The Violent Truth of Opportunity
Opportunities aren’t just made; they’re painstakingly crafted. See what I mean at today’s Freelance Folder guest post: The Violent Truth of Opportunity. I’m particularly proud of this one, so give it a look, won’t you?
Working Hard for YOU, 24 x 7
Hi folks. Happy Niebuday!
Just wanted to give you an update on the Helium Report. I’m putting the finishing touches on the report today, and will post it late tonight or, more likely, some time tomorrow. I’ve discovered that I have a lot more to say about Helium than I thought at first. The word count is over 5,000 at this point! I’m thrilled to be passing along so much good info.
While you’re waiting, make sure to check out a couple of my favorite posts from the last few days. Some are useful, some not so much. I’ll let you decide which are which:
Should You Specialize in Website Content?
Chris Brogan: est Social Media Advice From This Site
How to Get More Freelancing Work from Your Writing
I Am Not Useful. (And Why You Should Be Cool With That)
Should You Tattle On A Bad Client?
5 Tips to Grow Your Twitter Presence
How To Stop Regretting The Past And Start Building Your Future
Are You Cut Out for Freelance Writing?
Have an awesome day, folks!
How to Be a Rockstar Freelancer - Review
Overview
For months now, I’ve seen the button and banner ads for How to Be a Rockstar Freelancer. To be honest, I assumed that I really didn’t need the book. The fact is, I was (and still am) already wildly successful in my freelance career. While I love reading Freelance Switch as much as anyone, I assumed that the book would be must a re-hashing of what I’d already read there and elsewhere. But, curiosity finally got the best of me, so I decided to check it out. Here are my thoughts, for what they’re worth.
For Experienced Freelancers
In many ways, I was right. How to Be a Rockstar Freelancer didn’t teach me anything I didn’t already know from five years in the field. It did, however, reminded me of some of the basic lessons I’ve learned in that five years. I can’t say I’d recommend How to Be a Rockstar Freelancer to anyone who’s been at the Freelance business for more than a year or two (unless your business is in the tank, in which case you might give it a read). If you’re already a successful freelancer, it is a good read and a pleasant reminder of the basics, but your $30 would probably be better spent elsewhere.
For New Freelancers
If you’re just getting started out as a freelancer, How to Be a Rockstar Freelancer will give you more than what you need to jump-start your freelancing career. If I had this book when I first started freelancing, I probably could have saved a good year’s worth of headaches, and would be a full year closer to realizing my ultimate dream of writing solely for myself. If you haven’t yet taken the freelancing plunge, How to Be a Rockstar Freelancer can help provide you with an accurate picture of the field and the lifestyle so that you can decide if it’s for you.
From practical issues like setting up your workspace to big ideas like branding, the folks at Freelance Switch offer up a ton of useful information. There’s information about how to figure your hourly rates, how to increase your rates over time, getting leads, managing clients, marketing, and subcontracting.
What’s Not There
I’d like to have seen more Information on Internet-specific writing and marketing. How to Be a Rockstar Freelancer is probably just slightly more useful for the print freelancer than the Internet freelancer, although both can benefit. To be sure, Internet writing is my thing, so I’m partial to seeing this sort of content.
Where It Excels
How to Be a Rockstar Freelancer is awesome at providing the basic principles from which you must operate to be successful as a freelancer. What How to Be a Rockstar Freelancer lacks in tactics and small-picture questions (although there is quite a bit of minutia there) it more than makes up for in strategy and big-picture ideas.
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Overall, I give it a 9.5/10 for new freelancers, and a 7/10 for those who’ve been at it for more than a couple of years. Oh, and yes, by way of disclosure, it’s an affiliate link. You buy it, I get a pittance 
How Freelance Writing Is Like Selling Cars
I want to take a minute to thank a commenter on the blog by the name of “Andy the Expat.” Andy the Expat left this little gem of a comment on one of my Helium posts:
Call yourself a writer? You sound more like a second hand car salesmen. Get a life
Now, I admit it: At first, I changed his comment to: “Great advice, I chek it out. I lik u write guy.” Realizing that was probably not appropriate behavior, I marked it as spam and went on.
Today, though, it dawned on me: Andy just gave me the perfect opportunity to talk about something near and dear to my heart, and an important part of the freelance writer’s life: sales.
The thing is this: while good writing matters, it isn’t the only thing you need to succeed as a freelance writer. You have to be able to make a living from your writing, and an important part of that process is selling your writing. That’s why just about any freelance writer’s blog has a “services” page (or pages): they want to make a living from their writing.
Now, some folks like Andy automatically bristle when they think about sales. They think about the “second hand car salesman” stereotype we’ve all heard about. They picture a balding, rotund and mustachioed man in his late 40s wearing a plaid leisure suit trying to get them to buy a broken-down lemon. In short, they think Danny Devito’s character from Matilda.
Some folks like Andy have a different view of a writer. A writer is someone who sits around being inspired. He gives his writing to the world to enjoy, out of the kindness of his heart, and he asks nothing in return. In short, they think Michael Caine’s character from The Quiet American.
But Andy’s stereotypes are plain wrong, about writers and about salesmen. Writers and salesmen have a lot in common. Both writers and salesmen are honest folk. Sure, there are some dishonest salesmen. Heck, even Hasbro can be misleading in their marketing. But most people in sales, and most freelance writers, aren’t dishonest. They believe in their product, and they stand behind it. They are willing to let potential clients take their product for a spin, to see how it feels. They are willing to haggle a little bit on their pricing. And, at the end of the day, writers and salesmen both go home, kiss their wives and play Monopoly with their kids. Both writers and salesmen go to sleep, believing that they have made the world a little bit better by providing someone with something they desperately needed.
I don’t think Andy will be back here, but that’s all right. There are plenty of wonderful folks reading my blog, and most of you get it already. Many of you already make your living writing, and others want to, and you all realize that sales is an integral and even enjoyable part of the bigger picture.
Next time you hear someone talk about a “second-hand car salesman,” make sure to tell them about Andy the Expat.
Photo by KB35
How to Make $750 a Week Writing Part Time at Helium
I told you all the other day about how I made a bunch of money writing just a couple of hours a day over at Helium. While I’m not going to go into all of the ways I made my money writing at Helium until the free report comes out, I do want to tease you all a little bit today.
One of the ways I made money writing at Helium was in the weekly contests. Every week, Helium features contests in 10 different content areas. Contest topics range from Roleplaying Games to Visiting Canada (I’m not making this up. A contest is ending tonight on “Visiting Canada.”) Within each topic there are 25 different article titles. Helium members compete by writing to any number of these titles.
Contests run from Thursday through Wednesday.You don’t have to write to all of the titles, and you are awarded points based on how your articles are rated after the fact. First Place in each content area gets $75, Second Place gets $25, Third gets $10, and three Fourth Place winners each get $5.
I know you’ve got questions. What is the ratings system at Helium? What about plagiarism? Is there a way to cheat? Is it a level playing field? Here again, I’ll cover these questions as time goes on. Suffice it to say for today that I’m confident in the ratings system.
So, how can you make $750 in a week writing at Helium? Win every one of the contests, of course.
What’s that? You have other work to do? You can’t write 250 articles in a week and still maintain a high degree of quality? You’re not willing to risk your income on the chance that you’ll win every contest?
And you call yourself a writer.
No, it’s not likely that you’ll enter and win all 10 contests in a given week. I get that. I’ve not done it. I do believe it could be done. I’ve thought about blocking out 20 hours in a single week to devote to Helium to test the theory, and I may do it in time. Maybe one of you will beat me to it, though. If you do, just remember who pointed you in that direction.
So to get you started toward your $750 week writing part time, here’s what I’ve learned about winning the writing contests at Helium:
- It takes 7-12 articles in a category to score enough points to win. Fewer articles makes it less likely that you’ll place, as does writing more articles. If you can get your Helium rate down to 15 minutes apiece, you can write these articles in 20 hours or so.
- Bullet-point list-style articles (using asterisks because Helium doesn’t allow HTML) will almost always get rated higher than articles that don’t have bullet points.
- An interesting opening paragraph and a solid concluding one will push your ratings higher.
- There are often plagiarists in the contests. Check the top three or four writers in the contest on Tuesday. Spend 15 minutes or so googling random phrases from their articles. This doesn’t take long, and it’s almost always worth it. Don’t let that scare you off, by the way. Helium deals with these folks quickly and harshly - again, more on that later.
- Article ratings will often sit steadily until after a contest closes. You might have the lowest-rated article on Wednesday and it will be the highest on Friday when winners are announced.
- Use the leapfrog tool late in the contest for low-rated articles in topics with a large number of articles. This will often give you a boost going into the final stretch.
- Even the best and most prolific writers at Helium, who often win contests, can be beaten. I know, because I’ve done it on more than one occasion.
Now, I’ll be honest with you. There are other things I can tell you about how to win contests at Helium. Com back on May 12 to download my free report, which will contain those contest-winning tactics as well as other strategies you can use to make money writing on Helium.
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