Freelance Writing – ArcticLlama

Freelance writing is one of those things that attracts a lot of entrepreneurial people who are looking for a small business startup that they can launch with little investment and run on very little overhead. 

While it is true that little investment is required to start up your own freelance writing business, assuming you already have the requisite software and a computer, the other side of the coin is that it is also the kind of startup opportunity that has income trickle in at the beginning.

Search around the Internet for freelance writing, freelance writing business, or freelance writer and you’ll get a lot of barely informational junk on websites who actually have no interest in being freelance writers or helping you become one.  Instead, their primary interest is in showing you ads, collecting your email address, and if possible, getting you to buy something from them.  You can thank Google for this.  Persevere long enough to dig a little deeper into the search results, or use more intelligent searches with more words and you’ll eventually find the websites of real writers. 

Some of these writers are bloggers, others write books, and others are copy writers, and of course, there is everything in between.  Generally, most of these sites will eventually post something regarding the rates freelance writers earn.  Or, mores specifically, on the rates freelance writers should earn.  The overall theme is that writers should earn more than they do because writing is valuable and the only reason freelance writers get lower rates than they deserve is because non-savvy writers accept the low pay.

After you find some of these websites authored by professional writers, eventually you may also encounter websites which are not about a writer and their business, but rather websites about helping other writers find writing gigs, or helping those who are not yet freelance writers become freelance writers.  These sites too will end up with an article on rates.  Ironically, these articles will generally have the theme of why they post low paying writing gigs and that if a writer doesn’t want to take a low paying gig, they can just ignore it because some writers will want those writing jobs.

I’m not going to get into that debate, but if you want the answer, I have it.

I am a professional freelance writer as my full-time job.  I do not have another job of any kind.  Writing is the only way I make money (except for some of my websites which earn money because I am doing the writing for them).  I bring this up because that is the line that separates those who truly understanding the pay structure of professional writing and those that do not.

If freelance writing is the difference between whether or not you get to buy 3 or 4 Xbox 360 games and that “other job” is the way you pay your mortgage it is easy to sit on a high horse and sniff at lower paying jobs.  Incidentally, it is also what makes it easy to take a job no matter how little it pays because it is fun or easy.  Besides, $5 for a 1000 words is good enough to add up to Saturday night’s beer money if you do it at work when your boss isn’t looking.

But, when freelance writing is how you pay the electric bill, the mortgage, and buy clothes for your baby, you know exactly what and how you have to earn to be a full-time writer.

Minimum Pay Rate Necessary For Freelance Writing Professional

For blogging, the answer is $15 minimum per post.

For per hour jobs, the answer is $30 minimum per hour.

Believe it or not, as a professional writer, you’ll make more with the top one.

Ok, let me just say three things right off the bat.

1. GREAT Superbowl – fun, fun, fun and loads of big plays.
2. Despite #1 I lost my pool – Doh!
3. Clock Management is a HUGE skill that seems to take lots of experience to learn.

Congratulations to the World Champion Pittsburgh Steelers.  It worked out for you guys this time, so no harm no foul, but there is a valuable lesson to be learned.

With around 3 minutes to go and the ball on the 1 yard line, Pittsburgh threw the ball on first down. 

I know all about why it sounds like a good idea, but it is, in fact, the wrong move.  Decisions like this one should be made on the merits of risk versus reward.  A simpler way to look at it is this, “What happens if this goes wrong.”

Throwing on first down was just dumb.  Sure, you want to get off the goal line.  Sure, you want some room.  Sure, it’s a high percentage play and you think they might not be looking for it.  But, what happens if it doesn’t work?

We know exactly what happens if it doesn’t work.  You are right back where you started and no time runs off the clock.  NO! NO! NO!

Run the ball!

If he gets stuffed for no gain, then you have the same result as the passing play, but TIME RUNS OFF THE CLOCK!  Or, in this instance, Arizona uses up one of their timeouts.

Instead of 2nd and 10 with 3 minutes to play and Arizona still has 3 timeouts, it is 2nd and 10 with 3 minutes to play and Arizona is already thinking about how to get back to the end zone with no time outs because, they know that you will also be running the ball on 2nd down (timeout #2) and 3rd down (timeout #3) which means they will have zero time outs and barely two minutes.  That’s pressure.

Put that together with your #1 ranked defense and I don’t care if they do get the ball at your 40 yard line.  No timeouts and less than 2 minutes to play?  I like those odds a lot better than them on the 40 with 2 timeouts.

Nuff said.

Ok, so whether you run a freelance writing business, or are someone who hires freelance writers, you need your business blog to rank higher in the search engines.

That’s right, even if your fully SEO-optimized blog ranks #1 for your targeted keywords, it needs to rank higher for other keywords and other searches.  How do you do that?

SEO can (an is) be a long tedious process of trial and error, as well as the consistent application of several tried and true techniques.  But, there are some things that you can do without even trying that will push your blog up through the search engine rankings.  One of those things is frequent updates.

Google Loves Blogs and It Has a Frequent Update Fetish

Google and the other search engines have many flaws, most of which stem from trying to force a computer to make a value judgment.  One of the kinks in Google’s algorithm has to do with the “freshness” of a site.  That is, all other things being equal, a website that has been updated more recently will rank higher. While this is certainly not the end story, it is a fact, and an easily exploited one.

To take advantage of this part of the Google ranking algorithm you need to do just one thing.  Update your blog frequently.  There is some disagreement over how frequently is necessary, but the consensus generally is that at least weekly updates are the minimum and that anything more frequent than daily updates brings little boost.  So, shoot for somewhere in between daily and weekly.

Setup Weekly Mini-Posts As An Insurance Policy

That sounds easy on paper, but sooner or later you will get busy.  Business will take off, family will come to town, babies will get sick, you will get sick.  Whatever it is, during that time it will be darn hard to update your blog.

To combat the inevitable, take a block of free time and sit down and write out a dozen or so posts for your blog.  Not full posts, but rather short and sweet ones.  Make sure they are related, but they do not need to be full length.  Two hundred, or even one hundred words is all you need.

While that length is too short for maximum SEO effect, it will keep your frequency up, which is more important.  Besides, unless you go into super-slacker mode for two weeks, only one or two of these will get posted in a row, so your front page will be full of better length posts.

Type up quick anecdotes, funny stories, fictional events, definitions, quirks of industry, whatever you want, as long as it is related and evergreen (something that is fresh at a later date).  Then, save these posts as drafts.  Now, set each one to post on a certain day of the week every week for as many weeks as you have posts.  That gives you a guaranteed weekly post for the next several weeks.

To best utilize this system, every week you make a “real” post, go into your dashboard and change the future publication date of the automatic filler post that was supposed to happen that week to the week after your last little post is scheduled to go up.  That stretches out your efforts as long as possible.

Get twenty or thirty of these little guys written and ready to go and your blog posting insurance policy can easily last you up to 2 years because you’ll be publishing full posts at least some of the time.

Hire ArcticLlama To Do It For You

Don’t want to write up a bunch of mini-posts, or don’t think you can come up with enough topics.  That, my friend, is what professional freelance writers are for.  Give us the topic (or better yet, point us to your existing site) and we’ll work up a bid.  Don’t worry, it will be fast and easy, which means it will also be cheap.

In the meantime, keep those blogs up to date and watch your site move up the search results pages.