About Sophie Lizard

Founder of Be a Freelance Blogger, creator of the free Ultimate List of Better-Paid Blogging Gigs and the Freelance Blogger's Client Hunting Masterclass. Hello!

By Sophie Lizard 191 Comments — Last updated July 1, 2017

Why You Should Step the Fuck Up to Be a Freelance Blogger

Do you love a challenge?

What if we call it a dare instead? You in?

Oh, you want to know what it is first. OK. In a nutshell:

I dare you to succeed as a freelance blogger.

Now let me ask you again: are you in?

If you are, I’ve got the one piece of information that will make a HUGE difference to your success as a freelance blogger. And I’m going to share it with you right here and now, so keep reading.

[If you have absolutely no interest in being a freelance blogger, feel free to leave.]

Excellent. Now that they’re gone, it’s just you and me, so let’s be honest with each other. Can we do that?

Get your business head on, and brace yourself: I’m going to be blunt. Because if I don’t tell you this, I’m not sure that anybody else will have the guts to say it to your face… [Read more…]

By Sophie Lizard 270 Comments — Last updated June 3, 2017

Feel the Fear and for F*ck’s Sake Get Over Yourself [$100 Prize!]

How many posts are there about fear on this blog?

How many about confidence? To most people, confidence implies an absence of fear, so it’s pretty much the same topic.

And, oh, you’ve felt the fear. You feel it and hurt under it and let it drag you down into this swamp of self-doubt so you don’t get as much done as you know you could. When you do take action, you take it so nervously it hardly makes any impact.

That’s why there are a bazillion self-help books and blog posts about courage and bravery and confidence and self-esteem and assertiveness and “fake it til you make it” and it goes on. I’m stopping there.

Listen, I get it. It’s kinda scary when you’re not 100% sure what you’re doing, or if it’ll work. In blogger mentoring sessions, I often spend time reassuring my students that yes, they’re doing this right, they’re doing fine, they should keep doing it and aim a bit higher next time, nobody’s going to mind, the universe will not implode…

I get it.

But here’s what YOU might not be getting:

It doesn’t matter. Your fear is irrelevant.

Freelance bloggers, it’s time to get over it and get freelance blogging.

If you have a genuine phobia that makes it extremely unpleasant for you to even think about writing a blog post or sending an email to a potential client, you’re excused. [And you should probably get professional treatment to make your phobia easier to manage.] I know if my laptop were swarming with spiders, Arachnophobia-style, I wouldn’t get any work done because I’d be too busy hyperventilating.

But if you’re just a bit scared… then you need to get past, through or over that feeling. [Read more…]

By Sophie Lizard 213 Comments — Last updated March 27, 2017

Your Freelance Blogging Plan B [How to Survive When Plan A Turns to Shit]

“Oh, holy fuck. Fuck fuckitty fuck fuck….”

That’s what my brain said. That’s probably what my mouth said too, but to be honest I can’t remember because I was too busy panicking.

Why?

Because my freelance blogging career took a nosedive from sweet, easy profit into the frozen, thumb-twiddling hell of I HAVE NO CLIENTS AND NO INCOME.

Plus I was the primary moneymaker in my little family and they were all depending on me to keep them housed and fed. So, y’know, no pressure. 😉

Shit happens

It was early 2012; Google had just updated its algorithms to stop crappy websites from ranking high in search results, and I’d been working 25 hours per week for a client whose websites were definitely kinda crappy. So when Google updated, those websites tanked and my client couldn’t afford to keep me.

I scrambled to pick up a couple of new clients, made sure this time that their websites were not crappy or grey-hatted, and kept on going. I also spent more than $10,000 on coaching and training programs to improve my business skills that year.

Fast forward 3 years to early 2015 and there I am, billing my clients up to $13,000 per month, owning a popular blog, working only part-time and only on projects that suit me, while planning my wedding and honeymoon.

So everything must have turned out just fine, right?

I wish.

[Read more…]

By Sophie Lizard 182 Comments — Last updated June 26, 2016

Win $100 and Get Published: Enter Our Pitchfest!

Most blogs have a process for choosing whose posts they’ll publish.

And most blogs keep that process hidden in private emails.

They might give you guidelines to help you write and format your pitches and posts the way the blog’s editors like, but that isn’t the same thing as letting you see inside the selection process.

Consider this post (or more accurately, the comments on this post) your window into how we choose the guest posts we publish on this blog. Use it as a place to practice your pitching, or take a serious shot at first prize — or if you’re super-shy, you can just lurk and learn. But we hope you’ll join in!

Now, the ~~million~~ hundred-dollar question:

Do you have a great idea for a blog post that an audience of freelance bloggers would want to read?

Then now’s your chance to pitch your blog post idea to us and win $100 if we choose it as our favourite to publish here on Be a Freelance Blogger. 🙂

Here’s how this works… [Read more…]

By Sophie Lizard 253 Comments — Last updated March 6, 2016

Pitch Your Blog Post, Win $100: It’s Pitchfest Time!

Do you have a great idea for a blog post?

Would it appeal to an audience of freelance bloggers?

Then now’s your chance to pitch your blog post idea to us and win $100 if we choose it as our favourite to publish here on Be a Freelance Blogger. 🙂

Normally, I’d write a longer introduction before announcing a new Pitchfest contest. But to be honest, I’m heavily pregnant and exhausted, so I’m just gonna lay it out and let you start pitching.

Here’s how this works… [Read more…]

By Sophie Lizard 22 Comments — Last updated January 15, 2016

How to Be a Freelance Blogger: Make the Smartest Dumb Moves in Your Career

How many times have you mentioned freelance blogging to someone only to have them throw a shitpile of doubt on your career choice?

How many times have you avoided telling someone about your career and ambitions, simply because you didn’t want to have that depressing conversation again? You know, the one where you try to justify your desire to freelance and write blog posts for a living — but the person you’re trying to justify it *to* doesn’t believe you can possibly make it work.

That many times, huh? Hmmf. Me too. In fact, I still have that conversation with people now, 6 years into my successful and lucrative freelance blogging career.

Just the other day, someone who’s known me a long time asked, “So how much do you really make an hour? I mean, say you write something for a client and they pay you $20, how long does it take you to earn that?”

I laughed so hard I started crying. Then I cried so hard I had to laugh.

Then I explained that I haven’t written anything for as little as $20 since, ooh, fucking NEVER. And that my entire reason for doing what I do here on this blog is to help other freelance bloggers (like *you*) avoid working for low pay too. [Read more…]

By Sophie Lizard 244 Comments — Last updated December 6, 2015

Pitchfest: Do Newbies REALLY Have A Chance at Winning? And If So, How?

Yep, it’s time for another $100 blog pitching contest! I’ll give you all the details of how to enter at the end of this post — but first, please read our guest Chana Roberts’ excellent advice on how to kick ass and win. 😉

So, you’ve found Sophie’s blog. You’ve seen the Pitchfest posts – they’re really cool. They make you drool. Oooh, a $100 prize for contributing a post, on a blog like this?

It’s a once-in-a-season contest. Pitchfests – and guest posts – are only accepted once every three months.

You want to be the winner. You want that $100 prize, and you want to show your post off. But you don’t feel qualified to enter.

Like, seriously. You’re just starting out, and you haven’t even been able to get a guest post published yet, much less find a client willing to pay more than $0.02 per word.

You feel like the biggest loser. All around you, there are successful freelancers, each with a story of, “I was in the worst place when I started, but within 6 months to a year, I was earning a full-time salary from part-time writing.”

You’re the only one left behind, you tell yourself. You suck. Big time.

And you know what? *That* is your biggest problem.

This Pitchfest is no different from any other site’s blogging job ads. Here’s how to win. [Read more…]

By Sophie Lizard 33 Comments — Last updated October 4, 2015

Why Starting a Freelance Business Is Nothing Like Having a Baby

Oh, you might think starting a business has a lot in common with having a baby.

They’re similar in a few ways, I admit.

But I was pregnant throughout the start of my freelance blogging business, so I can tell you from experience: the differences outweigh the similarities by approximately one metric shit-ton.

Sure, starting a business and having a baby both involve feeling excited, hopeful, and nervous all at once.

And sure, I can understand why some people call their businesses and blogs their “babies”. [I think it’s a bit wacky and melodramatic, but I can understand it.]

No matter how you slice it, though, there are vital differences between starting your freelance blogging business and having a baby.

SPOILER: The business is easier. [Read more…]

By Sophie Lizard 166 Comments — Last updated September 5, 2015

Why Your Photos Are Worth Millions [Plus a $100 Pitchfest Prize]

Now, let’s be sensible about this.

Most of the people who read this post will never get a million dollars for a photo they’ve taken. It’s unlikely, though not impossible.

But a million views, ah, that’s a different matter. It’s totally possible for a good blog post with awesome photos to get a million views. Yep, even one of *your* posts for a client whose blog is moderately popular.

Sometimes a post goes viral purely on the strength of its visuals. How many times has a photo caught your eye on a social network that isn’t dedicated specifically to images? Like on Facebook or Twitter, say, or on LinkedIn.

You may not go there intending to gawp at photos of other people’s cats, lunch, home office setup or accidental sideboob flash, but all those images are there just waiting to jump in your eyeballs as you scroll down. (OK, not so much sideboob on LinkedIn. But TBH it really depends who you network with — even LinkedIn has lively subcultures of burlesques, erotica writers, vajazzlers and other deviants.)

Why are those images there? Because someone shared the post that photo or video was featured in. Why did they share it? Because of the visual elements that make it more fun, more surprising or more insightful. More cool. More meaningful. More worth pointing out to a friend.

Point is, you can either:

(A) Write a brilliant blog post, or

(B) Write a brilliant blog post with an information-rich graphic, a funny stick-figure illustration, and a sequence of photos or screenshots that show YOU doing whatever you’re talking about in your post.

As the editor-in-chief of this reasonably popular blog you’re reading, I can tell you that I’d pay a writer more for Option B.

And now I’m giving you a chance to win $100 by creating *your* version of Option B.

[Read more…]