Dan Smith

Over the last few years, I’ve worked in a variety of different roles while being a freelance writer, from an MIS Officer through to a consultant for a technology company. Up until 2011, all of my freelance writing work was carried out on an evening and weekend. It started off ...

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Happy New Year! I hope you’ve all had a fantastic Christmas and are looking forward to a wonderful 2012. Over Christmas, I took the time to look at the blog posts I’d made throughout the year and realised that I hadn’t talked much about activity on social networks, something I ...

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There’s no doubt that Christmas is one of my favourite times of year and as much as I have a lot of fun over Christmas, I always manage to take something away from it that can benefit my writing career. Looking back at the last few Christmases and how I’ve ...

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Each and every year, I always set goals for myself, generally in relation to my working life. Although I’m not going to set goals for 2012 until early January (as discussed in last week’s post, ‘Bucking The End Of Year Trend – Reflecting, But Not Preparing. Yet.’), the end of ...

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Take a look around most freelance writing blogs at the minute and you’re likely to see the same type of discussions – how the last year has gone and setting goals and aspirations for the coming year. Last year, I followed suit. We looked at how 2010 had been and ...

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As easy as you might think it would be to work with writers – there seems to a copious amount of us willing to take on new work! – it brought back memories of when I tried to outsource work a year or two ago and simply put, it was ...

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As soon as December starts to beckon, it seems as though Christmas is only days away. I’ve always been a relatively organized guy who likes to plan and prepare to a certain degree when it comes to business, but around this time of year, I used to always think that ...

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Each writer has their own speciality topics. Some writers state this blatantly and obviously on their website, blog, business cards and e-mail signature, while others don’t explain their specialities, often stating that they’re a general writer. However, whichever type of writer you are, you will have topics and subjects that ...

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One of the most attractive aspects of being a freelance writer for me has always been the ability to work as and when I want to. I have realised over the last few months that I work longer hours compared to when working in an office, but I still have ...

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When I started writing on a freelance basis, I was doing so on an evening while I still lived at home with my parents and worked in a full time salaried role. Being a typical family, it was very rarely quiet throughout the house and so I carried out almost ...

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I’m going to generalize here.  I know this won’t apply to every freelance writer, but from my experience, it applies to most. When you first start out as a freelance writer, you try and do your utmost to please your clients and not annoy them in anyway. Sure, this is ...

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Every now and again here at Get Paid To Write Online, I make a post about words or languages. Things have been somewhat hectic over the last few months and so my working time has been dedicated more to delivering piece after piece than thinking about the various different aspects ...

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Every now and again, I take some time out from work and just look and what I’ve been doing, what I was doing a few weeks or months previously and what I’ve got lined up in the coming weeks and months. I don’t schedule the time in or set aside ...

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Being a freelance writer can be a considerably varied career. If you’re a banker, you work in finance. If you’re an IT executive, you work in IT. If you’re a doctor, you work in medicine. If you’re a freelance writer, however, you get to sample numerous different careers and be ...

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I didn’t always know that it was freelance writing I wanted to do as a career, but from being 8 or 9 years old, I’ve always known that I wanted to be my own boss, something that I always thought would lead me to working as and when I wanted, ...

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Over the last few months, I’ve been doing a lot agency work, both delivering writing projects for agencies and actually working with an agency on more of a consultancy basis. My experience of agency work in the past has been pretty, well, bland. They’ve sent over a project spec, I’ve ...

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As a writer, most people expect me to be really pedantic when it comes to spelling and grammar.  I’m not just talking about in the business world here, either – some family and friends tend to look at me in a certain way if we’re, for example, sat in a ...

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I had today’s post written and ready to publish, but earlier in the week something happened which made me put my original post back a week and write this post instead. Recently, a writer friend contacted me asking if I would be interested in any 500 word pieces on a ...

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