Be a Freelance Blogger

Your Freelance Blogging Plan B [How to Survive When Plan A Turns to Shit]

“Oh, holy fuck. Fuck fuckitty fuck fuck….”

That’s what my brain said. That’s probably what my mouth said too, but to be honest I can’t remember because I was too busy panicking.

Why?

Because my freelance blogging career took a nosedive from sweet, easy profit into the frozen, thumb-twiddling hell of I HAVE NO CLIENTS AND NO INCOME.

Plus I was the primary moneymaker in my little family and they were all depending on me to keep them housed and fed. So, y’know, no pressure. 😉

Shit happens

It was early 2012; Google had just updated its algorithms to stop crappy websites from ranking high in search results, and I’d been working 25 hours per week for a client whose websites were definitely kinda crappy. So when Google updated, those websites tanked and my client couldn’t afford to keep me.

I scrambled to pick up a couple of new clients, made sure this time that their websites were not crappy or grey-hatted, and kept on going. I also spent more than $10,000 on coaching and training programs to improve my business skills that year.

Fast forward 3 years to early 2015 and there I am, billing my clients up to $13,000 per month, owning a popular blog, working only part-time and only on projects that suit me, while planning my wedding and honeymoon.

So everything must have turned out just fine, right?

I wish.

[Read more…]

By Peter Boyle

How to Break Up with a Client without Burning Your Bridges

Why did you become a freelance blogger?

That’s not a hypothetical question, I want to see the reason in the comments below.

Why am I asking? Because most freelancers lose sight of why they shunned the 9-5 to chase the freelance dream.

They start out full of promise. They want to live life on their terms, build their own empire, and get paid to do what they love, write.

If we boil that down, I’d say bloggers like you place a higher importance on happiness and personal growth than simple financial gain.

And that’s amazing.

But it rarely lasts. The dreams that drove you to leave your 9-5 soon escape your grasp. And with them go your positivity, happiness, and dreams of personal growth.

You see, most freelancers I speak to end up miserable, overworked messes. They’re terrified of falling from feast into famine and end up stuck.

Stuck doing work they hate for clients they despise. Stuck being overworked, under appreciated, and wishing they had more time to explore how they can improve themselves and their business.

But their fear of losing income prevents them from doing this. And that’s no way to live.

What most freelancers fail to understand is that holding on to clients because they pay is not how to run a successful business. You are the commodity and the value of your business.

When you’re unhappy, that value drops. You owe it to yourself and your business to drop bad clients. Sure, you’ll lose some income in the short term, but you’ll be a happier, more productive you which will help with long term growth.

[Read more…]

By Lauren Spear

5 Steps to Take When You Lose Your Best Blogging Client

Before I became the Managing Editor of Be a Freelance Blogger, I was a reader, just like you. And I’m still an avid reader of the posts here to this very day.

One of my all-time favorite posts here on BAFB is th i s one on preparing for the Feast or Famine Cycle. It details how you can prepare yourself ahead of time for the “Famine” part of the cycle so that, when it comes, you won’t take as much of a hit financially or mentally. It’s great stuff!

But what about those times when – WHAMMO! – you find yourself in the “Famine” part of the cycle unexpectedly?

As freelancers, it’s not uncommon for us to be let go with little to no warning from contracts that were supposedly “steady.” It happened to me just last month! A company I was working for suddenly went under and laid off all of their employees (including me!) with zero warning ahead of time. None of us had any idea anything was financially wrong with the business until we found ourselves suddenly jobless. And that’s not an uncommon story among freelance bloggers.

First of all, don’t panic. What you’re going through is normal, and you will find another job.

After the bone-chilling realization that you’re suddenly “unemployed” sinks in, remind yourself that you’re a freelancer and that you’re never truly “unemployed.” You’re your own boss! The only way for you to be truly jobless is if you quit freelance blogging altogether. And you’re not about to do that, right? Yeah. I didn’t think so.

So, after you’ve come to grips with your new situation and reassured yourself that everything’s going to be fine eventually, there are a few steps you should take…

[Read more…]

By Oleg Starko

Going from $75 to $250 per Post… with the Same Freelance Blogging Client (A Step-by-Step Case Study)

Your freelance blogging dream was a trap.

And you never saw it coming.

“Get as many clients as you can,” they said. “You’ll always have steady work!”

And you did! Now your calendar is full, and you churn out blog posts like nobody’s business.

So… how is that bad?

I’m glad you asked!

For your freelance blogging business to thrive, getting steady work at a steady rate isn’t enough. I mean, if “steady” were all you wanted, you might as well have stayed at your day job!

You need room for growth. For raising your rates to reflect the growing value of your work. For landing new high-paying clients. You can’t afford to be stuck on a hamster wheel of writing blog posts, day in and day out.

For most freelance bloggers, solving this problem boils down to three options:

[Read more…]

By Pinar Tarhan

How to Get Paid As An International Freelance Blogger When You Can’t Use PayPal

Getting paid is a pain point for a lot of freelance bloggers. We mainly face these three questions: How, how often, and how much?

Now, how much you charge depends on a lot of factors including niche, experience and confidence. How often depends on whether you are getting paid monthly, weekly, per post and/or if you are charging a retainer for the privilege of receiving your kickass services. (Go, you! I’m so proud!)

And the how part is often solved through a mutual love for PayPal, the most popular online payment processor.

Ah, I love PayPal. Or I used to.

I used it religiously for getting paid, shopping online, and paying for stuff. How could I not? It’s easy to use, comes with a ready template for billing clients, and there’s no minimum amount at which you can withdraw the money to your linked bank account. Whether it is 5 bucks or 5000, you can withdraw it to your bank, and it is free to do so.

Then PayPal got lazy, didn’t comply with some of the business regulations in Turkey, and being an international writer became even more difficult. And Turkey isn’t the only country where PayPal doesn’t work in. This is a problem because editors are increasingly using PayPal as their preferred payment method. Fees are a lot less compared to checks, and some writers even figured out how to pay even less in transaction fees.

There are reputable marketplaces where you are matched with clients according to your experience and selected niches. ClearVoice is one of them. Guess the only way they pay their writers.

PayPal is also the default payment method for most merchants, so this negatively affects your affiliate income as well.

So what are alternative payment methods?

[Read more…]

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Shit happens