Are you guilty of these mistakes?

If you want to earn money by writing online you need to avoid the mistakes below.  I’ve been guilty of some of these in the past, back when I didn’t know any better.

Now I do – and I want to share these with you so you can get off to a much faster – and more lucrative – start.

Mistake #1 – writing for $1 per 500 words.  You’ll never get rich as an online writer doing this!  It might be good to get those first couple of jobs done so you can get some feedback, but once you have done that you need to move on.

Solution – aim higher.  Avoid those cheap buyers who expect outstanding quality at twenty cents per 100 words.  You can’t get it.  Most of the freelance job sites have plenty of buyers who will pay a decent amount for decent work.

Mistake #2 – not actively looking for work on a regular basis.  How can you expect to earn a lot of money as a freelance online writer if you don’t look for the work?

Solution – make a regular date to look for suitable writing work.  I made it a daily task from the start and I still do.  You need to accept that you won’t succeed in getting every single job you apply for.  It’s a numbers game – the more you apply for, the better your chances are of getting enough work to bring in a decent income.

Mistake #3 – not having your own blog or website.

Solution – start a free blog if you need to, although a paid one looks more professional as you will have your own domain name.  You also have much more control over what happens.  The same applies to having your own professional website.  It is one of the best ways to attract new clients to your online writing business.

If you avoid these three mistakes and start following the solution diligently, you will soon notice a marked difference in your online writing fortunes.

Article source: http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Allison_Whitehead

Is this the kind of romantic image you get when you think of working as a freelance writer? (Image by NKZS, used with thanks)

It sounds glamorous doesn’t it?  The idea of setting your own hours, selecting the jobs only YOU want to do, and earning however much you want to earn from your own writing efforts – it is all very alluring.

Indeed, a career in writing can be all this and more, but it can also be a nightmare if you don’t have the right mindset to handle it.

One of the best things about a freelance writing career can also be the worst if you aren’t careful – and that is the fact that you don’t have a boss to answer to.  Except for yourself, of course – and that’s the problem.

You need to have the determination and persistence to keep going and keep looking for writing jobs even when you don’t particularly feel like it.  Yes you can decide to take the day off at a moment’s notice at times, but that means you won’t earn anything that day.  At least with a regular job you know you have to go in!

The best way to see whether you could carve out a career in writing in reality is to start slowly.  Do a few hours a week in your spare time alongside your regular job.  Start looking for places to sell articles and find work.  There are plenty of online article buyers and markets that are in constant need of good writers.  If you can keep up with demands and stay enthusiastic and motivated over the course of a few months, it will give you a chance to build up a second income.

Not only does this make life easier when you finally make the break and try out a full time career as a freelance writer, it will also make that transition easier to manage.  If you already have some work lined up, it isn’t quite as nerve wracking making the leap.

Article source:  http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Allison_Whitehead

Ouch.  The loss of any writing client can be a disappointing time.  This is particularly true if you have been writing for them for quite a while and you’ve got used to that stream of income flooding your way.

Are you keeping your fingers crossed you keep all your regular clients - or are you looking for new ones all the time to ensure a regular income?

I had just such an experience today.  I have a regular market – offline as it happens, the only one I have on a regular basis that isn’t internet based – that regularly takes four of my articles a month for their magazine.  But this morning I received an email that revealed they will only require one article a month for the immediate future.

Since the articles are also well paid, this will be a chunk of money to lose.  Not  a huge amount in the grand scheme of things, but enough to notice, if you see what I mean.  Obviously it’s disappointing, but it got me thinking about the nature of freelance writing and how well prepared you are for such things to happen.

After all it is the very nature of freelance work of any kind.  You do get regular clients, but they won’t go on forever.  You might work for them fairly steadily for years on end, but even then you should never come to rely on them.

So how do you turn this into a positive experience?

Well firstly it will free up a little time to focus on more things.  Firstly I have decided to devote some of that time to finding more clients.  And secondly – and perhaps most importantly – I have devoted some of the time to writing for myself.  You may have read before that writing for your own needs is the best thing to aim for in the end.  You can write eBooks that you sell over and over again; you can create your own websites that you monetize in all kinds of different ways, and you can do lots more besides.

I have a plan for an eBook that I can now devote some more time to.  And I also want to start creating PLR – private label rights – packages to sell directly to clients from a dedicated website.

All of this takes time though, and the danger when writing for lots of clients all the time is that you never get time for yourself.  So this is the lesson in losing a client, or a certain body of work.  By all means take a moment to mourn that loss, but then think about how you can use that news to gee you up and start making inroads into achieving even more in your writing career.

In this sense, losing a writing job or a client could be one of the best things that ever happens to you as a freelance writer.  At the moment I am devoting time to the Ezine Articles Challenge too, so this is just one example of how you can spend that extra bit of time in a productive way.

Now anyone who DOESN’T work from home is probably now thinking, ‘How on earth could there be?  There’s no boss to dislike, no getting up at 7am to get ready and rush to catch a crowded train, oh and you’re probably doing a job you enjoy too.  What disadvantages could there be about that?’

Well yes, point taken – working from home IS, for the most part, fantastic.  I’ve been a full timer from home now for eighteen months and counting… and there isn’t a day goes by when I don’t thank God that I’m not pickling walnuts in a factory twelve hours a day any more (more about that in some future post, I’m sure!).

So yes there are plenty of advantages and they far outweigh any negatives.  But there are some disadvantages I think I should point out, for those of you who might be caught up in the dream of becoming a full time freelance writer.  I don’t want to be negative and I’m certainly not going to crush your dream – far from it.  But it’s worth bearing in mind that some of the positives can turn into negatives if you don’t have the right mindset.

• ‘No annoying boss’ – absolutely.  And also no boss to remind you that you need to work to earn money.  If you are disciplined then working from home is great – but if you’re not, you’ll find yourself panicking and back in a normal job pretty quickly.
• ‘No getting up early’ – well, it depends.  It depends on what sort of person you are.  I like getting a good start so I am usually up between 7am and 8am and at my desk and writing about ten minutes later.  Feeding the cat and making myself a cup of tea have to be done first – in that order!  But if you’re a late person then getting up at noon and working until 2am might work for you.
• ‘No crowded trains’ – ah yes.  Now that part IS good.  Never get tired of missing out on that part.
• ‘Doing a job you love’ – let’s hope so!  I love writing and so it rarely feels like an actual job.

Could YOU work in surroundings like this?

So you need to be disciplined and you need to be prepared to WORK.  Sounds crazy but a lot of people aren’t disciplined enough to do that.  Put it this way – the weather can be a big disadvantage when you work from home.  Supposing you’re all set to work and it turns out to be a lovely warm day.  You want to get out in the garden to relax and soak up some sun.  But if you do, you’ll be behind on your work and you won’t earn anything.

Solution – keep working, try and finish early and then go outside.  It rarely works trying to do it the other way around.  Either that, or you have to take your laptop outside.  I’ve done that, and it’s great.  One of the perks, you could say.

I’m going to blog more about this topic in the future.  But I just wanted to point out that there can be disadvantages to home working.  Being a writer is wonderful and I earn much more than I did in any of my previous positions in employment.  But I DO need to be disciplined.  I DO need to show up at my desk virtually every day.  And I DO need to be pro-active.

If you can’t do all of these things, then yes, you will find plenty of disadvantages to working from home.

Well there are lots of benefits of course, but there is one that has really come to mind in the last few days – and it’s also the reason why I haven’t been blogging for a short while.

You see, I got ill.  Only a bug, but enough to confine me to bed for a while.  A couple of lousy nights and very little sleep.   Luckily I didn’t have to worry about ringing in sick, or worrying about what the boss thought.  That was enough in itself to make me feel a little better!

The benefits of working from home

That’s one of the great things about writing.  If you don’t feel well you can’t do it, but if you can’t sleep and you want something to do, you can write at 3am if you want to.  I ended up writing very early this morning and then going back to bed to catch up on my sleep at 10am.  All my work got done on time and I was still able to get the sleep I needed and get better as well.

It does teach you to be more organised though.  It teaches you to be versatile as well – and those are both valuable freelancing skills to have any day of the week.  Bug or no bug!  It’s also something I’ll be blogging about in more depth in the future, so bookmark this blog, subscribe to the RSS feed or just remember the URL… although I’d recommend one of the first two options to be honest.  There’s plenty more to come.

This is an important question because it can have a big influence on your future writing career.  One of the best ways to work for lots of different people is to join a ghostwriting team, because you will naturally receive plenty of work from all kinds of people.

But you should still make the effort to find other clients of your own, because this will help to protect your income and grow your writing skills still further.  You can search for higher paying writing jobs too; I found my highest paying one by far after a couple of hours spent surfing around Craigslist, for example.  You just never know where you will find your next job.

As a freelance writer, you could be working for anyone

The thing is that writing jobs are just like any other kind of work.  There will always be the danger that a particular job will cease to be, and if you have relied on that as being your main source of income it could leave you in a sticky spot.

In many ways being a freelancer protects you from the ups and downs of the job market, because you are likely to receive work from several different directions.  This means that if one falls through for any reason you still have plenty of streams of income coming in from other sources.

So take a look at where you get your freelance writing jobs from.  If you only rely on one or two sources then perhaps it’s time to up your income by adding a couple more.