Help with selling - be brutal . . . well, kind of brutal :)

[weagle87]

I really, really want to make a go of this freelancing thing.

In the two months that I have worked on this full time, I have determined that $400 is about my max at another site that pays upfront but a whole lot less per article. This is not workable for me, so I have begun transitioning to here.

Anyway, the trouble is that I have only sold one article (and one usage rights that I practically gave away). In order to make this a living, I need to earn at least $800/month. I know I could easily write that much if my articles would sell, but I must be missing something.

I thought that maybe price was the issue, so three times, I have lowered prices. I even wrote one "edgy" article and one really fluffy article that I could feel okay about pricing low. Yet, still I have no nibbles.

I was wondering if something is missing in the quality of my work (I don't have any trouble getting the articles approved) or in the quality of my short summaries. Maybe it's my topics? I will admit that my content is all over the place instead of in one area. That is mostly because I have scads of research accumulated from the other writing. Is this a good strategy or not? It certainly saves time to check my notes and write from what I have already learned rather than learning something new.

I would appreciate any help. I will take my kids on spring break very soon, then decide if I need to go back to "real work."

Thank you.

[SJHillman]

The biggest issue with freelancing is that income is not steady. You may only sell a couple articles on month and dozens the next month. There are a few things you can do to help sell your articles:

1. Follow the trends. CC let's you know what search terms are hot and what articles have sold recently. Articles on these topics are more likely to sell.

2. Know the cycles. Baseball articles will sell starting just before baseball season and will stop selling around the end of baseball season. Christmas articles will sell starting around the end of November. Every topic concerning an annual event, holiday, season, etc sells well in cycles. The big caveat is to avoid dating your articles to one specific year if possible... this way, if it doesn't sell this year, it may sell the next time the cycle comes around again. Also, cycles aren't just annual. Many personal finance articles sell better at the end of the month.

3. Broaden your horizons. CC is the best 'bang-for-buck' site I've seen, but it only covers are relatively small part of the freelance market. To successfully freelance full-time, you'll need to expand into other markets. Grant-writing, magazine articles, editing, ghostwriting, short stories, jokes, etc all sell well in various markets depending on your experience and talents. Some places will pay $50 for greetings cards... and that's just the words, not the pictures. I get 'burned out' easily from writing articles, so I'm currently working on a short ebook that I plan to sell through Amazon and Barnes & Noble until I feel ready to do more articles. I suggest getting hold of the latest Writer's Market. Among other things, it has a nice price chart covering what you can expect to make for dozens of different kinds of freelance writing projects.

4. Break apart long articles into multiple short articles. You may be able to sell a 1,000 word article for $60. You may be able to break that same article into three 500-word articles for $30 apiece. In my personal experience, articles between 500 and 800 words sell the fastest.

5. Attack every subject from multiple angles. Wrote an article about how wind power is great? Write a counterpiece about how wind power threatens some bird species. Then another article about how wind turbines face opposition from the NIMBY crowd. And another about celebrities who publicly endorse wind power. Odds are you can use the same handful of research sources to turn out a lot of articles relatively easily. That's the key to being prolific. The more articles you have, the greater the chance X number of them will sell. Likewise, many buyers will scoop up a number of related articles all at once.

6. Self-promotion. Every truly effective freelancer has, at the least, a website. Even just one page will do and few are more than five or six pages. Just enough to promote yourself, offer to do work, and point to where people can buy your works. Start a blog and post regularly (even if just once a week) and you may get a following which will lead to more sales. There are plenty of places to get a free website and hosting is fairly cheap if you want something more complex. What I pay for hosting and domain names of all of my sites is paid for after three or four sales a year.

7. Never give up. Freelancing as a full-time income is very difficult. I don't have what it takes do it, I just write as a supplement to my day job as a sysadmin. However, the first year or two is definitely the hardest as you need to build a network of contacts before you really get an opportunity to make the money.

[weagle87]

Wow! Thank you for the advice. I also am working on e-book, but difficult finding time as $$ for groceries is more important right now. I would have planned better, but you know how the lay-off thing goes.

I have been thinking about a website, but I wasn't sure how to showcase work since most of it has been ghostwriting. I suppose I'll do a little research

[Judith]

I have a website where I post online articles that I did not sell for full rights and magazine articles after the contract date expires. I use this site as a portfolio for potential customers and for anyone that wants to read my work. Anyone interested in hiring me is directed to my business site.

I have written for travel magazines and health magazines for many years, and there is excellent money involved. The travel magazines do require travel. They want you to experience before you write. The money varies depending on whether it is a commissioned article or a spec article. Commissioned work pays best, but I wouldn't turn down $ .50 a word for a spec article. Travel brochures are a good market, and when I combine them with my own photography, the payoff is excellent. A brochure for a chamber (depending on the size) can net up to $3500.00 for 3 or 4 days work. Resorts also pay respectable prices for well written content, and once again if you know your way around a camera and Photoshop, additional $$ can be had. One magazine article can net you between $800 and $1200. Any photographs add extra $$. NEVER sell your copyright to a magazine or anything in print and retain all image copyrights as well. You want your byline and any photo credits.

If you are serious about freelancing, find your niche and dig in! Best of luck!

[weagle87]

Judith, thank you. I am - or at least I was - serious about it.

There is obviously a lot I need to learn. Can you recommend a place to learn how exactly to go about writing these spec articles. I assume you need some specs before you get the commissioned work. Many times I have bemoaned having two English degrees. I feel like journalism or something would have been better for the real world. Oh well. No looking back.

I can see that I need a website for real. Luckily, my daughter's boyfriend is in that business (setting up sites). Time to invite him over.

Thanks again.

[Judith]

It's always great to have a daughter with a BOYFRIEND !! I have degrees in both English and Journalism, but I don't find either all that important as long as you can make your articles interesting. With magazines, even though they expect articles to be written correctly, the meat of the story is most important. Travel articles can be written in first person 90% of the time.

TheTravelWriterLife.com website has some good information and some free articles. They also sell pricey courses which are excellent, but primarily involve a photography and writing combo. You might also check out state travel magazines. Every state has them and it's easier to start with something you know and build a portfolio.

Writer's Digest is a good source for magazines that take articles on spec, and it is broken into categories to make them easy to find. It now lists online magazines as well. Most libraries have a couple of copies so you don't have to invest in one until some money is coming in.

[weagle87]

Oh Judith, you rock! Thank you so much. Also, finally got some selling going on here, too. Today was a good day. I do take Writer's Digest, so I'll look into that. And that trip I'm taking in a couple of weeks . . . well, I think I should snap some pics, too. My family was into photofinishing back in the day when there were mom and pop stores.

Thank you very, very much.

Leigh Anne

[Judith]

Congrats on your sale!!