Freelance Writing Jobs: 4 Ways to Increase Your Freelance Writing Income in 2008

December 31, 2007

Original Title: 4 Ways to Increase Your Freelance Writing Income in 2008

I’ve been freelancing since 1993, and have been in the publishing industry since 1987. As such, I’m often asked for advice from other freelance writers.

 As the New Year is a great time to re-evaluate, re-invent and re-assess goals, I want to add to the advice I gave in this article about landing more freelance writing jobs, based on some of the queries I’ve received over the past year from readers.

All of the following is from my personal experience.

4 Things You Can Do To Make More Money as a Freelance Writer in 2008

1. Broaden Your Skill Set: This is possibly the best thing you can do to make more money as a freelance writer.

My personal experience: This year, I started to write SEO content (aka article writing, seo content provider, web writer). And boy am I glad I did!

As I detail in this article, I went from 0 clients to making $250/day with just a couple of weeks of marketing. This past December was the busiest one I’ve had in years. Practically all of the projects were from SEO clients. I even picked up a new client on Christmas Eve.

I’m excited about 2008 because I have several clients lined up who want me to start on projects for them in January.

If I’d never taken the time to find out what SEO writing was all about, I would have missed out on what is rapidly becoming one of my biggest money making streams.

2. Don’t Listen to Other Freelance Writers: The internet is all about the ready sharing of information. BUT, this is a sword that can cut two ways.

Take my SEO writing experience. Once I started looking into it, I found a lot of info that didn’t make it sound too good. In fact, I’d say 95% of what I read about SEO writing wasn’t good.

Many freelancers told stories of how clients didn’t want to pay a decent article rate (eg, 500 words for $4). I also read accounts of freelance writers not being paid at all for the work they turned in. Then there were the stories of burnout (eg, writing 100 articles in 3 days time).

In spite of all of this, my gut told me that I could make a go of it in this niche. I brought all of my business experience to the forefront as I was investigating this niche.

And I said to myself, “this type of writing is new enough, there is a vast enough need and there are not that many professional writers doing it that I can make a successful go of it.” My gut just told me so.

And, I was right. But, if I’d believed almost everything I read about SEO writing, I would have dismissed it – and closed the door on a great opportunity.

I guess the point I’m trying to get across is, don’t be so quick to dismiss an opportunity because of what everyone else says. If an opportunity appeals to you, take some time to look into it.

Which brings me to my next point . . .
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3. Develop Multiple Income Streams: When you start to investigate different opportunities, you’re going to run across some amazing ways to make money as a freelance writer.

Select two or three complementary ways to make money. Developing complementary income streams will make it easier. Your secondary income streams should take less time and effort than your primary income stream.

For example, I write ebooks, and produce freelance writing and teleseminars. This goes hand-in-hand with my primary way of making a living – writing/editing for clients.

Passive Income Tip: Try to develop secondary passive income streams. For example, I set up an Inkwell Editorial Amazon Store featuring books on how to make money as a freelance writer. It took me about 20 minutes to set up. I don’t have to do anything to maintain it – passive income at its best.

4. Listen to Clients for Chances to Expand Your Service Offerings: Sometimes, opportunity knocks on your door so often, that you’d be crazy not to take advantage of it.

My personal experience: I’ve been asked by three different clients in the last month if I do blog writing (eg, update blogs). I don’t, but, starting the New Year, I’m going to.

Blog posting goes hand-in-hand with SEO writing. Hence, I’d be missing out on numerous opportunities to increase my income. 

So, listen to your clients. Have they been consistently asking for a service you don’t provide? Do you find yourself referring customers to other service providers to a service you can easily provide? Is there a service you don’t want to actually do, but can outsource to others and still make a fee off of it?

Extra Service Tip: When you are seeking to expand your service offerings, look for opportunities that compliment services you’re already providing. This provides three distinct advantages:

3 Advantages to Expanding Your Freelance Writing Service Offerings

(i) Save Time: Take my blog posting example. As I already provide SEO content, adding blog posting to my service offerings is seamless.

Most blog postings are 250-350 words. The SEO article writing I do consists of articles that range from 500-1,000 words. It’s just a different variation of a service I already provide (one that takes less time, no less). How easy is that!

(ii) Save Money: As you’re targeting the same group of clients, you don’t have to spend money to target a different demographic.

Also, there should be nothing to train for, set up, educate yourself on, etc. And, in cases where there is, it should be very nominal.

(iii) Create Client Loyalty: Service offerings that compliment your existing services increases your clients’ loyalty. I think of it as the WalMart marketing approach. Eg, why would you go anyplace else when you can get all of your writing needs met here?

Furthermore, new service offerings give you a reason to contact existing clients again – eg, “XYZ Writing now offers the following service for your convenience.” Having a legitimate reason to stay top of your clients’ mind is never a bad idea.

Freelance writing is not a static profession. Every year brings new opportunities to make more money. Knowing how, when and where to take advantage of these will ensure that you get a “raise” every year – and it can be greater than any raise you get from a 9-5 job – if you are smart enough to capitalize on the opportunities.

Here’s to a successful financial year in 2008.

Happy New Year!

Yuwanda

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SEO Copywriting Success: From 0 Clients to $250/Day in Less than Two Weeks

December 17, 2007

Originally Titled: From 0 Clients to $250/Day in Less than Two Weeks — How to Quickly & Profitably Break into a New Freelance Writing Niche

I’m amazed at the month I’ve had. One new client I’ve already completed four projects for, and three more serious inquiries for work starting in January.

Remember, December is supposed to be a slow month for freelance writers.

Before I tell you how I’ve turned what is usually a month I spend doing behind-the-scenes tasks like updating my websites, writing and submitting articles and organizing receipts for the tax man into a busy freelance writing season, I want to back up and give you a little background so you can understand better how you too can profitable break into a new freelance writing niche.

Case Study: How to Turn December into a Profitable Freelance Writing Month

This year, I started to do SEO article writing. For those who don’t know what this is, read more about it here.

Even though I’ve been freelancing since 1993, this is a very new form of writing for me. Most of my clients are small business owners who commission newsletters, brochure copy, articles for their websites, etc. I have some corporate clients who outsource their editing/rewriting work to me, eg, editing annual reports.

I decided to give SEO writing a try for four reasons: i) I was bored with my existing workload; ii) I’d read a lot about SEO writing and knew that it was going to be lucrative long-term; iii) there’s not a lot of competition in the field (not for good, quality writers anyway); and iv) it’s quick turnaround (in pay and assignments).

As an aside, it fits my rather schizophrenic writing personality too in that I may write five articles in one day on extremely different topics – from wedding accessories to mortgages. As my brain likes to flit from project to project, this works great for me.

How to Break into a New Freelance Writing Niche (Profitably!): How I Did It & You Can Too!

As this was a completely different field for me, I had to start marketing from scratch. Following is how I went from 0 to 60 in about three week’s time. 

Marketing for New Clients? Here’s a 3-Step Plan that Works Every Time

1) Website: I took about a week to build a website specifically for this type of writing.

2) Research: I compiled a list of SEO companies I wanted to contact for work.

3) Contact: I contacted them – one at a time, using the names of appropriate contacts where possible and at minimum mentioning the company in the email when no specific name could be found.

Marketing Success by the Numbers: What makes this plan work every time is that you make contact every day with a certain number of firms. In my case, I decided to contact – at minimum – 20 companies a day.

This is simply the power of “marketing success by the numbers.” What is this? Quite simply, there is an old door-to-door salesman idiom, “If you knock on enough doors, you’re going to get orders.”

One expression I heard summed this sentiment up perfectly. It went something like, “You can tie a sales presentation around a dog’s neck and if he passes enough people, he will come back with orders.”

On the very first day of marketing, I received two inquiries from companies wanting to use me for pending projects in January.

About three days later, I received another inquiry from a potential client who wanted to package my services with a presentation he was giving to secure a client, and in the second week, I landed a client who gave me 4 writing projects in three days (the first article consisted of two assignments).

This client is a large SEO marketing firm and wants to put me on their permanent staff of writers (we’ll see how this pans out).
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While nothing beyond the current 14 writing assignments has panned out, the point I’m trying to get across is that if you make enough contacts, you will get work – especially in the SEO sector.

If you want to learn more about how to start an SEO writing career, order the ebook, How to Start Making Money as an SEO Content Writer, here. It’s one of the easiest ways to start making money as a freelance writer, especially if you have no experience.

In this ebook, I outline exactly how I went from 0 clients to 14 writing assignments in – in just over a week. And, how it continues to grow beyond what I can practically handle alone.

The best part, I’ll show you how to start from scratch – with no experience, no samples and no website in this sector.

2008 Income Goal: In 2008, my goal is to have SEO Content Writing be 50% of my freelance writing income – with the remainder coming from passive income via my web entities.

How Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) Affects Search Engine Rankings

December 4, 2007

You may be scratching your head wondering what Latent Semantic Indexing is. It can really wreak havoc with search engine rankings and is something every SEO writer should be aware of.

What is Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI)?

Latent Semantic Indexing is basically a language algorithm that examines patterns of words for relational connectivity.

As an example, I’ll use a segment I saw on the TV crime show Forensic Files. In this particular episode, the deceased had supposedly left a suicide note. To determine if the note was indeed written by the deceased, a forensic language specialist examined it against known writings of his. 

By examining things like syntax, word patterns, use of language, etc., the specialist was able to determine if it was authored by him, or not. She determined that it was not.

Now, she also examined the suspect’s known writing samples and determined the suicide note had been written by him, not the deceased.

This is kind of how LSI works. In short, latent semantic indexing allows search engines to figure out what a page is about without matching exact search phrases. 

For example, If you write an article about types of apples you eat, by using LSI, the search engines will be able to differentiate it from an article about types of apple computers by the other language surrounding the word “apple.”

Ostensibly, an article about apple computers will contain phrases like iMac and computer, while an article about the types of apples you eat wouldn’t (ie, because of the relational connectivity between the words).

Why Latent Semantic Indexing Is Important to Making Money Online

In addition to the above, latent semantic indexing goes one step further. Instead of simply evaluating one document independently, LSI looks for relationships between sets of documents.

Eg, if you have a website about SEO marketing, it will scan that website looking for other pages that contain information relevant to that topic. It wouldn’t expect to find a page about quilting, for example.

As explained in detail on SEOBook.com:

 In addition to recording which keywords a document contains, the method examines the document collection as a whole, to see which other documents contain some of those same words. LSI considers documents that have many words in common to be semantically close, and ones with few words in common to be semantically distant.

This simple method correlates surprisingly well with how a human being, looking at content, might classify a document collection.[bold added] By placing additional weight on related words in content, or words in similar positions in other related documents, LSI has a net effect of lowering the value of pages which only match the specific term and do not back it up with related terms.

Read a full discussion of LSI.

The Future of Internet Marketing

The phrase bolded above is why latent semantic indexing is important. Search engine companies – particularly the larger ones like Google – are adopting technologies that make it harder for internet marketers to falsely rank high.

Proof? Read about the fallout over Google’s recent changes.

Once internet marketers figured out techniques to rank high in search engines – eg, keyword density, backlinking – it became easy to stuff an article with keywords, submit it to search engine directories and wait for the results to take effect. 

Why “Get-Rich-Quick Sites” Will Disappear from the Net (for a minute)

LSI makes it harder to do this. There are going to have to be more pages on a website, more text on a page, and more interconnectivity between them all for a site to rank high.

So, those sites with just a few stuffed with keywords and tons of ads will disappear (and the web community sends up a collective hallelujah).

The bottom line: Search engines owners want the web loaded with pages comprised of fresh, relevant, in depth, concise content. And many times, you have to wade through pages of results to find the meaningful ones because get-rich-quick gurus in every niche have figured out how to have their website pop up first when you type in a search phrase.

Like a new crime-fighting tool, LSI is the future of internet marketing technology in the SEO fight. UNTIL online criminals (ie, get-rich-quick gurus) figure out how to beat it. And the war rages on . . .

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