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.
The Helium Experiment is Complete
I like article directories. Why? Several reasons:
- Article directories can drive traffic to a website like nobody’s business, and I’m not the only one who thinks so. Yaro Starak of Entrepreneur’s Journey and Brian Clark of Copy Blogger released a free report back in 2006 on the use of article marketing as a traffic generation strategy.
- Article directories give you the chance to play around in a niche you otherwise wouldn’t write in. For example, I’ve written articles on things as diverse as starting a running exercise program to American Idol to avoiding work-at-home scams.
- Article directories give you a sandbox in which to test various techniques such as SEO and formatting before you use them on your production site.
Why do I mention article directories, and what do they have to do with a Helium SpongeBob and Powerpuff Girl balloons? Or is that just another one of Bob’s seemingly-random image selections?
Well, you might remember that, back on March 1, I decided to do an experiment. The experiment involved the article directory Helium and their Reward-athon promotion. Essentially, I wanted to see how much I could make on Helium in the 45 remaining days of the promotion.
I also invited readers to compete with me, and offered a prize to anyone who could top me. The Writing Journey was but a few days old at the time, and my readership was in the low double-digits. I got a few takers, but no one that really seemed to enjoy Helium as much as I did.
At any rate, I made $1,044.28 at Helium during the 45-day Helium experiment. I wrote for about two hours each day - around 33 work days. That works out to about $15 an hour. That’s not great, but there are other benefits. I’ve gained several regular readers (and some friends) along the way. I’ve had about 150 or so incoming hits from my Helium About page. (That’s nowhere near the hits I get from EzineArticles, but EzineArticles doesn’t pay me, either.)
What’s exciting to me is the residual income potential of the experiment. I’ve continued to earn about $2 a day on my articles. Given that most of my topics are timeless, I should continue to earn that $2 as long as Helium maintains or increases its popularity. Over a year’s time, that’ll raise my hourly rate by $11. In five years, Lord willing and the creeks don’t rise, it will be $70 an hour. In reality I expect that to be higher; Helium, I predict, will go gangbusters before too long. It will not surprise me if, by January 1, 2009, That $2 a day is more like $10 a day. Even if Helium only maintains, $70 an hour isn’t too bad.
So, I consider the experiment a shining success. In fact, it was so successful that I’m turning the experience into a free report. I expect to release on May 12, so watch for it if you’re interested.
In the meantime, since you all have so such varied backgrounds and differing stories about how you got started writing, I’m curious: What do you all think of article directories? Do you use them? If so, how do you use them? If not, why not?
Photo by Nadia308
How To Write the Best Damn Food Blog on the Internet
Let’s get something straight from the get-go.
I’m not a foodie. I’m not even a cook. My specialty is scrambled eggs. Plain ones, with no distinct features, other than “extra love,” which is my special ingredient. At least, that’s what I like to tell my kids. And they buy it, for now.
I have NO IDEA, for example, how to make this:
Occasionally, under extreme pressure from outside forces, I might be compelled to make Thai Beef or Tuscany Glazed Turduken in Hollandaise. But I’m not good at it.
Let’s get something else straight from the get-go.
I’m not a graphic artist. On more than one occasion (here and here, at least,) this blog’s banner has been called into question, with good reason. My personal taste is, let’s just say it, tacky. But I’m working on it.
Beyond all of that, I have little or no feel for the food blog marketplace. Angie tells me a few things here and there; I know that Orangette rocks, and that you can find yummy-looking food pictures at TasteSpotting. So, obviously, photography is an important part of food blogging. And I stink at that, too. Oh, and I do know that a good number of food blogs do little more than restate Alton Brown’s latest theory. Aside from that, I haven’t a clue.
To recap, I can’t cook, don’t know the food blog marketplace, and I rely on others for help in my own blog design. So, why am I writing about food blogs?
What could I possibly have to say that would be of any use to a food blogger?
Here’s the thing: I never said I could make your cooking blog famous or pretty, help you pick out recipes or take great pictures. What I said was that I can teach you how to write the best damn food blog on the Internet. And I can. And I’m going to.
I’ve said it here before, many times: I’m a good writer. I’m far from the best writer on the Internet. I like to think of myself at the high end of average. Regardless, I’m a good enough writer to have provided for my family for five years writing full-time on the Internet. I know what works and what doesn’t. I know what good writing is and what it isn’t.
There are plenty of folks out there, from Dosh Dosh to ProBlogger to Remarkablogger to Entrepreneur’s Journey to a thousand others that can tell you how to market your blog, how to drive traffic to your blog, and how to monetize your blog. Those folks are good at what they do, and you should definitely take the time learn from them. Learn as much as you can from them, because I can’t teach it to you. I don’t have anything original to add when it comes to blog marketing. Sorry.
But I do have plenty of original things to say about writing on the Internet. To repeat: I know what kind of writing works on the Internet. I know what kind of writing can make your readers think, “I’ve GOT to remember to come back here! Where in the world is her damned RSS button??!?”
So, starting on Monday and going for the next week or so, I’ll be using food blogging as an example of how you can improve your Internet writing, putting it (and, assuming you can market it, your blog) ahead of your competition. If you’re not a food blogger either, feel free, as you read the series, to replace “food” with whatever your niche is. Maybe you want to write the best damn model railroad blog on the Internet. Well, this series is for you, too. It’s even for the folks whose niche is blog marketing, social networking, real estate, or James T. Fracking Kirk.
Most of my regular readers, you writing bloggers, might even find something useful in the process, too. I certainly invite and expect you to contribute your thoughts to the process as we go along.
Here are the other posts in this series, as they become available:
- The Number One Reason People Read Food Blogs
- Three Types of Food Blog Posts You Must Master
- The Essential Element of Food Blogging
- The Last Word on Food Blogging - And A $25 Contest
Follow along with me, won’t you?
Why Internet Writing is Better than Print Writing
We talked some the other day about how there is a perception among some writers and among many non-writing folk about how Internet writing isn’t “real” writing, and how Internet writers are perceived as somehow being second-tier. I told you then that I didn’t agree with the analysis, and that there are specific benefits of Internet writing over print writing. Today, I want to explore some of those benefits in more detail. Why is Internet writing better than print writing?
photo credit: Mr. Wright
Internet writing has better odds.
Everyone who’s ever tried to have something published in print knows that you don’t win them all. In fact, when it comes to print publications, even the best writers don’t win many. There are exceptions. Once you hit a certain level in your niche, you can pretty much get anything published. Take my favorite fantasy author, Ed Greenwood, for example. Ed can write as many novels as he likes, and almost guarantee that someone will pick them up. Same for Stephen King. In the nonfiction world, the same would apply to folks like Seth Godin or Deepak Chopra.
I’m a decent writer; if I weren’t, I couldn’t make a living doing it. But the ratio of what I’ve written to what I’ve published when it comes to print is about 10 to 1. On a good day. And that number doesn’t even take into the account that most of my print writing doesn’t get published on the first submission; its usually the third or fourth. And my numbers are, as near as I can tell, very much in the average category.
Contrast this to my Internet writing. Everything I write for the Internet can be published. It might be for a client, or it might be on my blog, but it can be published. If I have an article topic I want to write that a client isn’t interested in, I can still write the dang thing and find a place to publish it with little effort. As an Internet writer, the odds of rejection are so small as to be insignificant.
photo credit: cassandra michelle
Internet writers make more per word than typical print writers.
I know what you’re thinking. “Bob, you’re full of crap.”
You’d be right. Only, not about this particular statement.
See, I’ve got a good number of steady Internet writing clients. My rate, while not as high as some, is sufficient to make the writing worth my time. And my clients give me specific writing assignments, which I complete, and get paid for. Every damn one of them. And, I’ve done the math: based on my rate of print publication, I make about twice as much per word written (not per word published, of course) on the Internet than I do with print. If you can get all of your print writing published, I’m sure it’s more lucrative. Bravo. Maybe you are a real writer and I’m not. But I can get all, or nearly all, of my Internet writing published, and I’m going to make money on it, even if I have to publish it myself.
See, I can write an article, maybe on a topic like common Internet writing mistakes, for this blog right here. In time, that article makes me money through contextual ads, affiliate sales, direct advertising and, eventually, my mentoring program. I can also spend about an extra 20 minutes rewriting that article or portions of that article three different ways, posting it to an article directory to make some additional pageview revenue and generate traffic back to my blog. The article directory income is relatively insignificant for a given article, but if you can get a thousand or so articles up on four different paying sites, you’ve got a healthy little supplemental income going on. I’m not all the way there, yet, but I’m making progress on that part of my journey, to be sure.
photo credit: Point-Shoot-Edit
Internet writers can have full editorial and marketing control over their writing.
Obviously I’m not talking about pen-for-hire work here. But anything that you self-publish on the Internet can have your own personal editorial stamp, and can be marketed as you see fit.
Does this create more work? of course.
Internet writing can be somewhat challenging because it forces you to learn to edit your own writing, and some folks can never seem to really master this concept. It also means you’ve got to develop an eye for design and know something about markets and marketing. But it also gives you a heck of a lot of latitude. The fact of the matter is that editors, in the print world, have different agendas than writers. I’m not saying they aren’t useful or even necessary; I’m just saying that it is nice to be able to rise or fall on your own merits, rather than on whether an editor makes you change something that really shouldn’t be changed. It also is nice to maintain some integrity when it comes to the marketing process, rather than leaving your integrity to an advertising agency.
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So, what do you all think? Based on the responses last time, many of you believe Internet writing is indeed better than print writing. What other reasons have we missed?
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