Well, I’m one month into full-time writing and loving it.

I’ve been hustling my butt to get extra writing to top off the one regular writing/social media job that I have and I have not found it difficult. In fact, some days I’ve had too much.  But it was good to hustle for a bit.

As a result of the hustling I’ve gotten two more regular gigs and have two more in the works for September.  Between these I have no need to do anything else but I have time to take on a few more things.  That’s good.  That means that when I need to make a little extra cash I can do some of my content mill writing or I can put out word to a few sources and get a little extra in.

It’s no where nearly as difficult as I thought it would be and if I’d known how suited I was for this life I would have done it five years ago!

My favorite part of teaching the Administrative Professional course at Robertson College was the Business Communications section.  But it was also very challenging for many of my students.  So, I thought it was well worth writing about how we can keep our business writing simple when I guest posted at Simply Stated Business.

Go and check it out for yourself and you’ll find my 6 point check list for keeping business writing simple as well as two ways to improve (hint: it has to do with repetition!).

Find out how you can keep your business writing simple.

By the way, if you are interested in having me guest post on your blog or if you’re interested in doing a guest post here there’s a link at the top of the blog that says “Guest Posting”.  Go and fill it out to you and I’ll get back to you as soon as I have a chance!

If you’ve had anything to do with marketing, online or offline, you likely already know that the best way to get the word out about your business is through word of mouth.  And how do you get people to talk about you?  It’s usually through people who have used your services.

The hard part of putting word of mouth into action is that people do not always think to say something good about a business that they have had good service with.  Why?  Because they expect good service.  That’s why bad word of mouth news tends to travel faster.

But you can encourage clients to talk about you!  Ask them for five things after you have done good work for them (which should be always!).

This video from Working Writing Happy Writer (be sure to check out the newsletter) has 5 questions (or favors) that you can ask of your clients:

I’d say that #3 and #5 are my favorites.  #3 is to ask for testimonials.  Ever wonder how other freelancers have all those great testimonials on their sites?  They asked for them!  Clients do not usually think to give them out on their own, but if you’ve done good work for them they are often more than happy to give you a couple sentences.  Make sure you ask if you can use their name and a link to their website to give the testimonial more validity. #5 is to ask them to pass your name along to others that might need your writing services.  Until you ask them they might not even think of that but once they are asked the might remember someone that could use your services.

It can be hard to ask thinks of clients other than your fee but if you’ve done a good job, clients are often more than happy to help you out.  Don’t be afraid to ask – the worst they can say is no!

Did you know that there is a 3 part writing process that is suggested for business writing?  There is!  It is taught in business communication courses but it applies to most forms of writing as well.  It’s very simple and looks like this:

I think the chart itself is pretty simple and doesn’t really need a whole lot of clarification.  The part that always surprised my students though was the amount of time that should be alloted to each part.

The Planning (or Pre-writing) phase should take up about 25% of your time.

The Drafting (or Writing) phase should also take up about 25% of your time.

But the Revising phase should take up 50% of your time.  This is perhaps the most important part of the writing process!

Does your writing process look anything like this?

On the Freelance Writing Gigs Facebook Page one of the questions they asked today was

Finish this sentence: The “free” in “freelance” stands for ________________.

Good question isn’t it?  So, of course, that make me think.  What does it mean to me to be a freelance writer?  Why do I want it so badly?  What’s the big deal?

To me, it really means being free to choose what you want to do to make your living.  It means being free to choose they type of work you do, who your work for, and what you will get paid.  Of course, there are some exceptions.  I can’t just decide I’m not going to write for a client anymore and then just bugger off and never be heard from again.  I have to think about whether I want to do that kind of work and once I decide to do it I have to commit to it.  I can’t decide to get paid $500 an article and expect it – my demand have to be reasonable.  But there are a lot of things I am free to choose:

• to write blog posts (or not to)
• to write articles (or not to)
• to write for content companies (or not to)
• to write for private clients (or not to)
• to write for pennies (or not to)
• to write for corporations (or not to)
• to write for free (or not to)
• to write in my pajamas (or not to)
• to write at the kitchen table (or the couch or the bed or heck – even my desk!)

What does the “free” in “freelance” mean to you?  Write about it in a blog post and leave a comment and get some “CommentLuv”!