Features

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Last night, a client I hadn’t heard from in just over a year emailed me to ask about rates for a new job. This is not the first time this has happened. I get a lot of repeat business from old clients and a few referrals as well. This is ...

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3

I love discovering new freelance writing blogs and one of the blogs I’ve discovered recently is Quiet Rebel Writer. The rebel writer is Amy Lillard, who says: Writers have to be rebels. We have to take the idea of normal and turn it on its head. We have to examine ...

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I was chatting to someone on Twitter the other day. One of the topics of conversation was motivating yourself to keep on working. I made the point that when you work for yourself you have to crack your own whip. I immediately began to think about what that actually meant. ...

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I must admit to being intrigued the first time I saw an ad for WhiteSmoke software. The idea was simple – this was a piece of software that would improve your written work. Now, you all know how I feel about Microsoft Word – the spelling and grammar check just ...

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Many of us try to balance our home lives with our freelance writing careers and most of the time we succeed. We manage to get breakfast for children and get them off to school, talk to clients, meet deadlines, collect children, supervise homework and tuck them up in bed. All ...

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8

How many times have you been in this situation? You’ve talked to a potential client, who is enthusiastic about your services and promises to hire you. You sit back in your office chair, feeling smug about having landed another job and rearrange your diary to make space for this lucrative ...

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4

I haven’t been quite as rigorous in collecting posts in the last month. That was in part due to blog woes, to an unexpected trip and to switching back to Google Reader after a three month flirtation with Netvibes. However, I have found time to stop off at a few ...

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2

What’s your online personality? Do people really get a good idea of who you are from your site, blog and interactions in the blogosphere? I don’t often have face to face meetings any more. I talk to most of my clients by email, IM or Skype. That has to be ...

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4

Everyone’s heard of Copyscape, the super duper plagiarism detection tool. Sometimes it’s the bane of our lives (like when clients who pay 1 cent a word want you to check every article on Copyscape even though you KNOW that you never plagiarise). At other times, it’s a useful tool, such ...

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A post from Allena Tapia made me think more about the process of querying for freelance writing work. The post outlined all the stuff that writers sell to editors along with their idea when they pitch to a magazine. At the end of the post, Allena asked three questions: How ...

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14

I’m not a mirage. Honestly. I’m a real, living, breathing person. And I’m a real writer, too. When people think of writers, they often think of famous novelists, best-selling authors or respected journalists. Web content writers don’t get a look in. And yet we are real writers, too. Just like ...

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10

One aspect of freelancing that always stymies new writers is how to set the right rate for the freelance writing job. In fact, even experienced writers who are bidding on a new area might have difficulty. A post the other day on rates for blog posting provoked some discussion. There ...

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0

Search engine optimization (SEO) costs money. There are lots of people out there who will charge you lots of money to make sure that Google, Yahoo and MSN will find your website. But when I wanted to increase my search engine ranking a few months ago, I didn’t have the ...

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What do you need to know about structuring an article? Part of the Making it as a Freelance Writer series by Sharon Hurley Hall.

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