Freelance
Writers' Series
Career & Business
Development Help
Freelance Writers: How to Use Technology to Make Real Money Online
I’ve dubbed November Freelance Writer Technology Month. What’s this
all about?
You may want to grab
a cup of joe. This article is kind of long, but I hope to shed some light on the
changes coming forth for InkwellEditorialcom and InkwellEditorial.blogspot.com.
A Solid Week of
Research into How to Make Real Money Online as a Freelance Writer
Recently, I spent a
solid week – 50-60 hours – researching how people make “real” money online. I’m
talking long-term, sustainable, pay for healthcare and retirement money. To do
this, I went back to basics. I forced myself to forget what I thought I knew and
approach everything fresh.
As I wrote about in
this article,
Why Freelance Writers May Be the Poorest Internet
Entrepreneurs. As freelance writers, we’re not very good at
embracing technology – which is how the real money is made online.
Sure, we may get as
far as learning a little HTML code, scan and upload images, and even create
simple logos, but we don’t get much beyond that. Once I started reading,
practically all of my searches took me to some internet marketing guru’s site.
Invariably, I’d find
a discussion about some piece of technology that would give me a eureka moment.
That’s when I knew that I had to change the way I went about my business.
What Made Me Declare
November Freelance Writer's Technology Month
I want to digress
for a minute to explain what made me want to start this series. Simply put, I
wanted to increase my online income. I’ve explained before, but as I’m starting
up this new series, I wanted us all to be on the same page.
I’ve been a
freelance writer since 1993. I make a good living at it, but the last couple of
years I’ve been kind of restless in my career. I want to work less and, perhaps
more importantly, create passive streams of income that will sustain me into my
golden years. At 41, these things weigh heavily on me.
As a freelance
writer actually writing for a living, time is my commodity. If I don’t
work, I don’t make any money. That’s why I started publishing ebooks and doing
freelance writing seminars a few years ago. These added income streams (passive,
in the case of the ebooks), which supplemented my writing work nicely.
I liked it. Logging
on and seeing money in my account for a product I produced five years ago can’t
be beat. This is the direction I decided I wanted to take my career in, and I
started to “turn the ship,” so to speak, in that direction a little over a year
ago. What does this mean?
How to Change the
Direction of Your Freelance Writing Career
I started to cut
back on client projects and focus more in producing income from my own projects.
This has caused me some financial pangs, but I’m thinking long-term here, as I
hope you do too when it comes to your freelance career.
I mean, ostensibly,
you can work as a freelance writer forever. As I say in my sales copy on
FreelanceWritingWebsite.com, age is not a barrier, income is not a barrier
and education is not a barrier. BUT, do you really want to have to write
for a living well into retirement?
So, this is what
brings me to this point.
What’s Coming Up in
“Freelance Writer Technology Month”
Over the next month,
I will be talking about what I’ve learned. I will introduce you to some online
techniques to drive traffic to your site, to increase your online marketing
strategies and to increasing your online income overall.
As I said in
last Friday’s post, I’m always trying to get freelance writers to think
beyond “writing for a living,” to “creating a stable income – for life.” This
goes way beyond simply writing.
It will be a
systematic approach, which means that I will cover a lot of basics – not from
the “this is how you do this” viewpoint. But, from the “this is why
you do this and the results you can expect” viewpoint.
A lot of it I’ll go
out on a limb and say many freelancer writers don’t know about, or don’t
understand, as evidenced by the comments left in
this article I recently wrote.
One More Thing:
I will be posting 2-3 times a week during this series, as opposed to the 4-5
times/week I usually post. Why?
This will be my
trend moving forward. Many bloggers post daily (in some cases, numerous times a
day) in hopes of driving traffic to their blogs. I’ve always believed in quality
over quantity, even though I’ve pretty much adhered to the “you must post
frequently to drive traffic” mentality.
My
research revealed that this is not necessarily the case. So, I’m already
starting to implement some of the information I’ve learned into my daily
practices.
Furthermore, I’m
working on several projects that will push me towards making more money online
from passive income streams. As with anything in the beginning, this takes time.
Over the coming
months, I will be revealing my success, failures (let’s hope these are minimal),
and mishaps along the way. I’ll hope you’ll chime in so we can all learn
together – and hopefully experience success that much sooner.
I hope you will find
this series informative – and most of all useful enough to apply to your income
goals.
Don’t Forget:
Tomorrow’s newsletter
features an interview with ghostwriter Amanda Evans at GhostWritingUncovered. A
preview:
Question #2: From your blog, I see that you have been freelancing
full-time for over two years. How long did it take you to get to that point?
When my daughter was
born in 2003 I stopped working full time and went part time. I also got the
internet at home and this opened up a whole new world for me. I had always
loved writing and I started looking at writers websites and I joined a number of
writing groups. These groups were mostly poetry based as this was my passion.
During 2004 I began
looking for ways to get paid to write. Most of the information I came across
regarding freelance writing was about query letters and how to approach
editors. This wasn't what I was looking for. I wanted a guaranteed payment for
my writing. I wanted someone to tell me what to write so that I could just do
it and get paid.
Subscribe to read the full interview.
Intro Post:
New Series - Freelance Writer's Technology Month
10/17/07 Issue:
Sue
Fagalde Lick, author
of Freelancing for
Newspapers.
Whether you are an experienced or inexperienced freelance writer, this is one
market that eagerly accepts freelancers, as Sue outlines in her book.
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