Writers Unbound

What happens with most freelance writers?
Not to generalize or anything, but I’m about to do some serious generalizing. Wait. I take it back; I won’t generalize. I’ll just tell you about me.

Here’s me.
I got a degree in English, figured out you don’t make much of a living on poetry, got married, quit my non-writing-related job, got pregnant, and thought, “Hey, I could do freelance writing….” I was already doing a sporadic bit of writing that I had picked up from old connections. I can add to that, right? No problem.

Now fast-forward to about four years later. My most typical non-productive day goes like this (we’ll talk about a typical productive day another time): I get up early to get in some computer time before the babies wake up (there are two of them now); I make a plan for the day to update my blogs, outline a few articles, do a little marketing, and get some better-paying jobs. So I get one long blog post written and another one started.

One of my blogs is my own, and as of today I’ve made zero money from it. That will change, but it’s a slow build. The other two blogs are paid, one in an ad-revenue-sharing model and another on a per-post plus page-views basis. One gets pretty good traffic; it’s regular and slowly building, but I’m not making much money from it. $50 a month or so. It’s got potential, I say. The other is new to me and has been sitting dead for the last six months or so, so the pickings will be slim there for a while, too. (I like to use that phrase “slim pickings” anyway I can; hope you don’t mind.)

The articles I need to outline are for another site, which pays on a per-article basis plus an ad-revenue-share. It’s the best deal of all of them, and I could make $200 per month from it, maybe more, if I worked a little more at it. It’s on a subject that, for me, requires a bit more research, so the time-to-pay ratio isn’t as great as I’d like, but it’s still not bad.

I hear the babies waking up after another hour of work. I’ve posted to two blogs, uploaded and edited photos for another, outlined one article, and checked the job boards. I leave a couple of windows open on my screen to remind myself to send my resume to the leads, later that day.

I’ve completed two hours of work and, from that time, have put maybe $10.00 in my bank account.

Ick. That’s what keeps me going back to the job boards, though I lose even more time there. There are dozens of other writers, more qualified, quicker, better… An ad offering a decent job for a decent rate will receive hundreds of responses. It might take weeks to get a response. There might be no response. I keep believing the blogs have potential, and they do. That’s why I am spending the time on them. I consider it an investment, a part of my long-term plan. Ah, you say, what long-term plan?

I’m glad you asked. Let’s have a little look, shall we?
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The Amazing, Indestructible Plan for Self-Sufficiency as a Freelance Writer

Are you intrigued yet?

Step 1: BLOGS
Independent: branding, promotion, expertise
Network: Anonymous for cash, and self-promoting for per-post/ad rev sharing/page views payment plans

Step 2: ONLINE ARTICLES AND PUBLICATIONS
Set pay standards at this point: no less than $0.10 per word or $15/hour
Target areas of expertise
Concurrent: some no-paying or low-paying jobs that will serve promotional, branding, and expertise purposes.

Step 3: BLOGS
Independent: begin adding ad space on side bars, more active promotions, interaction, community building, connections; should be well-established in area(s) of expertise, increasing publicity, gaining better search rankings.
Network: drop all but the self-promoting (i.e. credit given to you in your name as well as being paid); Drop the lowest paying blogs and focus on the higher paying ones or the ones that are more specific to my area(s) of expertise.

Step 4: OFFLINE PUBLICATIONS
Start with the lowly, move on up to mid and then to the upper level, which will take time. Use blog experience and clips from online articles and publications to get into the lower circulation, lower paying offline publications, then use those clips and experiences to get into the mid-range, then use those clips to get into the upper range.

Step 5: BLOGS
Independent: expansion, further experience, products, affiliation, advertising, beginning passive income.
Network: evaluate earnings, potential, exposure, overall value to Me, the Brand, and the potential stream of income. Am I getting higher traffic and increasing pay? Is it worth my time? Should I move solely to independent blogs or negotiate pay or look for better paying network blogs (use previous blog experience to step in)?

Step 6: PLATFORM
Building a good platform for Me, The Brand.
Begin outsourcing the details that are time-consuming.
Add and expand sources of income from independent sites as well as Me, The Writing Company: ebooks, resources, consulting, speaking, interviews, product promotions, advertising contracts, affiliates, etc.
Keep prices reasonable, especially on advertising contracts.
Continue building network, interaction, community, connections.

Step 7: PASSIVE INCOME
Convert active to passive income streams.
Delegate and outsource and automate.
Sell business if desired, launch into book contract or begin publishing or eliminate all but highest-paying clients. Broaden areas of expertise. Use experience, clips, and credits to obtain long-term contracts with the best clients. Launch new sites, blogs. Be a total sell-out, or not…
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I’m kind of kidding about the total sell-out part, but kind of not. See, though I love writing and would do it whether there were money involved or not, the point (or at least part of the point) of this freelance writing career is to make money.

I recently resigned a $5/post blogging job. It was fun writing, and I enjoyed it; the site was clean and was a good place to reference when applying to new jobs. However, writing and posting was taking me 2 to 3 hours per week. 2 to 3 hours per week for $25 ends up, at best, being $12.50 per hour. At worst, it is $8.33 per hour. Though the site was nice as a sample for potential clients, the subject wasn’t one I wanted to pursue or establish expertise in. Not worth it.

But you know what? I was using that $25 per week. It wasn’t much, but it paid for (almost) half a tank of gas. Now I don’t have it anymore, because sometimes you have to make sacrifices in the present to get yourself where you want to be in the future.

That’s the only soap-box statement I will make in this post. I’d love to hear your thoughts on this whole subject. Where are you as a freelance writer? Do you have a long-term plan? Where do you want to end up?

More on this tomorrow…

Make it a good day.

The standard formula for blogging success seems to be as follows:

1) Set up a blog
2) Start writing about something which inspires you to great passion
3) Be an extremely active participant in blog communities, networks, social pages, comment boxes, blogs with similar topics.
4) Be responsive and friendly to the people who read and comment on your blog
5) Keep going
6) Repeat ad infinitum

There’s nothing wrong with this advice, really. What I don’t like about it is the formulaic concept. The appeal of the internet (for me, anyway) is the vastness, wildness, uncharted territory-anything-can-happen feeling. The more I dive in, though, the more I feel like I’m about 10 years too late.

The internet leveled the playing field. We were all equal again, nameless and faceless and free from the social boxes we all wore once we stepped out of our own homes. The athletes could talk about technology, the geeks could discuss pop culture, and no one questioned. It was the holy grail of opportunity for all us introverted people. We might get nervous and fidgety and stutter in a crowd or at a party, but online, with our fingers flying on the keyboard, we could be witty and friendly and fun. We could be ourselves, and we found out that people liked us. Really liked us. Not because we were like them, either, or because we suddenly figured out how to fit in. It was a revelation: when we got comfortable enough to be genuine, other people liked our quirky taste and sarcastic humor and opinionated voices. They had just never seen it before.

And then (to continue a vast oversimplification) we really started blogging seriously. It was addicting. We talked about it. We blogged on each other’s blogs. We blogged about everything. It became our social life. Suddenly we were at the heart of the next big thing, first. Everybody started a blog. Traffic grew. Comments increased. It was a frenzy of clicking and linking and commenting and posting…

And things began to get civilized. We tracked numbers and plotted graphs and calculated averages and figured out advertising. We were blogging, and we were making money and we were more popular than that other guy who was also blogging. We had arrived. We had conquered. We had created an online world that mirrored the one we were so happy to escape: a world that defined success by money and popularity, with rules and formulas and systems for achieving that success. The West was won, and we turned it into the East.

So what’s next? Renegade blogging, an alternate internet, tracking popularity through text messaging? Something about us keeps seeking the newest frontier. That’s what we loved about the internet. That’s what I still look for when I flip up my screen. I have a more difficult time finding it. Some days I don’t mind. It’s easier to have structure. I can follow the formula someone else figured out. But it makes me feel dead when that’s all I do. The reason I don’t want a 9-to-5 office job is because I hate the idea of simply doing what someone else tells me to do.

I respect authority, I love a free market, I value organization, and I wish success to new ventures. I just don’t want to be chained to doing what someone has already figured out how to do. I want to figure things out myself. I want to make progress, not repeat processes. I want to invent and theorize, not just test the validity of what others have invented.

I know it’s a balance, and maybe I should just munch my part of the internet pasture and be content. I can’t even see the fence…

But I can’t forget about it. That’s why I’ll keep moving, keep looking, keep watching the horizon, keep searching for the next frontier.