easier for the writer to get the grasp.

She also gives you tips on what not to do as well, when it comes to voice, language and style. And don’t worry- she doesn’t stop with how to start a great query letter. She goes on to give tips on how to draft the rest of your query. Yes, these are powerful 20 pages!

My Favorite Writing/Blogging Job Search Resources

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freelance writing jobs
image via allfreelancewriting.com

It’s true that most well-paying jobs aren’t advertised, but sometimes we just want to write a fun blog post or an article without going through the querying process. If you are looking for jobs that will make you a nice little side income, these are the sites to go about hunting for them. Mind you, this is not meant to be a comprehensive list, but rather my favorites.

 

Freelancewritinggigs.com – Not only does it come with a nice collection of daily freelance writing gigs Monday through-Friday, it also has valuable info on freelance writing. Plus, you can try and have a guest post published on the side. If you are a regular contributor, there is a chance you might be hired as a paid writer too.

Jobs.problogger.net – Posted on Darren Rowse’s Problogger, you get a list of blogging jobs. Of course it costs for the job poster to be listed here (even though it is only $50 for 30 days), so some employers might prefer craiglist (which doesn’t charge).

Write-jobs-blogspot

The good thing about this site is that they list a lot of contests, as well as writing and blogging jobs. They don’t list any jobs that pay less than $10, so it is up to you to dig a little to find better paying ones.

BloggingPro: Another source of blogging jobs.

 

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