The Unemployed Writer

It’s no secret that there are seemingly unlimited ways to promote yourself on the Internet these days. Yet, it still manages to surprise me when someone does not use them all to their fullest potential. There are just too many options not to actively seek out and take advantage of them.

Starting with the most basic methods of blog promotion, I frequently tell people that they need to start and operate a blog - it doesn’t matter if it is the simplest, least detailed project you have worked on, you need to have a blog. Start one on Blogger if necessary and start posting every day (I know, I’m one to talk, but it’s a good habit to start). Once you have started your blog, you have unlimited options to reach people. You can start memes, contact other bloggers, start conversations with your commenters, and much more.

Another necessary promotional method is to start and maintain social networking profiles with all of the major sites - Facebook, MySpace (unfortunately), Friendster, etc. These sites offer you something no other option does - a built in audience of millions that you can reach with a single click. You can be sly or you can be explicit, but always remember to present yourself as a well polished person. On these sites, you are not selling things, you are selling yourself.

Which of course brings up the matter of salesmanship. I have had this conversation with a dozen other writers and many of them do not enjoy the idea of “selling” themselves to their clients. But, it is a necessary task and when you think about how things break down, it makes good sense. The Internet is full of people who sell themselves before their services. In fact, the Internet is just a bit too impersonal not to do so. If you try to go faceless and tell people that they can trust you when they don’t know who you are, they will often ignore your suggestions. If you tell them who you are, provide ample opinions and open conversation, and draw them into the fold, they will begin to trust you more outright and you will be much more successful in reaching them.

I won’t go into the details of everything you can do to promote yourself just yet. I may continue with a series of future posts about self-promotion, but there isn’t enough room for them all right now. However, keep one thing in mind: you are your best product. Your mind and your ability to write, design, or program are the things that you are selling. If you can sell yourself, you can pick up any project you find and that’s the key to true success as a freelancer.

It has been a long couple of months - for a variety of reasons. First, I was offered a job that would have taken me to San Diego for a fairly good opportunity - a steady paycheck, sunny weather, and a nice area to call my home. But, things started to change almost immediately after I accepted the job offer. The work was pouring in, the emails were piling up, and I got well behind.

Fast forward a few weeks and I’m having the most lucrative year of my life and the freelance work is taking off - of course I had no choice but to retroactively turn down the job offer. This means a few different things. First, I’m not buried up to my eyeballs in work. Second, I can actually relax a bit and enjoy what I’ve been able to accomplish in the last few weeks. Finally, I can start throwing my energy into wholeheartedly expanding Seattle Freelance and making it into something special.

With a second writer on hand now who can both keep up with me and complete all of the projects I bring in with relative ease, this is an even more realistic goal - the one I was striving for months ago when I first launched Seattle Freelance. It will be an interesting few weeks as I start building upon my current successes and start looking for opportunities and methods to expand. The growth potential is huge, my ideas are literally overflowing from the files in which I keep them, and I now have the freedom - both financially and temporally - to see them all out. It is an interesting experience, and a fitting homage to the one year anniversary of quitting my last hourly job … hopefully for good.

It’s been viewed a few hundred thousands times, so it’s probably old news, but I thought the Lego Mario video was pretty cool. Here are a couple of the best ones in their entirety.

I caught this originally over at Fimoculous and knew I had to share it. Using a little fun math, Virgil Griffith at BooksThatMakeYouDumb has developed a cross section of the top books on Facebook and the correlating average SAT scores for the schools that make these their top books. The results are as follows. Make sure to stop by Virgil’s website to read the awesome story of his creation. Genius idea for using Facebook:

It’s that time of the year and while last year I was still in the relatively decent shape that tends to follow those who have full time jobs working in a kitchen, this year has me a full four months into the blah fall and winter weather of Seattle and thus three or four months into a growing spare tire, spurned on by day long sessions in front of my computer and television rather than braving the sub freezing temperatures and torrential rain pouring down outside.

Yes folks, Con #10 of working from the comfort of home is the growing mid section that symbolizes way too much time planted on the couch rather than taking a walk to the store or riding a bicycle a few miles each day. What can you do to combat this ridiculously common occurrence and keep from falling into the common stereotype of a writer sitting at the computer all day eating potato chips and drinking energy drinks?

You’ve got to get out of the house first of all - at all times of the year. It’s easy to get out when it’s 75 degrees outside and you really don’t want to do any work, but what about when it’s 25 and you have lots of work in front of you? It’s a hard task, but it’s one you have to push forward and make yourself accomplish. Get up early, join a gym, find a community center, walk instead of drive - find something you can do to keep yourself from lounging on that couch for too many hours every week, because otherwise you’ll get to April and step outside, realizing you are in incredible bad shape.

Let’s pretend for an instant I actually follow my own advice (come on, at least pretend) and I am still doing okay even though it’s winter and I loathe going outside into this weather. Seriously, I haven’t let a couple of extra snacks get to me at all - I’m all about staying healthy all year long……..

The first three months of any freelance career are a volatile, sticky, messy period. Most often, you still work a full time job, then come home to write for two or three hours, putting together half baked projects for questionable sources and wishing you could break through to where all the big boys are playing in the magazines and newspapers.

So, it’s understandable when that first opportunity to bid on a real freelance project pops up and you are a little nervous. First of all, if you haven’t gotten your first project to bid on yet, stop waiting. It’s not going to magically appear in front of you. You need to back up, survey the area, and actually start making a few decisions - ones that will be hard to make.

If you took my advice and are working on small, micropay or revenue sharing articles for sites like Associated Content, that’s perfect. You already know what people are interested in reading and have a decent amount of experience to share with potential clients. They don’t need to know why or when you wrote an article (I don’t recommend you tell them) - they just need to know it was written by you and it is well crafted.

Arriving at Elance.com

Fast forward to your first few minutes on Elance.com (you should start here, forget the other, lower stress and cheaper alternatives - the clients are here) and the rush of new things you have to do. Make sure you have a quality profile filled out, a plethora of information on hand to provide clients, and at least three or four solid samples to share in your portfolio.

Now, start looking for projects to bid on through the project search tool. There are, at any given time 350 or so projects active in the Writing/Translation section of the site. If that doesn’t sound like much to you, consider the fact that more than 7,000 new projects are created every week - they come and go quickly.

I recommend that you start with the articles category and look for small, low paying jobs with people that want something done cheaply. It’s a rough reality, but when you start writing for actual clients, they have no idea who you are and with a brand new Elance account and no one to vouch for you, the only selling point you have is the fact that you are cheaper than the competition. It will make getting started easy though as these individuals usually have a low threshold for quality assurance - if it reads well and is coherent, they’re happy.

Find that ideal first project, something with 10 or 20 500 word articles on bird feeders and get ready to write up your first bid. There are a few things to consider:

Their Requirements

What did they ask for you to give them? Read the project description thoroughly multiple times to make sure you have everything they need of you in your bid. If they asked for completion times, rates, and two samples, give them what they wanted. If they asked for a specific answer to a question they have, answer their question.

Bidding Details

In the little box where you describe your proposal, you need to be concise, well spoken and mildly persuasive. First, introduce yourself and tell them why you would be good for the project. If you have a bird watching hobby, mention it. If you have no personal connection to the project and have never written about their topic before, keep it strictly professional. Add a few details about your work philosophy - what you provide, how you do revisions, your satisfaction guarantee, etc. Finally, throw in the details. How much do you want and when can you get the project done. Starting bids vary from person to person, but for your first project, expect to bid anywhere between $5-$7 per article of 500 words - it is a horrible rate, but trust me - if you do good work, they will reward you with positive feedback and you will be bumped up in the ratings. Three or four glowing reviews and you can start asking for the larger projects with better rates.

Finally, throw in a sample or two as an attachment. Unless you have a portfolio with 20 files in it that cover every possible writing style, always include a targeted attachment as a sample to show off your work. Many times if you don’t they won’t even consider your bid - they rarely bother to email you for a sample.

The Final Review

Finally, review your information, enter your total bid and the time frame for completion and click the submit button. You will need to confirm your bid one more time on the next page, so don’t close the window just yet. When you have done that, you are officially in the running.

Remember one thing though; there are more than 9,000 writers on Elance in any given week vying for the same projects. If you don’t get one, it has no bearing on you as a writer; it just means someone else got to it first. Try again and be persistent. When you finally get that first job, things will snowball and before you know it, you will have 40 reviews, a 95% rating and will never have to bid on a project again - they’ll come to you. It’s always about persistence, no matter what happens.

I’ve been reading a little blog over at indexed.blogspot.com for a few months now and apparently its author has a book coming out next month, which to me is a pretty amazing accomplishment, especially for a freelance writer with a Blogger blog. All the best to Jessica and her new book. If you haven’t checked out her incredible observations on the human condition via pie charts and bar graphs, you must visit her site - it is a beautiful thing.

Because we all know that I like to populate my blog with award nomination and winners lists, here is the recently released National Book Critics Circle Award Nominees.

Autobiography
Heart Like Water: Surviving Katrina and Life in Its Disaster Zone by Joshua Clark
Brother, I’m Dying by Edwidge Danticat
The Journals of Joyce Carol Oates, 1973–1982 by Joyce Carol Oates
Writing in an Age of Silence by Sara Paretsky
A Russian Diary: A Journalist’s Final Account of Life, Corruption, and Death in Putin’s Russia by Anna Politkovskaya

Nonfiction
American Transcendentalism by Philip Gura
What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America 1815-1848 by Daniel Walker Howe
Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present by Harriet Washington
Legacy of Ashes: A History of the CIA by Tim Weiner
The World Without Us by Alan Weisman

Fiction
Sacred Games by Vikram Chandra
The Brief Wondrous Life Of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz
In The Country of Men by Hisham Matar
The Gravedigger’s Daughter by Joyce Carol Oates
The Shadow Catcher by Marianne Wiggins

Biography
Stanley: The Impossible Life Of Africa’s Greatest Explorer by Tim Jeal
Edith Wharton by Hermione Lee
Ralph Ellison by Arnold Rampersad
The Life Of Picasso: The Triumphant Years, 1917-1932 by John Richardson
Thomas Hardy by Claire Tomalin

Poetry
Elegy by Mary Jo Bang
Modern Life by Matthea Harvey
Sleeping and Waking by Michael O’Brien
The Ballad of Jamie Allan by Tom Pickard
New Poems by Tadeusz Rozewicz

Criticism
Twenty-Eight Artists and Two Saints by Joan Acocella
Once Upon a Quniceanera by Julia Alvarez
The Terror Dream by Susan Faludi
Coltrane: The Story of a Sound by Ben Ratliff
The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century by Alex Ross

Chandra or Diaz could both easily take in the award (Junot Diaz’s debut is incredible by the way) but I have a feeling that Joyce Carol Oates will probably take it home. Anyone banking on her to pull in that Nobel sometime in the next few years too?

It’s been a few weeks now since the writer’s strike kicked into full effect and everyone started anguishing about the loss of their favorite TV shows to the eventually clogged machinery of Hollywood. I was rather upset myself that Scrubs did not get a proper farewell and that The Office was off the air in mid November. I missed The Daily Show something fierce and eventually started popping DVDs in before I even turned the TV on.

But, fast forward a few weeks, and do I really care all that much that I don’t have much to watch on television - not really. It’s just not that interactive of a medium. The thing that I have realized before and that dozens of other people before me have tried to insist to the legions of young fans who have nothing better to do than glaze over and stare at their television sets is that there is nothing essentially about what you see on the TV every day.

It came to me about 9 months ago really. I had been working at home for about three months and kept the television on every day. I usually put it on Fuse or something and zoned out as the music played, but I was still incredibly non-productive as a result. I would flip channels, watch videos, and be distracted by annoying commercials.

When the work started pouring in, I started muting or turning the TV off until my “paid” work was out of the way. It was my way of creating an office environment in which to be productive. Push forward to the summer and I was actually leaving the room when my girlfriend flipped the television on because it was so distracting. Today, I will quite literally go almost until 9 or 10pm every night without even touching the remote, and I’m not always working that late - I just don’t care what’s on, and it’s not just me.

So, when someone asks me, as a writer, if I care about the Writer’s Strike, I have two answers. First, I say I am supportive of the writers and their demands. Everyone deserves to get paid for their work. Second though, I make sure to say I really don’t mind that there’s nothing on to watch. It’s just television and besides, these Late Night talk shows have actually gotten pretty interesting without writers for the hosts to lean on as a crutch. Conan’s singing folk songs and Colbert’s reading the New York Times - It’s good old fashioned awkward fun.

What’s this? Another 3 week break from posting. I suppose I get a little lazy when Google dumps me from their listings for no actual reason. Plus, I was out of town for a few days and spent the last few days relaxing in lieu of celebrating any of the seasonal holidays.

But, forget my unbridled laziness for a second as this marks the 1 year birthday of this blog. Well, technically, yesterday was the 1 year mark, but because I did not think to look until earlier this afternoon, we can pretend otherwise - a year is actually a little longer than 365 days, right? Something like that.

Anyways, I wouldn’t have guessed a year ago everything that would happen to me. Here are just a few of the 2007 highlights that were at least a little awesome:

• I churned out almost 350 blog posts that have attracted occasional attention from a variety of semi-important sources.
• My freelance writing business went from a pile of self-interested goof-off articles to a serious and moderately successful business.
• What feels like 25 years of Presidential campaigning is finally going to give us a respite and a few concrete results on Thursday.

I’m sure there were some other cool accomplishments, but that would require more than 2 minutes of reflection and its getting woefully late. I just wanted to make sure I took a second and made a note of the one year mark in a career endeavor that I could not possibly have expected to last as long as it has - I feel lucky and here’s hoping for even more great successes in 2008.