Turning Down Work

Just before I sat down to figure out my blogging topics for the week, I made a phone call to a prospective client to talk about the work she wanted me to do.  Now, I didn’t have a very good feeling about this client in the first place, because her email was totally incomprehensible to me.  I had no idea what she was asking me to do, but hoped she was simply not comfortable writing emails.

It turned out she was just as difficult to understand on the phone, and immediately I knew this was a job I didn’t want to take.  The most critical factor in writing for private clients is being able to communicate effectively.  If you can’t understand what your client is saying, chances are very good you will disappoint them with your writing by not providing what they want.  That they don’t know what they want either will make little difference in the end, so sometimes it is a good idea to turn down a job.

Even though I need the income, I just knew this particular client was going to cost more in time and frustration than they would be worth.  Instead, I can choose to spend that time trying to generate more leads for clients who will be easier to work with.  It’s a nice goal to want to help everyone who needs it, but it is more practical to realize when something will not work out.

So if you are talking with a potential client and having trouble understanding what they want, or if you just have a bad feeling about a project, it is usually better to listen to your instincts and move on.  As long as you work hard at marketing, provide excellent quality and don’t be too picky about new projects, you should be able to easily replace the income from a job you turn down.

Autonomy

The Best Thing About Freeelancing

The biggest advantage to being a freelance writer is the sense of autonomy. As a freelance writer, I don't have to play office politics with anyone, ever. I never have to laugh at a joke I don't actually think is funny. I don't have to keep my mouth firmly shut while my boss shares his offensive political opinions. I don't have to attend sales meetings or look at motivational posters.

I don't even have a boss at all- I have clients instead. Of course, it's important for me to be respectful in my dealings with my clients, but a client doesn't expect the same kind of servile behavior so many bosses do. I deal with all my clients over the internet, which means that each of my clients has his or her own life (which I know nothing about) while I am also free to have my own private life (which they know equally little about). It's not that I don't want to have personal connections with other people, but that I prefer to choose who those people will be.

 

The internet gives me the freedom to do that, so that I can maintain a cordial professional relationship with whoever my current client happens to be, without feeling as if they've wormed their way into my private life somehow. Which brings me to one of the most glorious aspects of being a freelance writer. When I feel like having a drink with friends, I get to have a drink with my actual friends. I never, ever have to go out with coworkers, a custom I have always found particularly repellant as it effectively increases the length of your workday by hours. Yes, the life of a freelance writer is the perfect life for a curmudgeon like me!

 

Content Mills for Getting Started

If you are an aspiring freelance writer and want to delve into the world of online writing, your best bet is to get your start writing for some of the top content mills online.  That is where I started, and within a couple months, I was providing a full-time income for my family.

You may be wondering what a content mill is.  Basically, it is a company that acts as a go-between, matching up writers to clients for various writing projects.  The typical type of writing for a content mill is a short article about any number of topics that is search engine optimized and will be posted to a website or blog.

Two of the top content mills are Textbroker and The Content Authority.  There are many, many other sites you can find, but a majority of my first income came from Textbroker.  You will need to provide a writing sample, which is how your writing skills will be assessed and how your author rating will be determined.  Make sure your sample is your very best work, because it directly affects your pay rate.

Before signing up for any site that pays you for writing, do a Google search and make sure there are no scam alerts or other issues with the company.  There are many reputable companies, but also some that are not so good, so do your homework before signing up.

Writing for content mills will not get you rich, but it will get you experience and some income while you learn the ropes of online writing and decide how you want to proceed.

Pulp Blogging?

Flash Fiction Possibilities

In the last two weeks I've been talking about the venues that used to exist for affordable writers to make a living by writing cheap adventure fiction. I said at the end of one of those blogs that the days of the pulp writer were probably gone forever. But I can think of one context in which they could possibly come back, if somebody with the right resources put the effort into it.

 

That context is blogging. People are very busy these days, and the pace of life is fast. Even a conventional short story is probably too long for most people. The blog format, however, is ideal for flash fiction- two hundred and fifty to five hundred words, serialized and updated frequently. The kind of thing you could read in the subway on your way to work, or maybe on your lunch break.

You could have all kinds of stories- fantasy, sci-fi, detective, horror. Every blog could end with a new cliff-hanger to keep the reader wanting more. You could not only sell advertising on the blog (for instance, a crime fiction blog could carry ads for new crime novels or movies), you could also work SEO writing into the stories themselves.

 

This is the only thing I can think of that could have the potential to bring back the golden era of pulp's glory days, when writers could make a living making up exciting stories. People used to really love those kinds of stories, and if they were presented in the right way, I think they could again.

 

 

 

Charging Per Word May Not Work

Many freelance writers charge by the word, probably because many content mills and other places writers get their starts pay that way.  For the most part, pay by the word can be a successful and profitable model, but there are times that writing a word will take much longer than other times, and you need to be able to account for those times when you are billing a client.

For instance, a couple of months ago I was hired to write a bio page for a prominent professional.  It was to be 500 words, which is a piece of cake for many standard web articles.  I discovered, however, that a bio takes a whole lot more research.  In addition to learning how to write a bio for that particular industry, I also spent 45 minutes on the phone with the client to get interview material for the bio.

My standard writing rate usually nets me upwards of $50 per hour, but in that particular case, I spent several hours researching, interviewing and writing the bio, and my hourly rate came out to about $10 per hour.

When you are deciding how to charge for your writing, be sure to allow yourself the ability to charge hourly or a set rate for additional research above and beyond a standard writing project.  When talking with customers, you can just include a small blurb saying that you reserve the right to charge extra for extended research, or you can calculate that extra time up front and include it in your quote.

The next week after my bio was complete, an associate of the client requested his own bio.  This time, I included an additional $25 charge for the research.  Since I had already familiarized myself with the process the time before, this worked out to be on par with my normal rate, and I enjoyed writing the piece.

The clients you would want to work with will be willing to pay a fair wage for their projects.  Remember that and have no shame in asking a reasonable rate for your expertise.

The Dime Novel

Affordable Writing of Yesteryear

Before the pulp magazines even existed, there was the dime novel, and there was even some overlap between the two because some of the dime novel publishers converted over to the pulp magazine format.

 

Dime novels were cheap, melodramatic stories featuring wildly inaccurate adventure stories about Western gunmen and other adventure heroes. The Old West wasn't mythologized after the fact, it was mythologized as it was happening, by the dime novel writers. Outlaws like Jesse James and Billy the Kid had dime novels written about them while they were still alive and active. It must have been an odd and uncomfortable experience, seeing your life become a legend in front of your eyes.

Between the dime novels and the pulp magazines, there was a period of nearly a hundred years where it was realistically possible to make a living as a writer of fiction. It may not always have been the most serious fiction, but that's still a lot better than the situation for fiction writers today. The pay rate for magazine fiction now is about what it was in the pulp era- only back then, it was enough money to buy something. These days the same amount of cash would probably best be described as “beer money.”

 

So what went wrong? It isn't that people don't love stories anymore, it's just that the radio, the TV and the comic book basically combined to kill the market for the pulps. So, as nostalgic as I am for that golden era, it's most likely never coming back.

 

 

Need Help Staying Focused? Write or Die

"The web version is free, so there is nothing to lose by trying it."

When I first began writing full time, I had a really hard time maintaining my focus.  Having not worked for three years, I had gotten used to the casual routine of a stay at home mom.  Projects that could be completed in two hours were stretched out to much longer because of my inability to focus and just get to work.

Now, I love writing, but I love spending time with my family more, so I had to do something to get productive.  When I heard about this program, Write or Die, I had to give it a try.  The web version is free, so there is nothing to lose by trying it.

Write or Die is a simple program that allows you to type into a box.  You set a time limit, a word count goal, and get typing.  If you pause for too long, you will get negative feedback through an obnoxious noise and flashing screen.  It keeps count as you type, so you can always see where you are at in terms of word count.

As simple as it seems, that negative feedback is very, very motivating.  Once I started using Write or Die, I was able to crank out an average of 2,200 words per hour.  Now those are results I can live with!

The desktop version is available for only $10 and offers a few more features.  It runs off Adobe Air so is compatible with all operating systems.  Having tried both, I definitely prefer the desktop version.

So if you find yourself lacking in motivation or focus, try Write or Die and see just how much you’re really capable of.
 

The Pulp Magazines

A Golden Age For Affordable Writers

As a writer who makes a living producing all kinds of copy very rapidly for not too much money, I have a vast nostalgia for the pulp magazine era. If I had the choice between writing a fifteen dollar article on how to fix a leaky faucet or writing a fifteen dollar story about a man from Earth battling six-armed green Martian warriors for the love of a red-skinned princess who gives birth by laying eggs, I know which one I would rather do.

The pulps were fun. The pulps were trashy. The pulps were lurid, quickly-written, often senseless and frequently offensively racist and sexist by modern standards. There were pulp magazines for every conceivable niche- cowboy stories, detective stories, ghost stories, even engineering stories.

 

My two favorite pulps of the classic era have to be “Black Mask” and “Weird Tales.” Black Mask featured stories of the kind we would now call hardboiled or noir. Stories about gangsters and molls, private eyes and femme fatales.

 

“Weird Tales” was the original home of both the Conan stories and most of H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos. It was a place for any kind of horror or outre fantasy.

 

If I could have written for either of these magazines in their heyday, I would be a happy writer. I wouldn't care that the pay was bad, or that the stuff I was writing would be looked down on as lurid trash. I would see the opportunity to write for the pulp magazines as being given permission to go out and play, and to get paid while doing so. What a life!

 

 

If You Make Income Writing, You Need to Track It

Many people just starting out in a home business have questions about reporting income for taxes.  For the most part, you can count on Uncle Sam wanting a cut and if you make income, you should report it.  The IRS has specific guidelines on what counts as reportable income, but generally, if you treat your writing like a business and plan to profit it from it, you will need to report your income.

The good news is, as long as you are reporting income from your writing business, you can also deduct many expenses, which reduces your taxable income.  Expenses such as office supplies, Internet access, reference books, relevant subscriptions, and even the cost of your computer can be deducted, as long as you keep your receipts so you have proof of each expense.

Unless you have dozens of private clients and a complex stream of income, you can easily keep track of everything using a simple Excel spreadsheet, or even a columned notepad. 

Keep track of each income, and don’t forget to track the fees deducted for some payments.  At the end of the year, you can take everything to an accountant or do it yourself with an inexpensive tax program.  I have been filing business tax returns for my home businesses for several years now, and always use Turbo Tax.  It is much less expensive than having an accountant, but lacks the peace of mind an accountant can offer.

The most important thing is to keep track of everything, and save receipts for it all.  If you are audited, you will not be able to deduct expenses you can’t prove you had.

Are Content Farms Bad For Journalism?

Or Just A Different Beast Entirely?

Apparently, some mainstream journalists have a real attitude about writers who work for “content farms,” those companies that pay meager sums for the rapid production of vast amounts of internet content on every subject from how to fix a certain type of motor to the best way to make apple crisp.

It seems to me that this kind of writing is obviously not journalism and is really never portrayed that way, so they can't really say it's any of their business. But the idea is that if you accept twenty dollars to write a two hundred word article and they would normally get two hundred dollars or even two thousand dollars for an article of the same size, you're bringing the whole profession down.

 

Here's the thing. A two hundred word introductory article on how to perform some mundane task is in no way comparable to a real research article. Writers who write for content farms do three or four of those articles a day. Journalists might take a week or two to do a single article, including phone calls and interviews and fact-checking. Assuming they don't just base their whole story on someone's press release, which is a common practice.

 

The reality of today's economy is that there are not enough jobs. Not just enough jobs as a professional writer- enough jobs of any kind. For as long as that continues to be true, people are going to have to look for any kind of work that will help them stay alive until things get better, and no amount of indignant hand-wringing by journalists or anyone else is going to change that reality.

 

 

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