Guest Posts
Sell Like a Pro or Fail Like a … Pro
Selling is fun. I could never actually understand why so many freelancers resent it so much. It allows you to see your business growing. It helps you to be busy. It brings cash to your bank (and who doesn’t like that?). Let’s face it, not matter what you might think, it is also the most important part of running a business. Without selling your freelance career will end with a bang louder than 4th of July fireworks.
Read MoreThe Death of a Blog
All good things must come to an end. Even blogs. I’ve been telling myself that for almost two months now. But somehow it doesn’t make closing down Jargonwriter.com any easier.
In The Beginning. . .
I started the site when I was in college. All the latest and greatest job-hunting advice recommended blogging. So I began writing about the publishing industry.
The site grew even as I did. When I decided to begin freelancing part time, I focused my writing on freelancing. When I left my editing job in August to become a full time freelancer, the blog yet again followed my progress.
However as my business got busier and I invested more time into actually freelancing, I found I had less time to write about it. “Write a post for JW” got pushed further and further down on my to-do list. A week would go by without time to write a post. Then another week. Before I knew it my last post was 2 months ago.
Read MoreThe Triumphs and Trials of Freelancing Abroad
Freelancing abroad is a dream come true for a lot of people. You’re living in a foreign country, working for yourself, exploring an entirely new culture, customs and language – all while working for yourself! But what most people don’t realize is that as awesome as it is to freelance abroad, it’s also very challenging. Some of the things that effect my freelancing from UAE are:
Photo Credit: Wikipedia
Time difference
I’m 8 hours ahead of US & Canada and 6 hours behind Australia. That’s where the bulk of my clients are. So what this means for my freelancing business is that I need to submit the work a day earlier to my Australian clients. It also means I can submit the work as late as 1:00 a.m. to my US clients if I’m running late on a project.
It’s fun in the beginning but then keeping track of all the deadlines becomes a nightmare. I have about 3 clocks set in different time zones on my computer. In the end, to remove all the confusion, I started submitting my work a day earlier.
Another challenge regarding time zone differences are client calls. Scheduling a call with a client can take as long as a week. After a few frustrating times of not being able to connect with a client on time, I now simply send a ‘Because of the time difference between us I’m available on such and such time’ and include a list of 3-5 possible call timings that suit me. This has saved me a lot of emailing and confusion.
Early Weekend
The weekend in UAE is Friday & Saturday because of the Friday afternoon prayer, which is a big deal in Muslim countries. So every Thursday while the rest of you still have one day till your weekend, mine starts as soon as it’s 5 pm here. Unfortunately, what this means is that even though I’m not working on a Friday, I have to keep an eye on my inbox to reply to any client emails and as a result have to work too.
My workaround to that is simple. I schedule all my deadlines for Wednesday and take a half day off. I submit all my work due that week and head out. Once I’m back after a few hours, I check my email, take note of the feedback received from my clients and put them on my to do list for Thursday.
The best part about the early weekend is the working Sunday. Since Sunday is the first working day here, I put in a full day of work and by the time the rest of the world gets done with their weekend, I’ve already put a dent in my workload for the week. This arrangement has worked wonders for my productivity and deadlines.
PayPal
PayPal plays a big part in our freelance writing business. But when you live in a country that’s not in Europe or North America then there’s a high chance that PayPal might not allow withdrawals to your local bank. This is the biggest problem I’ve faced as a freelancer working abroad. Clients in different countries prefer to use PayPal. I quickly realized that saying no to PayPal payments was losing me business.
My PayPal account is now used for paying bills, shopping and several other recurring charges of internet services I’ve subscribed to.An alternate to PayPal is Western Union. I clients if they’re open to sending payments via Western Union. If not, PayPal it is. For local clients, I always ask for a bank deposit. I never accept checks since a bounced check has harsh penalties here and I don’t want to ruin a business relationship by landing a client in trouble – even if it’s through no fault of mine!
Currency exchange rate
The absolute best part about freelancing abroad is the difference in currency rates. $1 = Dhs (Dirham) 3.66 in UAE. So for every $100 I earn, I’m actually getting Dhs 366.
This means I don’t have to earn as much as a freelancer living in the US to be called successful. If I’m earning $3k per month as a freelancer, that’s around Dhs 11k in UAE.
Does this mean I should charge less for my services? Definitely not! Where a freelancer lives has no bearing on what he or she charges. Just because the exchange rate is in your favour where you live, it doesn’t mean that the cost of living is cheap. So even if you’re earning more in local currency than in dollars, you might still just be breaking even.
The Mommy Zone: Freelancing While Pregnant
I need to confess something from the outset: I don’t do pregnancy well. Before I became pregnant with my oldest child, a part of me bought into the idea that babies were something that people had and that expecting one shouldn’t have to interfere with your life all that much. In my very naive mindset, I figured that being pregnant was something that you could run in the background of your life while you concentrated on work and other things.
Boy, was I wrong. I don’t think anyone could have explained to me that I was going to be swept along in something primeval was way bigger than me. As much as I had pictured myself being in control of the process, I wasn’t. You can freelance while pregnant, but may need to adjust your expectations and your schedule to make it work.
Photo Credit: davhor via Flickr
Be Patient with Yourself
One thing I learned while freelancing during pregnancy was that I needed to be patient with myself. No one told me that morning sickness could happen at any time of the day or night, and that’s what it was like for me. When my doctor suggested eating potato chips to help with the nausea, I was willing to try anything. (It did help.)
I work from home, so it was a little easier to manage having to take time out to deal with being sick. At that point, I only communicated with clients through e-mail so there was no chance that I would have to interrupt a phone call or leave a meeting for this reason.
If you can find certain times of the day when you feel more energetic or less distracted by having to either throw up or use the washroom, use them to your advantage. Plan to work on projects that require the most concentration then, and don’t overbook yourself. There may be some days when you just aren’t able to focus as well as you would like to on your work and you need to learn to take them as they come and hope that tomorrow will be better.
Plan for the Unexpected
In a perfect world, you would feel wonderful every day of your pregnancy and you would give birth right on your due date so that you could make sure that your projects are completed before you have the baby. Unfortunately, life is not perfect, and you may run into complications in your pregnancy that mean you have to change your workload or take some time off earlier than you had planned.
If you develop health issues that require you to go on bed rest, cut back on your hours or make other changes to your business, keep your clients in the loop. It’s not a bad idea to have a contact list on hand so that you can have someone else reach out to your clients if you are not able to do so yourself.
You could explain that you have developed some complications in your pregnancy and that means you need to do [X]. Then follow up that statement with a plan for your client. Tell him or her if you need an extension on a deadline or you need to cut back on the amount of work you are doing. In a case where you will be out of commission for a while, offer to refer your client to a fellow freelancer until you are ready to start working again. Your goal is to offer a solution to the issue, not just dump it in the client’s lap and run.
“Birth” Day and Afterwards
Babies tend to have their own schedules and you may find that yours decides to make an appearance earlier than you had anticipated or you could still be a very pregnant lady in waiting two weeks after your due date. Even with the best laid out birth plan, your delivery may not go the way you were hoping, either.
When you are planning for life and freelancing after baby, build a cushion of time and put away some funds in advance. You may end up having a C-section which means a longer hospital stay and recovery. Your bundle of joy may develop colic. Even if you have the easiest delivery ever, you are going to be tired and sore.
You are the best judge of when to start freelancing again after having the baby and how much work you can take on. When family members and friends offer to help, say, “Yes,” and if they don’t offer, speak up and tell them what you need. Your new baby won’t be a newborn forever and as he or she gets a little older, you will find it easier to get back on a regular schedule.
Read More
Master the Art of Knowing Your Audience
In my previous post, I talked about how as a freelance writer, you need to master the art of disappearing. You relinquish your distinctive voice in order to take on the voice of your client. After all, you don’t get paid to write in your style, you get paid to write for your client.
Still, even after you know your client’s goals, their history, their industry and have their voice, that isn’t enough. Sure, taking on their persona means that you can be a believable mouthpiece, but it doesn’t make what you have to say interesting or meaningful to the most important people of any freelance project: your audience (i.e. the customers).
If you want to earn your pay and bring business to your client, you have to be an effective communicator. And effective communication involves more than giving information (i.e. writing content) to the audience. You have to translate what you know about your client (their goals, styles, etc…) in a way that connects with the customers. And you can’t do that, unless you master this next tip.
Know your audience
Regardless of what project you’ve been commissioned to do (e.g. web content, a brochure, a ghost written article, etc….), you have to know your audience in order to translate the client’s message in a meaningful way to the audience. Communication happens when the speaker (i.e. you) conveys the message (i.e. what you’re working on for your client) in a way that is understandable, relatable, and relevant to your audience.Remember, it’s not the audience’s responsibility to figure out what we’re trying to say. The onus falls on us, the freelance writer, to clearly communicate the message.
We’ve all been victims of poor communication. High schools and colleges are filled with instructors who drone on and on about a subject and are never able to engage their students. They fail because they never make the ideas they are trying to teach relevant to the student’s lives. Companies are also filled with ineffective communicators. Think back to the jobs you held in your pre-freelancing days. At some point, did you ever sit in on a staff meeting where a lot was said yet nothing was communicated? In both situations, someone was talking and you may have been listening, but in reality, no communication was taking place. Rather than talking to you, they were talking at you.
The same thing happens when freelancers don’t take the time to get to know their audience. Here are a few factors to consider that will help you get to know your audience:
- Know your audience’s demographics. What part of the country do they live in? What’s their age group? What’s their socio-economic status? Different demographics have different values and attitudes. Baby Boomers won’t respond to a message the same way that Millennials will. If you write your content for everyone, you’ll reach no one. Targeted writing is effective writing.
- Know your audience’s language. What words, similes and metaphors do they use in their everyday lives? What imagery are they familiar with? How I write a marketing piece that’s directed to hip urbanites from Chicago is vastly different from a piece I would write for earthy Midwestern farmers. Whoever your audience is, you have to speak at their level and with their language when you’re writing content.
- Know what’s important to your audience. What does your audience care about? What are their needs? What are their goals? What are their desires? What do they want? When you know what makes your audience tick and your message addresses something that is important to them, you give them a reason to care about what you have to say.
In the end, your client’s customers shouldn’t see you when they read your content; they should see your client. And when they see your client’s message (i.e. the project you crafted for them), they see something that speaks directly to them and their needs. Your skill and professionalism as a writer shine through when you masterfully combine the art of disappearing and the art of knowing.
Read MoreWant to Get Noticed on Google? Stop Being Like Everyone Else
If you want to bring in a steady stream of new freelance writing prospects, one good tool is your professional website. After all, many of the best writing gigs are never publicly advertised, and one way buyers find writers is by searching the Internet. If those buyers can’t find your website ranked high in search results, they’ll never know about you.
At the same time, ranking highly in search engines for the right phrases people are searching for isn’t always easy. You can’t just stuff a bunch of keywords into your Web copy or submit your site to directory after directory hoping to build easy links. So how can you help your business website rank better in search engines without selling your soul to the SEO gremlins and their constantly-changing algorithms?
You can do it by focusing on increasing the amount of quality content by turning your oh-so-typical business website into an all-out resource site for your target market.
Make Your Business Site More Than a Business Site for Better Rankings
Here’s the thing. If you want to rank well in search engines, precious little helps more than incoming links to your website. But that doesn’t mean any old links will do. You want high quality, relevant links — you know, the kind people share on their own because your site is just so damn good that they can’t possibly keep it all to themselves.
To get those kinds of links (not to mention repeat traffic from prospects, keeping you fresh in their minds), you have to give them what they want. And what they want will usually not be your sales hype and marketing copy telling them how great of a freelance writer you are. They want something that’s good for them, whether they’re ready to hire you right now or not.
You can give prospects that, and really set yourself apart from the competition, if you transform your ho-hum sales-oriented site into something more. Don’t get me wrong. Keep the marketing copy. Improve it if you can. And keep an emphasis on it. After all, that’s still why you have the site in the first place. But you can do that and still add other pages or sections with great content that keeps people coming back, and keeps them spreading the word.
When you do that, you build natural incoming links to help you stand out in Google — the kind that aren’t likely to disappear after a sudden algorithm change (like spamming links across a half dozen article marketing sites might).
5 Ways to Turn Your Business Site Into a Resource Site
When I say you should consider turning your freelance writing website into more of a resource site, what do I mean exactly? What kinds of things can you do or add to the site that would attract more prospects, help you build more links, and help you stand out in Google and other search engines? Here are five ideas to get you started.
- Add a blog. — Blogs not only let you regularly update your content, but they also help you build relationships with readers — your prospects. You let them see that you know what you’re talking about in your specialty area. You give them plenty of advice and commentary that’s worth linking to. And you keep them coming back for more. Just remember to write about things that interest them — not about you and your business all the time.
- Publish free e-books. – Free e-books are another option for giving away great information in a marketing capacity. You give more detailed information than you might on a blog, but not so much that your freelance writing services become obsolete. For example I have a short e-book on writing press releases available on my business site (I used to charge for it and later converted it into a freebie marketing tool). I teach prospects how to do what I do. But in the process they also see a lot of details they’ve never considered. And many, if not most, still come to me for either writing or editing help when they realize there’s more to effective press release writing than they thought. Sometimes educating prospects makes them really appreciate what you bring to the table, especially when they realize how much time you can keep them from wasting.
- Conduct original research and publish industry reports. — If you work with business-oriented or technical-oriented client groups, maybe you could conduct some research (such as through a comprehensive industry survey). Then publish your findings in a free report. You become a go-to source for industry information, and that can open a lot of doors when it comes to meeting and networking with prospects, not to mention moving you up in the search results as more people discover and link to your site.
- Offer free downloads. — Freebies don’t have to be writing-related. Anything useful to your target market will do. For example, you might create an iPhone app, software download, online tools and calculators, or downloadable forms and worksheets.
- Feature FAQs or a knowledgebase. — Even if you aren’t ready to create an all-out resource-driven site to attract prospects and rank better in search engine results, you can at least set up a knowledgebase. You’ve probably seen tech-oriented companies use these to explain their software, hardware, or services. Why not do the same? You can offer a knowledgebase where you provide answers to common questions about the services you provide. But don’t make your answers overt sales pitches. Keep the information more general and helpful so people keep coming back and referring it to others. For example, a freelance blogger might offer a knowledgebase with information about setting up a blog, using different blog platforms, or formatting Web writing more effectively. This is a great way to highlight how-to articles if you don’t want to commit to the ongoing writing required in blogging.
The idea is pretty simple — give people evergreen content and tools they can use on their own, and you’ll be fresh in their minds the next time they need to hire someone in your specialty area. Messages of “Buy! Buy! Buy!” don’t cut it alone. If you want access to more potential clients than you could possibly take on, you have to make yourself stand out. Dropping the old school business site for a more diverse resource-oriented one gives you the best of both worlds — content that encourages word of mouth marketing and natural linking while you still have the marketing copy you need to convert those leads into new clients.
