Where Not to Get Freelance Writing Work

So where do you get better paying work? I hear that question a lot. The standard sources that most people hear about are Digital Point, freelance job sites and Craigslist. Sure, there are gigs to be had on all of these sites. There are, however, significant problems.

Digital Point
Con: The people of Digital Point are often called bottom feeders, and if you've ever spent time there you will understand why. Don't get me wrong- there are a few perfectly lovely clients there who want quality and will pay for it. Unfortunately, there are about 1,000 jerks for every one of those. They will argue and make fun of anyone who wants a decent price for articles. They tell new writers that the "standard rate" for articles is $5 apiece. New writers believe it and soon devalue their own work to the point that they can't afford to keep writing.

Pro: If you have an enormous amount of time on your hands, you can find the lovely clients. They are there, somewhere. There are also a few places to post your info and to post special offers for the marketers who hang there. I'm told that though it costs $20 to do this, it can pay off in the end.

Freelance Job Sites
Con: For the most part, they are a waste of time. They are so heavily promoted and so populated that the job posters are inundated with several hundred emails a day, making it impossible for them to even look through them all. The first cheap one is generally chosen. Also, most of the jobs are from Craigslist and many of them are scams. I wasted too many hours that I will never get back on this type of site.

Pro: There are a few gems in the bunch, but it can take 100 hours or more of applying to scam after scam to actually find one, if you manage to apply within minutes of the gem being posted. I do know of people who have found high-paying work this way.

Craigslist
Con: Most of the time the jobs are either scams or they simply weed through responses to find the cheapest one. For a professional it can be difficult to abide this type of system. Quality is often not a consideration. And, scams are flourishing at a rapid rate. Many of the ads for high-paying work are really affiliate ads trying to get you to sign up for a membership with a job board. Others are there to get your email address to sell to people who run those types of job boards.

Pro: Like any type of freelance site, there are gems in the slush pile. I know of companies that use Craigslist to quickly fill legitimate writing positions and individuals that use it to outsource decent-paying work. However, like the freelance job sites, it can take days of searching and applying to find one.

Tomorrow I will go into some of the best places to get work that pays better than the DP "standard rate." Once you get going in that direction and build a reputation, there's no reason to ever take .02 a word, or even less, for an article.

Can You Make a Living as a Freelance Writer?

Of course you can. I sometimes see speculation about whether it's possible and who is actually doing it. I know of quite a few who do, and all of them are Web writers or copywriters.

I'm not sure whether it's possible with magazine writing, though. Magazines may pay a lot more, but there are far fewer paying markets and it can take months before you see payment.

If you've ever look at a Robert Bly book, the entire process of becoming a commercial copywriter is spelled out fairly thoroughly. According to him, much of it depends on cold calling. Copywriters that I'm acquainted with have reported the same thing. If you can't do it, and I can't, there's Web writing.

Web writing may not pay as much per project in most cases, but there's plenty of work and no limit on how much you can earn. If you're getting started, it's a good idea to have a monetary goal in mind. Without that goal you may be taken advantage of by unscrupulous people looking for what is essentially indentured servitude. To reach a weekly or monthly goal, you need an hourly goal. Starting with a reasonable hourly figure, with hard work you should be able to increase that rate steadily until you are able to work fewer hours and still reach your goal every month.

Reaching an hourly goal sometimes means having a specific per-word rate. The rates for Web writers vary wildly, but there are a few norms. One norm is that the bottom feeders will try to tell you that .01 a word is the standard. It isn't. Even starting out there is no reason to write for that rate. Another norm is that charging a super-high rate means getting little work. I do know of people who charge .30 a word or more for Web articles. That rate will probably work for one or two clients, but it would be hard to succeed long term at that rate. If you are writing sales letters or other commercial copywriting online, that is a more reasonable rate. Of course, it may take longer and involve revisions. In the end, the hourly rate may be the same.

If you seem to be working all the time but are wondering where the money is, calculate your hourly rate. Try it for at least two days- using only one day may be affected by mood, energy level or distractions. If you can get a two or three-day average, you might be surprised by what you see. It may make you ask for higher rates or it may impress you so much that you put on a bow tie and hit the town. Either way, you will know where your business stands and what you need to do next.

Stay Out of the Low-Pay Rut

I've seen it happen many, many times. New Web writers accept very low paying work and then have to work an extreme amount of hours to make the money they need. Then, of course, there is no time to search for better paying work or to learn about other markets. All time becomes devoted to the low paying work in order to keep up the pace. People who get into this rut may never get themselves out.

Don't get me wrong- you certainly can't start at the top. Making the transition from print to Web writing usually means a learning curve and a lower wage to begin with. But, if it isn't going anywhere, it's time to overhaul your markets.

If you can't afford to stop writing for the low-paying markets long enough to apply to better markets, then simply integrate it into your writing schedule. Spend one hour per day scanning through freelance bidding sites. Also check out legitimate sites like ProBlogger and MediaBistro for better markets. There are many people who get high-paying work from Craigslist, but it is often much more time consuming to do so than to go elsewhere for work.

After integrating this into your daily work schedule, you will eventually see the ratio start to shift. At first 90 percent of your work could be in the .02-a-word ballpark, then 80 percent, then 70, etc. Getting out of the rut is possible, however. I have seen too many people lately who are stuck and see no way out. Just keep plugging away and in a few months the transformation will be breathtaking.

American Literary Tastes

I think that this says it all. Basically, if it says "Best Seller" on it, it's usually crap. Except Harry Potter. And anything by Kim Harrison. And Anne Rice.

Actually, what most Americans read is romance novels. I was shocked when I found out that they make up a little over 50 percent of the country's book market. I wrote a summary of the American book market's appetite for romance novels here. Yes, there really are NASCAR romance novels.

I think that the perfect story for American audiences is probably a handsome lawyer who falls in love with a beautiful but feisty woman and then commits a crime in a haunted house. That's probably the quickest road to being published. I have not copyrighted this story idea, so feel free to use it. Also feel free to send me a cut of the royalties.

Web Press Releases

It occurred to me the other day that I haven't written a press release in a couple of months. I think that's the longest I've gone in years without writing one. This wasn't really an accident, though. I haven't sought out any press release writing gigs in awhile because writing Web press releases can be extremely annoying. Here's why:

It's time consuming. I see more people wanting bad press releases than wanting good ones. That means cheap prices and little attention paid to actually getting the release carried. Sorry. I can't do it. It takes me at least a couple of hours to write one, and I end up with a result that is a balance of PR and newsworthiness that I believe has the best chance of being of interest to media outlets. I'm not writing a $5 special because it's a waste of my time and the client's. Of course, that means that $20 for a press release isn't going to cut it and I'm tired of looking for people who can actually pay for their releases.

Clients often don't know what they need. In the online press release world, I have found that many clients sincerely don't have any idea what a press release is or what it should contain. I've had clients tell me that a press release is "just an article in a different format," and other such nonsense. Clients like that really don't understand what goes into one and they don't know what aspects of a press release make it very different from an article. I'm tired of having clients ask me for a press release and then need me to tell them what one is.

Many clients think their topics is incredibly newsworthy, when it isn't. When I was doing online press releases regularly, I only took on releases when I knew I could make them slanted toward the newsworthy. Often that takes a great deal of creative nudging to make it equate to something that people want to read about. I did one a few months ago that publicized an online store that sold one specific type of product. That product is kind of antiquated and has never been newsworthy. However, I took it on because I remembered a news story two weeks before that could propel those products back onto the map.

I wrote the release with that in mind, slanting it toward actual news so that it would get picked up. The client said that the news story I had referenced wasn't "recent enough." Now, keep in mind that this was the only news story about this topic in at least 10 years, and the story had only been two weeks before. Now you may see why I'm soured on Web releases for the moment.

On the other hand, I've never had any problem whatsoever with print press release clients. They listen to my advice, understand my experience and trust my judgment. So far, I've never had one fail to get into the newspaper. Go figure.

How to Get Your Blog a Book Deal

Blogging is a lot of different things to the people who blog. I saw a recent post somewhere that said you are not a blogger unless you do research before you start a blog and figure out how to bring in traffic. I wish I could remember where I saw that, but I do remember that the blog itself was crap. It was dry, boring, offered no new ideas or points of view and was heavily invested in bringing in as many people as it could. It will never be like
Passive Aggressive Notes. This site is funny and interesting without demanding anything of its readers. The blogger has just been signed to a six-figure book deal based on this blog.

Postcards From Yo Momma is a site everyone can relate to. Unfortunately, not everyone can relate to the book deal that the blogger will only describe as "comfortable."

The Julie/Julia Project was one woman's attempt to cook 536 of Julia Child's recipes in one year and to blog about the experience. It not only led to a book deal, the movie starring Meryl Streep is now in production.

Stuff White People Like is a weird blog that's about just what the title suggests. It's hard to classify exactly what the point is other than just to highlight weird stuff. The blogger started the blog as a whim to amuse himself. He was recently given a $350,000 advance from Random House based on his blog.

What do these blogs have in common? They were not thoroughly researched ahead of time. They did not cajole people into reading them and they were started in the spirit of fun and self expression. Those are the best blogs and those are the ones that get books deals. So, go out and do that. The Web has enough dry blogs that are calculated toward making a profit through keywords. Seriously.


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Boring Writing vs. Interesting Writing

By the title, I don't mean whether it's boring or interesting for the reader. Writing all day, every damn day makes you appreciate when a topic is just interesting enough to keep you from throwing things to keep yourself awake but not interesting enough to make you freak out. Why would something interesting be bad? Perhaps an explanation is in order...

I have ghostwritten a number of boring topics. If I told you the topics, just listed them, they would bore you. Now imagine writing on topics like that for hours when you know that Charmed may possibly be on or maybe there's still a Cadbury egg in the pantry that you missed. It's rough.

So, an interesting topic should be a lot better, right? Not remotely. A too-interesting topic can keep you researching way past the point that you should. That makes the writing process go on and on and on. This means less money, fewer opportunities for new projects and glaring spouses. I first noticed the glare this evening when I showed him the third giant insect native to a specific African jungle. I was already half an hour past the information I needed and was still going. That's what an interesting topic can do.

The ideal topic is one that is interesting, but not fascinating. It's easy to research, but the Internet isn't crammed full of information about it. And lastly, there should never be too damn many pictures of it.