Apparently I’ve angered some folks with my post about Stephen King and the horrendous “literary” outing he had with Cell. I would say that wasn’t my intention, but reading back through the post I originally wrote back in January, I think it probably was my intention. Regardless, I’m glad people are stepping up and offering their comments. It’s always nice to harbor a bit of conversation around here. The book really is awful, but that’s not the point. The point is that, at least his readers can drum up a decent reason to support his work, rather than the occasional expletive (as in the case of some half wits who leave comments).

Today’s looking like a gloomy day outside too, so I’m going to leave the spit and vitriol at the door for now and post this awesome review of M.I.A’s new album, Kala

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More relevant posts to come later…

I’ve been talking a lot about how you can start you freelancing career, the steps you need to take to organize your life and keep everything in place as you commence writing for money. But, I also thought I’d write a little about some good starter spots for before you become a full time freelancer. I write full time today, freelancing for dozens of websites and make a fairly decent living.

However, when I started, I had no idea what I could write and whether anywone would pay me for it. It seemed like a pipe dream. So, I did research and found a few sites that would take articles on spec and pay me for them in varying forms. Some would pay up front, though very little. Others would pay me advertising revenue as my site attracted visitors and traffic. Still more sites would offer a way for me to sell my articles to other people in a marketplace style setting.

So, I took all of these ideas and started putting them together. I’ll review them one at a time for you here though, starting with what I think is the best place to start writing for those unsure of whether they can make it in the field.

Associated Content

This site is a great place to start for a few reasons. First off, you have to have a basic semblence of writing skill. You don’t have to be a professional, but you can’t use the same blotted sentences you put together for your blog every other day. You need to draft an article, choose a good topic and some good keywords and make sure everything fits together properly.

You can essentially write about anything you want, which is another great way to get started. When you start writing, you have no restrictions, only your ability to think of new ideas. There are some places where you can’t make money on the site - movie reviews, book reviews, short stories and poetry, and other similar products that don’t make money over time. However, you can publish nearly anything if you desire.

Next, after finishing an article, you upload it to Associated Content. You will write a good headline for the article, something Associated Content will help you do if you need the help, and then you’ll fill out a variety of fields asking for additional information, including categories, tags, quotations, key points, and more. Finally, you choose a photo or two to represent your article (they need to be copyright-free or permitted for use) and you upload the article.

After about 8-10 days or so, you’ll receive a response from Associated Content with an offer on your content. It will be slightly more if you chose for the article to be exclusive to the site (meaning you can never use it again for other publication). I recommend keeping everything non-exclusive in case you decide to use other sites such as Helium or Xomba to double or triple post your content for additional money.

The offer can be as low as $3 and as high as $50 depending on how much traffic Associated Content assumes you will be able to generate with the article. This is where you start learning about SEO and how to write an article that draws traffic. You also start to learn what sells and what doesn’t and what client will expect from you.

The most important part though is that almost nothing is rejected. If it is rejected, you should look at a few more articles on how to write articles for traffic and see if you might be missing something (I’ll have more on this later). It gives you ample practice to learn about the online article writing trade as well as start putting together a nice little portfolio. If, in the end, your article does not gather the attention you would hope, no worries - write another one. Plus, you start making money for your writing - one of the best feelings you can ever experience as a writer.

If you are a writer like myself and have considered yourself one for long enough to be halfway confident in your ability to put coherent sentences together to form decently compelling prose, you are probably ridiculously disorganized. It comes with the territory. The imaginary guild of aspiring writers requires that all properly serious writers live in a disheveled mess with half finished work on every flat surface and only one clean spoon, sitting precariously atop a coffee maker.

It is this very trait that keeps so many writers from actually becoming freelance writers and making money from their talents. If you can’t find your computer under the detritus, how can you reply to the emails that are starting to pile up? Not a good combination.

Unfortunately, for those of you who are only partway down the road to freelance writing, this is the first thing you need to tackle. Fortunately though, there is a right way and a wrong way to do it and you can get a few pointers right here on those first steps.

As I mentioned in my post from last week I started my freelancing career by overdoing just about everything. I wrote massive schedules that were often two pages long and longer than most of the articles I had to write for any given day. Also mentioned in that post is how quickly I managed to overcome that phase and starting getting to the nitty gritty of my writing much faster.

The first thing I learned was that you have to peel away all of the extra stuff. You haven’t even started writing you, so don’t go too far. Do away with any extra curricular writing and focus all of your energy in getting your things straightened out for your first project.

1. No personal projects. Blogs are a great way to relieve stress and seek help online, but when you are just getting started, you’re just spliting your foucs too many ways.

2. Set aside designated time for each task you need to accomplish. At first, you will likely still have another job. Don’t try to fit in a few minutes of research or writing every day after work. Set aside two hour blocks before or after work or on th weekends.

3. Clean your home. This seems unrelated, but you have to trust me when I say: as soon as your home becomes your office, your productivity is directly affected by how clean it is. Dust causes allergies, dirty dishes force you to go buy meals. Unfiled papers waste time when you are trying to work. You wouldn’t leave your desk at work cluttered with garbage and old files, don’t do the same to your home (this might change as you get more comfortable in your home-office; be wary)

4. Start Scheduling. Don’t write down anything other than work related tasks. You should keep a separate calendar if you feel the need to write down that you are headed to the doctor or want to exercise every Tuesday or Thursday morning. Your work schedule should be very simple. For example, here’s what mine looked like on a random day in June:

June 9, 2007

Elance Bidding
Email MySpace Contacts
Scan and Send Non-Disclosure Form
Triangle Direct Posts
Edit and Send off Mobile VoIP Article (need more details in introductions)
Need an Article x10
Brave New World Book Summary
Dating Site Edits (if they arrive)

My schedule might appear a touch over simplified, and you will slowly learn what works best for you. But, notice that nothing on that list is not a specific action related to a task. I didn’t include anything like “Lunch” or “Baseball Game”. Everything I did after work that day was written in a different schedule. It’s not that everything else isn’t important (or that I won’t forget at some point to go to the DMV) but I want a space in which I can easily look and see exactly what work I need to do for any given day.

As I complete each task, I will change the color in my Word document to red to mark that it has been completed. It’s a very simple process and I know other writers who go a few steps further and purchase Microsoft Project to keep track of everything for them, something I would almost consider myself if this didn’t work so well for me. Other writers still are able to remember what they are doing and don’t keep schedules.

However, my advice to you is this; always keep a record of your work for any given day. Even if you can remember, you probably won’t remember in 4 months if you need to look back and see which day you supposedly sent off Part 2 of a project that has gotten mixed up. Records are vital to keeping track of who owes you money, what you’ve completed and how productive you’ve managed to be.

5. Be Flexible. The final piece of advice I can offer in keeping organized is to remind you that as a freelance writer, you should always remain flexible. If a project doesn’t arrive on a certain day, just move it to the next day. If someone needs edits right away, squeeze them in. Two or three times a week I have to reorganize my schedule completely to fit in a project that needs to be finished or take on a new one that I promised to complete quickly.

As a new freelance writer, you are likely a few weeks or months away from keeping track of big projects in this manner, but trust me when I say that if you start now, you’ll thank yourself for it later. You will speed up just about everything by staying organized and eventually start branching out further. You’ll be amazed at the difference this stuff can make.

Let us pretend for a moment or two that I don’t have anything to do right now - a good assumption, even if it is completely wrong (I’ve been procrastinating all day). If that is the case, then I might be enjoying the end of a long and stressful week, watching the Mariner game and relaxing before the weekend sets in. That is technically what should be happening, but instead I sit here and keep writing for the blogosphere, zoning in and out of the aforementioned Mariner game, trying to decide whether or not I should continue working (that is, start working) or find something more entertaining to do.

Welcome to the most common dilemma for a freelance writer. Most of the time, the difference between working and not working is how loud the TV is set. And most of the time, when I feel the urge to not work, I sit and stare at the screen, wondering if I should do something else. Instead, I do nothing at all, an ironic situation I think. This is a common problem that you will be forced to face at some point or another, and most likely one you should consider when you actually sit and decide whether to work or not.

I’m going to go eat right now, I think, but so everyone is aware, I really should be working.

Good Riddens

I’ll continue my “journey”, if you will (and you should), through the realm of freelancing in the coming days, but first off let me just throw out a few of the less than fun aspects of the trade. For anyone who thinks they have it in them to write full time for money, I’m going to list 12 reasons why you should not. Keep in mind;  I ignored all of these reasons and so have thousands of others around the world. But, they are really good reasons.

1. Self Motivation - If you never did your homework, didn’t study, and rarely went to class in school, it might not be best for you to write at home, with no supervision and an open schedule. Procrastination is your enemy when real life clients with your paychecks are waiting for their articles.

2. Paydays - You never know when you’re going to get paid. In fact, you might never get paid. While, most of the time clients pay within 30 days of completion, keep in mind that some projects might take you 2-3 weeks to complete. Add 4 more weeks to that and you just spent 10 days writing a massive project and won’t get the check for almost 7 weeks. You’d better make sure you have money set aside at all times.

3. Taxes - I still don’t understand the tax laws for what I’m doing. As soon as you make your first $1000, start doing research and figure out if you are going to owe taxes…here’s a tip: you will. As a self employed writer, you’re going to be paying more taxes than normal in all likelihood. You have to pay all of your social security (employers pay half normally), self employment tax and federal income tax. Of course, you also get to deduct a lot more stuff. Just make sure you have receipts.

4. Work space - You’re probably going to be working at home; which means, you’ll have limited space and whoever else is there with you. Try your hardest to create a secluded space to work in. If you can’t, invest in a nice pair of deprivation headphones.

5. Loneliness - You won’t realize it at first, but you will miss having coworkers. Even if you hated every single one of them, you probably enjoyed occasionally discussing the game or current events on your breaks. Get a dog and practice not being embarassed to talk to it.

6. Reaction of your friends and family - Friends and family will be very supportive and probably a little jealous of your new found career, but often do not understand it. Most people are used to the grind of hourly work, weekends, and the corporate shuffle. You’re not in that maze anymore, so prepare to explain it to everyone you know.

7. Distractions - Everything is a distraction, especially your computer. Prepare to be overwhelmed by the urge to play computer games, check your email and read about the newest prosthetic leg molds (it will happen). The key is to overcome those urges at least 75% of the time.

8. Clients - Your clients will drive you mad. It’s a matter of time before you start working on larger projects and with larger buyers, but when you do you might start to notice that payments come slower, instructions are cryptic and criticism is unbalanced. It’s not because your clients are any less professional; it is because they are too professional. The unfortunate fact is some people do not respect the writers. You have to accept that and just be as nice as possible. Offer to do everything they ask of you and never complain. You may need their repeat work in the future.

9. Clients - Deserves a second spot

10. Flawlessness - You need to be the best writer you possibly can when you are first starting out to get as many repeat customers as possible. When you have established yourself, you need to do the best possible work to keep those clients and continue to grow. As a freelance writer, expect to become a perfectionist. It’s a necessary step to ensuring you succeed.

11. When it rains, it pours - When you get too much work, you get way too much work. On occasion, expect to spend 75 or more hours a week working. Inversely, when you have no work, it can feel like there isn’t a single job in sight. You might only work 15 hours in down weeks. Be prepared for either possibility.

12. The next step - You’re always working towards the next major step. Unlike a traditional job, there is no “clock off” time. You are always thinking of what you can do next and which projects you will attempt to start. When you succeed on one level, the next logical step becomes to move on to the next.
For almost any single one of these things listed, you must be prepared. If you do not feel as though you can succeed at being self motivated or cannot offer top notch service at all times to every client, you may want to reconsider freelance writing and get a job with a firm somewhere. However, the overwhelming freedom and flexibility of a freelance career makes it overwhelmingly seductive, despite the drawbacks.

It’s really easy to sit back and say that everything sort of fell into place for me after graduating college. Unfortunately, I’m incapable of that level of denial. The truth is that the months after college were stressful. I graduated in March and decided to spend the three months between then and commencement in June relaxing and enjoying my new found freedom. Of course, after three weeks I was working 40 hours at a grocery store again and there was no free time; but at least there were no deadlines, readings, or homework to complete.

In June I started looking for work. It didn’t go well. First, I had no idea what to look for. I had an English degree. What do people with English degrees do for a living? No one had a single answer, so I looked for jobs I actually wanted - writing gigs and entry level editing. The jobs that were good didn’t want me and the jobs that were bad…well they were too bad. Throw in a distracting summer and a few more months of disappointment and not having any money and I stepped back to reconsider my options.

It was October and as tends to be the case with most 22 year olds, I decided to change everything at once. However, unlike most 22 year olds and especially myself, the changes actually set. I did away with a lot of unnecessary spending, started working extra hours and decided that I would start working part time on January 1st, only two days a week. I saved up enough money to last three or four months doing this. My goal was to focus all of my energy into deciding what I would do with my life in those months.

When New Year’s day finally arrived, I had no idea where to start. I started this blog in an attempt to “share” my journey and start writing more. I had a college degree in creative writing after all, why not use it? The days passed and I wrote three or four posts a day, alernating between two blogs and a slew of article writing ideas that had jumped out at me in the middle of the month. I made massive schedules with everything I wanted to accomplish each day (spending more time on those lists than on the things listed) and flew blindly into the world of online writing. I read dozens of blogs, wrote dozens of articles and applied for a handful of jobs that never called me back.

Eventually, it was luck more than anything else that landed me the kind of seedlings I needed to start making a standalone income. I met an established freelance writer on Craigslist and started working with him on a regular basis, receiving advice and bolstering my confidence. I met another individual on Craigslist and helped him prepare a manuscript for publication. By mid-February, I was making a part time income and had enough resources lined up to make it full time if I put the effort in. So, I quit my job.

I suppose the moral of this story is that you have to take a few chances every now and then. I took a chance when I stopped looking for work and saved up my money. I took another chance when I started working part time and the ultimate chance when I quit altogether. I took a chance by approaching established professionals with my work and eventually I took a chance by advertising my own. In the end,  I found the job I was looking for completely on accident, by responding to a series of oddball postings on Craigslist. You can spend months looking for what you think you want, but eventually, if you’re suited for the role, the world of freelance writing will just pop up on you.

It’s no surprise that I haven’t written anything in a few weeks. I’ve been ridiculously busy and when I’m not working, who wants to spend even more time in front of the computer when they’re not working. Regardless, I’ve been getting a little ornery of late with my work and feel like I’m starting to lose interest and a small bit of respect for how great I have it, working from home everyday on my own terms, so I’m going to find the time to update my blog every now and then with my complaints and success stories (take a guess which one is more likely), plus it’s a great chance to take a break from work and feel like I’m successfully procrastinating.

As a side note, I noticed that my post about Stephen King and the abhorrent waste of text that was Cell was referenced on Publisher’s Weekly about three weeks ago. I had been wondering how I racked up more than 350 visits in the last three weeks when I have updated the blog twice in the last 12 weeks. The article is an interesting look at a new novel series by Sarah Langan and how much Stephen King let his fans down recently. I just though it was interesting (and flattering) for Marc Schultz - the blog’s author - to cite me when my blog has been largely stagnant for so long. My chance to return the favor - same gesture, without all that pesky traffic.