writing Archives - Page 17 of 18 - Addicted to Writing

4 Reasons Why Every Writer and Blogger Should Use Twitter

Posted on June 3, 2011 Written by Pinar Tarhan

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.

11 Writing Job Requirements That Are Against Freelance Nature

Posted on April 25, 2011 Written by Pinar Tarhan

freelance picture — Image via teknosarj.com.

This is how wikipedia defines freelancing:

“A freelancer, freelance worker, or freelance is somebody who is self-employed and is not committed to a particular employer long term.”

Pay attention to the “free” in the word freelancing. Freelancing is -by definition- different than a regular desk/office job. You don’t have one boss, you don’t have set working hours. You don’t typically make the same income every month.

Unfortuntely, economy is almost always tough, and many employers in the marketplace have some unreasonable demands, or just demands that resemble more of the demands of a controlling office boss.

Below are some of these unreasonable, un-freelance-like demands that I run into often:

1. Hourly pays

Some employers want to pay you hourly. While it can make sense for some writers, most freelancers like to freelance because of the freedom.

Some jobs can take you 30 minutes and some can take 4 hours. When you are expected to bill in, your performance and motivation can dramatically decrease.

Of course if you manage to snatch a writing job that pays $500/hour, by all means please take it. I know I would.

But jobs that pay $10/hour? Thanks, but no, thanks.

2. Webcam on desktop turned on

There are freelance job sites (such as odesk) and employers who request that they can see you working. It is a very odd demand, as even your ex office boss didn’t probably have a chance to watch you directly, unless you worked in a very small office.

How can you concentrate or feel liberated when you know someone can observe you anytime? Yikes.

3. Bidding

There are many bidding job sites, such as Elance, Guru, oDesk and more.

The concept on these sites is that an employer gives you his budget and you estimate how much your time should be worth. Then you make a bid at a common denominator.

But of course the employer will be likely to choose the writer that charges less, given that the credentials are equal. This doesn’t work in the favor of the writer as the cheapest most qualified writer tends to get the job. The only benefits here is obtained by the employer.

And since most projects don’t really involve impressive budgets, these bidding sites decrease the amount of money the writer is going to make.

4. No-pay jobs and Internships

The idea behind applying to a job is to make money. Some job posters do not disclose how much they are offering. And you quickly find out that this is mostly because they don’t intend to pay at all. Under the name of internship, recognition and work-experience, you are supposed to work for free. But who is going to pay for the bills?

5. Very low pay

Some businesses ask you to turn in about 10-20 articles a week. This is doable, unless you are expected to get $5 or less for each article. Then why would you do it? You could write whatever you wanted for user-generated content sites, and maybe earn even a little more, without being obliged to write about something you don’t have control over.

I am not defending content mills blindly, but I am really opposed to taking $5/article jobs. The lowest I ever went for was $10/500 words -on a topic I could write my eyes closed. Let me put it this way: I used to talk about these topics (my favorite bands) all the time when I was in high school. No one paid me then.

If an article is going to take you a lot of time, and it is not on a subject you’d write about even for free, even $20/500 words is low.

6. Low pay, but maximum quality requirements

Some companies do offer to pay you $1-5 per article, and moreover, they demand the quality of a $50-100 article. Yes, you heard right. This is not any more rational than a guy who demands a loyal wife while he wants to be allowed to sleep with whomever he wants. These are things that should never happen!

If noones takes these jobs, no matter how desperate they are, people won’t post it. If there is no supply, how can there be demand?

7. Only employing people from certain countries

Many employers have some specific location requirements. Of course being from New York would help if you are to write New York-related articles. But if you are going to write about universal topics, such as blog traffic tips, what difference does it make if you are in New Zealand and your employer lives in Japan?

8. Only hiring people of 5 years’ experience

Some jobs go very overboard with their requirements, such as demanding multiple years of experience. While experience is a bonus, not all jobs really require that much experience. Sometimes experience is wanted only for experience’s sake alone.

I mean, if you have 5 years of experience, chances are you are not applying to jobs to get clients. Clients are contacting to hire you.

9. Phone calls and face-to-face interviews

One of the most appealing things about freelancing in the 21st Century is that you can handle anything via an internet connection and a laptop.

However some editors like to treat their freelance writers as they are office-bound, or as if freelancers need to live nearby. While it might be helpful on some occasions, having to meet/see your employers is something you did frequently when you weren’t freelancing.

I’m not opposed to the occasional skype conferencing, but commuting to offices? It wouldn’t work unless you lived close to where the hiring company is located. Remember one of the most attractive things about freelancing versus office jobs: Eliminating commute!!!!

10. Revenue-sharing job ads

Many internet writers take advantage of revenue sharing sites such as Factoidz. I did. I actually still do. It is fun to get paid while I do article marketing and link-building.

However when I am searching for writing gigs, I don’t want to run into ads of a million sites who only pay according to your adsense earnings. There are already many websites that work in that fashion. If I were satisfied with their paychecks, I’d write for them only. After all, nothing hardly beats the freedom of writing about whatever you want.

11. Job ads of sites already famous for revenue sharing such as Hubpages and Suite 101

It might be a blessing for newbies to find out about as many revenue-sharing sites as they can but for a more seasoned web-writer, it becomes old and boring news. Because chances are you already checked out Hubpages or Suite 101 ages ago and you are either writing for them or you aren’t.

I really don’t want to see their ads on my favorite job-hunting sites!

What writing job requirements do you find against freelance nature? Do you agree with any of these 11 pet peeves of mine? What are yours?

7 Benefits Writers Can Get from Applying to Freelance Writing Jobs

Posted on April 10, 2011 Written by Pinar Tarhan

writing cartoon — Cartoon on Writing via justkiddingcartoons.com

Applying to individual freelance job ads can sometimes be a tedious process. You might also feel like you would rather self-publish (it can be a book, or simply blogging) than going through all the formality of writing cover letters, customizing resumes and selecting or creating appropriate samples. Still, while it is not the most fun activity for writers, applying to different freelance gigs has many benefits:

Benefit 1: Market Research

You get to see which jobs are in demand, what’s expected of the blogger/writer (resumes, samples, blogs, years of experience, etc…). You also see what kind of jobs are available and how much which jobs pay.

Benefit 2: Publishing Industry Research

Sometimes there will be ads from publishers that they are expecting manuscripts. Now, you can and should search about them and see if they are trustworthy. But if they are in the clear, the good thing about these types of ads is that even though you don’t happen to have the manuscripts or collections of poetry they want. You will be able to add names to your list of publishers. Because you will be able to know what kind of stuff they are usually in need of, you can submit your work accordingly later on.

Benefit 3: Different Kinds of Jobs

There are jobs for editors, copywriters, article writers, article rewriters, website content with seo focus, novelists, bloggers, fiction writers, photographers, researches, business plan or grant writers and more.

You can analyze your strengths and weaknesses, along with your interests and expertise and be able to work as a writer in more areas than one.

Benefit 4: Enhanced Address Books

Some of these jobs come from craigslist. It is free to post ads on that site so many people choose their service. After all, who doesn’t like a respected website that doesn’t charge? The only problem with it, however, is the contact address of the poster of the job ad. More often than not, people choose to give a craigslist address. The address expires after the job is gone so you don’t have to option add the contacts and keep them for future use.

However some ads include the actual e-mail address of the editors. So even though one job isn’t right for you or you are not here, you can always use it later if you have a relevant sample. There is also the fact that craigslist addresses allow a very small attachment size in total. So a colorful CV with a nice picture, along with writing samples may be out of the question. However when private addresses are given, you are only limited by the storage capacity of your email account.

Benefit 5: Traffic to Your Blog and Articles

When you apply for jobs, you will often be asked to show samples. But most employers are happy with links to your published work online, especially if the job in question requires writing for the web. So you give links to your relevant articles. If the article is on a website where you earn money per page view, you will have at least guaranteed one view. If the link is to your blog, you will have gained one unique visitor. If the employer doesn’t hire you but likes your writing all the same, you might just have gained a reader.

Benefit 6: Entering the Database

Many employers would rather choose to work with writers they have already worked with. And instead of going through all the hassle of posting another ad, they would rather look at resumes and samples they have already acquired. There is a big chance that a writer who wasn’t perfect for the previous job might just be the right person for the current gig. It is always beneficial to be in the database. Because the next job might just find you.

Benefit 7: Customizing Your CV

I had previously discussed that looking for a job in writing wasn’t all that different than job-hunting in other areas – Customizing your CV is necessary in all professions if you are applying for different positions.

You don’t want to send movie reviews to a fashion editor. And you don’t want to send an academic article when you are applying as a gossip columnist.It takes time, but after a while, it becomes easier to prepare quality resumes, customized appropriately for the targeted job and it won’t take much of your time after you have gotten used to the process.

Plus, keep in mind that there are many individuals out there looking to hire writers to write their resumes for them. If you become good at this area, you can use your acquired skills to help others and make money through the process as well.

So do you agree with these benefits? Do you have any more benefits to add? Let me know.

What Editors Can Learn from the Movie Up In The Air

Posted on March 30, 2011 Written by Pinar Tarhan

Up in the Air movie poster - starring George Clooney.

Editors are busy people. We get it. They receive a gazillion submissions and manuscripts, most of which aren’t even relevant. We do feel their pain. But then again, for every writer who is too lazy to study the writer’s guidelines, there are many writers who put tremendous effort into researching the magazine, dissecting the guidelines and perfecting that query letter. And there is the endless waiting on the writer’s part, when the writer’s going crazy with all the questions in his head:

-Did they even see the query or did it just get lost in the mail box?

– If they did read the query, did I not get an answer because my e-mail account failed me or because they forgot to reply? Or was it because they just didn’t want to spend time sending out a rejection e-mail?

Did any of these sound familiar? After spending all that time on a query, and spending even more time waiting for the publication’s response time to pass, we are left wondering in the uncertainty of it all. Now, I don’t care how busy the editors are. I want that reply, whether it is positive or negative, right after the response time is over.

This is where the connection (that I made) with the movie Up in the Air comes in. Up in the Air is a romantic comedy/drama starring George Clooney. It is a very bittersweet & entertaining movie and you can read a detailed review (without spoilers) on my entertainment blog. But if you haven’t seen the movie, all you need to know is that George Clooney’s character fires people for a living. If a corporation wants to do the layoffs through an outsider, they get him to do the dirty work. Yes, it is not a pleasant career. And it is not a great moment to hear that you were fired. But it is better to know, as soon as possible, so that you can move on.

With writers, the problem for the most of the time, is that we have to wait weeks, or months to hear we were “hired” or not. Since editors are so busy, wouldn’t it be so find a person who would tell the writers that they simply weren’t right for the job. Writers need to know when they aren’t going to be assigned an article, so that they can pitch the idea to other magazines. Plus, telling someone they are not hired is not as depressing as telling them they are fired.

We need to know. One way or another. So if editors are too busy to reject us, why not let someone else do it? Might be wishful thinking, but I think this idea would actually do both sides a big, fat time-saving favor. What do you think?