How to Apply for Freelance Writing Jobs Quickly

Okay, you've seen the places I look for freelance writing jobs and you've seen how I weed out the best paying jobs. Now I'm going to show you how I apply for the freelance jobs quickly. The secret is that I use templates I customize for each gig.

For example, one of my niches used to be fitness and healthy eating. So, I wrote a cover letter that goes over all of my expertise in this area. When I applied for jobs in this niche, I just tweaked the cover letter a bit and copy and paste it into an email. I'd change out writing clips, too, according to what type of articles or blogs the client is looking for. One out of five tries, my templates usually brought in a client. I bet you want to see one of my templates. Here's one of my old ones that got me a lot of gigs:

It's as simple as that.  I also had a resume that is customized to the fitness and healthy eating niche to go with the template. This part is very important because you don't want to send a general resume with a targeted cover letter. They just won't mesh and your client will be confused. Or bored. Or both.

Do you use templates or other quick way to apply for freelance writing jobs? Let me know!

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How to Quickly Weed Through Freelance Writing Job Ads

When I need a new freelance gig I usually find one in a few day's time. Is it because I have really low standards? No. I get great new gigs quickly because I've gotten job hunting down to a science. A while back, I posted my list of job hunting sites.

Today, I'm going to show you how I weed through them quickly everyday to find the real gems.

• First, I scan job lists for keywords that target my niches. 

• I only click on ads with titles that aren't generic like, "Looking for Writer" or "Freelance Writer Needed."

• Then, I click on the job link and look to see if it is an on-site job or telecommute.

• If it's on-site I toss it. I quickly look for the per word, per article or per job rate.

• If it's too low I toss it. If I haven't tossed it yet, I actually read the ad. If it asks for too much work for the fee I toss it.

• If by some chance the ad makes it to step four I will actually apply for it.

How Do You Get Respect From Family and Friends? Write, My Friend, Write

I was cruising the forms and a post stuck out. One young writer was asking how do you make your family respect your choice to write. Well, my answer was pretty simple. I've found that success is the best way to make family and friends respect me.

When I started being able to take press trips to luxury hotels for my travel writing and such, my family acted like I was a superstar. When I started making $50 an hour they treated my writing time very reverently.

So, you're probably saying, "Okay, this doesn't help me at all," but wait.How did I get to that point? I worked even when my family didn't believe in me. I worked when they bothered me. I worked when I found it hard to concentrate. I worked with a baby balanced on my lap, happily punching the keys as I wrote.

I think it was Stephen King that said the best way to become a success is to sit your butt in the chair and write no matter what. That is so true. No matter what your family thinks, no matter what your roommate does, write anyway, even if you think it's drivel, even if your brain feels like it's going to bleed. Keep it up.

Eventually, you'll make it.

Here’s everything you need to make it as a successful freelance writer.

The Top Five Ways to Work at Home With Small Children

If you have children, like I do, keeping your kids happy while you are writing, and still getting work done, can be a hassle. Here are some tips to make life a little easier.

Make a Mini-Office

Make a special area for your kids beside your work area. Fill it with toys, coloring books, crayons, and other things that your child likes and encourage him to play while you work.

Give Them "Work"

Let your child "work" too. Give your child a small pad of paper and a pencil, then let her go wild. Even if your child can't really write yet, she will still get satisfaction out of being like mommy or daddy.

Schedule in Fun

Take regular play breaks. Give your tot, and your own mind, a break and play your child's favorite game for a few minutes every couple of hours.

Work Around Your Child's Schedule

Decide to work when your child is napping, at grandma's or playing outside with your spouse. This way you can get 100% quiet time for those especially important tasks.

Work at Home, Away from Home

Take your child to places where they can safely play and you can have WiFi access, like McDonald's. Your child can get plenty of exercise and socialization and you can get a frothy drink to sip while you work. This was one of my biggest writing secrets when my kids were little.

Here’s everything you need to make your writing business successful.

5 Services Every Successful Freelancer Should Bring on Board

In the wonderful world of freelance work, you’re often alone. You’re your own boss, you don’t work for a company, and that can be incredibly freeing. But at the same time, life as a freelancer can also be a little lonely.

More often than not, we believe that we’re going to need to work by ourselves and a lot of the time you will. But, at the same time, if you want to grow and be successful, you can bring in external services to help you.

Graphic Design

First up, there’s graphic design. Perhaps you want to be able to offer a full-service to your clients, but you’re not so great on the graphic front? Well, then you can bring in a freelance graphic designer to help you do that.

You can utilize their skills when your clients need graphics, and they may then want to utilize yours if their clients need content. You'll find your relationship with a graphic designer can be a great way to push your freelancing business forward. At the same time, you can utilize their help for graphics on your website and within your marketing and portfolio too.

IT Support

As a freelancer, it’s safe to say that you spend a lot of your time working on your computer. So if you were to have an issue with it, software or hardware, it’s going to be a huge problem. Not only can it slow you down and kill your productivity, but it may even cost you clients or lose work - and that’s something you’ll always want to avoid.

Bringing in IT support, with someone such as Houk Consulting, is a great way to play it safe. They take on the support for you, so you can just get on with your work.

Financial Support

How are you with numbers? If you’re not great with the financial side of things, then bringing in an accountant is going to save you time. If you hire the right accountant, you’ll save money in the long-run too.

Virtual Assistance

Maybe you’re spending a lot of time replying to emails and organizing information? When this is the case, you’re probably reducing your rate by far too much! And you may also be killing your productivity levels. So bring in a virtual assistant. By hiring a VA, they can do all this for you on a set hourly rate, so you can focus on your work.

Marketing Support

Finally, there’s marketing support. And there are a range of marketers you could hire. Obviously, you can do your own content, but you may find that it pays to bring someone in to find clients to save you time too!

Stuck In A Rut? 3 Awesome Ways To Grow Your Freelance Business

The life of a freelancer is a roller coaster ride. One month you may be swamped with writing projects, SEO jobs and copy to produce. You might be working flat out, ten hours a day and then chasing the mountain of invoices that follow. While these may be manic months, these are productive months that can see you through those other periods that descend into a lull.

You may have days where you are twiddling your thumbs, with only the odd short-term project and plenty of tumbleweed moments on your hands. How can you strive for more equilibrium in your freelance working life? Take a look at these ways you can mitigate against the lulls and grow your freelance business.

Show Your Credibility

Many clients need to read the positive testimonials from your previous clients and see examples of your work before they part with their hard-earned cash and entrust you with a writing project, so be sure they are easy to find.

Some writers even go one step further, and create some fake check stubs that can demonstrate how much you may earn in a given month. Now, I don't advocate lying, but you may want to create a graph of recent earning that you can show clients. 

By providing this evidence, you can fill your potential customer with confidence. They want to utilize a busy writer in high demand, not someone scrambling for every job they can get.

Expand Your Repertoire

You may be experiencing a lull because you simply don’t have all the skills that clients are looking for in your armory. If you are a travel blogger, it’s vital that you hone this niche skill, for example. 

However, if a client is requesting high-quality content for SEO driven copy, you don’t want to be turning clients away because this is outside your sphere of comfort. Get on a course and develop your knowledge. Become adept at keywords and public relations press releases as well as having your trusty travel blogging skills to fall back on.

Think about offering bundles to elongate projects. If you charge $80 per 500-word article, think about providing a package of ten for the price of eight. The client feels like they have a good deal, and you have a solid influx of cash and some steady work.

Use Social Media

If you haven’t got a Twitter, Facebook or Instagram account, you need to sign up to these platforms as soon as you’ve finished reading this. The power of social media cannot be underestimated in the twenty-first century.

This free online marketing can act as your advertising platform, your marketing campaign and your review site. Potential clients will head straight to Facebook to see if you have a page, seek out examples of your work and read what your clients have to say about you. If you’ve worked with big names, shout about it on your social media feeds. You need to be visible, relevant and able to persuade any potential client with a writing job to come to you rather than your competition.

Going freelance isn’t an easy process, and while you’re learning the ropes, you’ll find that you need to utilize every opportunity you have to obtain writing jobs. Persevere, remain visible and upskill yourself to grow your freelance business.

The Experienced Freelancer Secrets Every Newbie Needs To Know

When you’re new to freelancing, you often look at more experienced or established freelancers and wonder exactly how they got there. Although you should never look to compare yourself, you have to be able to look to those freelancers for inspiration.

Wouldn’t it be great to know their secrets? Well, you can because they’re not actually secrets, they’re just tried and tested approaches to the world of freelancing. Let’s take a look at some of the things you need to know if you want to get on the right path to success as a freelancer.

Fake It ’Til You Make It

This is something that can apply to any business, and many other areas of life too, and it’s to fake it until you make it. You’re not going to know everything when you first start out because you’re brand new. But at the same time, you’ll only ever learn because you’ve had to do something, or because you’ve worked on it.

So fake it for now and trust that you can learn the skills and pick up the knowledge you need when you’re required to. And guess what? As you go along, you will soon become the expert that you’ve positioned yourself as. This is my biggest secret to success. Now I have a successful writing career and 20 years of experience. 

Determine Your Worth

Now let’s talk rates, because you know you want to be earning say $100 an hour, and not $10 - right? Read as much as you can about setting your rates like https://www.freelancewriting.com/freelancing/how-to-set-your-freelance-writing-rates/.

You have to really realize that you get to set your rates and you get to determine what your time is worth. 

1. First, figure out how much you want to earn per month.

2. Figure out how much you want to work, in hours, per day.

3. Multiply the number of hours by 30 to find how many hours you will work a week.

4. Divide the amount you would like to make by total number of hours . This is your per hour rate.

5. Time how long it takes to write an article in hours.

6. Multiply that by your hourly rate. This will be your per article rate.

This is how I determine my rates.

Show, Don’t Say

This is a biggie! It’s just far too easy to say that you’re great at this or a pro at that. But if you can show that you are, with your work or portfolio, clients will be more impressed. So start a blog or build a portfolio that sells your work for you.

Take a look at these free videos. I think they'll help you build a great portfolio.

Time is Money

Remember, time is money. The more time you spend on things that don’t make you money, the less time you have to make money. So outsource the things that others can do, such as IT with http://www.qoverage.com/services-solutions/it-consulting/, admin and social media. Then, you can get on with the actual money making stuff.

Systems Are Everything

Finally, you’re going to want to get yourself a system. Because as a freelancer, and an accomplished one, you need to be organized. Motivation can be tough, so you need to make it easy for yourself. With a system of doing things, even when you’re lacking in inspiration or feeling unproductive, you’ll be able to stay on track.

Want more tips? My book teaches you how I make $100 to $200 an hour freelance writing with real, actionable tips.

Don't Worry About Stolen Words

Plagiarism. It's a word that sends shivers down most writers' spines. Most of us diligently ensure that we haven't stolen anyone's work and hope that others do the same for us. Some writers even go so far as to hunt down people who have stolen their words or implement code that prevents copy and pasting on their blog. I used to do this and all I can tell you is it is a BIG FAT WASTE OF TIME.

Plagiarism

You're never going to be able to stop people from plagiarising. They'll just keep doing it, even after they are caught. They'll give you some lame excuse about how they didn't know it was illegal to copy and paste your articles or blog posts without your permission. Then, they'll go right back to it. The only real way to stop the thiefs is to sue. And that takes money. Lots of it.

Plus, all of this takes away time from what you should really be doing: writing.

So, am I saying just ignore the sentence snatchers? Yes.

See, beyond bad karma, those that have nothing original on their sites will get penalized by search engines so badly that they won't even show up in results. They won't get any traffic, won't make any money from your work. Eventually, the thieves will slink away into the darkness to find some other way to make a coin.

In the end, you're the winner.

Running Costs That Any Freelancer Or Small Business Can Easily Cut

Starting out in any small business is a challenging endeavor. In the digital age, there are more opportunities than ever to take your career into your own hands and join the freelance revolution… But that also means that there’s more competition than ever.

Then there’s the problem clients that you have to hound constantly for payment, and the myriad day to day problems that can compromise your productivity and keep you chasing your own tail so that you don’t have time to plan your business strategically.

In such a fraught climate, the last thing you need to worry about unnecessary overheads. Like any small business owner, freelancers walk a fine line between investing in areas that will facilitate growth while cutting down on unnecessary costs. What constitutes a necessary overhead will very much depend on the nature of your business, but there are some areas where virtually everyone can save money.

Your phone bill

Most freelancers (especially those in their early stages) spend a lot of time hustling for new clients and new contracts. While a good deal of this may be over email exchanges or even Skype calls, you’re likely also making a lot of outbound calls. If this is the case, you likely found that your phone bill has skyrocketed. If this is the case, you desperately need to change your tariff with your current provider or switch to another service provider who can give you adequate business phone systems.

You may well find that switching to VoIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) saves you a small fortune in outgoing calls. Plus, your rates will be more favorable, your service will be more reliable and you can even use it when on the go. 

Office space

In their early days many freelancers (particularly writers) work from home or find a cosy nook in their local coffee shop. This works just fine for some, but as their business and client base expands, it soon ceases to be fit for purpose. They start to want the prestige of an office space to assure their clients of their professionalism.

The trouble is that this can be a pretty sizeable (and largely unnecessary) overhead. While it’s understandable that you may want a prestigious office address, this does not mean that you need to fork out large amounts of money to get it.

There are numerous options for business address rental, and if you work better in an office environment you may want to consider hot desking as an alternative to paying over the odds for an office.

Web hosting

It’s understandable that you’d need an online presence to serve as a portfolio for your work and skills, as well serving as a tool to advertise your services. That doesn’t mean that you need to sink a chunk of your monthly profits on the wrong web hosting deals. Many new freelancers don’t realize that you can save money by buying their domain name and their hosting services from different companies.

A Sneaky Way to Find Jobs On LinkedIn

You probably already know how to use the jobs tab on LinkedIn, but there is another, sneakier way to find jobs that many people will never see. Many company post job openings in their post, instead of on the job boards. Finding these types of posts is easy.

1. Go to the home page.

2. In the search bar type "looking for writer" or "looking for blogger." You can get more specific, if you like. For example, you could type "looking for fashion bloggers" or "looking for medical writers." Whatever your niche is, try a search including it for better results.

3. Look for the menu on the top left side of the page.

4. Click on Content.

5. Click on the menu on the right side of the page called Relevance.

6. Click Latest.

All of the recent posts including the phrase will pop up. Bingo! Job gold! There may be a few results that don't work for you, but there will be at least a couple that will. Searching this way gives you less competition than on the job boards, too.

Want more client finding tips like these? They're in my book: The Fluff-Free Freelance Writing Master Course: The only course that gives you concrete, actionable information to building a successful freelance business without any fluff.

Hey, Writers, is Anxiety Making You Fat? Probably

A little insight into potential weight problems. Guest article by Nancy Bryan, Ph.D.

Can anxiety make you fat? The answer is an emphatic “Yes.”  If someone finds it hard to accept this assertion, it may be because it’s hard to grasp how anything that seems to be occurring in the mind could make an apparently unrelated something happen in the body.

The best way to understand the process by which anxiety is translated into excess weight is to visualize the body as a continuing messaging system whose complexity dwarfs the distribution systems of Amazon and UPS put together.  While you are feeling a mental state you call “anxiety,” your body is undergoing a complex set of processes known as “stress,” or “the stress response.”  The stress response calls forth an outpouring of a dazzling array of hormones (norepinephrine, cortisol, dopamine, and others), but for the purposes of this brief piece let’s focus first on cortisol, the single hormone within the stress response that is primarily responsible for fat formation.

Before he developed the South Beach Diet, Dr. Arthur Agatston, a cardiologist, noticed that many of his obese cardiology patients at risk for developing Type 2 diabetes displayed what is called “metabolic syndrome,” a condition with three well-recognized symptoms: “central obesity” (i.e., belly fat); “insulin resistance”; and “reactive hypoglycemia.” What Dr. Agatston discovered in 2003 has since been reinforced by Dallas and Melissa Hartwig in their admirably rigorous 2012 book, It Starts with Food.  According to the Hartwigs, chronic elevated cortisol levels are responsible for doing the following three things: increasing blood-sugar levels by impairing glucose uptake from the bloodstream; contributing to insulin resistance; and “preferentially direct[ing] body fat to the abdominal region.”  All of the major markers for metabolic syndrome, and thus fat formation, are right there, courtesy of chronic elevated levels of cortisol.

And while we’re on the word “chronic,” if you are a chronically stressed-out individual, most of the stress you are undergoing on a daily basis may have retreated below your conscious awareness.  If you are suffering from chronic stress, you may not be the only one blind to it; your doctor (probably also a chronically stressed-out person) may not even see that your problem is related to stress, since in this culture we define stress as “business as usual.”

When in a recent New York Times column titled “What Cookies and Meth Have in Common,” Dr. Richard A. Friedman wrote, “Now we have a body of research that makes the connection between stress and addiction definitive,” what did he mean, exactly?  To figure it out we must turn to the neurohormone dopamine.  Stress also causes the release of dopamine from the brain’s limbic system; this dopamine then binds to specific receptors in the brain.  When the body is undergoing large amounts of stress, or undergoing it too often (which according to Dr. Friedman can occur simply from eating excessively fatty or sugary food), correspondingly large amounts of dopamine are released.  However, these larger-than-normal releases of dopamine paradoxically cause the body to damp down the number and effectiveness of its existing dopamine receptors.  This process is a capsule summary of addiction of all types, and any type:  a stressful event is experienced by the body, which causes a large release of dopamine, which release eventually causes a reduction in receptors, which then leads to withdrawal symptoms once the first flood of dopamine has subsided and the body feels its loss.  The constant and unending (but ultimately futile) search for more gratification from addictive substances is the essence of how addiction works, and what it is all about.

Let’s be crystal clear: with compulsive (i.e., addictive) eating, food functions not as nourishment but as a narcotic, a substance capable of instilling an artificial feeling of calm and serving to keep unwelcome thoughts out of awareness.

My own experience with this basic truth was instructive.  When my husband died nearly four years ago, I found my eating spiraling out of control.  Because I was eating too much, I was gaining weight steadily, so I therefore faced a life of widowhood in which I would continually get fatter and fatter, which I certainly didn’t want.  But I also didn’t know what to do:  I could think of no way on earth to bring my eating under control.  Suddenly one day I said to myself, “Wait a minute!  You’ve already written a book on this subject!”  At that moment I realized for the first time that the function of my excessive eating at this particular point in my life was to keep my grief-stricken thoughts out of consciousness (the food-as-narcotic connection).

I understood that if I wanted this unhealthy pattern to stop I had to be willing to eliminate the foods that I had been having constant cravings for, so right away I cut out all wheat, sugar, and dairy from my diet.  (I also included chocolate among the foods to be eliminated, but it had already been eliminated under the category of “sugar”.)

The results were dramatic and exceedingly gratifying.  Immediately my constant food cravings ceased; all at once I was content with normal portions of food eaten only at normal times of day.  (To my surprise, I even found myself pushing plates of food away when I had eaten enough, even if uneaten food remained on the plate.)  And I lost all the excess weight I had previously gained.

In short, I don’t need one more shred of evidence to convince me that there are two starkly different modes of eating:  first, the normal way (which people of normal weight use); second, the addictive, out-of-control way, which leads to insatiable cravings and unremitting weight gain.  I know which way I’m going to be following for the rest of my life.

**

About Nancy Bryan

Nancy Bryan, Ph.D., author of this revised and updated edition of Thin is a State of Mind (first published in 1980 by Harper & Row, and subsequently by CompCare Publications), has spent her entire working life as an editor:  in the sixties at The Rand Corporation; in the seventies at an ARPANET research institute; in the eighties at a worldwide employee-benefits consulting firm; and in the nineties for the J. Paul Getty Trust.  In addition to Thin is a State of Mind, Bryan has written a doctoral dissertation on the poetry of Elizabeth Bishop, and has ghostwritten a bestselling self-help book.  Her work has appeared in Vogue, Self, Family Health, and various museum and computer-science publications.  She is currently working on a forthcoming title, Metathinking: Great Ideas for Women’s Use.

Small Blog, Big Ideas - How To Turn Your Blog Into a Success

For many freelance writers, having a successful blog is at the top of their goals list. While it’s great to make money writing for others, there’s something rewarding about writing for yourself (and being paid for it).

blogging

The issue with blogging, however, is that there is a lot of competition out there that can make it difficult for your blog to get noticed. How do you make your blog a success? Read the advice below to help improve your blog and gain traffic that will allow you to make money from doing something that you love.

Put good content first

Before worrying about increasing traffic to your blog, you need to focus on creating good content. That way, when people visit your blog  there’ll be something worthwhile waiting for them.

There are some excellent suggestions for blog content that can make it easier for you to find ideas. Instead of writing the usual posts, consider doing interviews, reader ideas and videos to give some extra depth to your content and make it different than others who write in your niche.

Make sure it runs like clockwork

Websites can break, and there’s nothing more frustrating than coming across a page that is riddled with errors or takes ages to load. As well as spending some time creating content, you should also focus on maintaining the back end of your blog.

If you self-host, you’ll have to do updates manually, so it’s worth checking once a week to see if everything on your blog is in working order. Keep an eye out for broken links in particular and fix them if you need to. If you’re struggling with speed or functionality, you may want to consider using a different provider to ensure your blog benefits from the most up to date services.

Boost the visual content of your blog

Having high-quality written content is great for your blog, but even avid readers can start glazing over when faced with a long wall of text. Create some beautiful visuals to go with your blog content such as photographs and graphics - these will help add interest to your posts and make your blog look more professional.

freelance writing

You don’t even need to be a great photographer to add photos to your blog; there are some amazing free ways to get photos for your blog that give it an incredible look and feel.

Work on your promotion strategy

Promotion is important for getting your blog noticed. If you have social media channels, make sure that you share your posts on them. The principles of creating an effective social media plan are the same whether it’s for a blog or other type of product, and involve a bit of planning and thought on your part about what you want to achieve. Here's my guide to social media for writers.

getting more clients as a freelance writer

Alongside your promotion strategy, think about how you can engage with others in the community and build up relationships with other bloggers and those with an interest in your content.

Focusing on the promotion can be just as important as creating the post itself, so bear that in mind when you’re organizing your time.

Try guest blogging

Guest blogging is a popular way for bloggers to increase their traffic and followers. You can guest blog for others or have others guest blog for you - a mix of the both can achieve excellent results.

You should read up about using a guest post for backlinks to see the benefits it could offer your blog. Guest blogging and effective backlinking help to increase your Google rankings, and can be a good strategy to implement alongside SEO to help make it easier for people to find your blog.

Don’t lose your enthusiasm

Blogging requires passion and enthusiasm to keep the momentum going, and if you lose these, then you could soon start to find maintaining your blog a chore. Instead of feeling uninspired or lacking motivation for your blogging, take a step back from it to help you miss it, as well as give yourself some space to think of new ideas.

making money online

Spend time reading blogs about things that you enjoy and have an interest in; this can help reignite that spark in you that renews your enthusiasm in your own blogging niche. Choosing a topic you know you love and will enjoy writing about is important, so consider your blogging subject carefully before you start pouring all of your energy into it.

Blogging can be a rewarding pastime as well as an effective way to generate income for yourself. Take a look at some of the ways you can monetize your blog and start generating some money from your hard work. A successful blog is within your reach, you just need to work to achieve it.

Improve Website Problems Today & Get More Freelance Clients Tomorrow

Many freelance writers understand the importance of having a website presence to attract clients, show off work and make it clear why you are the best person to take on writing assignments. But let’s be honest. The vast majority of freelance writer websites aren’t as good as they should be.

awesome website content

And the truth is, you are up against a heck of a lot of competition. Type ‘freelance writer’ into the Google search box, and you will reveal almost 11 million results. How can you possibly compete when you're new to the business or don’t have the time to work on your site 24/7 for a few months - or longer?

Well, there are a few things you can do that can make a huge difference to your online presence. In today’s guide, we’re going to go through a few simple things you can do today that will - hopefully - give you a better chance of getting yourself some writing gigs tomorrow. Let’s take a closer look at some of your options.

Explain your niche

What kind of writer are you? It’s important to establish your niche and make it crystal clear to any visitor that arrives on your site. Don’t mess around, and make sure your unique value proposition is the first thing that any prospective customer sees.

It should explain who you are, what you do and why someone should give you a shot at writing for them in less than a few seconds. Leave nothing to the imagination, and you’ll find you get better results than before.

Don't know your niche? Here's a guide to help figure it out.

Speed up your site

Another important thing to consider is the speed of your website. A slow, lumbering site that takes eons to load is not going to be good for business. Search engines will rank slow sites low in the results, ensuring you don't get seen. Aim for a load speed of around two to three seconds. 

First of all, think about upgrading your web server - while a lot of writers start out using free services, the reality is that they almost all have speed issues, and it’s worth investing in a service that gives you snappy, super quick response. If you need some assistance, look around for some local cloud migration solutions to help you transfer your data with as few hiccups as possible.

If you are using a lot of images on your site, it can cause severe slow-downs, so make sure you are optimizing every single image for the web, and your site should zip along quite nicely.

Also, nix unnecessary plugins. Plugins can slow speed down dramatically.

Google has a free nifty tool that can tell you how long it takes your site to load and what you can do to fix it.

Test CTAs and headlines

Do you want someone looking at your site to hire you, or at least to get in touch? Then you need to be implicit in telling them that’s what they should do. Creating Call To Action buttons - or CTAs - is essential.

People like clicking buttons, so give them every opportunity. Test your CTAs, too. The idea is to run A/B tests and see which button converts the best - and then keep on improving it.

Finally, do the same for your headlines. Believe it or not, the headlines you use on your website could make or break it. First impressions form incredibly quickly in the online environment, and it’s important to test your work to see what resonates most with your visitors.

Good luck - and why not share your tips in in the comments section below?

Build Your Confidence In Your Business

When you set up your business, you have an idea that you believe will work. However, as you grow your business, you can have plenty of moments when you don't feel as confident in it. You start to think that maybe you were wrong and that your business could fail. Or you don't feel that your business is capable of surviving without you there micromanaging everything. If you don't feel like you have a lot of confidence in your business, there are ways you can boost your confidence and remind yourself that you can make it work.

Make a Happy Portfolio

I suffer from anxiety and depression. Running a business is hard when you have mental illness. There are times throughout my career when I told myself that I suck at writing, that I would never make it.

Way back in 1998, I started keeping a binder full of screenshots, award certificates, first clips and notes from people who like my writing. One of the first entries was a note from my mom saying that I am a good writer. Now, my mom is a world renowned Esperanto poet, so that's high praise. Every time I got down on myself, I would look at my Happy Portfolio.

Build a Staff You Trust

To build a business you can believe in, you need to make sure you have the right employees. If you don't think they can do their jobs to the best of their abilities, you might not have hired the right people. You need to build a staff you can trust with the day-to-day running of your business. While they might need some daily instruction, perhaps in a meeting each morning, they shouldn't all need to be constantly watched while they work. You need to hire carefully if you want to feel like your business can make it, even when you're in a rush to expand your team.

Know You Have Tech You Can Rely On

Every business today relies on technology in some way. You can lie awake at night worrying about whether the tech your business uses is adequate and if you can meet your customers' needs. You might even struggle with various tech problems that make you feel like your business can't make it. With the right help, you can feel a lot more confident in your business tech.

Using a strategic IT consulting service allows you to ease some of the worries you might have. You can trust a team of experts to take care of things for you. Meanwhile, you can work on other aspects of your business.

Measure Results to Observe What's Working

Sometimes you need to remind yourself that your business idea is working. If you want to see that things are going well, as well as where you could improve, it's imperative to have metrics you can measure. Being able to look at things like your website conversion rate or the average value of your sales allows you to see your success in hard numbers. Reading customer reviews gives you a different way to see how you're doing things right.

Get Mentoring from Someone More Experienced

In business, you should always recognize that you have things to learn still. Even if you have been running a successful business for years, you can still learn about how to do it better. If you want to increase your confidence in your business and the business world in general, getting mentoring from someone more experienced than you is a great idea. They can reassure you, and they can also help you develop your ideas and give you the support you need.

If you feel less than confident in your business, do some things to improve your business or to improve your confidence.

How to Get Your Name Out There as a Freelance Writer

Being a writer has never been an easy job. Not only do you have to keep fresh ideas in your mind at all times, but you also have to put them on paper in a pleasing way, all while making sure that you’re not copying other people’s work. When you’re in this role, rapid growth is essential, and you need to get your name out as quickly as you can. To help you, this post will be exploring some of the easiest ways to achieve getting your name out there.

how to make more money as a freelance writer

Social Media

Over the last couple of years, social media platforms, like Facebook and Instagram, have taken the world of business by storm. Changing the ways that people share information, these websites have become some of the most powerful marketing tools to ever exist, giving companies the chance to reach millions of users.

As a writer, the best use of a tool like this will be to announce when something you’ve written is accessible. If people like your work, you will slowly start to generate a small base of fans, and this could catapult you into the career you want. Here's my guide for running successful social media campaigns. 

Trade Shows

Along with showing off your work on social media, it can also be a good idea to look for ways to network directly with those who might be interested in your work. Investing in trade show booths and exhibits, you will be able to build a good base to talk about your company to those interested, while also being able impress people who haven’t heard about you. Not a lot of freelance writers will go down this route, even though it can provide excellent benefits, so you'll be ahead of the game.

Writing Competitions

Whether you like to write about the things going on around you, stories about made up lands, or anything in between, there will almost certainly be a competition out there which you can join. It won’t take long to meet the requirements of a game like this, and you might even win some money at the end of it. Being able to tell clients that you have won something like this will give them a lot to talk about.

At the beginning of my career, for example, I won the Writer's Digest 365 Writing Prompt contest. I also won Journalism Student of the Year and the Paris News Journalism Scholarship. Those looked pretty shiney on my resume.

Guest Writing

Finally, as the last idea to consider, there are loads of blogs out there which are always looking for guest writers. This sort of work won’t pay anything, as both parties will benefit from the work. Having a post of your own on a site with a large following will make it a lot easier to gain traction than using your own website to do it.

Hopefully, with this in mind, it will become a lot easier to start making a real difference to your writing career. While it will take time to grow in this field, a lot of people are able to find ways to make the time go much faster. With the right drive and determination, you can achieve anything, even working for yourself.

How To Make Your Blog The Ultimate Industry Competitor

Self-employment has been on the rise recently. More and more people are realising the earning potential of being their own boss and creating their own business. Blogging has surged in popularity.

For anyone starting out, or trying to climb the blogging ladder of success, there is a lot of competition - even if you have a peculiar niche. So how do you stand out? Here are a few tips on how your blog can climb from the bottom to the top of your competitor list, and start to grow with the success it deserves.

Your Layout And Design

You may love your layout and design of your blog, and make a point of constantly trying to improve it. However, if you are still not seeing a surge in views per day, it may be time to see what your existing viewers think of it.

• Are new blogs easy to find?

• Do you have a way of searching through your content?

• Is your content categorised?

You may think your blog is pretty and simple, but the opinions that really matter are of your viewers. If they think it’s a hot mess, it could be what's holding you back from your big viewing break.

There are many websites out there who offer a template service to help you customise your layout, or you could get in contact with an experienced web designer who will be able to advise you on the best way to make your page easier on the eyes and more user-friendly.

SEO

what is SEO

After you’ve put all that hard work into making your website functional and visually appealing, it would be a shame if nobody got a chance to see it. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a way of ensuring that whenever people are searching for content within your particular niche, that your blog comes up near the top of the list.

If you are honest with yourself, when was the last time you looked beyond the first page of an internet search? Most people don’t even look beyond the first five or six entries. A good quality SEO agency helps to put your blog at the top of the pile, meaning more hit and more followers for you. Exposure is the name of the game.

Don't want to hire help? Here's my free guide to everything you need to know about SEO.

Social Media

In order for your blog to become a success, you already know you need to create a loyal following and make yourself known to brands who can  sponsor you.

If you haven’t yet started to market your blog on social media, it is time to start. With being able to reach a much larger percentage of people overnight than any other source of marketing, social media is invaluable to your business success. You can join blogging groups or simply share posts on your own professional page.

To really kick-start your marketing campaign, you could even do a giveaway that requires the viewer to share your blog on their page to enter. It also is a great tool for keeping in touch with your readers to thank them for any good feedback or constructive criticism. You can also get inspiration for ideas if ever you hit a wall of writer's block with your blog.

There you have it, some tried and tested methods of placing your blog head and shoulders above the competition, and helping it to find its own two feet in success.

The Way to Create Genuine Business Fans

If you’re a business owner, one of the biggest mistakes you can possibly make is figuring out how to attract customers. You don’t want to attract customers. You want to create genuine fans of your business. You know, the kind of people that get excited about your product launches, stay up to date with what you’re doing, and tell their friends and family all about you! That's what you want! 

Take a look through these pointers and tips and you’ll quickly learn how to create fans.

Know Exactly Who Your Audience Is

Before you go about creating fans for your business, you need a good idea of who your audience is exactly. When you know this, you can tailor your efforts to them and speak their language. You can’t target absolutely everybody, so don’t try to. Sure, you’ll probably get people who were’t expected at one point or another, and that’s fine.

Roll with it. Just keep on doing what you’re doing.

To make sure you have this part down, sit back, imagine your perfect fan and try sketching out a couple of ideas. Write down who these people are, their age, what they like, don’t like, whether they have kids, what their problems are, what they do in their spare time - all of these things will help you to create awesome campaigns. It’ll also help you to see how you can target the people you want perfectly.

Start With Your Brand

Now you know who your audience is, you can start designing a brand that appeals to them. Bear in mind that your brand is everything these days. Your brand is not only your logo, but your fonts, the words you use, the colors, your values as a company, and more.

Make sure your brand aligns perfectly with your target audience. Doing this alone could be difficult, so you should consider working with an experienced company who can help you. Smashbrand is a good example of what can be achieved when hard work and experience are put to the test. Click for more information if you think they could be of help to you. You’re free to go it alone, but if you don’t have experience in the field, then it probably isn’t the best idea.

Set Up Social Media Profiles

Social media is a must for any business in this day and age, but it's especially important when trying to win fans. You want to make sure you have the social platforms set up that your audience most often use, though. Don't just go crazy and start a page on every site. You'll get worn out and your posts won't be as good. This is why many businesses choose to hire a social media manager.

Make sure you do your research here. Your customers might use Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or something more specialized. For example, if your niche is crafting or how-to, you may do well with Pinterest. If your niche is tech, Reddit may be the best option.

To gather fans, be sure you post consistently, post when your target audience will read it and interact with other people who post things in your niche.

Make Sure Your Customer Service Is Impeccable

Something that fans of your business will love is a great customer service ethic. Make yourself an expert in customer service by remembering great customer service experiences you’ve had and figure out why they were so great. Write a list of things you want to emulate.

Then, do the same with terrible customer service experiences.

The thing about customer service is that you’re not always going to be dealing with happy or chilled out customers. Some may be quite angry and aggressive if you’ve made a mistake. The customer may not always be right, but if you want to keep them, they need to feel like they are. Here are a few pointers:

• Make sure customer service is consistent across your entire business.

• Make sure you can show empathy, and you aren’t just reading robotically from a sheet.

• Make sure they go above and beyond to help a customer resolve a situation.

• When talking to customers keep a smile on your face. It's sounds crazy, but people can actually hear a smile in your voice.

Remember, word spreads. People will be more likely to tell others about a bad experience, than a good one. They could haunt you!

Give Your Customers Stuff

To run a successful brand you need useful things that your fans can get from you to make them feel like part of the team. For example, my No-Fluff Writer brand includes a book, a free download, an Instagram feed full of writing tips, this website and a Facebook group.

I even give out free wristbands! lol

Don’t Compromise On Product/Service Quality:

Create Awesome Content

This goes without saying, but creating awesome content keeps people coming back to your business again and again. Whether you choose to write helpful blogs that are designed to inform, or create videos to entertain and educate at the same time, make sure you do it and do so consistently. Post them to your social media channels, and design them so that people share them and engage with your business.

Content is one of the key things you should focus on if you want to create fans of your business. Don’t be afraid of sharing your knowledge. When you establish yourselves as experts, you’ll be glad you did!

You should make sure your product or service is the highest quality you can muster. Ensure you have a great quality check process, and that everything meets the same standards across the board.

For articles, be sure to check:

• Spelling

• Grammar

• If the intro is interesting

• If you've included different types of media for visual interest

• If the title grabs attention without being clickbait

• Links: They need to be live and point to reliable sources

• Style

Personalize Interactions

Personalizing interactions -- not just sending duplicate messages to people (it’s too easy to copy and paste) -- will go a long way. It shows people that you’ve paid attention a bit, and shows them that you care. Do your best to personalize email interactions, social media interactions and telephone interactions.

Listen To Your Audience

Make sure you take the time to listen to your audience too. Perhaps one issue has cropped up a few times, or you put out a survey and ask what can be improved. Make sure you actually make the changes they are suggesting! You don’t have to change everything based on a small number of issues, but showing that you’ve paid attention to your audience will create more of a loyalty with them.

The thing is, you don’t just create fans with your product or service, like many people believe. You could have a great product, for instance, but if the rest of your business is off, it’s unlikely people will come back. The key is making them feel good about the entire experience. That’s how you create fans that keep on coming back.

If you’re just starting out with your freelance writing business this pack will give you everything you need to be successful.

Here's A Trick To Help You Get Through To The Busiest People

Please enjoy this guest post.

Hate it when you can’t get through to someone you really want to connect with in business?

They don’t return your phone calls, your emails go unanswered?

“Here’s a trick that I learned from my kids about communicating with even the busiest people,” says Ivan Misner Ph.D., a leading networking expert who’s been called ‘The Father of Modern Networking’ by CNN.

Dr. Misner holds a Ph.D. in Organizational Behavior and as the Co-Founder of the BNI Charitable Foundation he was recently named “Humanitarian of the Year” by the Red Cross.

“No one is harder to reach than a teenager who just moved out of their parents’ house,” jokes Ivan, who is the author of the just-released second edition of Networking Like A Pro (Entrepreneur Press). “To get through to them I had to get a little crafty. This same technique applies in business too. Here’s how it works . . .”

Here’s What My Kids Taught Me About Getting Through To The Busiest People In Business . . .

• “After my three kids moved out of the house, I quickly realized that our avenues of communication were no longer working. My eldest daughter did not respond to emails and phone calls, but when I texted her, immediate response. My second daughter wouldn’t use email, never used the phone, and thought texting was old school. Instead, she communicated via whatsapp. I downloaded the app, immediate response.

• “Now, my son didn’t use email, or phone, didn’t text and refused to use whatsapp – but I knew he was big into online gaming and communicated with his friends via a gaming platform called STEAM. As crazy as it sounds, I downloaded the app, purchased a game, and sent him messages through the platform. Boom. Immediate response."

The business networking lesson? “Rather than try to get people to move to your preferred communication platform, go to theirs!” explains Ivan Misner, Founder of BNI.com, the world’s largest networking organization.

• “When you meet a valuable connection in business, ask them how they prefer to be communicated with and use it,” says Ivan. “This will help you get through to the important and powerful people that can move your business forward. Don’t be afraid of using new and unfamiliar apps – just go wherever they are.”

3 Things a Freelance Writer Needs To Worry About

The life of a freelance writer can be strange. You are likely to see yourself as part-business, part-individual, and you have to treat yourself as a little of both at all times. Because of the business side of things, it means that you often need to concern yourself with business affairs and creative.

The more you pay attention to these details the more likely you'll be able to build your writing career into exactly what you want it to be. You'll see the success you are looking for all by just changing your perspective a little. Let’s look at some of the business concerns a writer should be aware of.

Security

As with any business, you need to make sure that you are focused on the security of your freelance writing career - and that means approaching it in the same serious way as any business. For instance, you might want to make sure your computer systems are as well protected as possible, by using an IT security company or doing it yourself.

You should also protect your business premises - which could be your home - so that you feel even safer. Be sure your insurance policy is updated.

Also, put a little money away each month to help tide you over during slow months. Freelancing is feast or famine. One month you may be making big money, and then the next you may hear crickets. Be sure you're ready for the slow times.

Marketing

You need to make sure that you are enticing people to buy your skill, writing, with marketing. Marketing an individual is of course a little different to marketing a company, but in principle they are ultimately the same.

You need to advertise your best qualities and downplay others which are not so good, all while ensuring that you are focusing on drawing in the right kind of people. Believe it or not, you have a demographic, and you need to make sure that you are aware of what that demographic is. The more aware of that kind of thing that you are, the more likely you can arrange your marketing so that it really draws in the people who care.

First, find a niche.

Next, build a website.

Finally, build a social media following.

Budgeting

Again, you have incomings and outgoings like any other business, and you need to make sure that you are budgeting yourself properly.  Be sure to budget and to keep records of everything you take in or spend for tax purposes. Also, keeping track of what you spend will help you to better determine your rates. I keep all of these figures in an Excel spreadsheet and make a new one each year.

Need help getting clients and starting your business? I share how I make $100 to $200 an hour in my book The Fluff-Free Freelance Writing Master Course: The only course that gives you concrete, actionable information to building a successful freelance business without any fluff.

Freelance Success is Within Reach if You Improve Your Tech Skills

Are you a freelancer looking for ways to do more and go further? Freelance life certainly isn’t easy, and if you’ve hit a ceiling, it can become incredibly frustrating. You don’t need to stay at the level you’re at right now, though. Career progression is possible, but to go further, your tech skills will have to be up to scratch. The freelance world mostly plays out online and involve tech, and there’s no way of getting around that.

working at home

You’ll Get Work Faster if You Know Online Tricks and Hacks

Most freelancers have to compete for work on a weekly or even daily basis, and that’s one of the most difficult things about doing this kind of work. If you know how to use the internet in the fastest and most up to date way, you will get better at finding work before someone else takes it. Here are some tricks to finding clients.

Upgrade Every Piece of Software Your Income is Reliant On

These days, every freelancers relies on some sort of software. Even if it’s something as simple as Microsoft Excel, you can use Excel consultant to learn new things and become more efficient. On top of that, you need to upgrade your basic software because it adds real value to your freelance career. Trust me, it’ll pay for itself.

Create Your Own Website to Get Your Name Out There

Creating your own website will give you an online base from which you can do your work. It might seem incredibly complicated, but it’s something that you can get good at pretty quickly once you get the hang of it. You'll learn so many important and useful skills along the way that will make you more useful to your clients, as well.

Build Your Own PC Next Time You Need to Upgrade

You’re going to need a good computer otherwise you won’t be able to do any freelance work at all. Why not make your own PC from scratch? Building a PC will help you get to know which parts fulfill which functions, which will help you fix simple problems when they emerge later on, saving you on IT costs.

Get Better at 21st Century Communication

Communication is a big part of being a freelance workers, and it’s something you need get good at sooner rather than later. If you’re still living in the last century, you’re never going to be very good at communicating with clients and keeping them in the loop while you’re doing work for them. 

Skype, Blue Jean and Slack are all popular instant messaging apps that business use to communicate on the fly. Find out which one your clients use and be sure to send them quick notes when you have questions. Clients are much more likely to answer on one of these platforms before email.

Freelancing is hard enough as it is, so why make your life even more difficult by limiting yourself in terms of your tech skills. There are plenty of ways for you to learn and improve your skills, so this is something that you should be looking to do in 2019. If you do, your career will progress nicely.