About Sophie Lizard

“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…]

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…]

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…]

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…]

Did your latest blogging pitch get accepted, or did it fall flat?

No freelancer can win them all. [But you’ll have a chance to win $100 a bit further down this post, so keep reading.]

One thing I’ve noticed is that top freelance bloggers don’t pitch much.

Now, for the love of all that’s holy, do NOT take this to mean you should stop pitching. You gotta pitch your way up the ladder until you’re close to the top.

When you’ve been doing this for a while and you’ve built a reputation for yourself, blog editors and would-be-clients start to come looking for you. They invite you to work with them.

At that point, full-blown pitches become a lot less important, and topic suggestions often become more important.

When you do pitch to new potential clients, they’re more interested in how your idea fits their content strategy and how your expertise makes you the ideal writer for the post.

So that’s what we’re gonna practice in our June 2015 Pitchfest!

In case you’re not familiar, Pitchfest is a blog post pitching contest we run every 3 months. You tell us your blog post idea and we choose our favourites, with prizes of up to $100 for the winners.

The contest starts today, but before you get your pitchin’ hat on…  [Read more…]