Katherine Swarts - Be a Freelance Blogger

About Katherine Swarts

Katherine Swarts (www.HoustonFreelanceWriter.com, https://twitter.com/houfreelance) is a freelance blogger specializing in mental-health and healthy-living topics (and all too familiar with Asperger’s syndrome and dysthmia). Her favorite things are reading, bird walks, cats, and chocolate ice cream with caramel sauce.

By Katherine Swarts

How to Cope When You Hit the “Feast” in the Freelance Blogger Feast and Famine Cycle

“I should be grateful, but…”

Has this ever happened to you?

For months your blogging income was stuck at near-poverty level, and you would have done anything for more work. Then, almost without warning, more work started flooding in — and suddenly, you’d do anything to get back the time it’s taking to keep up.

Three months after this first happened to me, the “feast” of work continues and so does the periodic “indigestion.”

Sure, it’s nice to be rid of the financial worries from the time when my regular income was a third of what it is now; but I hadn’t anticipated the recurring fears of inadequacy, the surges of irritability, the lows of emotional depression following the highs of frantic work.

It can be stressful being in a profession where your income rises and falls with busyness — “busyness” defined as keeping up with a LOT of small individual projects at once.

I’m learning to cope. This is, after all, the earning level I hope to stay at or above for the rest of my working days.

My top nuggets of wisdom for other freelance bloggers who’ve been served their first “feast”:

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By Katherine Swarts

Secrets of Being 100% Honest and Dependable as a Blogger (While Still Loving Yourself and Your Work)

Do you want to be known as a freelance blogger with integrity?

Are you committed to all that “integrity” implies? It’s not just about never telling a lie, or being straightforward with your clients, or even finishing everything by deadline.

What “Integrity” Really Means

Word-wise, “integrity” comes from the Latin integritatem or integritas, which meant “soundness,” “wholeness,” “completeness,” “purity,” “correctness,” and/or “blamelessness.” So maintaining integrity as a blogger means being thorough in your writing and editing—and that doesn’t just mean “thoroughly” getting rid of typos. The online world is full of blog posts that are perfectly spelled, grammatically flawless—and achingly dull or incomprehensibly confusing.

Integrity of thoroughness—making a post complete and whole—includes:

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By Katherine Swarts

How Your Attitude Towards “Interruptions” Can Make or Break Your Freelance Blogging Career

“There cannot be a crisis next week. My schedule is already full.” ~ Henry Kissinger

A “crisis” doesn’t have to mean a major war or a major accident. If you’re like me, it’s crisis enough to hear your e-mail beep when you’re rushing to finish the post you THOUGHT you’d left plenty of time to write. The freelance blogging vocation is full of emotional hells born from underestimating working time and overestimating life’s cooperation with your schedule.

Anger over that can hurt you mentally and physically. It can also hurt you professionally, if it poisons your overall attitude toward “interruptions.”

Opportunity Was Knocking, But I Resented the Noise

Have you ever had a potential high-paying client call out of the blue, and blown the opportunity because your brain was locked into a “Plan A” that brooked no alterations? I have. Silently fuming over the upset in how I expected things to go, I fumbled any show of enthusiasm and radiated the attitude “take your business elsewhere.” They usually did.

Actually, this is part of freelancing’s learning curve. The self-employed life, with its limited income guarantees and potential dozen-plus “bosses,” is a constant balancing act between doing your best at everything that needs doing, and leaving room on the to-do list for new opportunities. If you aren’t careful, overcommitting on “Plan A” can rob you of a “Plan B” that might serve everyone far better.

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By Katherine Swarts

Blog Visuals: A Guide for the Terminally Word-Brained Writer

Are you one of those bloggers who wants to bury your head in the sand on hearing how VISUAL the online world is these days — who wails inwardly, “But I’m a WRITER!”?

Does your knowledge of “adding visuals” stop at copying and pasting clip art?

Do you envy magazine-article and picture-book writers who can leave the whole task of finding visuals to the publisher?

I understand; I could answer “yes” to all the above. But let’s face it: you can’t be an entrepreneur and expect the market to make all the allowances for taste. So here’s a simple guide for word-brained writers to get to grips with creating visual media for their blog posts.

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By Katherine Swarts

3 Unconventional Ways to Measure Your Progress When You Feel Like You Aren’t Going Anywhere

When you first heard — perhaps right here on BAFB — about the burgeoning freelance blogging market, you leaped in with high hopes. You were already counting the income that would pour in from your favorite type of writing.

A couple of months later, the enthusiasm is smothering under a pile of discouragement. Jobs are few, rejections are daily, income is thin. And you’re wondering: “How did I ever get into this? I’m going nowhere. Why not cut my losses and quit?”

Though you may be tempted to think that every other freelance blogger is showered with high-paying work from the start, you’re actually in the majority. Most writers, including blog writers, belong to humanity’s pool of “creative” minds that ricochet from big dreams to big disappointments, taking stories of (extremely rare and often only apparent) overnight success as guarantees, and equating anything less with failure.

Don’t believe it! You may be making more progress than you think.

Created equal but not identical

Contrary to impressions given by many “how-to” articles — even many written by established freelancers — a surge in income and clients isn’t the inevitable quick result of becoming a freelance blogger.

If you’re lucky enough to be a natural entrepreneur or an expert on a high-demand topic, things may work out that way; but many of us need to grow in other areas first.

The one thing all full-time freelance bloggers have in common is good writing skills (okay, some Internet skills are also necessary). Everything else — topic focus, working hours, writing style — is unique to the individual blogger.

So, trying to copy perfectly a successful blogger’s career-building story, on the assumption that their result of $4,000 a month within six months is thus guaranteed to become yours, guarantees only disappointment.

Blame the legendary “butterfly effect”: One flap of a wing (one small difference in attitude or approach) is enough to unleash a chain reaction leading to a tornado (perceived failure of the whole project).

Every blogger needs to work out his or her own best approach, and decide how to measure progress. Obvious progress indicators include a record of guest posts or a growing bank account, but there are many other ways to keep track — even if you feel you’re not getting anywhere yet.

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