Blog Better 2 - Be a Freelance Blogger

Want to blog like a pro?

From eyeball-grabbing headlines to irresistible endings, here's how to write blog posts your clients will be happy to pay for.

Why You Don’t Have to Choose Between Doing the Right Thing and the Profitable Thing

In the movies, the heroes decide whether to do the right thing, or take the money and run. Our decisions in freelancing can often look similar: Do I take the lucrative blogging gig, even though the client makes me queasy? Or do I starve with integrity? If you’re going to have a successful career as a freelance blogger, you should know right now that this is a false dichotomy.

Reaching your maximum earning potential and maintaining your professional integrity is NOT an either/or proposition. In fact, acting with integrity is actually the best way to earn the most money. It’s true—the top earners in this industry are the ones who stick by their values, whether they’re rolling in clients at the moment or not.

The fact is, acting with integrity is the best way to ensure that you are working with the right kind of clients, and earn the kind of reputation that keeps them coming in droves. Let’s take a look at how we ended up buying into this lie that you can either have your integrity, or financial success. [Read more…]

By Katherine Swarts 5 Comments

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: [Read more…]

By DeAnna Knippling 26 Comments

Procrastination: When You’re Too Scared to Start Freelance Blogging

You’ve blocked off your freelance blogging time, you have your clients and assignments all lined up, everything is ready to go…

…and you’re cruising around on social media, not sure why you can’t get started. You’re miserable and overwhelmed with stress. You open your word processing program, check the client’s requirements, and take a few seconds to research one last thing…

…and it’s three hours later, your mental energy has drained like a tub with a leaky plug, and you’re playing a video game with your neighbor’s six-year-old kid (and losing). You’ve done solitaire, Words With Friends, Angry Birds, Farmville and…

You still haven’t started your blogging for the day. You mean to. Really you do. But every time you try to get started, your throat tightens up, your stomach clenches, you get distracted by a Facebook ad for car insurance, and before you realize it, you’ve wasted the day.

On top of which, you haven’t made your earning goals, and…you start going broke doing nothing when you very much want to be doing something.

So much for following your dreams.

Here’s how to start recognizing the habit of procrastination and learn what steps you can take to negotiate with your inner two-year-old and their delaying tactics.

Instead of continuing a cycle of trying to guilt yourself into writing, using up all your willpower, then collapsing into mindless time-killers, let’s look at procrastination itself: if it were mere laziness, then you wouldn’t be so stressed! [Read more…]

By Katherine Swarts 2 Comments

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. [Read more…]

By Kelly Gurnett 14 Comments

21 Unusual Ways to Find Blog Post Inspiration

There are plenty of questions I hate fielding from people when they find out I’m a freelance blogger (such as, “Why don’t you write for a newspaper?”). But at least I’ve developed canned responses for most of them (such as, “Because print is dying and traditional jobs make me murderous, Uncle Frank.”).

The one question I’ve yet to figure out a good response to, however, is one which on the surface seems fairly innocuous: “How do you come up with ideas?”

This is is because I myself don’t really know the answer to this.

I can say it helps to have a working knowledge of the publication you’re writing for, a sense of what has already been covered (and converted well), and a healthy heaping of creative spin to make your approach new and noteworthy. It also helps if you’ve gotten enough sleep, had enough caffeine, have nothing else stressful going on in your life, and are Seth Godin. (The man is so prolific it’s unnatural).

But even possession of all the above (minus, of course, Seth Godin) isn’t enough to ward away those times when the ideas Just. Won’t. Come. Some days you’re a wellspring of potential pitches and some days the well runs dry, but if you want to succeed as a freelance blogger, you have to find ways to prime the pump no matter what condition it’s in. Because your clients want content, and their schedule doesn’t revolve around your “aha!” moments.

When you find yourself at a loss for blog post ideas, here are 21 ways to step outside your stale, obstructed brain and jumpstart your creativity. Whatever topic you’re covering or audience you’re writing for, these hacks can be tweaked to fit your needs — and the timeframe you’re working with. [Read more…]