Lauren Spear - Be a Freelance Blogger

4 Ways to Earn Passive Income for Freelance Bloggers

Freelance blogging is hard work. Much harder than some of us expected! What happened to living the dream? To getting our “money for nothing and our chicks for free?”

Well, I’m not sure about how to get your chicks for free, but I can help you with the “money for nothing” aspect. At least to some extent.

At this point in your career you’ve probably heard the term “passive income” at least once. Now, to fully understand passive income, let’s first take a look at what qualifies as “active” income:

Active income is money that you have to earn actively. (Makes sense so far, right?). Money you make from your freelance blogging “job” is active income. As is any money you have to be present to earn. You perform a service once (like writing a blog post for a client), you earn money for it once. It’s the income model we’re all more-or-less familiar with.

Now, what qualifies as “passive” income will vary from place to place, but the basic gist of it is this: It’s the exact opposite of active income.

Passive income can be earned even when you’re not around — it can run on auto-pilot. It’s money earned with little-to-no effort on your part. You perform a service once, you earn money from it multiple times. With no additional work from you!

Sounds pretty good, right? Now, imagine setting up multiple revenue streams, all passive. Each of these revenue streams will take effort to set up initially; however, after they’ve been put in place, you could potentially earn more money than you earn now… for doing nothing at all. Talk about living the dream!

[Read more…]

By Lauren Spear 115 Comments

How to Keep Freelance Blogging When You’re Mentally Ill

“I’ve really got to get on with writing this post. And pitch an idea to that interesting blog I found, too.

But… I don’t know… maybe I’m not good enough for them. Maybe I should go back to bed and leave the writing until I feel more inspired. Meh.

Wait, did I put a fork in the spoon compartment this morning? I better go check… OK, no fork. Back to work!

Muhahaha, this post is brilliant! I’m a genius. No, I’m an idiot. This is the worst thing I ever wrote. Delete, delete, delete. There isn’t enough delete to undo my stupidity. I suck. My clients will hate me and I’ll lose this gig.

If I can’t pull this off then I’ll never make it as a freelance blogger, and then I won’t be able to pay the rent and I’ll wind up homeless and oh god I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe and I think I might die right here face down on my keyboard and my cat will eat my corpse and nobody will notice because everybody hates me anyway and… wait, did I check the spoon compartment carefully enough?”

Does this sound familiar to you?

Sure, these could be the thoughts of almost any freelance blogger under pressure. But if your thoughts run like this a lot of the time, then it’s also possible you’re a freelance blogger with a mental health problem.

Freelance blogging isn’t easy. Having a mental illness isn’t easy. And trying to be a freelance blogger with a mental illness really isn’t easy. Take it from someone who knows.

Actually, take it from three someones who know:

Sophie Lizard, owner of Be A Freelance Blogger; Kelly Gurnett of Cordelia Calls it Quits; and Lauren Tharp (that’s me!) of LittleZotz Writing.

That’s right, all three of us are mentally ill. And all three of us are successful freelance bloggers.

[Read more…]

By Lauren Spear 16 Comments

Reverse Scope Creep: How to Break Up With Your Ever-Shrinking Freelance Gig

He’s cheating on you.

You’re doing everything you used to do for him — all those things he said he loved — but he’s pulling away. Oh, sure, he says you’re still the tops and that he never wants to end his relationship with you, but it’s just not the same as it used to be.

But you know he needs what you’d been giving him. Really needs it. So, if he’s not getting it from you, he must be getting it somewhere else…

Sounds like you’re dealing with reverse scope creep!

Reverse scope creep is killing your relationship

“Reverse scope creep” was a term we came up with in the (free!) Be A Freelance Blogger forum to describe a client condition that’s the opposite of the dreaded “scope creep.” Let me show you what I mean:

Scope creep = When a project slowly gets out of control by becoming much, much larger than what you initially agreed to in your contract. Basically when a client continues to ask you to do “just one more thing” and you do, because you’re too nice for your own good.

Reverse scope creep = When your contract promised you a ton of work but now you’re barely doing anything. For instance, you were told you’d be writing (and getting paid for) 3-4 blog posts per month… but now you’re lucky if you get assigned/paid for one blog post every two months. But your client still “really loves” your work and wants you to continue working with them.

It’s an odd situation to find yourself in as a freelance blogger. There’s a chance you haven’t even come across this problem in your career yet. However, there are four main reasons why reverse scope creep crops up…

[Read more…]

By Lauren Spear 73 Comments

Why Your Guest Posts Keep Getting Rejected

For those of you who don’t know, my name is Lauren Tharp and I was the Be A Freelance Blogger official Community Helper for quite a while. (And I’m trying my very best to not let my moderate amount of power go to my head…)

Basically, I helped answer comments and questions on the blog and social media, and I was in charge of guest posts/writers for the blog. That’s right: I’m the one who made sure your guest post got uploaded into the BAFB backend, didn’t have any typos or weird grammatical errors, included your author bio and appropriate links, and was otherwise magnificent. 🙂

I was also the person you had to pitch your ideas to.

Yeah…

Anyone who wanted to write for Be A Freelance Blogger had to write to me first with their pitch. From there, I made the decision to reject your query outright or send you along to Sophie (the gal you really have to impress). I was the first gatekeeper.

I loved my job. But sometimes it made me a little sad. Out of all the writers who pitch, only 10-15% of them actually made it to the next step. I had to reject a lot of pitches.

[Read more…]

By Lauren Spear 107 Comments

From Zero to Freelance Blogger: Start Your Engines

The journey to become a freelance blogger—or proofreader , copywriter, editor, freelance anything really!—can be an overwhelming one.

You know you want to, you just don’t know where the heck to start!

Do you print up business cards? Build a website? Talk to your accountant? Start looking for work immediately… or wait a few months? Ugh!

Writing has been my sole source of income for over 3 years now and even I get a little queasy looking at that. I remember all-too-well what it was like to be a newbie: As exciting and full of opportunity as it was, it was also gut-wrenchingly frightening.

It doesn’t have to be.

When I first took the plunge and went freelance, I kept wishing that there was a map I could look at. Some sort of step-by-step guide. I understood that the journey was my own—and that everyone’s freelance journey is different—but there were some things that everyone experienced, weren’t there? There had to be!

Turns out, I was right.

[Read more…]