You see the ads all the time: “Article writer wanted…” or “Blogger Wanted” or “Ghostwriter Needed.” These often lead to freelance job boards, classifieds and bidding sites that resell your writing to clients. Many are content mills of one sort or another that pay, if you’re lucky, $2 or $3 per 500 word articles when you can collect it.
Writing for exposure
Dear Dr. Freelance: I was asked to write an article for a popular website that puts out a digital magazine periodically. The stories in it get advertised all over several popular websites. I’m something of an expert in my field and a freelance writer. The editor tells me it will be great exposure, but has made no mention of payment. I get the feeling she is treating it like free PR for me and that if she chooses to use my submission, I should be grateful. I don’t have a lot of writing (for bigger sites or magazines) under my belt. Should I do it for the exposure and experience, or turn it down if there is no payment? — Underexposed [Read more…]
Positive client management
When turning to other freelancers for advice on the sometimes tricky area of client management, common advice includes limiting yourself to dedicated consultation hours, or learning to say “no” when relations between you and the client have deteriorated. These typical solutions, however, come from a negative perspective—preventing or dealing with problems by putting checks and balances in place.
I prefer to accentuate the positive: The best way to achieve an effective and pleasant working relationship with your client is to focus on your qualities as a freelancer. Superior client relationships come from controlling what you can—being the best freelancer and partner that you can be. [Read more…]
Writing robots need love too
Demand Studios and content mills? You ain’t seen nothin’ yet, my fine freelance writing friends. We’re talking writing robots! Forbes is the latest among a group of 30 organizations using Narrative Science software to write computer-generated stories. It’s actually kind of clever—the software uses data to create stories on sports, financial reports, real estate, local community blah blah, polling and elections, ad campaign summaries, sales and operations reports, and market research. [Read more…]
Guest blog roundup
Just a quick note to share a guest blog post:
Your Freelancer Life Cycle: A look at the stages when you move from the point where you don’t know what you don’t know to understanding it so well that it’s second nature. Some great discussion there, too.
Are freelancers unique?
I’ve been doing the Freelance Forecast for four years now, and in addition to the many thoughtful responses I receive to the survey itself, it’s always interesting when someone takes the time to offer detailed criticism—constructive, nit-picky or otherwise. So, I thought I’d pass along a piece of correspondence I received the other day for your consideration: [Read more…]
- « Previous Page
- 1
- …
- 19
- 20
- 21
- 22
- 23
- …
- 35
- Next Page »