This is the third part of a three part series.  If you haven’t read them yet part talked about marketing as a freelance writer and part two talks about getting personal, pricing, and contracts.  You should check those out before you read this.

Here are some more mistakes you might be making.

Mistake #6: You wait too long to discuss payment.

You get a phone call or email asking if you have time to do a large blogging project. Woo hoo! You respond immediately to get more details. An hour later, an email comes back and the topics are right up your alley.

They want to see samples similar to the type of work you’d be doing. You spend time gathering and fine tuning some previous articles you’ve written. They love them. You have a phone interview, and you grow increasingly excited when the person tells you that this will be a long-term gig. Finally, toward the end of your conversation, you ask what they’re budget is.

“Well, we can pay around $2 for 300 words.”

Oops.

By now, you’ve wasted at least a couple of hours of your time. How many cold calls could you have made during that time? How many emails could have mailed off? How much paying work could you have gotten done?

Ask for a company’s budget as soon as you know a few of the project details. If it’s well under what you’d normally charge, politely decline before either of you has wasted too much time.

Image by Beni Ishaque Luthor via Flickr

Mistake #7: You don’t know your floor.

One of the biggest issues writers face is deciding when to walk away from an offer. Before you can determine whether a job is really worth your time, you have to know what your rock bottom hourly rate is.

Consider this scenario. You are offered a gig paying $100 for one article. Doesn’t sound too bad, right? You jump on it. Yes! As you delve into the work, though, you realize that it’s going to take you quite awhile to finish. You have to do an interview and several hours of reading. By the time you’re done, you’ve spent 10 hours interviewing, brainstorming, researching, and writing. That equals out to $10 an hour. Not such a good deal after all, eh?

Avoid this type of situation by figuring out the least amount you’d be willing to accept per hour, and then multiplying that by the amount of time you think a project will take. Now you have the least you’d be willing to take for the project. Quote higher to leave a little room for negotiation.

Mistake #8: You don’t follow through with warm leads.

When you start any new marketing campaign, there are usually four potential answers a prospect will give you. Some will say “no.” Some will have a project they want to start soon and will ask for samples. Some will never get back to you one way or another. And some will offer to “keep your information on file” for when a new project arises.

That last group needs to be nurtured. Connect with them on Twitter or LinkedIn. Send them an article that you think they might find interesting. Send them a quick email announcing your new site or blog launch. Do something to stay within their line of vision. If you do, you’ll be the one who comes to mind when they have a new writing project.

What’s the biggest mistake you can make as a freelance writer? Giving up! Remember: nothing good happens overnight, and this is no different. Just keep putting yourself out there, demanding fair pay, and fine tuning your craft.

Have you made any of these marketing mistakes? What do you think is the biggest mistake a writer can make when marketing her business?

Are These 8 Marketing Mistakes Hurting Your Freelance Writing Career? – Part 3 is a post from: The Social Freelance Writer.

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You have all the makings of a successful freelance writer: talent, professionalism, and a can-do attitude. Stellar writing samples? Check! Killer website? Check! LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook business pages? Check, check, and check! So, why aren’t clients beating down your door?

Easy. You haven’t gone out to find them yet.

As with any business, if you want to succeed as a freelance writer, you’re going to have to do a little (a lot) marketing to build your client base. Unfortunately, marketing alone isn’t enough. You have to know where to market, who you’re marketing to, and how to negotiate the process once you have a fish on the hook. Sound daunting? It doesn’t have to be, but there are plenty of things that could be hurting your marketing efforts without you even realizing it. Here are 8 of the most common mistakes.

Mistake #1: You’re not marketing yourself enough.

You made 50 phone calls and placed 10 ads on Craigslist. Great! What else? If you don’t have an answer to that question, you probably aren’t marketing yourself nearly enough. It takes time to find clients, and one single burst of effort isn’t going to cut it. You’ve barely even scratched the surface. Keep sending emails or making calls. After you’ve done that, gather a new list of prospects and do it all over again.

Set a weekly goal, and stick to it. If you plan on sending 5 emails a day, do it.

How many contacts do you need to make before you start seeing results? That depends, and it’s different for every writer. Some will get lucky and start landing gigs after the first week. For others, it can be a much longer process.

A simple answer would be: keep doing it until you have enough work to stay busy. Then, continue doing it (albeit, at a slower pace) to make sure you stay busy. Rest assured, if you keep doing it enough, you will see results.

Image via CrunchBase

Mistake #2: Your marketing efforts are not targeted.

While it’s true that almost any company could benefit from professional writing help, some make better prospects than others. The main things you should consider when choosing who to target are the industries you have the most experience writing for, and the size of the companies you want to contact.

The way to get started is to stick with what you know. Were you in the insurance biz for 10 years? Great, write insurance articles or offer to write brochure copy for insurers in your area. Did you go to school for veterinary assisting? Contact vet clinics, pet stores, and dog food makers.

The size of each company is also important. Very small businesses often do not have the financial resources available to hire writing talent, while very large businesses usually have writers on staff. You want to start in the middle. These companies usually don’t have the money to keep writers on payroll, but they do often have a large enough budget to pay freelancers on an as needed basis.

It’s also a good idea to deal with companies that are older than the Internet. These businesses were around before SEO and $3 articles. They know the value of good content, and they are willing to pay for it. That’s not to say that all newer companies will try and low ball you, but aiming for more established businesses will lower the chances of being offered $100 to write an entire ebook.

Don’t miss part 2 and part 3 – coming soon!  Subscribe to the feeds so you don’t miss anything.

Are These 8 Marketing Mistakes Hurting Your Freelance Writing Career? – Part 1 is a post from: The Social Freelance Writer.

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I’m a big believer in social media marketing.  You all know that.  I think that social media is the new search engine and studies are starting to show that more and more people look to social media for information on topics, rather than the search engines.  Will search engines like Google become obsolete?  Not likely for a long time.  But social media is going to just get bigger.  So it is important to know how to use it.

Facebook is one of the biggest social  media venues that we can use for marketing but many just don’t know how they are supposed to use it.  I get a lot of questions about Facebook and whether we should use a profile or a page.  And if we use a page, what should we put on it?

Well, for those of you who are fairly new to Facebook marketing, I’ve found the perfect resource for you.

Check out FansBridge.com – a blog that is all about Facebook marketing.  It is owned by Faissal Alhaithami, a young blogger who loves Facebook.  He’s actually also a past FamousBloggers/CommentLuv/IBlogZone contest participant and came in 5th in the Traffic Generation Blogging Contest so I have to give him props for that.  His whole blog is pretty awesome though.  There is loads of Facebook info to be found there and you could literally be there all day if you wanted to learn everything there is to learn about Facebook marketing.

But most of us don’t have all day long do we.  We need to learn the most important stuff right away and then move on to the more complicated stuff later.  And Faissal knows that so he put together The Facebook Marketing Secrets Guide for those who need to get going with their Facebook Pages now (there is a sign up form right near the top of the page – get the ebook and the free email newsletter at the same time).  This ebook is long enough to provide some true value but short enough to get through in an hour of concentrated reading.

Some of the things you’ll find in this ebook include:

• Creating a landing page
• Getting fans
• Inspiring conversation in your fans
• Page settings
• Making money
• Facebook advertising

And this isn’t just the same old regurgitated info you’ll find in other place on the net (although getting it in one ebook saves you a lot of time).  You’ll also learn about the double lead strategy, how to SEO your page, and how to use games to get your fans involved.  And perhaps one of the most important aspects that people often forget about – how to track data!

For a free ebook, Facebook Marketing Secrets provides a lot of value.  The ones that will benefit from it the most are new Facebook marketers but those of you who have been around the Facebook block a few times will find some helpful tips in here, too.  I did.

Facebook Marketing Secrets: A Great Start for New Facebook Marketers is a post from: The Social Freelance Writer.

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Come and visit me at A Dynamic Life

Hi all!  :wave:

I’ve done something fabulous.  I’ve been given permission (by myself, because who else would give me permission for something like this) to take off as much time from blogging here as I need to.  Seriously.  Writing in this blog is becoming a job and that just defeats the purpose of why I quit my job.  I didn’t quit my job to do more stuff that I am not enjoying.  I quit to be able to do stuff that I like.

It’s not that I don’t like this blog. I do.  I’ve put a lot of work into it and I love what it has become.

But I need a break and I’ve got permission to take one.

So, The Social Freelance Writer is officially on hiatus.

But I will still be around.

In fact I’ll still be blogging.  If you really need your fix of me you can find me at A Dynamic Life and I do hope you’ll come and check it out.  It’s about kitties and pregnant teenagers and stupid people and all sorts of random stuff.  Yes, it is my personal blog.  It’s not the blog you want to read during “learning time” – it is the blog you want to read when laughing until you snort coffee out your nose sounds like an idea.

So you’ve got no reason to miss me.

And don’t worry – I’ll be back here eventually. And maybe randomly.

Cheers!  Have a good summer!

I Have Permission is a post from: The Social Freelance Writer.

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Image by edgeplot via Flickr

I’m sure – well, I hope – that more than a few of you have been wondering that.  It’s been…a month?…since I last posted something new.  And you know – it isn’t because I didn’t want to.  Ideas came to me in the middle of the night, I’ve got loads of notes jotted down and files with things that I want to remember.

But you can’t do everything at once and I’ve had two projects that I’ve been working on that has put some of my other things on the back burner.

One of the things I have been working on is my first e-book.  It’s not a social media e-book though.  I have a niche site on anxiety and panic disorders and I decided that it was time to come out with my first product for that site.  I don’t want to inflate the traffic to that site by putting  a link here though, so if this is a topic that is of interest to you or if you have a site that is on a similar topic and would like to be an affiliate of my ebook, please use the Comment form to send me a message and I will send you the info you need.  The book is done, the e-book cover is made.  I just need to work up a sales page and some promo material and it will be ready to go.

The other thing that I’ve been doing is some experimentation with residual income.  Which is where that niche site came in.  I have three niche sites but they haven’t had a lot of attention from me lately.  So I’ve been building up some content on them, building some backlinks, building some linkwheels, and generally getting them moving.  They are doing better now and I’m getting into more of a routine.

You know, I actually got so busy that I decided that I was not going to take any more writing work for private clients unless someone contacted me and was willing to pay a higher price than I usually ask.  Well, wouldn’t you know, 3 days later, someone did contact me and was happy to pay what I am worth.  No questions asked.  It was fabulous.  Everything was worked out in a matter of days.  I’ve also gotten permission from another client to outsource some lower paying work – I had  to in order to be able to dedicate more time to my residual earnings projects.

You might be thinking, “Why is she telling us all this stuff? What does this have to do with social media or freelancing?”

Well, my dear friends, the reason is because I want you to understand that most people who work online these days have more than one source of income.  Most people do a few different things that work for them.  And to me, that is one of the greatest things about working  online.  You can do some private client work plus run your own blogs and sites and you can do some residual income work in there, too.  It’s completely up to you.  Your the boss – so what do you want to do?

“Where the hell has she been?” is a post from: The Social Freelance Writer.

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Have you been blogging for awhile but find that you’re not getting results? Seems like no one is reading? No one is commenting? You’ve got no subscribers?

People forget that blogging takes work and effort. Internet Marketers tell you all the time that you can easily make money online if you just start a blog and put some ads up on it. But it isn’t that easy is it? I struggled for years to figure out how to make a success of my blogs and I still work at it every day.

I have learned a few things along the road though. And one of the things I’ve learned is that if you want your readers to do something you have to tell them what you want. Ask for it!

Don’t Act Like You Actually Want Comments

And Lord forbid you actually ask for them. No one wants to come off as desperate. But the thing is that people often don’t know what to do after they have read your blog post. So, if comments are what you want, then ask for them. A request at the end of your post or arrows pointing to the comments section can get some good results.

Here are phrases you can use to encourage people to comment:

I’ve just given you a few ideas so leave your suggestions in the comments.

Tell me in the comments what works for you?

Leave a comment to share you experience in this matter.

And when you make a request, don’t forget to say “Please!”

So, what are you waiting for? Leave a comment and tell me what common blogging mistakes you’ve learned to avoid – please?

Don’t Forget to Say Please is a post from: The Social Freelance Writer.

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Well, the answer to that really is determined by what you are doing in marketing.  Do you need a Facebook page?  Not if what you are already doing is working for you.  Not if you don’t feel a need to make more money.  Not if you have no desire to connect with your customers.  Not if you don’t want to get noticed on the Internet.

But if you want to make more money, connect with customers (both current and future), and you want to brand yourself on the Internet…YES, you need a Facebook page!

The amount of people that are using Facebook is increasing every single day – despite the fact that Facebook has been around for about 4 years now.  The growth that Facebook has experienced can’t be compared to any other social site out there and it isn’t showing signs of slowing down.

The ways that you can connect with people are growing as well.  With apps, pages, groups, and profiles you can find many ways to make connections with people.

It’s not about sales – it’s about making connections with people that will guide them to that place where you can make the sale.

You don’t have to be a genius or a social marketing junkie to have a Facebook Page.  In fact, unless your business is social marketing, it’s better that you are not.  People like to talk to others on their own level.

All you have to do is make connections with people.  How do you make connections in real life?

• “Hey, did you hear that XYZ company is shutting down?  Does anyone have the scoop on what happened?”
• “I just found out that __________ – check it out and tell me what you think.”
• “I love our new _____________.  What do you think?  Would you have made it any different.”
• “People keep buying this product from our store.   Do you have one?  What are you using it for?”

Those are just a few suggestions.  Find out who your audience is and what they want to know.  Then give them what they want!

Do I Really Need a Facebook Page? is a post from: The Social Freelance Writer.

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People go to school to learn about marketing and they learn marketing online from self-taught gurus.  I wouldn’t say that either one is better or worse than the other.  It is what you do with the information that you take in that makes the difference.

And sometimes it is how long you do what you’ve learned that makes the difference.

Have you ever learned or thought of a new marketing strategy, decided you wanted to give it a try, implemented it on a site and then promptly forgot about it?  It didn’t work very well did it?

That’s the thing with marketing strategies.  You need to give them time to work.  Very few legitimate marketing techniques see success immediately.  You need to do it over and over again to see it work.

For example:

Facebook:   You decide to start a Facebook page for your business.  You get some pictures added, all the critical information, start linking to your site.  You might even add some relevant links.  You get a couple fans (maybe a couple dozen) and then you get busy with something else and it sits there.  Then you remember you have this Facebook page so you go back a week or two later and throw up some updates.  A couple more weeks go by before you return.

Your Facebook page is not going to have success if you are not consistent.  You need to return every day to let your fans know that you are worth following.  You need to converse with them – ask them questions, get them to share their links, compliment and challenge them.  And you need to be on that page at least once a day.  A couple days pass and they forget about you.  A couple of weeks pass and they are asking themselves why they liked your page in the first place and looking for the “unlike” button!

The biggest mistake you can make in your marketing is NOT using your marketing strategy for a long enough period.  If you give up on in within a week or even within a month you will never know if it would have been successful or not!

Are You Making This Big Marketing Mistake? is a post from: The Social Freelance Writer.

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Day 1 of the 31 Days Blog Challenge is to come up with an elevator pitch.  I remember doing this one before but I think I missed the point of it.

The point of an elevator pitch is to have a response to people question when they say, “Exactly what do you do?” (and you know if you tell them that you’re a freelance anything that is going to be the first question they ask!) – you need to have something short and sweet to tell them that explains what you do in simple words.

Now, if you look at the title of my blog I guess it isn’t exactly clear.  Text Media?  What’s that?  I guess that text media is my play on text writing and social media.  So Text Media is any type of social media that is based on words – like Facebook, Twitter, or blogging.  It can be other things as well – article marketing, bookmarking (although I’m not really big on that yet), LinkedIn…and some others that I haven’t really gotten into so we’ll leave it at that.

You should have a short version to give to those who are just asking to be polite and likely won’t sit through a 3 minute spiel but you should also have a longer version that you can use when they really do want to know what you do.

So, my short version elevator pitch:

I help people with written social media like blogging, Facebook, and Twitter.

And my longer version:

I help people with written social media like blogging, Facebook, and Twitter.  I write profiles for their social media accounts, I help set up their accounts or their blogs, and I write the content.  It can be as simple as writing a blog post for them a couple times a week or it can go as far as writing the blog post and then spreading it through their social networks.

Working on My Elevator Pitch is a post from: The Social Freelance Writer.

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Have you heard of this event? It’s happening on August 30th and it looks like it is going to be amazing. This is a FREE teleseminar serious that has a line up of some of the smartest women online today.

If you’re a work at home mom or a sole entrepreneur – and yes, that includes work at home dad’s, too! – you’ll want to check this out. It’s not just the same info that you hear every day and read on every blog you come across – this going to be the kind of info that you can immediately put into action and it’s original stuff!

Wondering what exactly you’ll learn?

• Establishing the right mindset to achieve more success than you could imagine possible
• Leveraging radio so you can grow your list, get more clients and position yourself as an expert
• Achieving a six-figure income in four short months with FREE marketing
• Tapping into the power of the huge, ever-growing Hispanic market
• Transforming your website into a powerhouse branding and marketing machine
• Taking full advantage of your social media tools through some great creative tips and tricks
• Making your blog ROCK so you can make more money and attract lots of new clients
• Hiring a virtual assistant to free your time and set your business alight
• Taking your networking or multi-level marketing program to new heights
• Using community marketing to explode your online presence
• Transforming your lackluster Facebook Fan Page into a fantastic, entertaining and profitable business tool

Check it out – I know I’m not planning to miss this one. Why would I? It is FREE and you all know how I love free!

Wise Women of the Web is a post from: The Social Freelance Writer.

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