10 Feb 10 Freelance writing – Have You Read Your Job Description?

If you thought by choosing freelance writing as a career you will just write, write, and do nothing else then let me prick the balloon. Your client wants many more things from you. Do not get scared, you will not be asked to do any fancy stuff like coding, scripting, PPC campaigns, and all.

Then what other works a client will demand?

Basically, you will be asked to do stuffs related to writing only. And in my career, primarily I have been asked to do following types of work (other than writing):

Many clients have asked me to do like keyword research, for writing purpose only. This actually is not all that bad. It helped me conceptualize the article or press release while researching.
At times, clients also asked me to submit articles to various social bookmarking sites. I helped my clients with 2-3 submissions, at max. I do not think I would have agreed to submit an article to 100 or so social bookmarking sites. It would have been waste of time for me, but for 3-4, I never said no.
Clients may also ask for content suggestions, and about other things he can do to meet his goal. This in fact is an opportunity in disguise to cross sell other services that you offer. If you are writing only articles for your client then you may suggest him to use press release to get some link juice, or may be forum posting and all.
I have also given some marketing and SEO suggestions to my clients. Depending upon your background (I have my background in marketing), you can either say yes or politely say no.

Word of caution

Do not say no to your clients’ request, at least not directly, if you can help him. And also do not ask for money for every suggestion that you offer—I know people who do so—because it looks cheap. For that work you may get paid, but it will reflect badly on your professionalism. You may lose the client.

If the work is going to take hours of your work then say this to client, and if it is going to take hardly 10-15 minutes then do not bother. It also depends upon your relationship with your client.

Tags: 15 Minutes, Background, Balloon, Campaigns, Caution, Content Suggestions, Disguise, Freelance Job, Job Description, Marketing, Press Release, Professionalism, SEO, Social Bookmarking Sites, Submissions, Suggestion, Waste Of Time, Writing As A Career, Writing Career, Writing Job

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19 Oct 09 When to Bid Freelancing Adieu?

When to bid freelancing adieu? This is a question that everyone asks us. A similar question is should I bid it adieu for other things?

The answer to both the questions is the age old “it depends.”

I know this answer sounds boring and it does not actually say anything. That is why I decided to write a brief post to describe when one should leave freelancing or one should leave it alone.

Should I Switch?

The decision to leave freelancing or not depends upon the answers to the following questions:

What will you do if not freelancing?
Can you support your family and yourself during the “switch period”?
Are you sure that you want to make a switch?
Is the switch worth the effort?
Are you confident that your clients will accept you in the new role?
Do you have what it takes to make a switch?

Switching career is not an easy task and you already know it. You first tested the sour water of switching when you switched from a full-time job to freelance work; therefore, you must be aware of the kinds of issues one faces when one decided to switch. After a switch, you will again be a fresher in the field. Hence, you should be prepared to fight the same battle that you fought when you first switched from full-time job to freelancing.

What should I do?

You can go for any career you want after free lancing, but there are some career choices which are more related to the works you have done as freelancer. Hence, before you bid adieu to freelancing let’s consider what career choices you have.

You can become a consultant. If you are a freelance writer, you can become writing consultant.
You can become a coach. A press release writer can become a better press release writing coach.
You can start a freelance agency. After working on many assignments for many years, you must know the nuances of freelancing business. Then why not become a freelancing hub that takes work from companies and redistribute among other freelancer.
You can become a freelancer manager for some company.
You can start writing on freelance career choices.

When to switch?

After knowing what you can do, it is time to know when you should switch. In order to find that out, you need to answer the following question to know when to switch from freelancing to another career.

How many years have you been into this? To become a coach, writer or consultant you need to have many years of experience.
Do you think you have acquired enough skill to manage a freelancing business?
Can you be a good negotiator? You must know to negotiate both from clients and freelancers, as it is important for you to make money as a freelance business owner.
Do you know everything that is there to learn to switch from freelancing to consultation?

Tags: Bid, Career Choices, Coach, Faces, Free Lancing, Freelance Agency, Freelance Work, Freelance Writer, freelancer, Full Time Job, Hub, Nuances, Press Release, Release Writer, Sour Water

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11 Sep 09 Why to Write a Press Release for Web

Why to write a press release for web if we can publish stories about our company directly in the media section of our website? This might come to your mind, if you are not aware of the three-fold importance of submitting a press release on the web-based news wire services.

Importance of a press release

Press release helps our website in three ways:

It helps us inform the stake holders about the recent development in our website by setting the news out.
It helps us get back links to our website.
And the third benefit of a press release is the massive one. A press release helps us get more traffic.

A well written press release will get picked by many news publishing sites operating in your niche, which not only will give you a backlink each to your website, but it will send a constant flow of traffic as well.

SEO benefit of a press release

Everything that gets posted on the Internet can be optimized for better ranking in major search engines. Be it articles, stories, poems, videos, podcasts, images, or even a press release. Unlike the press releases written for print medium, the press release written for web is technically optimized to help the company in question get some mileage in terms of the search engine juices.

How to optimize a press release

As usual start with doing a keyword research for your niche and use it as early as you can in the first paragraph of the press release. Use the main keyword in the title of the press release as well. You should not use more than three links in the body of the press release. I will suggest using 2 links, each at a distance of at least 100 words from each other.

Tags: Backlink, Benefit, Images, Juices, Keyword Research, Major Search Engines, Mileage, News Publishing, News Wire, Niche, Paragraph, Poems, Press Release, Press Releases, Search Engine, SEO, Stake Holders, Three Ways, traffic, Web Based News

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19 Oct 09 When to Bid Freelancing Adieu?

Should I Switch?

What should I do?

When to switch?

11 Sep 09 Why to Write a Press Release for Web

Importance of a press release

SEO benefit of a press release

How to optimize a press release

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