Stay Sane 3 - Be a Freelance Blogger

Plans B, C, D, and Beyond to Keep Sane and Prolific as a Freelance Blogger

“Do you honestly believe I don’t have a plan B? And if that fails a plan C? Then a plan… You know how the alphabet goes, don’t you?” Katherine Pierce says in The Vampire Diaries, episode 6 of season 2 after Salvatore brothers, her arch-enemies and former lovers, take care of her plan A.

Though she’s one of the villains of the show and makes life very difficult for my favorite characters, she has my respect due to her strategic thinking. Freelance bloggers should take a page or two out of her planning book – just not the evil endgame part.

Because like life and all compelling TV, freelancing can be maddeningly unpredictable. Unexpected illnesses, recurring health problems, romantic distractions, loss of loved ones, disappearing clients, constantly changing editors, and more keep you on your toes, terrified to look at your bank balance.

Luckily, you already took efficient measures to keep one step ahead of the damn fast curveballs: your plans B, C, D and beyond:

[Read more…]

By Lisa Fourman 6 Comments

How to Stop Anxiety from Ruining Your Freelance Blogging Career

You stare at your computer screen as your heart rate picks up speed. You can’t help yourself when it comes to your fear since this is how you always react.

Your cursor has been blinking at you for quite some time. You’ve been trying to figure out how to convince someone to use you as their freelance blogger.

It doesn’t make any sense. You’ve tried every way imaginable to calm yourself down. You’ve also tried to convince this person that you are the better blogger over the other person.

Won’t they use someone else in the end anyway? They’ve already asked you this question themselves. You conceded to this fact as you let this client walk away from using your services.

You’re worrying yourself sick with anxiety about this situation. You know you aren’t the best at convincing prospects to use you as their freelance blogger.

Here’s the problem I see with your anxiety, my friend. Anxiety shouldn’t be the determining factor in your decisions for your blogging business.

Let’s break down how to stop anxiety from ruining your freelance blogging career.

[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 Sophie Lizard 275 Comments

Feel the Fear and for F*ck’s Sake Get Over Yourself [$100 Prize!]

How many posts are there about fear on this blog?

How many about confidence? To most people, confidence implies an absence of fear, so it’s pretty much the same topic.

And, oh, you’ve felt the fear. You feel it and hurt under it and let it drag you down into this swamp of self-doubt so you don’t get as much done as you know you could. When you do take action, you take it so nervously it hardly makes any impact.

That’s why there are a bazillion self-help books and blog posts about courage and bravery and confidence and self-esteem and assertiveness and “fake it til you make it” and it goes on. I’m stopping there.

Listen, I get it. It’s kinda scary when you’re not 100% sure what you’re doing, or if it’ll work. In blogger mentoring sessions, I often spend time reassuring my students that yes, they’re doing this right, they’re doing fine, they should keep doing it and aim a bit higher next time, nobody’s going to mind, the universe will not implode…

I get it.

But here’s what YOU might not be getting:

It doesn’t matter. Your fear is irrelevant.

Freelance bloggers, it’s time to get over it and get freelance blogging.

If you have a genuine phobia that makes it extremely unpleasant for you to even think about writing a blog post or sending an email to a potential client, you’re excused. [And you should probably get professional treatment to make your phobia easier to manage.] I know if my laptop were swarming with spiders, Arachnophobia-style, I wouldn’t get any work done because I’d be too busy hyperventilating.

But if you’re just a bit scared… then you need to get past, through or over that feeling.

[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…]