If you read my guest post over at Carson Brackney’s blog and are now thinking that you can take the leap from part-time writer to full-time writer, I’m thrilled.  One person actually called me her hero.  And then I looked her up (the name was familiar but I didn’t make the blog/name connection right away) I found out that she’s the owner of  SoloMompreneur and now I’m even more honored!

What Makes Me Different?

But then I got to thinking – why can I do this while others are still struggling with multiple jobs and doing what they love on the side?  I know it’s not because I’m “better” than them (I’m not) and I know it’s not because I’m more prepared than them (I’m not).  So what is it?

I thought about my life and the way we live and what is important to me.  And I realized that I live my life very differently from other people.

One thing that a lot of people don’t get is the fact that I am almost 40 and have never owned a house.  Never.  I’ve lived in an apartment for the past … years (since I was 19) and only once lived by myself.  I always had roommates or a spouse.  It’s not because I can’t – I could stretch it and afford it if I wanted to – but I like having others around.  My friend and I actually dabbled with the idea of community living for awhile.  We were going to find a big massive house that three families could live in with our children (none of us were married at the time) and we’d share money responsibilities, parenting, etc.  Of course, one of the mom’s decided that wasn’t for her and we put it on hold.

Anyway – what’s my point?  Oh ya.  I don’t own a house – and I don’t have any intention to in the near future.  Why?  In the short term it costs me less.  I don’t have to worry about broken pipes, leaky roofs, mowing the lawn, fixing the driveway, doors being slammed off their hinges, and so on.  Those things are all my caretaker’s/owner’s problems.  And their financial problem, too.

I know this doesn’t make sense to anyone in the modern world.  After all – house ownership is what we are all trained to want.  And even to believe we need.  But think of it this way.  If I lose my job tomorrow and have to pick up a lower paying job I can just move to a cheaper apartment.  It may not be the one I want or in the area of town I want but guess what?  As soon as money issues get sorted out (and trust me, when you’re living in a dumpy place where the noise outside is even louder inside that’s pretty damn good incentive to find a better job!) I’ll be moving again into something I can actually live with.

This thinking has carried on in other parts of my life as well.  For example, I’ve never owned brand new furniture.  Ok – wait.  When I was 19 I bought a brand new bed. It cost me $99 plus tax.  I got it from the retail store I worked at with my Christmas employee discount, which cut a fair amount of the main price.  But other than that, furniture never comes into my house brand new.  I remember a neighbor came to my door once and told me that they’d bought a new bed and they were going to throw out the old one but it was actually in pretty decent condition so they thought they’d check with me first (how did they know to do that?  No clue.).  My first thought was, “If the old bed is in decent condition why are you buying a new one?”  My second thought was, “Let’s see it!”  And you know, that bed was fine.  No stains, no smell, springs were great – it wasn’t even dusty when I pounded on it!  So, ya, I took it and my son got a double bed that barely fit in his room.  He loved that he could jump to his bed from the doorway.  And because I didn’t pay a thing for it I didn’t care how much he jumped on it.

Couches, tables, chairs, office desks – all of those things have come either free or bloody cheap.

Ok – they don’t match.  So what?  If I had friends that cared about matching furniture I’d find new ones.  Really.  You sit on it.  That’s all it is for.  Even when it doesn’t match you can still make your place look great.

A True Story

I know this is getting long but before I get to the point of the title I want to tell you about the parent of one of my daughter’s friends.  She has multiple children (let’s say more than 5) and some of them weren’t in school yet and others were finishing high school.  So she needed a lot of room.  In Canada we have a social system that helps out people in that situation.  They are able to find housing that actually suits their needs.  Not my point though.  Well, I went to pick my daughter up from her place one day expecting they typical housing set up (basically it feels like you’re living in a ghetto) but instead walked into a home that looked like it should be in a magazine.  She had furniture of different shapes but it was all covered in this great striped fabric.  The curtains didn’t exactly match but they went very well with the decor.  She had all these great touches that made the place look like she’d paid someone to decorate it.

I had to ask: “How can you afford this?”

She hesitated for a moment before she said, “Well, you’d be amazed at what people throw in the garbage.”

My jaw dropped to the floor.  Really?  Could all this be people’s castaways?

She confessed that she regularly found furniture, slabs of carpet (completely unused), reams of material (also unused) and all sorts of things in the trash of rich people’s houses.  And yes, she took them.  She took them right back to her place and made it all work.

Now, I’m not suggesting that y’all take up dumpster diving (although I have been known to grab a thing or two that is sitting beside a dumpster and fix it up) but what I’m saying is that our society is trained to believe that everything we have needs to be brand new or that we need to replace things as soon as they start to show some age or that we can throw out stuff just because it doesn’t suit our immediate needs.  If we started questioning that train of thought, I’m tell you that we could all live on a lot less and our lives could be much less expensive!

The Book That Changed My Life

Now – to the point of the title.  Until a few years ago, I never had a salaried job.  I worked a lot of split shifts and my income was never guaranteed.  And it was friggin’ hard.  Until I came across this book called How to Live without a Salary by Charles Long.  It’s about “living the conserver lifestyle” and his book changed my life.  I don’t want to go on and on about what’s inside because that will make this post insanely long but to sum it up (from the back of the book)

As a Conserver you will learn how to:

• avoid consumer traps
• budget effectively
• analyze your true needs
• plan your personal attack on inflation
• make a casual income
• utilize second hand buying and auctions
• find alternatives to buying
• save on taxes and insurance
• begin the Conserver lifestyle yourself

(Want the book? Just go click on the picture. And yes, if you buy from this link I’ll get a tiny little kick back!)

This is an OLD book (my version is a reprint from 1991).  But the wisdom in it is especially pertinent to today’s life.  We’ve gotten carried away with what we think our needs are.  We don’t need cell phones (I know you think you do but people did just fine without them before they existed) and we don’t need to replace everything on a regular basis and we don’t always need to buy retail.  You don’t have to own a brand new car (and sometimes you might not need to own a car at all!  What a concept!).

Now, if I didn’t subscribe to this Conserver Lifestyle there is NO WAY that I could be dropping a salaried job with benefits included and a regular pay check.  Not a chance. But because of the way I choose to live my life I can now work at home full-time doing what I want to do.

You Can Do it, Too!

If you really, really want to work at home full-time I encourage you to consider what sacrifices you are willing to make.  Consider what you have that you don’t really need.  Consider purchases you’ve been planning to make that you maybe don’t really need to make right now.  Be realistic but don’t buy in to our societies ideals of everything needing to be bought right now, right off the shelf.

Think about it.  Maybe you could go full-time a lot sooner than you thought!

(BTW – I will be honest that there is one thing we pay for – computers.  Although we do still save money by buying refurbished but that is our one big expense every 3 years or so!)

I’ve met a lot of great people online since I started freelance writing and some of them have been very encouraging.  Most of them really.  Most recently, I’ve become familiar with Carson Brackney and his writing.  I immediate fell for his writing style and have been hooked on his blog ever since.

And today, I’m lucky enough to have him as my very first guest poster!

—————–

From the Recliner of Carson Brackney on a late morning in June

Danielle asked me to write a guest post for this blog and I decided doing so was a perfect excuse to take a break from an ongoing project. I moved from my desk to the recliner, flipped on the television and open the laptop.

She thought it might be interesting for me to write about how I got my start in this crazy business. Did I dive in headfirst? How did I prepare myself? What made me think it would work? Would I do anything differently? What inspired me to take the plunge?

I’m starting with the last question. Inspiration.

One of my inspirations is ten feet behind me in the next room. She’s six years old and she’s making a greeting card for a friend in the playroom. A few minutes ago, she yelled out for some spelling help.

Another inspiration walked by me less than ten minutes ago. You can’t get to the laundry room without sneaking through the corner of my basement office. She just moved a load of wash to the dryer after putting the baby down for a nap.

That little sleeper wasn’t around to inspire me to get started, but she’s part of what keeps me going now.

The sun is shining through the sliding doors of the split-level, streaking across my propped up bare feet. I found Channel 199, the MLB Network. The Rays have a 1-0 lead on the Padres. I’m thinking about firing up the grill again tonight.

I just looked at the clock. 11:27 a.m.

Right now, I know there are guys in suits checking their clocks. There are guys in Dockers and snug polo shirts with nametags on lanyards looking at their watches. In thirty-three minutes, they can walk out of their offices or away from their cubicles for a lunch break. Maybe they’ll call home and check on their kids. Maybe they’ll call their wives. They’ll eat and gripe about work. They won’t see Longoria steal second on a one-hop Hundley peg. They’ll go back to work. I’ll answer another spelling question and I’ll give my wife a kiss.

This is the story of my inspiration: Our first child was a few months shy of entering the world and I realized that I didn’t want to be one of those dads–the kind who make it in the nick of time to the preschool Halloween party, out of breath and anxious, hoping they can get back in time for a meeting or presentation. I knew I couldn’t be a “hug you in the morning, kiss you goodnight and hope the stuff in between is going well” kind of father.

I liked the idea of bare feet, an office at home, and being there. If I had known that the MLB Network was going to be part of the deal, I would’ve liked that, too.

I was always a good employee but that came from effort, not instinct. I don’t take orders well. I don’t like answering to anyone.
Money? Yeah. I wanted money. As much as I like Thoreau, I’ve never had a desire to hide out in the wilderness. I like things. I’m not greedy, but I’m not into self-deprivation, either.

So, that’s the tale. The baby was coming and I knew a change was in order. I had at least some idea of what that change needed to look like.

The question, of course, was how to make that vision into a reality.

The Internet seemed like a good place to start.

I started looking at ways to make money online. I did my homework. I read, read, read, and then I’d read more. I learned everything I could. I developed the ability to separate the bullshit “get rich overnight” schemes from reasoned advice. I learned how things worked, why they worked and what things might continue to work.

My first project of note, which I completed during my spare time, involved the creation of a series of Adsense-monetized free Blogspot blogs. Good keyword research, good content and a lot of good luck combined and it worked. I went from making a quarter per day to cashing nice monthly Google checks very quickly.

Those checks were nice, but they weren’t going to replace my income and there was a limit to how much I could scale my little blog network. There was also a reasonable amount of risk involved–sometimes those seemingly perfect projects would crash and burn. That’s fine when you’re a hobbyist. It’s not good if you want your income to buy diapers.

I experimented with affiliate marketing, too. I had some success utilizing article distribution and a pre-sell landing page bearing my affiliate link to generate commissions. Between the affiliate sales and the Adsense, I was generating a nice little side income.

During all of this experimentation and learning, which took place over the course of a few months, I reached a few realizations:

• My greatest strengths were in writing and research.
• I’ve always loved writing.
• Much of the online world was convinced that “content is king”.
• Much of the content online looked like semi-literate little kids wrote it.
• My own experiences confirmed the value of quality written materials with respect to generating online earnings.

I connected the dots.

My first writing job involved creating little informative profiles about various famous golf courses. I was surprised at how easy it felt. I was encouraged by the client’s effusive praise for the work. When I did the math, I discovered that I made pretty damn good money on that gig, even though the per word rate was well below what most people would find acceptable.

I took another gig. And another. I didn’t use the job boards and I didn’t work for third parties. I found a handful of good clients and that led to others through referrals and the connections I made. Eventually, I started reaching out to people I thought I could help.

Originally, I planned on slowly but surely building up a fund equal to about six months’ of my salary. That would take about a year, I thought. Then, I could “go full-time”.

Well, the requests for work were coming in faster than I thought. The only way I could keep up with them would be by quitting my day job. I had to choose between taking a big chance and riding the brakes.

I took the chance. The baby was still a baby and I didn’t want to stall another minute. My wife supported the gamble.

And now I’m watching Adrian Gonzalez roll a ground ball to second with one out in the third, knowing that I’m no more than twenty seconds away from finding and hugging my inspirations.

I’ve made a million mistakes since I started writing for a living. Some are small and specific to me and my circumstances. Others have been big, nasty whoppers. If I were going to start all over again, I would do a number of things very differently.

I think that’s true for everyone, though. I don’t feel bad about those blunders. It’s part of growing.

We’ve had great months when we feel like part of the Rockefeller family and, I’m not ashamed to admit, there were times when macaroni and cheese seemed like a smart choice for a dinner entree. I’ve made clients swoon and I’ve infuriated people so much that they still might give me a well-deserved gut punch if we met on the street.

Along the way, I have figured out a few big things.

I won’t call them secrets for success, because they’re not that secret and because I’m not willing to call myself a success. I’m a work in progress. But I will tell you that these are damned good recommendations if you want to find a way to make a living as a writer. They may not be right for everyone, but they worked for me and I know they’ve worked for others.

Write. Putting your ass in the chair and working consistently is the most important thing you can do. If you’re working, you’re earning or you’re setting yourself up to earn. When working becomes habit, income flows.

Learn. Never stop learning about new things. Keep your eyes on new trends. Read what other people in the business and your clients’ businesses are writing. Knowledge is power and its fuel for creativity.

Grow. I started as a would-be Internet marketer. I became a content writer. I transitioned into doing better-paying copy projects. I started doing more consulting work. As I’ve grown and changed, I’ve maintained the best parts of those experiences and have jettisoned the others.

Believe. Danielle asked me why I was convinced the writing thing would work for me. I don’t really have a good answer for that. I didn’t give it a great deal of thought to it. It made sense to me. It felt right. I believed in it and I believed in my ability to make it work.

That’s my story and I’m sticking to it. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to get out of this recliner and move back to the desk before I fall victim to a nap. I need to get some work done if I want to sneak off to the swimming pool with the girls for an hour this afternoon. I’m not turning off the game, though.

********************

Carson Brackney is a freelance writer and consultant. He thinks you should follow him on Twitter and become a regular reader of his freelance writing-oriented blog. He is currently sporting a Mohawk at age 39 because his daughters think it’s funny.

One of the reasons that we become freelance writers or freelance graphic designers or virtual assistants and other work at home is so we can have a personal life.  We can pay more attention to our kids and our families and things like that.  But sometimes something happens where we need to give our attention to our family and it is really important BUT we also have to get work done for clients.

So, we try to arrange time for our work. But that thing keeps popping into our heads.  We’re worried or concerned or anxious.  We feel like we should be giving it our full attention.  We want to be there but not getting work done isn’t an option?  So what do you do?

I haven’t come up with a good solution to this yet.  I’ve tried to separate the two things but it’s easier said than done.  And the trouble is that even if I deal with the situation today, I know it will come back again.

So, I’m asking your advice – how do you keep personal distractions from interfering with your freelance career?

There’s a lot of material out there about marketing yourself and I came across this YouTube video today. Rebecca Santo talks about marketing yourself in the very simplest terms. This is the stuff that you should know before you get on Twitter or Facebook or even start a website. This is basic.

One thing that I don’t agree with is that she says it is ok to embellish. I do not agree with that at all.  Don’t exaggerate, don’t embellish.  If there’s not much to go with then create some content online that will give them something to work with.  Clients don’t really care if you’ve been working for free on residuals based sites like Bukisa or Firefox as long as what you’ve done there is good work.  You can omit saying that you’ve never actually worked for a client but don’t embellish what you’ve actually done to make it sound better than what it is.

I do agree that confidence is important.  When teaching resume and cover letter writing and training for interviews I always tell my students that they basically have to become sales people.  If you want the job you have to be a good salesperson and you are the product.  Be proud of what you have done and don’t be afraid to speak up about your successes.

Some other posts you might like:

Follow me on twitter: http://twitter.com/DanielleMcGaw

Have you been dying to get some private clients under your belt?  If you have, you should read my post on Getting Private Clients first.  Go ahead, it will open in a new window and I’ll be here waiting when you’re done.

Now that you’ve read that you’re likely thinking, “I just don’t have the time to do that!” But it doesn’t have to take that much time.  You can cut down on time a lot if you use some organization techniques make it go faster.

I could tell you how to do this but I figure you’ll find it a lot more enjoyable if you can see me do it!  So, I’ve created this little tutorial for you.  Hopefully, you’ll find this helpful.

BTW – I can’t take credit for the idea of how to do this.  I first read about it at Freelance Writing Gigs where Carly Schuna blogged about Being a Craigslist Millionaire.  I’m not doing it exactly the way she’s suggested but I’ve used most of her ideas.  Thanks Carly!