Archive for category Business Help

Setting, Increasing, and Sticking To Your Freelance Writing Rates

Posted by Alicia in Business Help, Writing Advice on January 11, 2010

Do you need a witty caption? Really? I think it's pretty self-explanatory.

One of my goals for 2010 is to stop working so much on the weekends. I was fairly good about that during the first few years of my freelance writing career – when I did work on the weekends, it was generally because I either A) took a day off during the week, or B) just wanted to. Over the last year or so, though, life got in the way and I found myself working almost every weekend.

It stops in 2010.

However, before it stops (I’m such a junkie), I’ve decided to spend the first few weekends of 2010 doing some housekeeping – of the writing career variety – and this past weekend, my task was to tackle my freelance writing rates.

I knew I was going to have to do it sooner or later, and the beginning of the year seemed like a much better time than, say, mid-June. Plus, Deb Ng’s recent blog post about making a profit with your freelance writing business provides some solid information about setting and raising rates and proved to be just the kick in the tail I needed.

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Creating a Freelance Writer’s Resume

Posted by Alicia in Business Help on January 8, 2010

I know I can't have been the ONLY writer having trouble with them.

We’re eight days into 2010, and a major trend I’ve noticed this year is that more job advertisers than ever before (at least, in my experience) are requesting writing resumes. Fortunately, producing a copy of my writing resume doesn’t aggravate me as much as it used to.

Since I started freelance writing, I’ve spent the first few weeks of every new year following exactly the same routine: Telling myself this is the year I will consistently apply for new writing jobs (no need to put all my eggs in one basket again, right?), sticking to that goal with fevered excitement, and then finally realizing I have to take a break to update my writing resume.

Here’s the deal: I used to hate updating my writing resume. I mean, I really loathed it. (Sure, I never ran into a ton of job advertisers who required them, but all it takes is one, right?) I’ve had tons of clients – big companies, small companies, individuals – I can’t include them all! What makes the cut? What goes unmentioned? How do I organize it all?

Then, last year, I sat down with a pen and a pad of paper and made an outline – a very old school, to-the-point outline of headers, subheaders, and even squiggly doodles when my mind started wandering. What I ended up with was an outline that looked very much like what the resume for a traditional, 9-5 job would look like – with a few tweaks, of course.

Well, that was easy. Maybe I’d been overthinking it the whole time? Maybe I just needed a visual? Probably both.

Whatever the case, below is the cleaned up version of the outline. It’s nothing new for seasoned freelancers, but it might help those of you just getting started.

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