Learn to make REAL money blogging for hire
Do you have a great idea for a blog post?
Would it appeal to an audience of freelance bloggers?
Then now’s your chance to pitch your blog post idea to us and win $100 if we choose it as our favourite to publish here on Be a Freelance Blogger. 🙂
Normally, I’d write a longer introduction before announcing a new Pitchfest contest. But to be honest, I’m heavily pregnant and exhausted, so I’m just gonna lay it out and let you start pitching.
Here’s how this works… [Read more…]
Yep, it’s time for another $100 blog pitching contest! I’ll give you all the details of how to enter at the end of this post — but first, please read our guest Chana Roberts’ excellent advice on how to kick ass and win. 😉
So, you’ve found Sophie’s blog. You’ve seen the Pitchfest posts – they’re really cool. They make you drool. Oooh, a $100 prize for contributing a post, on a blog like this?
It’s a once-in-a-season contest. Pitchfests – and guest posts – are only accepted once every three months.
You want to be the winner. You want that $100 prize, and you want to show your post off. But you don’t feel qualified to enter.
Like, seriously. You’re just starting out, and you haven’t even been able to get a guest post published yet, much less find a client willing to pay more than $0.02 per word.
You feel like the biggest loser. All around you, there are successful freelancers, each with a story of, “I was in the worst place when I started, but within 6 months to a year, I was earning a full-time salary from part-time writing.”
You’re the only one left behind, you tell yourself. You suck. Big time.
And you know what? *That* is your biggest problem.
This Pitchfest is no different from any other site’s blogging job ads. Here’s how to win. [Read more…]
Now, let’s be sensible about this.
Most of the people who read this post will never get a million dollars for a photo they’ve taken. It’s unlikely, though not impossible.
But a million views, ah, that’s a different matter. It’s totally possible for a good blog post with awesome photos to get a million views. Yep, even one of *your* posts for a client whose blog is moderately popular.
Sometimes a post goes viral purely on the strength of its visuals. How many times has a photo caught your eye on a social network that isn’t dedicated specifically to images? Like on Facebook or Twitter, say, or on LinkedIn.
You may not go there intending to gawp at photos of other people’s cats, lunch, home office setup or accidental sideboob flash, but all those images are there just waiting to jump in your eyeballs as you scroll down. (OK, not so much sideboob on LinkedIn. But TBH it really depends who you network with — even LinkedIn has lively subcultures of burlesques, erotica writers, vajazzlers and other deviants.)
Why are those images there? Because someone shared the post that photo or video was featured in. Why did they share it? Because of the visual elements that make it more fun, more surprising or more insightful. More cool. More meaningful. More worth pointing out to a friend.
Point is, you can either:
(A) Write a brilliant blog post, or
(B) Write a brilliant blog post with an information-rich graphic, a funny stick-figure illustration, and a sequence of photos or screenshots that show YOU doing whatever you’re talking about in your post.
As the editor-in-chief of this reasonably popular blog you’re reading, I can tell you that I’d pay a writer more for Option B.
And now I’m giving you a chance to win $100 by creating *your* version of Option B.
Did your latest blogging pitch get accepted, or did it fall flat?
No freelancer can win them all. [But you’ll have a chance to win $100 a bit further down this post, so keep reading.]
One thing I’ve noticed is that top freelance bloggers don’t pitch much.
Now, for the love of all that’s holy, do NOT take this to mean you should stop pitching. You gotta pitch your way up the ladder until you’re close to the top.
When you’ve been doing this for a while and you’ve built a reputation for yourself, blog editors and would-be-clients start to come looking for you. They invite you to work with them.
At that point, full-blown pitches become a lot less important, and topic suggestions often become more important.
When you do pitch to new potential clients, they’re more interested in how your idea fits their content strategy and how your expertise makes you the ideal writer for the post.
So that’s what we’re gonna practice in our June 2015 Pitchfest!
In case you’re not familiar, Pitchfest is a blog post pitching contest we run every 3 months. You tell us your blog post idea and we choose our favourites, with prizes of up to $100 for the winners.
The contest starts today, but before you get your pitchin’ hat on… [Read more…]
Grammar.
How’s yours?
It’s a tricky thing to judge. You might think your grammar’s perfect, when really you’re making some howling mistakes. Then again, you might fret that your grammar isn’t good enough when it’s absolutely fine.
So I just want to say two things about grammar, and then we’ll get on to the $100 blogging opportunity. 🙂 [Read more…]