Writing and Stuff by Anthony Chatfield

I just realized that my last post was number 400 – I don’t normally spend a lot of time thinking about the number of posts I’ve written, but since I took so much time off in 2010, 2009 and a big part of 2008, I’m kind of excited that I managed to get the number of posts up this high. My goal is to maintain at least 3-5 posts a week, which is much harder now than it was 3 years ago when I was writing only 2,000 words a day or so.

So, stick with me, keep reading and get ready for some fun new posts coming down the pike. I’m going to go collapse on the couch and weather the heat for a few more days. Since it’s Saturday, I’m hot and my brain is still taking a break, I’ll leave it at that. Have a wonderful 4th of July though and an awesome long weekend (if you get the extra day off).

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One of the biggest problems I see in my fellow freelancers is that they are unwilling to bump up their rates when they know they are worth the money. Well, not all of them. Some people will gladly bump their rates up too early and then inundate your inbox when you post a project on craigslist (ahem…). But, for the well-meaning majority, the issue of rates and getting paid what you are actually worth is a HUGE deal.

If you sift through the archives here on the site, you’ll see that I once worked for micropay sites like AssociatedContent and Helium, making between $3-$5 for 1,000 word articles. It was horribly low paying, but at the time I was exhilarated to get paid for anything and to see my name next to a block of text. I even used to sit and track page views to see how many people had read my articles.

That jubilation passes when you realize you do in fact need to make enough to pay your bills if you want to quit your job.

So, I migrated to Elance, quit my job and promptly struggled by for the next 15 months. No matter how fast you type – and I’m a fairly speedy typist – $5 an article makes it very hard to get ahead. So, I slowly started creeping my rates up.

I was terrified it wouldn’t work, that my regular clients would abandon me and I would go broke. A funny thing happened though.

1. I didn’t go broke
2. Many of my regulars did abandon me, but a lot stayed on and paid the higher rates.

This told me that I had not been charging enough all along. People were gladly willing to pay more than they already were rather than go out and find another cheap writer. Stop and think about that – it’s a really incredible feeling. It means you’re not replaceable and that you’re a valuable commodity.

Pricing the Commodity

Once I realized that I was not working with men and women I needed to be buddies with, things go much easier. We’re talking about marketers, business owners and entrepreneurs who all think in terms of $$$. I make them money so they see me as a valuable asset. They might be nice to me, and me to them, but at the end of the day, it’s all business and if it makes good business sense to pay me twice what my old rate was, they’re going to do it – not because they have no choice, but because my work is worth the extra fee.

So, stop thinking of yourself as a starving artist who needs to take whatever people are willing to pay you. If you are a good writer with years of experience and a solid portfolio of happy clients, you have earned the right to be paid more for your time.

But, here’s fair warning. You WILL lose clients. It’s going to happen. Some people don’t care about quality. They don’t need to. They’re uploading articles to dead end blogs or posting on article directories. They just need quantity and if they can pay someone from Romania $3 an article and get the same results, they’ll do it.

Your task is to STOP competing for that low paying work and start putting yourself  in line for the high paying, rewarding work that real business owners and marketers offer on a daily basis.

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When you’re just getting started as a freelancer, which I know a lot of you are doing, there don’t seem to be many options. You can either work for $0.50 an article on Elance or roll the dice on Craigslist and hope someone accepts your email out of hundreds they’ll get for that single post. It’s a tough road.

I, on the other hand, kind of stumbled into it by working on so-called “micropay” sites like Associated Content and Helium where I generated my own topics, wrote at my own pace and got paid only if the content I wrote was useful to the site. Of course, that was also in 2007 when Associated Content’s stringent guidelines were not quite so hard to get around and you could get the occasional $20 offer for an article.

And to round out the story of my flirt with Micropay, it only lasted the better part of 6 weeks. I got up to about 20 articles a week with Associated Content and promptly realized that Elance was a far better place to test my talents – quickly obtaining a far greater supply of work per month than I would have been physically capable of writing on the Micropays.

So, Does it Work?

I will say yes. It might not be the most exciting thing in the world, but over the course of the first few weeks as a freelancer, you need something to do. You might spend 2+ hours a day carving out a name for yourself on forums, on your blog, or at Elance with bid after bid, but if you don’t actually sit down and write an article or two, you’ll never gain the experience you need to succeed.

It’s hard to be good at this job. You must not only be a good writer, you must be a fast writer – capable of adapting to numerous styles and tones instantly while shifting between dozens of topics. Only practice will give you the skillset needed to succeed.

So, where does that leave us? If you need a jump start to your career and some practice writing content that will help you hone your skills, get on the micropay sites. Until you actually get a real paying job on Elance or Odesk, it’s your best bet for getting some experience, feedback and much needed pay.

Don’t Forget Blogging

Regardless of your decision on micropay, though, don’t forget the value of a good blog. If you haven’t done so yet, get a blog started on Blogger.com or WordPress.com. You may not get a single reader, but the chance to sit down and write something that is dear to you and send it to the world is as good a way to build confidence as any. Just take a look at how many posts on this blog are from 2007 when I first got started. Whether you’re getting paid or not, you have to be writing, so stop reading and start writing.

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I took a big leap back in February and set myself up with an office space in a neighborhood a few miles north of our apartment. It’s in a fantastic location, close to the city but still in Brooklyn and right on the water. And while everyone I know is excited for me to have my own space, the people I meet wonder why I would bother spending that money each month when I get to work at home and make my own hours.

The truth is that working at home isn’t quite as amazing of an experience as you would think. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not complaining. It’s pretty amazing to get up each day and get to decide in the moments after a shower whether I will trudge to work or sit on the couch and watch soccer between articles. But, there’s something draining about being home all the time, almost like there’s no gap between work and home.

The Gap is Important

If you’re new to this business or are still working your day job, you still have your gap. You leave the house at least 3-5 days a week and whole heartedly enjoy the time you get to spend at home relaxing. And there’s nothing wrong with that. I was exactly the same when I first left my job and started writing. I would brag almost daily when my roommate got home from his job.

But, after getting married and moving to New York, I found that sitting in the house all day is rough, especially when my wife gets home and wants nothing more than to relax on the couch and all I want to do is get up and go out.

It’s also very hard to draw a line and say “I’m done working”. Most people, when they’re done working, go home. I’m already home, so instead I have to physically remove myself from my computer and draw the line. It’s tougher than you might think.

A Space of My Own

Basically, the office is an excuse to leave the house when I want to. I can get work done in a quiet, personal space out of my wife’s hair  where I can meet other people and enjoy the city between projects. Yeah, it’s a big add-on expense, but it’s totally worth it.

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When I got started in this business, one of the biggest perks I saw was being able to sit back and relax on the beach with a laptop, because I had the freedom to travel where I wanted and when I wanted.

It’s been a few years since then, and I’ve learned a few things about travel. Yes, it’s possible to go somewhere whenever you want, but even more so than when you have a job you need to plan EVERYTHING out perfectly if you actually want to enjoy your trip.

1. Lost Pay Adds Up

First up, you need to save up money for a trip. When you only go on vacation once every year or two, it’s not a big deal. You have a fund in a jar on top of the fridge and everyone knows you don’t go until it’s full. When you’re a freelancer with itchy feet, you want to get out there as much as possible, but you still need to pay for the trip.

To top things off, you don’t get vacation pay. It seems obvious enough, but too many people neglect his little detail. Sure, you can go away whenever you want, but if you do, you don’t get paid because you’re not working. And if you plan on working while you’re gone, trust me – it’s not going to happen.

2. Juggling Clients During Vacation

Another toughie is figuring out how to juggling existing, ongoing, or new clients while away. I’ve learned, over time, to tell my clients about my vacation at least 1 month before I go away…then I remind them weekly in subtle ways so they don’t forget.

The first trip I took, I spent three hours a day in the hotel room replying to emails and editing documents. The second trip, I forgot my laptop at home and came back to a dozen irate emails. By the third trip, I had a system in place where I worked my butt off for 10 days before I left to get EVERYTHING done early.

However you do it, make sure your clients A) know you’ll be gone and B) have a lot of time to unload whatever they need on you beforehand. If they don’t, it becomes their problem, which 99% of them will recognize.

3. Having Work to Come Back To

Here’s why I don’t try to get everything done before I leave, and actually build the trip into my schedules. It’s because, when you get back you don’t have anything to do. I’ve been in this trap twice before – once after a 2 week trip to New York City in 2008 and last year after I got married.

Both times, I took extended leaves of absence (two weeks and three weeks), having planned ahead to cover the lost time and get everything done early. Unfortunately, when I got back, I had nothing to do – no edits, no projects, no responses from those clients.

They hadn’t moved on – they’d just taken a break themselves and I lost another whole week finding work on Elance. The lesson here is to always bid out in advance of leaving and try to convince your regular clients to have stuff waiting for you when you get back.

Ideally, you’ll eventually have regular monthly projects that you can use to fill these gaps, but for now, a good bit of pre-bidding or even a day or two mid-vacation spent bidding, can help stave off the lost week.

4. Enjoying Your Trip Properly

Enjoying your trip is important. What good is all that travel if you’re miserably thinking of your email the whole time. If you’re traveling with family, it can be even worse as you drag down your spouse and kids with you.

So, instead of worrying constantly, be realistic and set aside at least 1 hour a day to check email, hash out work details and make sure everything is okay. The rest of the day, leave your phone at the hotel. A blinking BlackBerry can be the death of a good vacation and your clients should already know you’re away.

If it’s important, they’ll leave a message and you’ll have your hour at the end of the day to deal with whatever comes up.

5. The Best Time to Get Away

So, with no boundaries on when you travel (unless you have kids), when is the best time to get away? I don’t have any preferred times, but I have been very lucky in offseason traveling. For sure, consider taking a trip in December. It’s the slowest month of the year for most freelancers and offers tons of opportunities for cheap travel if you go in the first two weeks.

September-October and April-May are also great times because of the pre and post seasons discounts at resorts in areas that are still quite nice. Avoid mid-summer travel like the plague if you can get away with it, and keep a close eye on nice weekends in the later winter and early spring.

My wife and I had a fantastic weekend in the Redwoods two years ago in April. No one was there but the weather hit a balmy 75 degrees. Last year we did the same thing in Vancouver, Canada in February. If you can time it right, you can get the entire destination to yourself.

The key to successful travel as a freelancer is to cut out as much of your work life as possible. I made the mistake on this one more than once and it can be extremely frustrating. Do it right, though, and trust me – you’ll have a blast and your friends will be super jealous (which is always fun).

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Okay so this is probably the fifth or sixth time I’ve written something like “I’m back”, but this time I have a big new site and all sorts of new ideas to toss around fir the blog.

First up there is the new site: Great Leap Studios. After moving to Brooklyn I realized that I was never going to get any serious interest with the old name so we’re setting up a new one and a new site is on the way. The old site is sticking around but my partner Micah will be working with it now (since he still lives in Seattle). The site is up now but not quite completed. You can check out what I have at Great Leap Studios.

I’ll post links to the Twitter and Facebook pages as well when they are complete. Stay tuned very soon for a handful of new posts in my series on writing an ebook and some other freelancing tips and guides I’ve been working on.

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It’s day one of NaNoWriMo and I’m already well under way toward 5,000 words for the first day. We all know how often this kind of progress will last, so it’s nice to get a head start. I’m hoping to get in a solid 5-7k by the end of the day so that I can take it easy if I have a busy work day coming up. Should be fun.

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The all important part 2 of writing your eBook is here and is going to be an incredibly important aspect. Not only is this the part where you actually start to commit your ideas to the screen (a profound moment for any project), but it is where you start to see just how much cool stuff there is to talk about.

How Should an Outline Look

Personally, I like an extremely detailed outline – for a couple of reasons. When I used to work on projects, well before I became a freelance writer, I would just wing it. My college papers were done the night before and I didn’t outline anything. I got away with it, but I never quite learned how to balance my ideas and ensure everything was covered.

Once I started writing eBooks for my clients, that all changed. I didn’t have the luxury of winging it because someone was paying me money to ensure they got what they wanted. If I did it half-way, I’d probably just cause myself more work. So, I learned very quickly that before I started any project I would need to outline everything I could think of for their book.

With time, I learned that this wasn’t just good for my clients’ peace of mind, but for my own writing process. It makes it sooo much easier to be able to look back and see where I am between days, especially if I take two or three days off of a project and come back to it mid-chapter.

So, I’m going to show you my in-depth outlining process. Keep in mind that you can outline however you like, but to me, this is the best way is to know exactly what you’re going to write in the book from step one.

Create a Basic Outline

Start by creating a list of things that need to be covered in your book. You’ve already done a LOT of research by now (hopefully), so start listing out everything of value related to that research. If you were writing about dog training, you would start with puppy behaviors, clicker training, house training, and so on. Write it all down in one big, messy list.

Once you have that list completed from memory, take a few minutes and start researching elsewhere to make sure you didn’t forget anything. A method I occasionally use is to sift through the table of contents in books on Amazon.com and see what other subject areas I might have missed for the niche. DO NOT steal any ideas from these books – that’s plagiarism. Rather, just see if there was a general topic area that you missed. For example, if you wrote a Dog Training book but forgot to mention leash training, your book would be missing an important part. Never copy an outline from another book. This is why you create your own list first – otherwise the urge to just copy it out would be too great.

Fleshing it Out

Once you have a full list of topics, you should start filling it in. The easiest way to start doing that is to group everything in your list together by category. These categories will be your chapters. Ideally, you should have between 6 and 15 chapters, but no less or more than that. Too few chapters makes a book too bulky. Too many chapters makes it disjointed. Keep things combined for ease of flow.

Then, when the chapters are nice and organized, create a flow chart of what will be included in each chapter. Here is a sample of what an outline for this blog post would be (pretend it’s a chapter in an eBook):

II. Outlining an EBook
A. Introduction to Outlining
B. How Should an Outline Look
C. Creating a Basic Outline
D. Fleshing it Out
E. Creating Notes
F. Some Tips

As you can see, I’ve separated the chapter as number 2, then added each subsection below. You can add additional subsections below that fairly easily. Microsoft Word or Open Office SWriter both have easy features to do this automatically.

Creating Notes

Once you’ve created your organized outline, go through and add a short sentence or set of notes next to each marker to remind yourself for later what will be included in that section. Sometimes it can help you to remember what details are most important in that part of the chapter. Here’s an example:

E. Creating Notes – Describe the need to add notes for each part of a chapter. Show example.

I’ve just told myself exactly what I should write in that section, making the process much easier for me when I am in the middle of a massive writing project.

Some Tips

If the above seems a bit vague to you, it’s on purpose. Everyone’s outline is a little different and you need to find what works for you. But, I want to be sure I give you some parting tips to keep you from being totally lost when you get started:

• Don’t Try to Do Everything – Don’t try to cover everything in your niche. It would be impossible. A good eBook is as long as it needs to be to provide value to your reader. For that reason, aim for between 8 and 10 solid, useful pieces of information, fleshed out into chapters or subchapters as needed. If you write on 20 or 30 different topics, you may never get done.
  

  Never understimate the value of research

• You Can Always Add or Delete Things - Don’t feel like your outline is written in stone. You can always come back later and change anything you want from it at will. I like to keep it open whenever I’m researching or working on a book. That way, if I find a new idea or decide an old one is no longer good, it’s easy to delete or add.
• Do Your Research – Don’t create an outline on only topics you know about. You should be willing and able to go out and do research on things you may not be 100% familiar with. This will add value to both the eBook and your experience.

The ideal outline is one that will prepare you for the writing process. It will create an organized timeline by which you can write your eBook without getting too overwhelmed with potential topics. If you can do that, you’ll be set when it comes time to start writing.

Next Time

In the next post, we’re going to discuss how to conduct research and gather information for your book. It may be dull, but it’s the backbone of all good content.

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I try to be at least a little modest every now and then, but there are some topics I know pretty well, based pretty heavily on the experience I’ve racked up in recent years. One of those things is how to write an eBook, so I thought I’d bring that knowledge to bear here for a short course on how to do just that.

The next few parts in this series will cover exactly how to brainstorm, outline, and write an eBook that can be sold as an informational product or used to promote something else you’re trying to sell. Despite what some of my colleagues would say, I always like to think that the content comes first, so I take this process very seriously and alway pour a good bit of energy into creating well written, highly focused eBooks that are actually valuable to their readers. That’s what we’re going to work on.

As a note, this is a guide for those interested in informational eBooks for distribution on the Internet – not for digital novels or non-fiction books. However, most of the tips in these guides will probably work just as well for those types of books if that’s your goal.

For the first message, I thought I’d keep things pretty simple and focus on how you’re going to choose the topic for your eBook. It’s probably one of the hardest parts of the process and for many marketers, if it’s done poorly, it results in a whole lot of work for not much gain.

What Do You Know?

Simple question. Probably lots of answers too. The first thing you should ask yourself is what you know about. If that fails, what are you willing to learn about. This has less to do with your innate knowledge (because god knows that research on the Internet is easier than ever) and more to do with your interest level and motivation. If you choose a topic you know nothing about, the odds are that you don’t care all that much about the niche in the first place. That may not be true, but it tends to hold course for most topics.

On the other hand, if you choose a topic that you know a LOT about, even if you don’t like that niche, the writing process should be smooth. You won’t need to rely on research alone to make it happen. Plus, when you’re an expert in a field, it tends to be much easier to find a unique angle from which to write the book – when you can tap into that unique angle, you will save a tremendous amount of time and energy and probably capture more attention.

What’s the Book For?

Before you can go any further, you need to know what the book is for. Are you selling it? Are you giving it away? Are you writing for the sake of writing? It doesn’t really matter what your purpose is in terms of how you write it, but when it comes to selling it, you had better be sure that the topic you’ve chosen is going to be marketable.

Can You Sell It?

This is the biggie. Can your topic be sold. I refuse to tell anyone that an idea cannot be sold, but I will sometimes hold my tongue as I wonder just how it is going to be done. The key here is to know exactly what kind of market you have. Are there people out there buying guides like yours already and if so, how many of them are there. How many people are in your niche and what kind of opportunities are there for growth?

An easy way to do some quick research, if you plan to sell your guide, is to look on Clickbank’s Marketplace. Here, you’ll find many of the top selling eBooks on the Internet. The higher the gravity, the more people are selling that book and the larger its niche probably is. I don’t recommend copying anything out right – but you may as well see how your niche is represented.

Case in point – I had a client who wanted a new guide written about how to create your own energy, like all the big Energy4Earth style guides out there right now. They asked whether I thought the guide would sell or not. I said, sure thing, but you’d better market it well because competition is fierce right now. I recommended a similar guide, but one that focused more on how to make a house’s existing systems more energy efficient. There were a couple of guides like that but none of them were all that good. Turns out, he did fantastic with that topic, just by finding a slightly different angle than what everyone else was using.

He still got the niche he enjoyed working in, but he managed to get a guide that stuck its landing well within a hungry niche that was interested in what had to be said.

A Short List of Topics

That’s about as far as I can take you in specifically getting you a topic for you book, but just to get you a head start, here is a list of popular niches that tend to remain popular regardless of things like the economy or the time of year. If you write a book that is different and interesting in one of these niches, you stand a good chance of creating something profitable:

(note: Click on any keyword below to do a Google search for it)

• Muscle Building
• Solar Panels
• Wind Power
• Acne Care
• Vegan Foods
• College Guides
• Skin Care
• Weddings
• Dog Care
• Golf
• Learning Languages
• Stress Management
• Anxiety
• Anti-Aging
• Weight Loss
• Divorce
• Time Management
• Quitting Smoking
• Yoga
• Satellite TV
• Vacation Homes
• Getting Employment
• Insurance
• Massage
• Dating
• Small Business Building
• Gardening
• Organic Cooking
• MMORPGs (Massively Multiplayer Online RPGs)
• Self Coaching
• Making Money from Home
• Home Décor
• Pregnancy
• Home Security
• Stopping Identity Theft
• Car Repair
• Yoga
• Real Estate
• Cruises

This is by no means a complete list, but it can help you get started with your new eBook if you’re looking for ideas.

Some Websites to Check Out

Want to do a little more research on your own while you’re at it? Here is a list of websites I use for niche research when I need new ideas to get an eBook started:

• EzineArticles.com – A huge article directory filled with topics and content that you can start brainstorming with.
• Amazon.com – The world’s largest online store. Use Amazon to see what people are buying and what you might be able to help them with.
• WordTracker.com – A paid keyword research tool that helps you look up related topics to your niche. Make sure to sign up for the free trial first.
• Google Keywords Tool – Google’s AdWords Keyword Tool. This is completely free but doesn’t offer quite as much info as the paid ones. It can be very helpful for basic research though.
• SpyFu.com – Provides details about current ads for a given keyword. Lets you see how competitive your niche might be with costs per click, recent data, and more.
• Quantcast.com – Demographic information for specific websites and keywords. See who is interested in which topics and how many of them are out there.
• PayDotCom.com – Information publishing and payment service like Clickbank. Look through their marketplace for ideas.
• Clickbank.com – As mentioned above, a great tool to help research what is hot right now and what topics you can get in on or find new angles to work with.

This is just a smattering of tools out there. You can also look on blogs, research local news and headlines, read up on the current trends on forums and much more. Don’t hold yourself back. Do your research and find ways to get the best topics out there.

Next Time

Hopefully this post has been helpful in preparing you for writing your eBook. Next time we’ll talk about how to outline your book before writing to minimize writer’s block and to be sure you don’t miss any important topics in the content.

chatfielda Writing Guides ebook writing, how to write, make money online, writing a book, writing courses, writing for money

It’s a bit early in the month, I know, but I am planning on taking a good bit of time off of writing beyond the bare necessities of work for the next couple of weeks, so I’m doing my mid-October update a little early.

I actually sat down for a few minutes the other day and did some basic outlining of my future novel. It turns out I had a few good ideas (cool huh?) and now I have the basic idea of a novel in hand for me to get started with when November gets underway. I never know for sure how much to outline though – I don’t ever want to get too far ahead of myself. When I do, I tend to fall behind a bit and then not get as excited as I could when it all gets started.

But, then there’s the other side of things – if I don’t do some outlining early, I tend to get really caught up when it’s time to write 1500-3000 words a day for an entire month. So, I opted for the former and have a nice little outline to get me started.

I also decided to aim for something slightly less messy than the last few years – I’m just writing something simple and fun in the fantasy genre. I’m also aiming for a really long book this year. The last few times I tried to keep it short and then got stuck in that in-between space where I couldn’t quite figure out where I was going to end the book and so even when I wrote 50,000 words, it ended up being about 40% of a novel. So, this year, I’m aiming for a finished length of 100K+. I know I probably won’t write that much in one month (unless work gets really slow), but it’s a good target and will actually end me up with a completed novel, which would be pretty fun too.

Anyways, I have an outline, I have an idea, and it’s a lot of fun. Anyone else out there wallowing through October before NaNo, make sure to spend some time outlining. It’s cathartic if nothing else, plus it keeps all your ideas fresh in your head as you roll into November and start writing.

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