When all is said and done. You've read my blog from #1 to post (almost) #600. You've read Sharon Hurley Hall's blog. You've taken a course or two to polish your writing. And, you've worked for a few months building a portfolio.
In the end, it all comes down to presentation and image. Freelance writers, work at home professionals, and people who want to get paid to write all have one thing in common - they are invisible to their clients.
Take my one site www.inspireduathor.com.
It was huge until we were hacked. Thousands of pages, but very little income, and we considered 20 000 hits a month as 'good.'
Now, inspiredauthor has its own chat room which holds a public chat every Friday, a blog, a forum, a school, and is about 5 000 pages. This month it received, to date, 54 500 hits. Why? For one thing - it is now a Niche site.
IA (inspiredauthor) use to have a little bit of something for everyone. Then, last winter we were hit hard and basically lost the whole site, and all but one Topic Editor.
I took my own advice and wrote the site for a very small niche. I researched other sites on the topics, researched sites from other industries that targeted this niche. I looked at the big boys and saw what they were doing.
I looked at professional templates, but in the end, built my own: A) Because the entire site can be optimized for Web 2.0 and Vista when they come out this year B) Because none of the templates fit my niche audience.
Then, I took a different approach to Topic Editors - good writers who are writing excellent content. Even though I only get Google income from 10% of the site, I am making more than I did last year at this time.
Of course - it is all going back into the site for the moment.
Image is everything. We started Enspiren Press with a specific audience in mind. I researched for 2 months before building the site. Then, I built what I thought would attract both readers and writers... based on information I learned from blogging and testing who hits, who responds, and who returns.
Today, the president of EPIC authors, and a full time working author, told me the site was FAB.
Freelance Writing
You might want to know what this has to do with freelance writing. Simple. You are a service. Clients are looking for a service. If you portray the right image, you'll get lots of work. If you skimp, save, and consider 'good enough as good enough' then you'll struggle.
I've seen the successes and the failures.
Even at writingup. There are 10 000 members - but where are most of them? Posting is so slow that I had one post remain on the first page for almost 4 days. That would never have happened six months ago. The thing is, people didn't put the work into the site, and then quit when it wouldn't pay big.
My blog has a lot of promises in it. However, you need to remember that I have spent more than 9 months in various courses learning to do what I do. I worked on my websites for almost 2 years before they started to pay. And, I have learned that you must promote. I promote about 2 - 5 hours a week.
As the credit card bills from Christmas arrive. As the new year stretches before you with decisions and problems, challenges and opportunity, remember that you can live a dream, if you remember that dreams are not free.
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