Tanuu Blog

Today it begins.

I have always known I was a freelancer. The phrase my family uses to describe me is “not a nine-to-five-er.” That said, nine-to-five does carry some not-so-romantic but comforting benefits. Health insurance. Travel reimbursement. Gas mileage. A regular paycheck.

But alas, I’m the daughter and granddaughter of entrepreneurs, and I’m also of the “ownership society.”

I love to write. No such thing as retirement–writing is who I am. But with that ideal and that passion comes every writer’s downfall. Running a business. Getting paid.

We right-brained people with our horrendous filing cabinets and hard drives/Zip drives full of e-mails have to spend time organizing, like any businessperson. I had a conversation with a fellow writer/content provider in which we both confessed neither of us knew how to charge for our services. Although University of Southern California master of Professional Writing Program does give great training in the business side, most writing programs in my experience don’t teach marketing, recordkeeping, fee-charging, and work-for-hire contracts, let alone publishing contracts.

Today while tracking two possible freelance jobs (I’d like to give a plug to David Copeland’s Freelance Daily, http://freelancewriters.blogspot.com/, a terrific daily newsgroup with tons of freelance leads, also PayingWriterJobs, http://groups.yahoo.com/group/PayingWriterJobs/, AbsoluteWriter, http://www.absolutewrite.com, Writers Weekly, http://www.writersweekly.com, and of course, my local paper, http://www.thedesertsun.com/), I found my e-mail inbox inundated with back and forth e-mails. While I admit my e-mail organization system resembles my filing system at times, I finally wised up.

On my computer, in Windows, I have a folder with subfolders for e-mail. I created a separate directory, “freelance”. Then I assigned every potential or actual freelance job its own folder with a client identifier number where appropriate and otherwise the name of the client/publication.

I also created a Work For Hire agreement today. My own–usually when I work with a publication I’m required to submit an invoice. However, a publication you have a relationship with is different from a client that doesn’t know you and vice versa. This is new ground for me. I’ve signed three book contracts, entered into three royalty agreements and two bona fide collaboration agreements, signed screenplay, magazine, fiction, and poetry release forms, sent more contest applications than I can count…but my own Work For Hire agreement…now I feel I’ve passed the “novice” mark and can proudly call myself a full-time freelancer. Freelance entrepreneur.

No.

Writer always works. To quote Harlan Ellison’s business card, “I write.”

But will I stay organized?

Continued next week…

Kristin Johnson is co-author of the “highly recommended” Midwest Book Review pick, Christmas Cookies Are For Giving: Stories, Recipes and Tips for Making Heartwarming Gifts (ISBN: 0-9723473-9-9). A downloadable media kit is available at our Web site, http://www.christmascookiesareforgiving.com, or e-mail the publisher (info@tyrpublishing.com) to receive a printed media kit and sample copy of the book. More articles available at http://www.bakingchristmascookies.com

This author started with a clean website and wrote 5 articles in as many weeks. There is nothing else.

Within a week, this author’s site got a #1 ranking from Google, using the author’s name as the keyword and has stayed there during this period. MSN finally gave a #1 ranking after wavering between 8 and 12. For 2 to 3 days, Yahoo ranked it as #1 or #2, after which, the ranking disappeared altogether.

There are about 100 sites which reprinted these 5 articles. Many did not activate the link found in the author’s bio. The three major search engines reported a total of 48 inbound links. MSN reported 34 links, Yahoo 13 and Google 1. All in all, this author’s site received about 100 visits from various countries. One article appeared in foreign-language site from Brazil.

Do not be surprised at meeting the odd article pirate. This particular website strips the author’s bio, changed the title slightly, take the whole article in word for word and claim the article as his original creation. Looking at this site closely, it is easy to spot the various styles of different writers, yet this article pirate claimed authorship of all those articles.

This author’s personal take.

Have lower expectations - taking a digit or two off from the figures is closer to reality for most writers.

Choose the right topics. Writing about celebrities, hair are popular topics. There is one particular article on hair in places where the sun has hardly shone before, which had over 30,000 hits in an article-submission site alone. In contrast, articles written by this author on cryptography and technical analysis have only 100 hits. How these popular topics are related to your website’s theme will need your creativity at its best.

Consider using teenagers and young people as your test-market. If they do not read your articles, chances are, few would.

Submission to article sites is an exercise in patience. The author still wonders how some experts still claim there are hundreds of article submission sites, when there are only tens of listed article depositories. Probably, they may be referring to the thousands of one-theme sites such as web marketing.

Despite some flaws, this author still recommends article-writing as a web promotion tool. Seeing your articles accepted by 100 sites and read by thousands is indeed gratifying. Seeing your opinion being quoted and discussed in forums is exhilarating. Seeing one of your articles being blatantly pirated provides a new badge of honor - how many articles get pirated anyway? The internet, like everyone else, is imperfect.

Stan Seecrets’ Postulate: “Website promotion is a journey of a million sweats. Savor each drop and it will taste like honey.”

The author, Stan Seecrets, is a veteran software developer with 25+ years experience at (http://www.seecrets.biz) which specializes in digital asset protection. A free RSS/XML syndicated feed on all his articles is available. You can email him with comments or criticism to Stan at seecrets dot biz.

© Copyright 2005, Stan Seecrets. All rights reserved.

“Shallow men believe in luck. Strong men believe in cause and effect.” Ralph Waldo Emerson

What is the “unique selling position” in your market? Luck will not propel you to success. Understand the “cause” of your market’s problem by knowing your target. Solving their problem is the “effect” they are looking for. Corporations have entire departments dedicated to finding out who buys from them so they can hone in on that market segment. They do that by profiling not only who buys from them, but who is their competition. Successful marketing campaigns listen to their market. It’s about connecting a hidden desire or an expressed desire in a market, a target market. Your job is to identify where those minds are, find them and then connect with them. You don’t have to be a corporation. It’s your job to do your own research and it’s available to you through your competition.

Singularly look at writing to one person rather than a group. When you get this one concept down, your copy will stick like glue to the reader because it’s just the 2 of you in the room. It’s a real easy thing to say “everybody is my target market” but it’s not. Your target market is only those potential customers who are suitable for your products or services. You really have to know exactly who you’re talking to so you can provide the solution to their problem. That’s why I demolish those roadblocks for you in my highly acclaimed workbook and audio CD, Red Hot Copy to Woo Your Target Market.

Copywriting is interactive between the reader and the writer. You want him or her to keep reading so you have to engage the reader. When you get in touch with your TARKET, that’s where you really make the sale. You need to know everything about who you’re writing for. In other words, start with the catch in the mind instead of the pitch.

Remember that it’s not about you. Eugene Schwartz, Copywriting Master says, “The creativity is in your market and in your product, and all you are doing is joining the 2 together. And the only way you can get the creativity out of your product and your market is to dig it out. And the only way you can dig it out is dig it out more than anybody else digs it out.“

International copywriting trainer, author and speaker, Lorrie Morgan-Ferrero has been a freelance writer and journalist for over 25 years. Her words have made her clients hundreds of thousands of dollars. Now she focuses her vast experience on teaching others the skill of copywriting. Lorrie is the author of a highly acclaimed copywriting course, creator of the Red Hot Copywriting Bootcamp and founder of Copy Campus, a unique membership resource site designed to support copywriters and entrepreneurs on all levels. Visit her site to learn more at http://www.red-hot-copy.com.