Learn How to Write for Money Online

ThatWordChick.com is my business site, and as such I endeavor to keep non-business-related posts elsewhere. I debated putting my Freelance Writer Guide on this site, but I was concerned that such a large chunk of information would cloud this site’s purpose – to connect with freelance writing clients and keep my portfolio visible.

I’ve now posted the entirety of my freelance writing eBook at Freelance Writer Guide for free, as I hope it will help more fledgling freelancers get into the business. I will also be posting reviews of freelance writing sites on that page, including updates on my Textbroker reviews and Freelancer reviews. Upcoming subjects also include:

• MediaPiston Reviews
• CloudCrowd Reviews
• Odesk Reviews
• Constant Content Reviews

So stay tuned, and be sure to keep the site in your reader or bookmarks. Thanks for stopping by!

-Delany M.
 ThatWordChick

ThatWordChick.com

 

 

On Niche Writing

The available pool of freelance writers is growing every day as more men and women find themselves in need of non-traditional employment in a job-scarce market. As a freelancer, specializing can be one of the best decisions you make for yourself professionally, as it significantly reduces the competition you need to fight off to reach potential clients. As long as it’s an industry that needs marketing, you’ll always be able to find contacts to solicit – if it’s an “odd” niche, all the better!

I came into freelancing on the heels of an unusual job writing item copy for an adult product store. Naturally, I was a little embarrassed when I first started there, but a few items in I realized that even “marital aids” were products when all was said and done; the same formula applied to writing about unmentionables as it did to, say, a flower vase. What does it look like, what does it do, why does a customer need it – the holy trinity of product description questions helped guide me past my initial shock and I became very quickly comfortable with the subject matter. Hundreds of descriptions later it became time to find a new job, but I went out with an unusual skill set to my credit.

Now, I’ve written for distributors, manufacturers and even performers in the adult industry, all without batting an eye. I noticed that other writers in my position erred towards brash and filth. This was a perfectly legitimate approach in some cases, but used too broadly it ran the very concerning risk of alienating shy buyers. I crafted a classy and sensual approach to the descriptive words and turns of phrase I used, and it opened – and continues to open – many doors for me.

Naturally, I had to weigh my options about being “out” and admitting I wrote these sorts of things, which in turn put me at a risk for alienating potential clients and companies because of the sort of work I was attached to. After I considered the pros and cons, I decided to be somewhat discreet but still include the work in my public profile. I don’t use my byline in work I do for clients, so the risk is minimal to them while the chance to get my skills advertised to the public puts me in a good position to gain more niche clients.

My advice to new writers is to pick a niche or specialty that they already know a great deal about, or one that interests them. Certainly there are popular topics right now, such as selling gold for cash online, but choosing that means you’d be competing against all the other writers who have discovered the same trend. Model trains, breastfeeding, even cooking on a budget can all be areas of expertise if developed and marketed properly.

So – what’s your niche?

 

Writer Gear Review: Microsoft Speech Recognition

It should come as no surprise that I’m a fairly prolific writer, turning out thousands of words every day. It’s my job and I love it, but sometimes my wrists fail to share that same enthusiasm. I’ve tried ergonomic keyboards, cushioned mouse pads and taking frequent breaks, but it didn’t occur to me until recently that maybe the system of text entry was the real problem.

After being bombarded by ads for the Dragon NaturallySpeaking program, the part of my brain that had relegated Dragon to service in the court reporting and medical transcript sectors started pondering a little deeper. I can certainly talk a great deal (just ask my husband!) and I began to consider the usefulness it might hold for me. After all, I owned a set of headphones with a swing-down boom mic for my video gaming habit (even a writer needs to take a break!) and it certainly couldn’t be that hard to set up.

However, Dragon NaturallySpeaking costs money. When you freelance for a living, you learn to do without a lot of bells and whistles in the lean times, and a fancy program was not a strict necessity. I hit the trusted roads of Google to seek out a free alternative, and was delighted to discover my computer already held a speech-to-text gem of a program called Microsoft Speech Recognition. I booted it up, strapped on my headset and waded through an especially trying tutorial before I got to dip my toe in the futuristic waters of talking directly to my computer.

I didn’t imagine it would have more positive implications beyond staving off carpal tunnel, but boy was I wrong. Even with my 65+ WPM typing speed – a fairly impressive rate, in my opinion – I can’t keep pace with this wonderful program. It’s intriguing to watch the words simply pop into existence as they leave my lips, not form slowly letter-by-letter as they do in manual typing. I timed a few pieces and was surprised to find that I was finishing assignments faster by using Microsoft Speech Recognition. I could select, delete and even replace words with a simple spoken command, jump to the end of the document, and even spell out words that my muddled former-jersey accent couldn’t communicate properly.

The best part of the program is that it learns. While this does not bode well if Terminator ends up being prophetic rather than simply an entertaining movie franchise, in the short term it makes my life easier. Eventually “are roddick” became “erotic” consistently and I was making less and less corrections to the sometimes-hilarious and autocorrect-like renderings of the program.

There are times, such as this one, where I prefer the “old fashioned” way of typing, but for my work it’s become a 70-30 split between Microsoft Speech Recognition and manual typing. If you freelance, I highly recommend you try it out!

 

Writer Gear Review: Chad’s Carolina Corn

 

When you spend hours in front of a computer every day, especially while working from home, breaking up the monotony with delicious snacks becomes that much more important. When procrastination threatens to send me rooting around in the fridge, I tend to buckle down and invest in some tasty snacks to keep my butt in my chair and my brain focused on the task at hand.

A recent transplant to NC from NJ, I’ve come to enjoy the plethora of Farmer’s Markets my new southern living affords me. It was at one of these markets that I ran into the affable and eponymous Chad, who so kindly insisted I sample some of his popcorn. There were a lot of flavors in his booth, but my inherent need to smack around my palate now and again drew me to the dill pickle version. I got a little dixie cup and munched on my sample on the way back to the car. Halfway home, I regretted not springing for a bag.

Dill Pickle Popcorn from Chad’s Carolina Corn is the best thing to happen to popcorn since caramel, and that’s saying something. The light, crispy crunch of well-prepared popcorn meets the salty, tangy kiss of a really good deli pickle, with none of the “pickle juice” cleanup to contend with. You know how really great popcorn starts out piece by piece and ends with cramming handfuls into your mouth like someone’s going to take it away from you? Chad’s Dill Pickle is like that, only you’re further moved to growl, doglike, at anyone that comes too close to the bag.

I killed damn near half the foot-and-a-half high bag on the way home from the market, and my partner and I made quick work of the other half while I was typing out some articles. With our propensity for food experimentation, I would love to pair this up with something else in the near future – maybe a dill-pickle-popcorn covered apple, or chocolate covered dill pickle popcorn for when I crave a bunch of different tastes at once.

Bags start at an astoundingly affordable $5, so pick up your bag (and your newest addiction) asap.

 

Working With Locally Owned Businesses

I wouldn’t be much of a marketing girl if I didn’t know how to promote and sell my own services. I have my snazzy business cards in my purse for all occasions, and even a few backups in my camera case for when I’m out adventuring. My friends and family all know what I do, and they aren’t shy about promoting me in my absence, or backing up a “pitch” to a business owner if I run across one in our mutual travels.

Ultimately, working with large, national businesses provides me with stability, but it sometimes lacks the personal touch and unique experience that drew me into freelancing to begin with. That’s why, living in a town full of farmers markets, festivals, and street fairs, I’ve taken a slightly more unusual tack with potential clients – beyond the usual brief pitch, I offer an unusual alternative that many other freelancers haven’t considered.

I feel passionately that it’s important to balance shopping at mega-marts with patronizing local businesses, both for financial and ethical reasons. That’s why I almost always offer a barter for my services, right out of the proverbial gate. The benefits are many – I get food, soap, services, car repair, even rent discounts for something I’m familiar with, the client is more likely to hire me if they can “buy” my writing services with stock on hand, and I typically get some word of mouth advertising in the deal as well. I’m supporting my local business, and it’s considerably easier to write about something I can physically eat, experience, or visit over something I have to examine through the internet.

The next time you’re looking for clients, take a few cards and be willing to give a nod to the very beginnings of commerce – item for item, skill for skill. You may be pleasantly surprised at what you end up with!

 

Copywriting vs Copyright

When I tell people I write for a living, there are often a few moments of confusion as they try to discern what exactly it is that I do. I used to refer to myself as a copywriter, but in spoken conversations (and even a few written ones) I found this often led to a mistaken conclusion that I rubber-stamped patent applications for a living. When I call myself a freelancer, I find that the average person attributes the term to a more artistic bent – graphic designers and the like. When I call myself a writer, people instantly summon up phrases like “great American novel” and “poetry anthology”.

While it is true that a writer, novelist, copywriter, copy righter, designer, and freelancer can all be facets of the same person, it’s considerably more likely that only one or maybe two apply when speaking about a single entity. I’ve decided to clarify a few terms in this post so those that may be confused as to the meanings can get an easily broken down guide.

Workers of any sort: as with any potentially business-related interaction, bear in mind that you are in a position to gently (and without condescension) educate, but should always refrain from taking offense over a simple misnomer. It’s a positive thing to be proud of your work, but a negative thing to let it go to your head!

The terms are below, for your reading pleasure. Anything in italics is courtesy of Dictionary.com .

Writer: A person who writes. Period. This can reference anything from limericks written for personal enjoyment only to giant ad campaigns for million dollar companies.

Freelancer: A writer, artist, or other skilled tradesperson who sells services to different employers without a long-term contract. A freelancer will often be doing several small jobs for different companies at the same time.

Copywriter: A person who writes copy, typically for the purposes of marketing and advertisement.

Copy: the text of a news story, advertisement, television commercial, etc., as distinguished from related visual material.

Copyright: the exclusive right  to make copies,  license, and otherwise exploit a literary, musical, or artistic work, whether printed, audio, video, etc.  A good way to distinguish this from a Copywriter – a writer of copy – is simply to break down the word. Someone who has a copyright has a right to make copies!

 

Freelancer? More like Freefall. (Another Freelancer.com Review)

I’m not making this a very long post, as I’m up to my eyeballs in work these days, but I got an email from freelancer the other day. This isn’t unusual, as they’re particularly fond of sounding their own horns with a fevor usually reserved for vuvuzelas, but I’m more used to reading about silly little contests and the latest site they absorbed.

Now I’ve got that creeping feeling of being really taken advantage of, one I haven’t felt since I left e-Bay over their unconscionable ever-inflated fee structure. Apparently freelancer’s introducing what is essentially pay to play – where once the bids were ordered by time (i.e. first to bid showed up first), then number of ratings (fair in theory, but how can a beginner hope to be heard when some users have ratings in the hundreds and reply to -everything-?), now they are charging for the privilege of getting your bid first.

They’ve made similar moves to eBay’s comedy of errors, going so far as to introduce essentially nonsense features for real hard-earned money. Want to put highlighting on your bid? That’ll be $1. Want to take one of our tests to prove you know English, even though the timer totally gives you time to cheat/google – making it essentially worthless for actual assessment? That’ll be another $2. Want a special profile page to show off your portfolio? That’ll be $15 a month. Oh, and by the way, most of that’s on top of the 10% we take from every bid you win.

Now, if I’m understanding this crazy concept correctly, you put in a “bid” for how much you’re willing to pay to show up on top. Freelancer even helpfully tells you, much like eBay, how much more money you need to pay them to be on top. The top 3 bidders have to pay freelancer the amount they “bid”. The TOP bidder gets their money refunded when they accept and complete the project. The other two? Well, they’re just out of luck, aren’t they?

This structure is designed to invite a “bidding war” in which no one really wins except freelancer. They not only get to keep the ever-increasing bids from the two losers of the top 3, they get to keep, at the least, the money from the top bidder until he or she completes the project, and possibly forever if the project never goes to fruition. This is, of course, in addition to their normal fees.

My problem is this – being in the top spot hasn’t, and never will, guarantee you the job you’re bidding on. In reality, the first bidders in are usually foreign copy pools that dramatically underbid domestic writers and often have glaring spelling and grammatical errors in their bid text. The time difference gives them a leg up on US-based writers when jobs are posted at odd hours, but overall they will generally leap on just about anything posted. Employers don’t take something just because it’s at the top of a list – I’ve been 15th, or 20th and still grabbed jobs because I’m polite, well spoken, and I don’t mind following through. I bid only on jobs I want and can handle, not every blessed one that shows up on the site. This “bidding” system does nothing but take advantage of existing site users that are either disadvantaged by the shift to reviews-first sorting or aren’t of the right caliber to be seen and triumph on their own merit otherwise.

My mother always told me never to take a job that wanted you to spend money to start earning it – and unfortunately, it was bad faith actions like freelancer’s she was warning me against.