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Online Invoicing with WePay.com: Approximately 1 Trillion Times Faster than a Pony
This guest post is brought to you by WePay, the easiest way to accept payments online.
Back in olden times, when freelancers like you and me wanted to collect money from clients, we pecked out an invoice on our trusty Underwood typewriter, left an epithelial DNA sample on a stamp, walked it down 5-flights of our Brooklyn walkup to the mailbox (this was when Brooklyn wasn’t “Brooklyn,” mind you), then waited for the mailperson to gallop his pony to your client’s HQ. Then you waited for Ye Olde Accounts Payable Department to flip on their green-shaded lamp and get to writing out a check (hopefully within 30 days) before repeating the whole process stamp/mailbox/pony process over again.
Okay, so maybe getting paid hasn’t been that slow in a long while, but sometimes it feels like it, right?
Fortunately, as all those out-of-work ponies can attest, there’s a faster way to get paid these days – with online invoicing.
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Dude, Where is My Money?
About two months ago, I was opening the mail when I realized I got a check from a client. The client is a trade magazine I’ve written for about once a month for almost two years. It’s not unusual to receive a check from them. What was unusual was that they didn’t owe me any money at time. I remember staring at the check like it was a trick before deciding that cashing it would be a mistake. (more…)
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Why Working “Sales” Jobs Made Me Bad At Selling Myself
Before and during college I worked my fair share of menial jobs. I’ve worked in fast food restaurants and as a server in a steakhouse; I’ve done retail and telemarketing. I even worked summers growing up at my grandmother’s dog kennel, cleaning up dog poop—certainly nothing elegant there.
But all of these jobs had one thing in common: at each, I was interacting with the company’s customers, trying to guarantee they left satisfied and often trying to get them to buy a little more than they’d intended.
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What I Did This Summer
The summer flew by for me. My celebrated my 32nd birthday. I bought my husband a new puppy for his 34th birthday a week later. I hung out in Brooklyn a lot. I walked the Brooklyn Bridge like a tourist. I forgot to use that Cold Stone gift card I got for Christmas last year. I began and ended a feud with Busta Rhymes. I lost a few pounds working out. I may or may not have ripped an Xbox controller out of a young boy’s hand and thrown it down the hall while yelling “How you like me now?!” so I could win the video game we were playing.
Oh yeah…and I got a job.
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On Dreaming Big
The amount of skepticism in the industry is, to me, unsettling. When you dream big dreams (of the I want to be a New York Times bestselling author variety), experienced writers practically jump up to tell you how unlikely it is. Well, of course it’s unlikely. That’s why it’s a big dream.
Why are we so afraid of disappointment? The message I get from writers’ message boards and writing groups is that it is better not to dream at all than to be disappointed in the end. Why? What’s so bad about disappointment? If anything, it’s character forming, it makes you work harder and while it may upset you and disillusion you for a while, it’s better than living a mediocre life with no dreams because you’ve already accepted that it won’t or can’t happen for you. (more…)
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September Group Therapy
This month, we’re having another Twitter chat for Group Therapy. Last month, we got into a lively discussion about websites and branding so I think we should talk about that this time. We’ll meet up on Twitter at 6pm on September 19th, using the #DMF hashtag. We start by introducing ourselves and telling the group what kind of freelance writing we do. As the moderator, I’ll use “Q” to signify a question and if you’re answering a direct question, you can use “A” to show it. (So I’ll ask Q1 and you’ll put A1 to answer it.) These are the three questions we’ll be answering: (more…)
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5 Crazy Ways I’ve Found Clients
I’m not typically a big believer in karma but there is one kind of karma specifically that I’ve come to believe in whole-heartedly: the karma of marketing.
The idea isn’t even truly mine.
A few months back I was doing a big marketing push to bring in new clients. In one way, the results were exactly as you might expect: The more marketing I did, the more clients I seemed to land.
However, I noticed something odd. For the most part there wasn’t any correlation between the leads I had pitched and the jobs I was landing.
For example, I’d send out Letters of Introduction to trade magazines and then I’d hear from a new copy writing client or a new author. That’s when PJ piped in and explained that that’s just how marketing worked: it’s karma. The more you put out there, the more you get back—just not necessary from the same places.
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The Wimp’s Guide to Protecting Your Office Hours
Sometimes all this advice about what you should do as a freelancer is just too much. It’s “You should put your foot down” and “You should just say no.” Even if you know that’s what you’re supposed to do, it can be hard to stand up for your business. Sometimes you have to do it like a wimp would. (more…)
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August’s Group Therapy
August’s Group Therapy will be old school and swing back to a Twitter chat. (#DMF) We’re doing it August 30th at 5:30pm. I hope you all can make it. Here are the topics this month:
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The Business of Freelancing
I don’t think it’s a secret that I am more business-minded than writer-minded. (Just look at the way I butchered that sentence.) I don’t think of the two as mutually exclusive. but I am less concerned with whether an editor has completely rewritten my lede than whether my check is already in the mail. As long as the client is happy with what I turned in and I’m getting paid, I don’t care what they do with it after that. (more…)
photo by: betsyweberRead More »
