Entries Tagged 'Writing Advice' ↓
As several folks mentioned in the comments from the previous post in this series, having a good business plan doesn’t mean that your business is going to succeed. Now, NOT having one can have a seriously detrimental effect on your business, and even put it under. But the way you execute that plan has a lot to do with your success.
Today, I want to talk about the next step on your writing business journey. Once you’ve built that business plan, you should naturally start trying to land a writing gig or two. I’ll talk next time about where to find writing work, but for now I want to focus on something that will help you immensely when it is time to do that:
Building your portfolio.
A good portfolio is, in my estimation, one of the most important assets of your freelance writing business. It displays the quality of your work, demonstrates the depth of your skills and gives potential clients a reason to choose you.
In the print world, a portfolio generally takes the form of “clips.” Clips are, in many cases, articles that you’ve written that are literally “clipped” from the newspaper or magazine you’ve been published in. The challenge with online writing is that much of the writing you do will be “ghostwriting” – that is, you won’t get the byline.
This was one of the challenges I faced early in my freelance writing career. I started out writing in one niche for a single client. When it came time for me to branch out, I found that I had no work samples to show prospective clients. In my case, I worked around it by getting permission from my client to refer potential clients to my articles on her website. But I’d have been much better off if I had a solid body of work I could point to.
So, let’s get practical for a few minutes. What makes a good freelance writing portfolio?
A good freelance writing portfolio is accessible.
If you want to showcase your talents to a prospective client, you need to make it easy for the client to see your work. That means reducing the number of clicks required to see your portfolio. That might mean you set up a website with work samples. It might mean you keep copies of some of your work as MS Word documents, to be attached to emails.
My best portfolio tends to be right here. This blog is one of the most important resources for my freelance writing business. I found that, once I started including a reference to my blog on my freelance writing bids, my sales went through the roof. In fact, bids that included my blog outsold bids that didn’t by a margin of 2 to 1.
However you do it, though, you don’t want to make your client look under every rock on the Internet for your work. I’ve been published all over the web, including some big names in the writing business like Freelance Folder and Freelance Switch. While I could send clients links to those articles, it’s much more convenient for the client if I include them as attachments.
A good freelance writing portfolio is diverse.
Every freelance writer has his favorite style of writing. Certainly a part of what you can do to market yourself as a writer is to brand yourself as the expert in a particular niche or style of writing. Still, the Internet is a funny place. What’s popular today may not be tomorrow. To make it over the long haul, you must have a diverse set of skills. On top of that, having a diverse set of skills means that you have a more diverse set of potential clients.
I keep, at any given time, more than two dozen work samples in my portfolio. It includes the best examples of my sales writing, blog writing, website copy, SEO keyword articles and several other types of writing. I also try to vary the niches, as well, showcasing some of my areas of expertise and interest.
A good freelance writing portfolio showcases your best work.
It should go without saying, but your portfolio needs to be error-free. Even if it’s work you’ve published already, it’s worth an extra proofread to make sure everything is as it should be. Simple grammatical or spelling errors can cost you potential clients.
Along that line of thought, it’s important also to realize that, by including something in your portfolio, you’re saying “I can do this again.” As such, the work you do for a client needs to meet that same level of quality. There’s nothing more frustrating for a client than to see great work in the portfolio followed by a substandard deliverable.
So, what about you? Do you have a freelance writing portfolio for your business? If so, what kinds of things do you include, and what form does it take? Feel free to include a link to your portfolio in the comments section.
Follow The Journey: Other Posts In This Series
How To Start Your Freelance Writing Business: Introduction
How To Start Your Freelance Writing Business: Education
How To Start Your Freelance Writing Business: Honing Your Craft
How To Start Your Freelance Writing Business: Planning
How To Start Your Freelance Writing Business: Building Your Portfolio
How To Start Your Freelance Writing Business: Finding Work
If I were to start my freelance writing business over, I’d do things differently. There are plenty of hurdles and unnecessary difficulties I’ve had to overcome, based on the way I came about it.
Still, I wouldn’t trade it for anything; however I got here, I can confidently say I’m more happy with my career today than I have ever been at any point in my life.
So, this series really is an effort to identify some of the steps I missed in my business, some of the steps that I did get right, and some of the steps that I maybe did out of order.
The first thing I’d do, if I were going to start a freelance business, is to get some education.
Now, I started my freelance business around the time I was working on my Master’s degree. I had plenty of academic education. I didn’t need lessons in grammar or style. As a humanities major studying history, I had to become an expert at very direct and precise writing.
Still, there were some important things that I didn’t know, that I couldn’t really learn in a classroom.
Business education
I dabbled, around the turn of the millennium, with my own computer business. It failed miserably, within a year of opening. There were a variety of factors that went into that failure. Some of them I could have prevented. For example, I had very little understanding of marketing, and even less understanding of how to do some basic business tasks such as keeping an inventory of commonly-sold items. And don’t even get me started on the accounting nightmare.
Some of these things, in retrospect, I could have learned in school. A course on marketing, one on business management, and one on accounting would probably have really helped shore up my business skills at the time.
When it came time to start my writing business, however, I had learned from many of those mistakes from my first business flop. I was able to avoid most of them. I set out to learn everything I could about those weak areas, to shore them up. Over time, I’ve studied all sorts of business subjects via books, blogs, ebooks and even just talking with other people in business.
Do I consider myself an expert in business today? Nope. I have what I need to run my business, and even see it grow by leaps and bounds, though.
Freelance education
If I were to start over today, I would try to spend some more time learning about freelance work and the freelance marketplace before jumping in. I’d spend time on blogs like this one and others. I’d ask questions about how the freelance marketplace works.
One of the ways that this hurt me, in the early days of my freelance business, was that I really didn’t understand the marketplace. I had a wonderful client who paid me a decent price for my work, and her work was nearly enough to meet my budget. However, when I went out and tried to find other work, all I could seem to find was offers to write $3 articles.
I didn’t understand what was going on. I didn’t realize that, just like in other types of situations, you get what you pay for. Those $3 articles are, typically, very poorly written, often inaccurate, and just plain bad writing. I felt sheepish, though, bidding so much more than these low bids that I just left some opportunities behind.
So, how do you become educated about freelancing? There are plenty of ways. I mentioned reading blogs – that’s one way. There are also some decent books on the subject. In terms of eBooks, I’d highly recommend How to be a Rock Star Freelancer (read my review here). You can, just like with business, talk with other freelancers. Find out what they’re doing, what the business is like, and what you can expect.
Writing education
Writing online isn’t like writing for print. It certainly isn’t like academic writing, either. It’s a very different world. There are many aspects that, when you first start out, you aren’t going to understand.
For example, understanding the difference between web copy and website copy is important if you’re going to freelance online. Knowing when to use a personal tone and when to use a professional one is important, too. It doesn’t hurt to have some understanding of the basics of copywriting, either.
For my part, I came about this all backwards. I learned, first, how to write SEO articles. Granted, SEO is an integral part of web writing, and it’s an important skill to have. But there were other skills, such as copywriting, that I had to learn slowly, over time. I learned new ways of writing in response to business opportunities that I was missing because I didn’t possess the required skills.
If you start your freelance writing business with several types of writing skills at your disposal, you’re going to have a leg up on the competition.
How do you learn to write? Again, you’ve got lots of options. The one difference with learning to write is, in my estimation, that all of the study you do won’t do you much good unless you practice the techniques. Writers become better, in many cases, simply by writing and editing their own work.
So, what about you? If you have a freelance business, are there areas you wish you’d been more educated in when you started? If you’re not freelancing yet, do you think it’s realistic and important do learn some of these things?
Follow The Journey: Other Posts In This Series
How To Start Your Freelance Writing Business: Introduction
How To Start Your Freelance Writing Business: Education
How To Start Your Freelance Writing Business: Honing Your Craft
How To Start Your Freelance Writing Business: Planning
How To Start Your Freelance Writing Business: Building Your Portfolio
How To Start Your Freelance Writing Business: Finding Work
photo credit: Menlo School
Over the last week or so, I’ve written about freelance setbacks and failure in your writing business. While it’s worth thinking about such things from time to time, I want to look at the flip side today.
I want to talk, just briefly, about success.
A funny thing, success. You work for it, day in and day out. You toil and sweat and push for it, hoping that tomorrow will be even better than today.
The funny thing is, though, that success can be a bit elusive. If you’re not careful, it can sneak right up on you. In fact, you can get so busy working hard, trying to be successful, that you miss success when it comes.
Success can take different forms, too. Sometimes, your idea of success can be very different from how success actually manifests itself in your life.
For example, you might feel like your writing business will be successful when you land a sizeable project, or when you get a new big client. While you’re digging around for that big project or client, though, you’re doing plenty of smaller gigs for your regular customer base. You’re paying your bills, you’re feeding your kids, and you even have a few bucks left over for pizza night.
You might not recognize it, but that’s success.
I’m not suggesting that you have to settle for “just getting by.” In fact, I believe quite the opposite: if you settle for just getting by, you’re ultimately going to fail. If you run your business that close to the edge for too long, it’s going to get knocked out from under you. It’s tenuous, at best.
What I am suggesting, though, is that you take a minute, every now and again, to think about what success means for you and for your writing business. What are the things in life that truly make you happy? Do you have those things? If so, you may be successful without even knowing it.
From time to time, I like to go through my blog stats and see what brings people to my shores. While search engines aren’t my main source of traffic, they do bring in quite a few people. I’m always interested by what searches lead people here.
I found one yesterday, though, that seemed to hit home. Someone plugged this into a search engine, and it landed them here:
Every time i build up hope then i fail.
Now I don’t know about you, but it sounds to me like this particular web surfer has had a rough go of it. It sounds like he’s had his share of setbacks, that he’s seen some dreams fall by the wayside. I feel for this reader, I really do. I’ve been there.
But there’s a problem here. I think the reader has some cognitive distortions.
What are cognitive distortions? Simply put, cognitive distortions are ways of thinking that don’t reflect reality. Here’s an example of a cognitive distortion:
My daughter forgot her lunchbox today, therefore she must not like my cooking.
A cognitive distortion often takes the form of a fictional cause-and-effect relationship. Here’s another example:
My boyfriend left me because I’m a worthless person.
Unless you believe that the universe itself is out to get you, “Every time i build up hope then i fail” is a cognitive distortion, too.
You see, I’d argue quite the opposite of my reader’s supposition. I’d argue that hope, while it doesn’t guarantee success, is one of the prerequisites to success.
While I don’t believe that positive thinking is enough to bring something into being, I do think that positive thinking combined with informed and dedicated action will eventually produce results.
So, what do you think? What advice would you offer to my visitor?
photo credit: Ligadier Truffaut
It doesn’t happen very often, but it has happened to me twice in ten days.
Last week, I had a client kick a project back to me. The client didn’t ask me to revise the project; instead, he said “I’ve already paid you for this half, don’t bother with the other half. This just isn’t what I was looking for.” Upon reflection, I realized that he was right; I’d written the material with a fever of 101.6, and it wasn’t my best work. Not by a long shot.
I had another client, just today, email me saying that she was dissatisfied with my product. In her case, I bit off more than I could chew. Because of that, I didn’t produce the deliverable in a timely fashion.
Now, I’ll gladly take my licks here. In both of these cases, I made mistakes. In the first, I let a product go out, not realizing that it didn’t meet client specs. The fever, well, that’s incidental. I should have known better than to try to write in that condition.
In the second case, I just overestimated how many hours were in a day, and how much time I’d have to meet the client’s expectations.
So, what do I do?
I’m going to do what I’ve always done.
I’m going to admit my mistakes.
I’ve done that, right here. Confession is good for the soul and, while those two clients likely won’t read this, I’ve already contacted them, offering my apologies and trying to set things right. I hate for there to be bad blood between me and anyone, for any reason.
I’m going to make sure it doesn’t happen again.
This was a tough lesson to learn. My instinct is to become indignant. “I was sick! You have to give me another shot!” is what I want to say. But I realize something: as a freelancer, I alone am responsible for what I deliver to clients. If it’s not my best work, every time, then it’s not good enough. If I’m sick, I need to ask for an extension. Better yet, I’ve decided to push out my editorial calendar a bit, just to get a little bit of extra wiggle room for emergencies. So, rather than offering a turnaround time of a week on a project, from now on I might ask for ten days, or even two weeks.
In the other case, I’m learning to let my assistant handle more and more tasks. She’s amazing at what she does, and when I’m overwhelmed she helps me sort it all out. I’m learning to let her help prioritize tasks, figure out which ones can wait, which ones can be outsourced, and which ones I have to jump on right away.
I’m going to focus on the positives.
it’s easy, when a client drops you or when a project gets kicked back, to start dragging yourself through the mud. You start telling yourself you aren’t good enough, that you have no business writing for a living, that you suck at business. But those are damn dirty lies, folks.
I’ve worked with more than a dozen clients in the past month. The overwhelming majority are thrilled with my work. If I extend those numbers out to the past year, I’ve only had three incidents where clients didn’t like what I provided, out of more than a hundred. Those aren’t bad odds.
So, I’m going to dig through some old emails. You know the ones I’m talking about. The ones that put you on top of the world for a full day after you get them. The ones you print out and tape to your desk, just like my kids do when they bring home a test with an “A.”
So, what about you? What do you do when you have a setback of your own making?
photo credit: Dawn Ashley
