Angela Booth's Writing Blog

Kick start your writing career with two articles

Next week's Fab Freelance Writing Ezine features two articles. Both will help you to make more money from your writing.

The first article "Kick Start Your Freelance Writing Career - 3 Simple Ways" helps you to kick start your career if you're a complete beginner, and if you're established, will inspire you to revamp your career.

Here's an excerpt:

Want to develop a great writing career? These days, you have unlimited options, because you can earn as you learn: there's never been a better time to be a writer.

Discover how you can kick start your freelance writing career, or boost a flagging career three simple ways. If you've always wanted to "be a writer", now's the time.

The second article helps you to write more and sell more. "Kill Writing Procrastination for Good with Three Words" will help you if you have a tendency to procrastinate.

Here's an excerpt:

Do you put off writing? If procrastination is a challenge for you, you'll discover how to kill that tendency for good with three short words. Discover what they are.

Let's start by assessing what writing procrastination is. Basically it's when you either put off writing something you know how to write, or are scared of writing in general because you imagine that there's a right way to write something or other.

To become a competent, prolific writer, you need to forget your education. All writing is subjective, and once you leave school, no one is giving you marks out of a hundred. That gives you lots of freedom: make the most of it with three words.

This issue will be out on Tuesday.

Subscribe now, it's free.

Make money writing from home: ditch your day job forever

If you can write, you can make money writing from home. The Web has made it possible for ANY writer, no matter how new or inexperienced, to turn writing into a fabulous career. If you're stuck in a soul-destroying, or just boring job, writing is your way out.

Fab Freelance Ezine helps you - subscribe and receive the free report: "Write And Sell Your Writing: The Power-Write Report". It's 21 pages packed with information to help you to develop a six-figure writing career.

Keyboard Cash - Make Money Blogging for Others

Want to make a steady income writing? One of the easiest ways is by blogging for others. Discover how it works in this article.

Blogging involves writing articles. These articles may be as short as 100 words, or as long as 2000 words. As a pro blogger, you'll be asked to write articles - or "post" in blogging terminology - for a blog several times a week.

Who Hires You to Blog?

You'll usually be hired by companies rather than by individuals. Businesses have discovered the power of blogging, and hire bloggers either because they don't have the resources in-house, or because the blogger has special skills.

How Much Money Can You Make Blogging for Others?

That depends on who hires you. If you're hired by a small business with fewer than 100 employees, you'll make a reasonable amount. However, if you're hired by a corporation, you'll make a great income - $2 and $3 (or even more) PER WORD.

How Do You Get Started?

You start by developing your blogging skills. This means creating at least one blog of your own, and posting to that blog every day.

I've seen many writers try to short-cut the process and apply for blog jobs without creating their own blog, but this is foolish. If you can't show that you have good writing skills, and know how blogging works, the only blog jobs you'll get are those with tiny budgets - for $2 pr $5 per blog post.

I'm not against you working for minimal pay if this is what you need to do, but please realize that in the long term, these kinds of jobs will do you more harm than good. You'll never be able to use your blog posts for these minimal-pay blogging jobs as a stepping stone to something better.

So create your own blog, and learn how to blog proficiently. The more you know, the more you can charge. This means learning things like how to market your blog and get traffic; how to set up a WordPress blog on a domain; and how to create a blogging plan.

The time you spend on your own blog is an investment in your blogging future. Put bluntly: your blog shows how much you're worth as a blogger. It's the difference between being paid $2 per blog post, and being paid $10,000 or more a month by a big business to manage their blog.

Blogging is big, and it will get bigger. It's a way to make a great income writing for just a couple of hours a day. What's not to like?

"Go From Zero To Making $250 Per Hour For Web Writing - Kick Off Your Web Writing Career In 24 Hours!"

There's great money in Web writing. Some Web writers are making $20,000 a month by blogging for a stable of sites. Others are writing articles or ebooks.

Want to jump on this opportunity? No matter what your level of writing skill, you can make great money writing for the Web too.

Get a full year of weekly assignments; become a Web writing pro with Sell Your Writing Online NOW.

Make Money Writing and Build a Great Career

Get free weekly writing tips...

Want to make money with your writing? Fab Freelance Writing Ezine is your free weekly resource.

Build your skills, get motivated - it's never been easier to build a great writing career.

Whether you're a brand new writer, or are an established pro, Fab Freelance Writing Ezine is packed with writing tips you can use.

Here's what a new writer said: "I've always wanted to sell my writing - you showed me how. I made three sales on one day, just from my blog."

You and Fab Freelance Writing Ezine are a powerful combination. Subscribe today... it's free.

Why you must blog

Over on Fab Freelance Writing Blog, I've posted "Your blog - a powerful tool to help your writing".

Here's an excerpt:

Want to make the most of your writing skills? Get a blog. When you have a blog, your words can be read by millions of people throughout the world, within seconds, and for years to come.

There are many, many ways to make money blogging.

Read the article.

Are you wasting time, rather than writing?

The way to make money as a writer is to WRITE.

Common sense, isn't it?

If you're dithering, rather than writing, "Stop wasting time, make money" will help.

The money quote from the article is:

Here's the key: the more you write, the more you earn. You don't just earn more in the aggregate, you earn more from each and every writing job, because when you're experienced, you can charge more.

Web writing for money - bootstrap your writing business

Want to build a million-dollar writing business on the Web? If you understand the power of the Web, you know that it's more than possible for anyone - yes, even for you, to bootstrap your business online.

(If you're not familiar with the term "bootstrapping", it basically means building a business from very little, or from nothing.)

Understanding the Web's power is the key.

Here's what a couple of Web writers are doing.

Liz and her blog network - she's aiming for a big payday

Liz R. has created a network of mommy bloggers. They're all friends. They live in a small US city, and discovered each other by networking online.

They're all craftswomen and sell their crafts on sites like eBay and Etsy. They  initially started their blogs to promote their crafts.

I won't go into Liz's business plans here; she asked me not to. However, I agree with Liz that her planned blog network has huge potential; and will be worth millions in three years. This is simply because the market for the information is there, and because Liz is a person who gets things done.

Mark's ebook empire - six figures by 2009

Mark N. is one of my writing students. He's written three ebooks, and is having three others written for him by writers he's hired on the outsourcing sites.

I won't reveal Mark's secret niche, but I will say that this niche is highly profitable, and that Mark's developed a spin on it that is already paying off, and will continue to do so. By the end of 2009, Mark wants to gross in the high six figures with his ebooks, aiming for seven figures in 2010.

Judging by what he's achieved already, Mark's sure to meet his goals.

Bootstrapping your micro business into big money

You can do what Liz and Mark are doing too, if you realize the immense power of the Web, and that YOU CAN DO IT.

On the web, you're not limited by anything at all. No matter what your current income, your experience, sex or age, you can develop your tiny business into a million-dollar business, as long as you understand some of what's possible and get to work.

The primary reason I created Sell Your Writing Online NOW (SYWON) was so that you would have all the training and tools to allow you to do this. It's always irked me that creatives are paid so little, when their products make huge profits for others.

Take the reins of your writing business and bootstrap it to success. You CAN do it. :-)

Discover the world of Web writing - make a great income writing from home, or from anywhere

Sell Your Writing Online NOW

There's great money in Web writing. Some Web writers are making $20,000 a month by blogging for a stable of sites. Others are writing articles or ebooks.

Join the Web writing gold rush with Angela Booth's comprehensive training: "Sell Your Writing Online Now".

POLL: Do you want a network for Fab Freelance Writing Ezine?

As you may know, Fab Freelance Writing Ezine is now almost two years old, so I've created a new site for it.

I've been thinking about how I can make the ezine, and its site, more useful to you.

I'm in two minds about whether I should create a Web-writing-style network for Fab Freelance Writing Ezine.

Here's the Web Writing Network to show you what I mean by "network".

The benefits of a network for the ezine are that you'd have your own Web page on the network, and would be able to chat to other readers, and use the forum for discussions.

Please vote in the poll, and let me know what you want.

Many thanks.

Get great writing jobs NOW

This week in Fab Freelance Writing Ezine we focus on getting writing jobs.

I know many established writers who are making great money on these sites because they know what buyers are looking for.

Now you will, too.

Here's an excerpt from our feature article: "Winning Writing Jobs on the Outsourcing Sites the Easy Way":

Want to kick start your writing career? The easiest way is via the outsourcing sites; many writers make great full time incomes on these sites, and you can too.

Over the past few weeks, I've acted as the project manager on several large projects, which meant that I spent a lot of time sourcing writers. Although I've done it before, this time I found the process particularly frustrating.

In this article I'll give you some tips on what a buyer's looking for when he's assessing 50 applicants for the same writing job. I hope that it opens your eyes, shows you what's essential, and helps you to win as many projects as you wish.

This issue is out on Tuesday; subscribe now.

Subscribe to Angela Booth's fabulous free weekly ezine for freelance writers: get a free report just for subscribing. Even if you're a new writer, you can freelance your way to a fantastic writing career.

Join the thousands of freelance writers who are making great money freelance writing, using Fab Freelance Writing Ezine as their guide.

Stop thinking and start writing

As a writer, your mind can be your best friend, or your worst enemy, and it's your choice which it will be.

The biggest challenge I've found with my writing students is that they think too much, and don't write enough.

Their minds are filled with:

"What if..."

"But why..."

"When..."

"How..."

Questions and more questions, leading to swamps of indecision and procrastination.

Take charge - WRITE IT DOWN

Got a question? Write it down.

Questions are great, but only if you get them out of your mind and onto the page. I love questions because they contain nuggets of possibility, if you corral them onto the page.

So whenever you find yourself asking any question, just write it down. Write your question onto sticky note, an index card, or into a computer file.

I have a couple of files I keep open most of the day, one is "questions" and the other is "this week".

The Questions file is a file packed with possibilities, because my questions are usually "What If" questions.

My "This Week" file is a Curio file with snippets of Web sites, blogs, current projects, planned projects, and links to recordings of discussions with clients. It contains everything that's current in my writing.

Meditate, to get control of your mind

Meditation is a boon for writers. It will clear your mind, and allow you to just write. Think of meditation as a gym for your mind, building your focus and concentration. However, paradoxically, you can't build your mind with meditation by struggling, straining and holding on using willpower - you learn to let go.

Even ten minutes of meditation a day will help you to get your mind, and emotions, under control and stop them running away with you.

There are many different forms of meditation. For many years, I did Insight Meditation, which I can recommend as a way of watching what your mind gets up to when it thinks no one is looking. :-)

So, in brief: write it down, whatever's on your mind, and consider learning meditation.

Recession-proof your freelance writing career

"Write More And Make More Money From Your Writing: Develop A Fast, Fun Productive Writing Process" gives you all the tools you need for a thriving writing career, no matter what the economic climate.

Three weeks after completing the class one student wrote:

"Thanks Angela, for all your help and advice in class. I'm quitting my job next week. I printed out my letter of resignation tonight after landing a contract writing job that will pay me more for three months part-time work than I earned in from my day job in the whole of 2007! You were right – the great gigs are out there, and now I've got the skills to land them. Your class opened my eyes. Bless you…"

"Write More And Make More Money From Your Writing: Develop A Fast, Fun Productive Writing Process" shows you how to thrive as a freelance writer. Would you like to write five times more than you're writing now, and sell to higher-paying markets? Take the class.

Your Web writing questions answered

I've created a new page of Sell Your Writing Online NOW (SYWON) Web writing questions we frequently receive, with the answers.

You can subscribe to the page in any RSS reader.

You can also download the questions and answers in PDF.

I hope you find the page useful; if you have questions YOU want answered, contact me via the site.

Your writing services business - how to get paid for consultations

Once your writing services Web site is online, you'll get loads of email queries every single day.

While it's great that people are interested in your writing services, many/ most of these queries are a huge waste of your time.

There's no way you can run a profitable writing services business and hand out free information day after day.

So, what do you do? You can't ignore these queries, can you?

No, you can't ignore them all, but you can qualify these prospects. Every business qualifies its prospects, so it's something you must learn how to do too.

Here's how.

1. Create a Web form so prospects can brief you

This is the first step. Create a reasonably detailed online form, so your prospects can tell you more about their needs. As you can see from the form on my Hot Web Copy site, it's detailed, but not overwhelming. If someone is serious about hiring you, they're happy to brief you.

Once your form's created, every email query is answered automatically with a link to this form. (Check your email program's Help files to see how to send auto replies.)

You'll never hear from 95 per cent of the people you send to this form, and that's fine. If they're too lazy to fill in a form, they're not going to hire you, and you've just saved hours of time.

2. Consultations: Yes, you can charge for the time you spend answering questions

You'll get plenty of work from the clients who fill in your form.

However, some prospects will need more hand-holding. They're not sure quite what they want, or they don't know what to do.

You'll get lots of these people, and they can eat up lots of time.

For example, let's say someone has heard about article marketing, and wants you to write some articles for them. However, they have no idea of WHY article marketing is effective, and what keywords are, etc.

This is where you can either spend time and energy and not get paid, or decide that your time is worth money, and so is the information you provide: charge for consultations.

Here's one of my Consultation pages.

Will people balk at paying? Occasionally, yes. But please realize that the people who balk at it have no intention of paying you for anything ever, they just want to pick your brain, so don't worry about it.

Discover more secrets to marketing your services with Angela Booth's video series and marketing ebook. Give your business a marketing boost today - you'll be thrilled with the results.

Subscribe to Angela Booth's fabulous free weekly ezine for freelance writers: get a free report just for subscribing. Even if you're a new writer, you can freelance your way to a fantastic writing career.

Join the thousands of freelance writers who are making great money freelance writing, using Fab Freelance Writing Ezine as their guide.

Worry-free creativity

Do you enjoy writing?

This article Psychology Today: The Creative Personality suggests:

".. when a person is working in the area of his of her expertise, worries and cares fall away, replaced by a sense of bliss. Perhaps the most important quality, the one that is most consistently present in all creative individuals, is the ability to enjoy the process of creation for its own sake. Without this trait, poets would give up striving for perfection and would write commercial jingles, economists would work for banks where they would earn at least twice as much as they do at universities, and physicists would stop doing basic research and join industrial laboratories where the conditions are better and the expectations more predictable."

Fab Freelance Writing Ezine now has its own site

Now that Fab Freelance Writing Ezine is almost two years old, it's finally got its own site.

This makes it easier for me to let you know what's coming up in future issues, and to also answer questions about making money writing which are asked over and over again.

I'll be adding some FAQ pages to the site in the coming weeks, so if you have questions about freelance writing, check there first, and send me a message if you can't find the answer there.

Enjoy. :-)

When You Write a Book - Should You Self-Publish?

You're writing a book - should you self-publish? While in the past going the ebook or Print on Demand (POD) route was seen as vanity publishing, that's no longer the case. The big benefit of the DIY approach is that you get to keep all the profits.

The Web has changed the way authors think. A decade a go, every book I wrote was for a major publisher. Although I didn't make much money, the books did boost my brand - any my ego.

The Web has changed everything. Nowadays I - and many other established authors - self-publish. It's sensible.

When speaking with established authors, I'm hearing that nine times out of ten they prefer to self-publish their books as ebooks, first.

Here are some comments I've received when I asked why authors did this:

* I can publish my ebook with a few clicks of my mouse in days, rather than years. Since I've got a mortgage, it makes sense...

* Eight or 15 per cent looks silly next to the 100 per cent profit I make from self-publishing...

* I love it - when I publish online, I have direct contact with readers...

Should You Self-Publish?

When you sell a book to a publisher, it's a long process. First you write a book proposal, and send it to your agent. By the time the agent has read the proposal and sent it around to publishers, a year has passed before you get a contract.

Another year passes before the book hits the bookstore shelves, and depending on the size of your advance payment (which is always against royalties) yet another year may pass before you get royalties.

So traditional publishing takes around two or more years from when you get an idea for a book, to the day the book is for sale.

Contrast that with self-publishing. When I get an idea for an ebook, the average time it takes for me to write the book and get it online and selling is around two months, sometimes less.

Other benefits of self-publishing include:

* You can see the results of marketing your ebook or POD book at once - in increased profits. You'll still need to market your bookstore-book, but you won't see the profits (if indeed there are any) for years:

* You can write six books in the time it previously took you to write one, simply because there's no waiting around for others to read your work;

* No rejections. You write it, you sell it, and you get the money, instantly;

* Your ebook acts as a book proposal. An editor at a publishing house may see it and make you an offer, which you can accept... or not, if you're making good money with the ebook.

Is self-publishing for you? That depends on your business model, and why you're writing your book. However, more and more, authors are seeing that DIY is the way to go.

Discover the world of Web writing - make a great income writing from home, or from anywhere

Sell Your Writing Online NOW

There's great money in Web writing. Some Web writers are making $20,000 a month by blogging for a stable of sites. Others are writing articles or ebooks.

Join the Web writing gold rush with Angela Booth's comprehensive training: "Sell Your Writing Online Now".

Want to develop a six-figure writing income?

The September 2007 issue of The Writer had a great story: “Secrets Of The Six-Figure Freelancers”. The story’s wonderful because it shows you the potential of a freelance writing career; with the development of the Web and its unlimited markets, if you can write, you can make a great income as a freelance writer.

I chuckled when I read the story because many writers think a “six figure income” is hype. Either that, or they think that a great income is reserved for copywriters, or genre novelists, or other specialist writers.

The fact is that YOU can develop a six-figure writing career: you just need to know that it’s possible to earn $250,000 a year and more as a freelance writer, and then make that your goal.

And of course, you need know-how. That's what my writing ebook manuals give you. In 30 years as a freelance writer, I've learned the tricks of the writing trade, and I'd love to share those tricks with you, so many of my ebooks offer free coaching. Whatever your level of experience as a freelance writer, you can develop a fantastic career, when you know how.

Develop your writing skills today.

Merry Christmas dear writer

Image via Wikipedia

Christmas comes early for writers.

If you're writing for magazines, you're working on commissioned Christmas articles now (it's too late to send Christmas queries.)

If you're writing for the Web, you're getting clients' holiday season material - anything from articles to complete Web sites - ready for them now.

Does this mean if you haven't made a start on writing holiday material you can't make holiday cash?

No, it doesn't.

You can still cash in on the big-spending holiday season boom.

Here's what you can do:

* Write Christmas-themed PLR - Discover Private Label Rights content here;

* Write ebooks.

I gave you some ideas for holiday ebooks in this week's ezine.

Christmas Web sites - get them online now

As a writer, you're way ahead of others who want to making money online, because you have writing skills. You can create your own "Christmas" sites and blogs which will make you money every holiday season for years to come.

However, you must take ACTION.

If you're not sure how, Sell Your Writing Online NOW (SYWON) is a good start; remember that the more you write, the more income you'll make.

Subscribe to Angela Booth's fabulous free weekly ezine for freelance writers: get a free report just for subscribing. Even if you're a new writer, you can freelance your way to a fantastic writing career.

Join the thousands of freelance writers who are making great money freelance writing, using Fab Freelance Writing Ezine as their guide.

Writing Blog of the Day - please SUBMIT again

If you've submitted your blog (or someone else's) for Writing Blog of Day in the past 24 hours, please send it to me again, if you would. My email messages are filtered, and somehow several messages have vanished into the ether... I know they were there when I checked earlier, but now they've completely gone. I've removed the filter for now, so please just make sure that your message has WRITING BLOG OF THE DAY as the subject line, in caps, and resend it to angela.booth(AT)gmail.com Sorry for the hassle... Many thanks.