| Allison's profileAllison's spaceBlogLists |  Tools  Help |
|
|
February 28 New blog topic for writers - is working from home all it's cracked up to be?Hi there to all my readers. After my last blog post I thought I should get started with a new blog category today, and it's going to be working from home. This is something that virtually all writers do, whether they are part time or full time. It's also something that many writers dream about being able to do once they are earning enough to be able to. I finally managed to achieve it after years of trying (and some six months of trying to get work purely from online writing opportunities), so I wanted to sit and consider whether it is as good as I thought it would be. And the answer - for me at least - has to be yes. It can be very busy, and you have to be able to organise yourself very well, but even the worst day is so much better than the good days ever were in my old job! I am generally very good about planning my days. For example, I am rarely up any later than 8am, although if I have had a late one the night before or I have stayed up to finish a job (that's rare, since I have a timetable) then I might catch a lie in. I did go through a phase last year of getting up at 7am to start work, but that was mostly during the lighter and warmer summer months. Who knows, I might do it again this year! I had also been used to getting up at 5.45am to go to my regular job, so I think it took my body clock a while to adjust. I have discovered that I work better when I set the alarm to get up at a reasonable hour though. It takes me ages to get going otherwise. I always plan ahead too, and make sure I know what I am doing each day. The last thing to do each day is to work out a schedule for the following one, but quite often I have already done it anyway. If I have several big projects on all at once, I might even plan out most of the week ahead, making sure to block out time for myself as well as for work. That is probably the biggest drawback I have found from working from home. It is very easy to work too much and never get any time to yourself. I started working from home in January 2008, and I must admit that last year I did fall intot that trap of working too much and not getting much time off. I think part of it was due to the excitement of finally having been able to achieve my lifelong dream - to work as a full time writer. I've settled down now though, and I always make sure I take three evenings off a week and the whole of Sunday. This can change - such as it has at the moment where my partner's mum is in hospital and we are taking afternoons off on most days to go and visit - but that is one of the benefits of having your own timetable. You CAN make changes when you need to in order to live your life. So if you are reading this and you are wondering whether working as a full time freelance writer would suit you, I hope this has started to give you something of an insight into what it is like. There will be more blog posts to come on various aspects of this, so keep reading and subscribe to my RSS feeds to stay up to date! See you soon. February 26 Welcome to all my new readers and writers!I have noticed in the past few days that I have picked up some new followers to my blog. So with that in mind I just wanted to say hi, thanks for coming along and I hope you enjoy what you're reading! Part of this new influx of people is due to my putting more effort into my Twitter account. I've spoken about that already in previous blog posts, so I won't go into any more detail here. But I have been thinking about expanding my blog to focus on more areas that might be of interest to freelance writers and online writers of all kinds. The majority of full time freelance writers work from home, and so I will be touching on this subject in more depth as well. These are some of the subjects I will be focusing on: * finding work * getting paid * creating a career for yourself * working efficiently from home * being positive and not letting rejection harm you There will be more subjects as well I am sure, but I think these cover many of the questions I get from people who are just starting out, or in the first stages of a writing career. But if you have any more ideas for topics or categories that you would like to see me cover in future blog posts on writing, be sure to let me know in one of the following ways: * reply to this post with a comment * tweet me on Twitter! * send me a message I look forward to hearing from you! February 25 Writing tweets!Hi there - and yes I
am still tweeting like it's going out of fashion! My attempts to
connect with more writers, Squidooers and other internet marketing
people on Twitter are working. And I have DOUBLED the number of
followers I had since last week. Don't forget, if you are a writer I'd love to connect with you on Twitter. My ID is allison_w, so I will see you there. Back to work now... February 22 An update on TwitterJust thought I would update you on my previous post concerning Twittering. As you may know, Twitter is a website that lets you post short blog type updates about what you are up to, in 140 characters or less. I've made a concerted effort over the past few days to find more people on Twitter who are writers, or who are involved in online marketing in some way, as these mirror my own interests. And as a result I have had many more people following me too. I'm using it a little more often as well, thanks to a great Firefox add on that allows you to tweet directly into your address bar before posting it to the website. My own Twitter ID is allison_w, so join my own network if you would like to keep up with what I'm doing in my writing life! I tend to follow other people in return too, so I can extend your network as well. And with that, I can feel another tweet coming on... February 18 Are you Tweeting?I've filed this under 'general', but it is as much about writing and promoting as anything else. Do you have a Twitter account yet? If you don't and you are looking to expand your writing efforts, you might want to get one. I've been on Twitter for a number of months now. I started in the name of research for a small book I was writing, and I just kind of stayed! It's the brevity and ease of using it that I like, and I've discovered that it's so easy to keep updated and attract followers without too much effort at all. If you want to follow my updates, you'll see a link on the right hand side of this page. So why exactly is it useful? Well firstly I can get the word out about my blog and my website, and that seems to work well. It's all about linking separate pages and sites together, and Twitter fits in very well in that respect. But it can make you more accessible to potential clients too. And considering it takes mere minutes a day to update people on what you're doing, some worthwhile tweets are definitely worth the effort. So why not make today the day you start? It only takes a few minutes to get set up, and if you contact me directly through Twitter I'll start following you too! February 14 The benefit of recommendationsOne of the best things about writing is that you can never quite be sure how or why new clients will find you. I learned that last night, if I didn't already know it. I write articles for a guy who contacted me through Squidoo several months back. He's a really lovely client, very helpful and friendly, and we get on very well. Last night I was contacted by someone through my website, who as it turned out had been recommended to contact me by this original Squidoo guy! It looks as if this new clients is going to be a regular, with blog posts and an article or two to do every week. It just goes to show how connections you make through your writing can reach out and continue to pay off months - if not years - into the future. Here's another story for you. Years ago - and I'm talking probably fifteen years here - I wrote articles for a lovely lady living in the UK who had her own magazine. Eventually I think we lost touch, but I often wondered how she was doing. I had a few years away from writing for one reason or another, and then I came back into it with a view to writing for online markets. Anyway one day I received an email from someone promoting a book. And this book turned out to have been written by the same woman I wrote for all those years ago. I hopped on her website and sent a message along the lines of 'do you remember me?' Needless to say she did, and after we had caught up on things she asked if I still wrote articles... Now I write four well paid articles for her once a month, so it just goes to show that those writing connections you make have a habit of leading you in all kinds of curious and wonderful places! This is one good reason for making sure you keep on going, no matter how dejected you might feel at times. That connection you make with someone today could lead to a well paid writing job at some point in the future... February 12 Writing anything different lately?Well they say variety is the spice of life, don't they? You might remember I said I'd had a long break from writing eBooks for a while, because I just felt worn out with them? Well I am itching to get started on this new one! I sent off the table of contents to be approved yesterday, but I'm so ready for this that I might just make a start on the introduction before I get confirmation back. I never usually do that, but I don't think it will be wasted somehow. I've also had some more work come in which is made of product reports. Once again, something different to get my teeth into. So how are you doing with your regular work? If you are finding things a little hard going, why not try doing something a little different to fire you back up again? This is especially worthwhile if things are a little quiet, as they were last week. They're picking up again now, but it was an excellent chance to jump on some new opportunities and make the most of a few websites that I haven't previously had the time to do anything with. If you're into your writing, stay tuned as I may share a few of my sources with you. Be sure to visit the link on the right though, which takes you to my best Squidoo page on the subject! Happy writing - I'll be back soon. February 11 Back to longer projects?Hi all. Well after a long weekend off, I have just snagged a new project - a 100+ page eBook. That's good news as I did take a step back from writing them for a while. I do love writing articles and I'd done so many eBooks on the trot that I was feeling a little worn out! But after having a break from them for a few short months and focusing largely on articles, blogs and web pages, it's back to writing longer material from this week. It's a nice subject too, so I think it will be rather enjoyable. Do you have a favourite topic or type of work that you prefer over all others? Or do you always try and get a good mix of work to keep you entertained? February 08 A weekend offHi all. I'm having a nice weekend off this week. That is an extremely rare occurrence for me; we normally take Sundays off but I can't remember the last time we took a Saturday off as well. It's been good though to catch up with family and friends and leave the writing behind for a while. One of my main resolutions this year was to have a little more 'me' time and not spend every waking hour writing (at least that's what it felt like). And even though I have occasionally turned down the odd job here and there, my earnings are on par with last year. I'm also enjoying that down time and it's recharging my batteries so that I can write more in less time again. I would thoroughly recommend it if you feel like you aren't getting any time off from your writing at all. I'm still being very pro-active though which is good. I haven't done any more Hubpages yet, although I think I can feel one coming on just as I am writing this! It's been good to get back on there again, so I'm intending on keeping it up. The prospect of earning something from Google Adsense as a result of getting visitors to my web pages is something that I can look forward to for the future as well. So, it IS my weekend off and there's a nice cup of tea and an episode of "Lost" waiting for me downstairs... Write soon! February 06 Back on Hubpages with a vengeance...Yes it's true. I got started on Hubpages around a year ago, and to be honest I never did more than a couple of hubs (web pages) before leaving it alone. I'm a really big fan of Squidoo and I've got some work through there from some good clients, as well as earning from the site itself. So I started out by approaching Hubpages in exactly the same way. And that was a BIG mistake. They are similar in some ways, but mostly they are very different. What makes a good Squidoo lens does not necessarily make a good Hubpage. Recently though a friend of mine said she'd been having a lot of success with Hubpages. Her hubs are good, too. Very good. Ironically she is having the same problem as me but in reverse - she can't do a thing with Squidoo! But Hubpages is a different story. So it got me thinking this week, as I had a few hours of spare time on my hands. So I finished up my work for the day and grabbed a couple of hours to explore Hubpages again. The upshot of that is that I have now associated my Google Adsense account with my account on Hubpages, and I've published three new hubs. Two of those are going to be part of a series, and I think that the other one (about eBay) could be along the same lines too. I'm linking into my main website from each hub - just at the bottom, saying who wrote the lens and where you can find me, so to speak. Hopefully I might attract the attention of more clients that way; it certainly seemed to work at Squidoo. So anyway I'm planning on creating a lot more hubs in the near future. If you're looking to get your byline seen online for the first time, or maybe you're just looking for a way to promote yourself as a writer a bit more, why not give Hubpages a try yourself? It's free to join and there are plenty of benefits once you get the hang of it. Let me know how you get on. February 05 Exploring the webI'm sure I have said before about the need to keep promoting yourself as a writer. As a freelance especially, if you don't do this the work is likely to dry up sooner than you might think. I had a spare couple of hours yesterday to myself, so I took the opportunity to do some promoting, as well as exploring the internet for any new writing possibilities that may have turned up. There are several benefits to this, quite apart from actually finding new sources of work to add to the existing ones. Firstly you are keeping in touch with the marketplace. This is particularly important as it does occasionally happen that new websites will turn up and you can get in 'on the ground floor', so to speak. I joined a new website yesterday that I found through creating a new hub for Hubpages, and while I may only get perhaps three or four articles a month out of it, it's a nice little job. And of course it will also help me in linking back to my own writing website and this blog. There is a flat fee per article, plus ongoing royalties, so over time it could be very beneficial. And it's nice to be part of another writing community too. Secondly, as you can see from the above example, it can unearth some writing possibilities that you would never have found otherwise. It almost feels like I am skiving if I'm not actually writing, but it can be a very profitable and life enhancing activity! I now find myself part of a large community that seems very helpful and pleasant. That's a wonderful bonus along with those few new articles every month. Where could you go today to make new connections? February 04 An early start to finish some articlesHi all. Yes this is my second blog post in as many days! I'm just grabbing a slice of toast at my desk so I thought I'd get back in touch again. I'm getting ahead of myself a bit today, finishing some articles that aren't actually due until next week. It's one of those times when the deadlines are mostly a week or more in the future, but luckily I'm motivated to get as much done as possible today! It certainly frees up the next week to slot in more work as and when it comes in. So how motivated are you feeling at the moment? It comes and goes in waves for me. So for example, I tend to find that whenever some new work comes in I get a rush of excitement and a new urge to get it done well. I could never say that about any of my previous jobs! lol I'm still waiting to hear back from a few article suggestions and emails I sent out to people last night, but I have a handful of articles to write for myself today. Remember I mentioned Constant Content yesterday? Well they could be seeing a few submissions from me today... Another possibility is to get on Hubpages to find some new work and get myself out there a bit more. Hey it worked with Squidoo, so there is no reason it shouldn't work for Hubpages as well. In case you didn't know, Hubpages is basically a selection of 'hubs' (or single pages) which each deal with a different subject. A friend of mine has had some really good successes on there, so I'm thinking of having another go at it. To date I have two hubs live, and I'm not happy with either of them! I think I took the same approach to it as I did to Squidoo, and they don't work in the same way. So we'll see what happens as I start to revamp my account on there. Will keep you posted... February 03 A brief break in the mountain of work...Hi again all! Yes I'm still here and still at my desk pretty much every day, even though I've not been blogging that much recently. It seems the January doldrums hit me a bit late this year. I'm back on track now though, and I've already landed one nice regular monthly job from someone who used to send just the occasional piece of work. That's been good news, and we get on extremely well too which is always a bonus! So how is your writing progressing during 2009? Have you set clear and worthwhile goals to further your writing during this coming year? I have stuck by mine pretty much - it's a shame I didn't add 'regular blogging' to that list... I've jotted it on the bottom now though, so let's see if it works! One of my main aims this year was to be more active in finding new clients. It's so easy to settle and never get any new work or challenges coming your way. Although I have three main sources of work that I fully intend to keep up with, slotting in other smaller jobs here and there can really be beneficial. So far it's worked well for me, and I've put my fees up too with no problems at all. Hopefully this new pro-active stance will continue to pay off. My next aim is to get more articles onto www.constant-content.com. I've sold a lot on there in the past but those sales have slowed to a trickle just lately. It's on my schedule for tomorrow though, so I'll let you know how it progresses... |
|
|
