Stay Sane 2 - Be a Freelance Blogger

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 Hayley Chalkley 44 Comments

6 Get-It-Done Tips for a Fairytale Freelance Blogging Career

Want to live happily ever after as a successful freelance blogger?

Then you’ve got to get stuff done, get it done well and get it done on time.

Sounds simple, but it’s not always that easy.

Looming deadlines and a rising workload are sure signs business is booming and the dream is coming true. But when the pressure starts to build and the panic’s setting in, you can find yourself lost in the writing woods.

Never fear. Whether you’re struggling to get started on a project, spinning your wheels in the messy middle or challenged by completion, together we can tame the wolves of time and reach grandma’s cottage safely (a.k.a. meet the deadlines, deliver the goods and exceed the expectations of our clients).

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By Pinar Tarhan 13 Comments

F*** Conventional Wisdom: How to Get Shit Done as A Freelance Blogger by Breaking the Rules

Conventional people don’t generally become freelance bloggers. It makes sense since most of us regularly deal with anxiety, rejection, distraction, and other problems. It takes a different kind of beast to make deadlines, satisfy clients, overcome introversion, and destroy the feast or famine cycle.

As freelance bloggers, we constantly have to be on the top of our game. We need to know what’s going on in our chosen niches, find experts to quote in our articles, research potential clients and publications we want to work with, brainstorm for new ideas, keep up with our deadlines, and always be marketing. Since we also need to find time for important people and things in our life, we naturally desire to be at our most productive at all times.

While the Internet and self-development shelves overflow with productivity advice, they aren’t all designed for freelance bloggers. They don’t necessarily keep our health issues in mind, or the kids we have to look after as we strive to maintain a sane and stable working environment at home. Then there are differences in our personalities of course.

So below are my seemingly irrational tips that can work wonders for freelance bloggers with flaky tendencies, coming from a flaky freelance blogger who has been doing this for over eight years:

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By Sophie Lizard 287 Comments

The Total Flake’s Guide to Getting Shit Done [Plus Your Chance to Win $100!]

OK, confession time:

People often ask me for productivity advice, and I usually point them elsewhere because…

…I’m actually a total flake.

Most of the time, I have no idea how I get shit done. In fact, I’m often surprised that I get ANYTHING done.

But recently, I had several conversations with my favourite client (who I just quit working with, even though they’re my uber-best client ever — that’s a story I’ll tell another day) about how I do what I do.

And I realised: Wow, I do get a lot of shit done!

In the past year, I’ve written hundreds of thousands of words of copy and content for my clients’ emails, sales pages, books, and blog posts…

…Published an ebook (with Lauren as my co-author)…

…Earned a *very* healthy income from working with a small handful of amazing people — and flew around the world to meet some of them in person…

…Helped my students to start and grow their freelance blogging careers…

…and that’s without even considering all the *other* stuff I’ve done, like taking weeks off work to travel with my family, or going to parent-teacher meetings, school performances, and sports events, or spending hours in IKEA sitting on all the furniture before going home with a multipack of plastic plates and a stuffed toy for each of my girls.

I’ve also wasted plenty of time flicking through Netflix and YouTube, reading articles about stuff I have absolutely no need to know, staring blankly out of the window while interesting thoughts scampered around in my mind, and dream-planning next year’s summer break. 😉

So the question my client asked me was this: “When we’re hiring someone to replace you, what should we look for? How do we identify someone like you, that gets done what needs to be done and doesn’t freak out under pressure?”

To which I said, “Umm… I dunno… I don’t do anything special, this is just how I work… and I DO freak out under pressure, I just do the work anyway.”

Because I’m helpful and articulate like that, right?

(Funny story: in the end, my client hired two new full-time writers to replace me. But their business is growing, so that hiring decision *wasn’t* purely about my mad productivity skillz.)

Now that I’ve had a bit of time to think about it, I’ve finally managed to figure out what I do that helps me get shit done. And now that I know what it is, I’m happy to share it!

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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:

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