Morning all – I’ve had a couple of new jobs roll in today so it’s been a nice start. I also started making a list this morning of all the clients I haven’t heard from in a while. It paid off too – I have only contacted one so far and I just had a request for four articles to be written. How often do you chase up old clients to see if they want anything new? It’s a good way to keep your name in the forefront of their minds and you’ll also get an opportunity to snag some new work.

1303 – I haven’t worked much this morning as my partner had a doctor’s visit; we have a confirmed fractured coccyx. So I have another few weeks of nursemaiding alongside my writing
Right I’m about to crack on with some blogs on social media; one of my favourite topics.

1617 – what a strange day. It’s been filled with phone calls and stopping and starting, so I haven’t done as much work as I would have liked to. I’m planning on getting another hour or two done now, but not all of that will be client work as I have a couple of articles to write for our own batch of sites first. It’s important to keep up with your own goals as well as to focus on client work. Juggling them both and trying to keep a balance isn’t always easy, but it can be done.

1711 – off for a quick snack as I am starving. In need of tea too. Hasn’t been a good day today – my concentration is shot so I have adjusted my schedule and upped things a bit for tomorrow and Thursday. Tomorrow will also be my final entry in 29 Days of Online Writing! It’s hard to believe the month has gone by so quickly. I’ve had some more work trickling in today and all our own tasks have been completed, so it’s not been all bad.

We have an extra day in February tomorrow, so meet me back here for the final entry in this series. And don’t worry, there will be plenty more blog posts coming in March too.

Hi all – I hope you had a great weekend? I can’t believe I only have three days left in my 29 Days of Online Writing series. It’s gone incredibly quickly – I guess the dramas we’ve had with the house have sped things along nicely.

Since I am at the end of the month I am now looking forward to March and thinking about the writing goals I would like to achieve for that month. You probably know I have my dedicated client site at www.allisonwhitehead.co.uk, where I have started blogging on a regular basis. I will hold my hands up and say I never did this in the past, which is why I only ever got a dribble of traffic to it. My regular blogging efforts have seen the dribble turn into a healthy regularly flowing stream, and now I am going for a full on flood. I started the year by aiming to get one new client from the site in January (which I achieved) and one new client in February (which looks like it has happened as well). The February client is getting together info for a HUGE job and we’ve agreed rates already so providing nothing happens to put a spanner in the works it looks good to happen as planned.

So for March I have decided to up the ante and to aim for three new clients to find me and start working with me during the month. I also have another goal for my client site, and that is to find two new clients per week by the time I get to August. That gives me six months to achieve the goal, and I’m basically going to do it in a couple of different ways:

1. I am going to carry on adding new content to the blog, written specifically to attract the attention of clients

2. I am going to start writing articles to promote the site on article directories.

Hopefully these two methods will help me get the clients I want, so we’ll see how things go and I’ll report back here to let you know the results. Perhaps you would benefit from setting some blogging goals for your writing business too? Share your thoughts below!

Anyway back to today’s work: it’s 0801 and I’m about to start proper. I have my usual round of weekly blogs to do for clients at the moment, then it’s onto some new blogs for a new client.

I’ve felt a bit out of sorts today, but I think it’s just where we’re back to something remotely like normal after all the house upheavals that have happened recently. I feel like I am on the verge of a new flood of clients and some nice new connections, so we’ll see what happens.

I haven’t really kept you up to date with a minute by minute account of what I’ve been up to today. But you haven’t missed out on much because I wanted to share some of my plans for the month ahead instead. After all you’ll be finding out how well they progress as I’ll be sharing them all here! Catch you again tomorrow.

I’m back for day three of the roofing process and I’ve got another quiet day ahead for my online writing. But here is the strange thing – my work seems to have fitted around the roofing job automatically. We only found out last Friday that the roof was being done this week, and yet the past three days have been very quiet as far as my writing was concerned. It’s ideal because I would have struggled to write consistently with all the noise and dust.

And yet today, an hour or so after finding out that they should be finished by the end of the day, I’ve had two more lots of work come in. This is basically two significant batches of articles that will fill up the rest of the week. Isn’t that strange? I was thinking I’d have to juggle clients and deadlines all week long, but it has all quite naturally and spookily slotted in almost without my assistance! I love it when things happen like that…

1504 – the roof is done! It looks very nice and is completely watertight, which let’s face it was what we were looking for most of all. I’ve got a lot of work done this morning as well, so it’s been a nice day. And we get to test it straightaway as no sooner had they finished than it started raining. Typical. But we can now have the Removing of the Buckets Ceremony in the office. Hurrah! We can finally work again without having to look up at the ceiling and wonder whether or not it will leak whenever the rain comes down.

Time to run the vacuum round I think…

Ok it’s 1738 and I’ve tidied round, vacuumed up all the dust and grit and had a bath. I just need to post this and write an article to promote the next website we’re going to launch and that’s it for the evening. Oh, and we’re having a glass of wine with dinner tonight to celebrate our new roof and the fact that we don’t need buckets and waterproof sheets in the office anymore! See you tomorrow.

Just a couple of hours work to fit in this morning before I can start my weekend. How much time do you allow yourself off if you work as a full time online writer? Freelance writing jobs can take up huge swathes of your day if you let them. I must admit I’ve taken a few years to find a reasonably good balance between work and play. It never pays to book yourself absolutely solid because if anything happens (like a gas leak for example ) you are stuck and running behind before you’ve even done anything.

We have family visiting today as it’s half term, so I get to see my nieces and nephew (and my sister). I’ll sleep well tonight no doubt as I’m cooking a roast dinner for 6 tonight. But having said that, I will also be fully recharged for Monday when I get back to work again. It’s no good working yourself to the bone and running your batteries down; you have to give yourself decent chunks of time off if you want to write to your best ability.

So to that end, I am off to enjoy a weekend of relaxation. Enjoy yours, and I will be back on Monday with more updates. It’s been a quiet week but a good one too. No jobs to report in terms of my Google Reader searches, but that’s not a problem. I’ll be back fresh with more job searches and online writing to do next week.

Well we had a lovely evening last night and despite having had a glass or two of gorgeous White Cloud wine (from New Zealand, do try it if you’re a white wine lover!) I’m up and ready for work as usual this morning. Today’s work is split between articles and blogs; no larger projects to work on at the moment, such as eBooks for example. Mind you, I had a period of time the other week where I found myself working on two simultaneously, so perhaps I’ll get another two together very soon. Who knows? That’s the beauty of freelance writing jobs.

I haven’t put times of certain tasks today, because I’ve been steadily working through them during the day. I’ve just finished everything on my list to do for today, except for my own article for the latest website we have to publish. Normally I’ll do that kind of thing first (or at least early on in the day) but it just didn’t work out that way today. However it shouldn’t take too long to do so I’ll slot that in right after I publish this blog post.

It’s been a quiet week so far but it’s actually worked out really well because it’s given me time to achieve some personal writing goals. I’ve also got a long weekend coming up so I’ll be off over Friday, Saturday and Sunday, so I’d lose a couple of working days there anyway. I’d rather be off during a quiet week and then get back into the swing of things next week.

I’ve been checking out my Google Reader feeds every lunchtime this week, but there’s been nothing of real interest there job wise. That’s quite normal – there can be huge swathes of time where no online writing jobs worth applying for will pop up. To be honest, I get far better results from simply Googling certain phrases to see what pops up. I’ve found an excellent new client as a result of doing just that so far this year, so I’m happy! Right – on with that article, then I’ve got a relaxing evening ahead of me. Enjoy!

Glad you could join me at the very beginning of my new 29 Days of Online Writing blog series! Here we are on the first day of a brand new month and I’ve kicked off a VERY cold day at 8am by clearing out some emails. I responded to one or two clients, and now it’s time to start writing.

I have a tiny edit and a press release to do for one client first thing, so that’s where I’ll start…

0859: interesting interlude – just had an email from someone responding to one of my Squidoo lenses on writing. I’ve managed to snag a few clients via Squidoo before, and this is someone looking for a writer to create some lenses for them. I’ve sent a quick reply so we’ll see what happens there. (Update – I think the client was looking for some sort of guarantee that they’d receive a certain amount of traffic to the Squidoo lenses. Haven’t heard back so that looks like a bust…)

1028: been emailing the potential client back and forth a couple of times; not sure if this one will pan out or not. The press release is done and I have completed a couple of very short blog posts as well. Time for more tea methinks!

1058 – ok time to finish off the last bit of an ebook project for a client now. You can see that I’ve been working solely on client projects so far today. I’m aiming to devote some time to my own writing projects this month too. If I blog about it I figure it will make me more accountable. My partner and I are looking to set up some simple product review sites and I have the details for the first few articles ready to write now, so I am planning on getting at least the home page done today.

1212 – well the final pages of the ebook are going well. Time to stop for soup and refreshments… and a quick look at my Google Reader account to see if anything interesting has appeared on my realm of RSS feeds. This is one of the ways I’ve used to find jobs in the past, and it does pay to check it on a daily basis.

1306 – lunch is over (nothing worthwhile on Google Reader today). Just finished the last little bit of the eBook so that’s another job ticked off the list. I’ve got to pop into town shortly as my partner and I also run an eBay shop and we’ve got a few parcels to post.

1446 – strange day today. It seems to be flying by. Still have some articles to complete for another client though, so now the eBook has been sent off I can get on with those. All while drinking another cuppa (you’ll notice I’m partial to a nice cuppa!).

1539 – I didn’t plan this. But I’ve got a great example to share that shows you how it pays dividends to get ahead in your schedule. I’ve got a stonking headache this afternoon that I just can’t get rid of. So I’ve adjusted my schedule a bit as I still have plenty of time in hand, and I’m going to finish in the next few minutes. I just have a couple of invoices to send, as well as posting this blog, and that’s it for the day. I’ll be back bright and early tomorrow to get a good start – and to blog on day two of my 29 Days of Online Writing. Catch you then!

Just a short post today, because I wanted to share with you what happens when you set a goal to achieve something with your writing. I set myself a goal at the beginning of January to find ONE new client via my professional website, www.allisonwhitehead.co.uk. While some clients have found me through this blog, I did create a separate site targeted purely to them.

However I never seemed to have a lot of time to develop it into the site I wanted it to become. So I set myself the challenge to start adding posts to it more regularly and to add some testimonials to it as well. And I wanted to find one new client before the end of January.

Now I must admit that by Monday this week I thought it wasn’t going to happen. My traffic has improved over on that website, so I was pleased with that. But today I had an email from someone who wanted one weekly blog for their website. A few emails back and forth and I’ve got the client I was looking for.

It just goes to show that with a little effort you CAN find the writing work you want. The clients are out there – and they might be looking for you now. But how easy are you to find?

I can say that my traffic per day for that site is still pretty low compared to this blog. But the additional effort is clearly paying off already. I wonder what February will bring?

PS – don’t forget to subscribe to my RSS feed, as my month long series “29 Days of Online Writing” is going to kick off next Wednesday – a week from today. I’m going to keep a notepad file open each day, adding to it as I go along. Then I’ll publish it at the end of the day so you can see what I’ve been up to. Don’t miss it – it’s going to be an eye opener! Subscribe now via the big orange RSS button at the top of this site. Thanks!

It’s hard to believe it’s 2012 already! I’ve had a nice rest over Christmas and the New Year, and got started back at my desk yesterday, so I thought it was high time I wrote a fresh blog post. I’ve been over on my professional site already, at AllisonWhitehead.co.uk, writing the first of a series of ten articles there, and now it’s time to update my blog.

There is a lot I want to achieve during 2012, some of which I had intended to get further with during 2011 but didn’t, for one reason or another. There are new goals in my mind too, such as the intention to drag out my novel and polish it up and rewrite it so I can get it published on Kindle. I got a Kindle for Christmas and although I must admit I was a little skeptical of it to start with, by Boxing Day I had fallen in love with it. I get rather annoyed now if I don’t find the time to read something during the day. I’ve also found a few books for Kindle that I had read years ago and couldn’t find anywhere in print, so I am delighted about that.

But back to 2012. What are your New Year’s Resolutions for your writing? One of my main ones – apart from starting to make use of the Kindle as a platform for publishing my own work – is to blog more often and start promoting my client site. I have it in mind to add some new clients into the mix by the end of January, so to make that happen I am going to write some fresh content for my client site to get it further up the rankings and seen by more people. It’s always surprised me how many bites I get from that site, considering the relatively low traffic, so we’ll see how that goes.

I actually love the start of a New Year because it always feels as if I am turning over a new leaf. I achieved a fair bit last year but it wasn’t as successful as I had hoped, mainly because some things got put on the back burner owing to my niece being poorly and in and out of hospital. Sometimes life intervenes. But thankfully she is doing well now and I can look ahead and hope for more achievements during the year to come.

Take some time out this week to think about what you might like to achieve during the coming year. Even if you don’t achieve all your goals, you’ll likely achieve more than you would have done if you hadn’t set them out in the first place.

You’d better be, because sooner or later things will change. How do I know? Because it’s just the way things are when you have a writing career.

Let me share how I got started with a full time freelance writing career.

I always wanted to go full time but I didn’t do it until I had enough clients to keep me going financially. In the end I managed to get enough clients to replace the income I was earning from my crummy job at the time, so it was an easy decision to make.

So I got started with full time freelancing. I had some regular clients and a few of them are still with me now, some three plus years down the line. But if I were to tell you that I still have every single client now that I had then, I’d be lying. I’ve worked for all kinds of people since then, and not all of them want regular ongoing work. That’s fine – I’m just as happy to tackle half a dozen articles as a one off job for a particular website or blog as I am to work with someone over a much longer period of time. That’s half the beauty of a writing career.

But it just goes to show how much change you can experience in a freelance writing career.

When you think about it, it’s the very opposite of a so called secure employed position. You have to be ready to deal with change when you’re a freelancer, because a client you think of as a regular could have a period of time where they no longer need work from you. They might come back to you again in the future (a good number of mine have) but you might also never hear from them again.

Change is going to happen whether you want it to or like it to or not. The real question is whether you are going to cope with it or not. You cannot decide not to have changes in your writing career, because they’ll happen anyway. If a client has been giving you, say, ten articles a week every week for a year, it doesn’t mean they’ll carry on doing so until you decide to retire. They might have cause to stop next week for all you know.

The hardest times in my writing career

I’ve found the trickiest times of change in my career have been when several changes come along at once. I might come to a natural end of a relationship with one client. Another one might put a hold on articles for a while because they have some changes to make to their website. They may or may not come back because of it. Another one might be looking to restructure their whole business or even get out of marketing altogether, so they won’t need me to update their blog any more.

These are just examples, but there have been times when a sea of changes have hit my writing career all at once. The first time this happened I must admit I did what all self respecting people would do – I panicked. As a writer working for lots of different people, I was pretty sure I had enough income streams coming in to weather any storm. In reality I did, but the first time I experienced several changes at once in my writing career I lost out on a couple of great clients in the space of a week.

Serious moping

I can remember all kinds of thoughts going through my head at the time. Why me? (Always a good one) Why now? (Hot on the heels of ‘Why me?’) Another good one was ‘I can’t believe I’ve lost two clients in the space of a week?!’

But one thing I soon discovered was that the initial worry and panic soon subsided. Yes it was a shame that my two best clients had cut right back on their needs. I ended up parting ways with one virtually completely (still do the odd thing every now and then but not often) and the other one disappeared altogether. But it happens. This is part of any freelancing career. The big thing to remember is that the first time it happens to you, you’ll feel like you made a mistake in starting a freelance writing career in the first place.

I must admit I still get disappointed when I part ways with a good client, even if it is only temporarily. But you know what? Every single time it’s happened, something else has come along to fill the void. Some of these newbies have occurred as a result of my own efforts. For example I’d go on Twitter and look for clients on there. If you’ve read my blog in the past you’ll know I’ve found two clients on Twitter and I did a lot of work for each of them. They both still reach out to me occasionally for additional work, which is nice. It’s always great when you have a professional and friendly relationship with your clients – it can make all the difference.

And you never know when that difference will pop up either. Just last week I had an email out of the blue from a guy who used to work for a media company I still work for today. He had joined another company on the other side of the world and wanted to know if I was interested in taking on some blogging duties for them. Of course I was, and now we’re into our second job together. You just never know when a previous connection you thought was severed pops back into your freelance career again.

Remember that when a door closes…

… a window opens, or something like that. I really believe this is true, and I also believe it helps if YOU believe it. You just have to know when to look for these open windows. They won’t always be obvious, but if you’re looking for them and you are open to the idea of change in your writing career, you’ll cope with it far better than you would otherwise.

In fact make a promise to yourself to look for open windows every single day from now on. It could be an email you send on the off chance to a company you spotted that you think you could write for. It doesn’t hurt to get in touch, and you could get a great client out of it. Think of all the windows you could open right now, just for you. There are more of them out there than you might think.

I know because it’s happened twice to me, and it’s all thanks to the power of regular tweeting and how it will alert you to more writing possibilities. If you are wondering how on earth you can find your own writing clients and you happen to be a member of Twitter, they could be closer than you think.

The thing is that regular tweeting leads to a better idea of who is on Twitter.

Is regular tweeting helping you?

Twitter writing jobs pop up more often than you might think. I have found that the more people you follow – especially those who list their interests as internet marketing, online marketing and associated fields – the more chance you have of seeing job offers popping up in your Twitter stream.

On the two occasions I have picked up Twitter writing jobs, they have both resulted from regular tweeting by me, and looking out for potential job leads.

The thing is that the more you tweet, the more you notice what other people are tweeting about. I used to go onto Twitter and send the odd tweet throughout the day. While I was there I would search for hashtags like #writingjobs and #bloggerswanted – basically anything that might turn up tweets where people were looking for writers.

This doesn’t always turn up good results and when it does they aren’t always ideal for me. But on two occasions I managed to hook up with a client – and I am delighted to say they are both still on my books.

The point is that unless you are looking for these opportunities you won’t see them. They’re there – I’ve proved it by capitalising on two of them to date. But unless you go in for regular tweeting and keep yourself active on the site, you won’t see them.

So if you are looking for new writing opportunities and clients, give Twitter a go. You never know where some regular tweeting might get you.