Freelance Writing – Where to Focus?

Freelance writers don’t know where to focus.

Look at the long-term.

Do you want to:

1. Write for someone else the rest of your life?

2. Write for yourself for the rest of your life?

From there it gets really easy what you should be focusing on. I’m going to guess than NOBODY wants to write for someone else the rest of their lives. There are people that do, but they are anomalies and we don’t care about them. We care about us, and WE want to write for ourselves because… well, we’re all sorts of intelligent over here in this camp.

What is the path to being able to write for yourself as a long-term goal?

There are many paths, this is the one I’m suggesting everyone jump on as fast as you can.

1. Take a pulling-no-punches look at yourself. Are you a writer? Can you write? Have others said they LOVE how you write? Have you written something that has been read many times – 1,000? 10,000? 1 million times? Did you get great feedback on it? Or, are you someone that is dedicated to becoming a great writer?

There are writers that have it already, and there are writers that can get it after a lot of work. If you’re not one of those two people, choose another profession.

2. Forget writing articles that you hope to sell. It isn’t scalable. By writing one article and shopping it around, you are wasting heaps of time that you could be spending doing other things that are more productive.

3. Do write articles that get you noticed. Find top bloggers that are in the same niche that you want to write about. Create 5 titles of provocative, new, or cool articles that you offer to the blog owner and ask her if you could write one of them as a guest blogger there. Be ready to show prior articles as samples of your writing. Ideally you’d have your own blog, but not really necessary.

Write the hell out of that article and submit it. Your story will be seen by hundreds of thousands of people over time. And, you’ll get a link back to your website where you can start building a list of email subscribers using Aweber.com’s list-building service.

4. Write your own books. The world of book writing has just changed remarkably. Today I can write a 15,000 word book and sell it for $9.95 at Amazon or $29.95 at Clickbank.com or websites across the world if it’s a groundbreaking book with more information than anyone else has on a small niche topic.

When I say, “Write your own books” – I mean ebooks. Books, paper books, are dead. Don’t write another paper book in your life. Paper books are old, they are too long, they are a waste of paper, time, money, ideas, and they’re not the future. Switch now.

5. Keep writing your own books and selling them. Try hard to know who your customers are so you can send them notices of future books being released – which they may also buy. Build your brand. The more people that hear about you – the better you’ll do. You can do well being an asshole or a saint. You should probably choose which – now.

If you are going to be a writer, write for yourself. There is nothing more rewarding in life – career wise, than producing something unique and having other people that appreciate it – buy it.

Writing your own books and putting them up for sale gives you residual income where you are doing nothing but watching sales come into your email box. It makes for a glorious day when I wake up in the morning after 7 hours of sleep and see 10 book sales in my email. What makes it better is knowing that I’ll continue to get sales for the next couple years off those same books. The rate of sales may increase or decrease – but, I’ll make sales. Also, I know I can do many things to increase the rate of sales… it’s within my power to make myself a winner.

Strive to be a writer for yourself – not for corporations, not for search engines.

Grading Myself Today: A-

I did about 29 things today, and yet the only two questions that really matter are:

How much did I write today?

How well did I write today?

How much? About average, which is maybe 4,000 words. If I write 4,000 words  I give myself an “A”. It matters not whether what I wrote is publishable, for this question the only thing that mattters is quantity. What matters is that I wrote 4,000 words.

So, my average day is an “A” level effort in my own opinion. If you’re shooting for a “C” then you’re not all that into what you’re doing and maybe writing isn’t for you. Maybe you should take up internet marketing like everyone else that can’t write. Format resumes or something. Be honest with yourself. You should be able to regularly come up with “A” grades.

How well did I write today? I wrote some blog posts, some comments, and some email. It’s 7:30 pm and I haven’t written anything for my books yet. So, right now I’m doing OK – but not awesome. I gave myself a “-”.

In my mind this A- isn’t acceptable and now I know I’m going to write some in the books tonight. It’s not OK to go to sleep knowing I’m at an A-. It’s not what I’ve allowed myself to do. I’ve got to put that grade in my Google Calendar if I don’t make it right tonight. I don’t like to see any A- days in the calendar.

If you grade yourself for the day well before you are ready to quit, then you’re able to salvage the day and make it not just a good day, but an awesome day.

Strive for awesome days. Give yourself the motivation to have awesome days. Give yourself the kick in the ass to have awesome days. (Did I use ass yet in this post?) It’s a frustrating obsessive compulsive practice, this getting the ass in every post. Call it a character fault.

How’d you do today – what is your grade based on these two easy questions?