Angela Booth's Writing Blog

Your Web presence as a writer: build your writing income in 2008

Do you have a Web site? I hope you answered "Yes!", and I hope you're putting time each day into getting known online: into building your Web presence as a writer.

I've devoted this week's issue of Fab Freelance Writing Ezine to building your presence. Here's an excerpt from the Editorial:

Here we are at the start of 2008, and looking around the online world, a lot has changed for writers. The most important change  for writers is that the move to the online world has accelerated.

The media world is much more Web-based: magazines and newspapers are online with a vengeance, and they're putting more resources into their online presence. Advertising is moving online, so where the advertisers go, the media follows.

New media networks are growing and are hiring more writers.

So where do you fit into all this? I hope you've created your writers' Web site and blog, and that you're building your presence online. 

The biggest benefit for writers of an online presence is that your target markets (the people to whom you want to sell your work) are already looking for you online. This means that they come to you – you don't have to go hunting for writing gigs. If you spend less time hunting, you get to spend more time writing, and your income grows.

Enjoy this week's article: "Creating a Presence Online: Build a Platform, Get Readers, Make Sales", and put the information to good use.

This issue is out on Wednesday. Subscribe, it's free.

Become A Marketing Dynamo - It's The Secret To A GREAT Writing Career

The latest issue of Fab Freelance Writing Ezine is online - "Become A Marketing Dynamo - It's The Secret To A GREAT Writing Career". The issue will be online for one week only, so read it while it's available - issues are no longer archived.

Not a subscriber? Subscribe here.

Here's an excerpt from the editorial:

Marketing Is The Only REAL Secret To A Fantastic Freelance Income

I correspond with writers who aren't selling, or who are making very little money, every day. I could compress my advice into a single word: "Market". Marketing skills are the only difference between a writer who's not selling, or is selling to tiny markets which pay in tiny amounts, and writers who are making a great income, and whose income goes up every month.

Great writers are great marketers of their writing. They have to be. Many writing venues are crowded. With some 150,000 books published in English each year, and magazine markets struggling as the Internet captures more advertising dollars, marketing your writing needs to be something that you do every day, as a matter of course.

This week's article lets you in on some of the secrets of using marketing and developing a highly lucrative writing career. Writing well is a skill that few people have, so you deserve to be well-compensated for the time you invest in learning how to write. Marketing ensures that as you become known, you can charge more for your work.

I should add - it's much more fun to be well paid than to be struggling. And there's no excuse for struggling in these boom times for writers. So if you're serious about wanting a six-figure income, and the security for your family that a high income brings, look to marketing.

My ebook "You CAN Sell Your Writing Now: Marketing Skills For Writers" teaches you essential marketing skills.

Technorati Tags: get started freelance writing, make money writing, marketing your writing

Sell Everything You Write – Yes, You Can

Have you ever wondered why some writers sell everything they write, from short stories and articles, to books and screenplays?

No, they're not better writers than you are. In fact, they may be barely competent as writers. Nevertheless, their income and fame grows, while your hard drive is stuffed with material you can't sell.

Discover how to sell everything you write, with my ebook "You CAN Sell Your Writing Now: Marketing Skills For Writers".

Technorati Tags: make money writing, marketing, marketing your writing

Writing for self-promotion: top ten ways you can use your writing to promote your writing

Writers are just like the shoemaker's children: we're barefoot. We write for everyone else, but not for ourselves. Writing for ourselves - to promote our writing - is essential. It gets us writing gigs, and it improves our writing skills because we're writing more.

Here are the top ten ways to use your writing to promote your writing:

1. Ask editors to add a mini-bio to your byline

Bylines are great, but you can get more effect from them if you can convince your editors to add a couple of sentences. Viz. "Kathy Writer's special interests are finance and technology. Visit her Web site at [site URL] to learn more about her upcoming book: "Designer-Wear On A Budget."

2. Develop a Web site

Everyone needs a Web site, and writers need a site more than anyone else. You're selling your WRITING skills - what better way to promote your skills than on your own site?

3. Create an archive of your published work

Never sell all rights to your work. The rights you do sell should always be clearly defined, and if you're selling the rights to a book, the rights should revert to you when sales drop below a nominated level. This means that you can repurpose and revise your work as the years pass - and sell it again.

Create an archive of everything you've written. Copy it to a CD or DVD, and update it regularly.

4. Create a newsletter

If you've been writing for a while, you've got people who know you and your work. However, those people won't remember you just because they published one of your articles or one of your books.

Create a Contacts List, and send out a newsletter to the list every month or two. You can post your newsletters on your Web site too.

5. Write press releases

Press releases are a no-brainer for a writer. Send out press releases consistently, whenever you create a new Web site, publish an article in a magazine, or give a talk.

6. Create an online press area on your Web site

Your press area contains your bio, your portfolio, articles that you've written to generate publicity, and useful information for your site visitors. Your press area is never complete. Aim to add to this section of your site regularly.

7. Write something to promote your writing every day - create a blog

Get a blog. I won't say any more than that - a blog has great effects both on your writing skills and on your online and offline exposure. Blog!

8. Guest-blog on other bloggers' blogs

Do an occasional guest-blogging stint on someone else's blog. This gets you new readers.

9. Add to the online conversation: contribute your knowledge at Web forums and discussion groups

Yes, you can read forums and discussion groups and consider it work - if you contribute to the discussions.

10. Set yourself "promotional writing goals" and write to meet those goals every day

Currently I'm slapping my own primary site around and doing some optimization on it, which means writing more for that site. This is one of my own current promotional goals. I do a few minutes' work on it daily, and although I'm not devoting huge amounts of time to the project, I can see that it's making a difference.

Does the idea of doing all this EXTRA writing make you cringe? You need to write more. Discover how to write more with my great new ebook "Top 70 Writing Tips To Help You To Write More" - you CAN write more, write effortlessly, and enjoy writing.

Technorati Tags: be more productive, blogs, get started freelance writing, how to blog your business, productivity, YOUR writer's Web site

Book blogs: can your blog sell books -- or anything else?

MJ Rose has an interesting post "This Just In: Flogging vs Blogging" about Holtzbrinck developing a group blog project and looking for authors for the group blog.

She also discusses the time and energy it takes to create a blog that's worthwhile -- never mind trying to sell anything via that blog:

This post took 55 minutes to write, 5 minutes to proof and I’m still sure there are typos in it, 5 minutes to find the links and 5 minutes to post  - total time 70 minutes and I’d bet not a single reader of it will hop over to Amazon or stop in their favorite indy  - just to hightlight one of my favorites - today to buy my latest novel because of what I’ve written here.

Yes, it takes time, energy and commitment to blog. If you're looking for quick fixes to problems via your blog, you're quite possibly headed for heartbreak. Blogs work best when you use them to enhance your visibility.

Over time, an author (or writer, or copywriter) gets benefits from visibility. When I visit Amazon.com, MJ Rose's posts appear on my plog, and on the plogs of many others who buy books vaguely related to MJ Rose's publications. Of course this has no immediate effect, but it has an effect over time.  It sells books. Over time.

I've just done a Google search on "MJ Rose", and this was the result:

Results 1 - 10 of about 249,000 for "MJ Rose". (0.34 seconds)

This is search engine visibility.

So, you might be thinking, how does this search engine and other visibility translate to money?

It translates to money because it helps to make the author a brand.

An author with this kind of visibility can leverage her brand in many ways, not least in the ability to guarantee an audience for his/ her next book, and for both current and future projects. It also gives her a platform as well as a brand. In an increasingly competitive world, a platform is vital to any writer's survival.

Technorati Tags: blog your writing, brand management, branding, marketing your writing

Make real money as a freelance writer with Writing For The Web

I'm proud to announce that my new ebook, Writing For The Web is now available. If you're not making great money as a freelance writer today, you're missing out.

From the site:

Here are some facts. When you write for the Web, you:

• Will make from $120 to $200 an hour – and more, in some cases, if you're writing Web sales pages;

• Will know you can get as much work as you want;

• Can get hired to write for the Web by large companies full-time; or

• Can work as a freelance Web writer if you wish, either full-time or moonlighting from your current job.

As a Web writer, you get paid for all the "extras" that go into writing. When you're writing for the Web, you can choose whether you want to be paid by the hour, or by the project. Until you know how long projects take you, you will probably choose to be paid by the hour. The difference with writing for other media is that you get paid for every minute of your time – generously.

 (Special introductory price, until August 16, only: Writing For The Web )

Technorati Tags: freelance writing, make money writing, write for the Web, writing ebook, writing jobs

You Can Create Your Own Writing Job... If

Want to create your own job as a freelance writer? It's a brave new online writing world, so nothing could be easier.

However, you'll need to face the fact that you're now an entrepreneur.

Note: The rest of this article was first published in my Creative Small Biz ezine in 2003. I've revised the advice it contains a little, but the advice is timeless.

You can create your own job as a writing entrepreneur, if:

1. You believe in your products and services

You must believe in your products and services enough to be able to sell them consistently. For creatives, that means you must believe enough in yourself to KNOW that you can create products people will want to buy, and then you must market, market, market, and market some more.

Stating the blindingly obvious, right?

It should be obvious, but it's not. The saying: "Love what you do and the money will follow" should be amended to: "Love what you do and be prepared to market it and the money will follow".

I've lost count of the number of writers I know who've decided to freelance, and then after six months decided that they couldn’t take it and scooted back to the corporate world.

You must be passionate, but at the same time develop acceptance. Passionate enough to put your heart and soul into your work, and into your marketing, and at the same time, accept that it will take time to develop your niche, and that you may be making less money than you could if you were working for someone else -- in the beginning.

2. You can work harder for yourself than you would for someone else

When you create  your own job, you get to do it all. You're in charge.

A lot of the work that happens in a business is invisible to you if you work for someone else. The  invisible chores include a multitude of tasks, such as keeping the computer system functioning, getting material printed, placing Yellow Pages ads, and returning phone calls. All this stuff takes time and energy.

When it's all up to you, you have to decide what's important for you to be doing right now. You need a list of what must get done today, this week, and next week, and you need to keep up to date, even if it means working on Saturday and Sunday.

3. You're constantly learning

When you work for someone else, your employer trains you so that you can do your job effectively. When you've created your own job, your training is up to you.

Learning needs to be fun for you. You must see it as an investment in yourself. The Internet is a blessing, and you'll find many training packages online. You don’t even need to leave the house to learn something new.

4. You can ignore setbacks

Stuff happens. Your computer refuses to boot up. Instead of working on a client's project you need to take your computer to the repair shop. A client cancels a meeting that you've just cancelled another meeting to attend. You get the flu, and have to work anyway, even though you're so dizzy you can’t focus on the computer screen.

After you've been working as your own employer for a while, setbacks like this will amuse you rather than defeat you. You know that in a week or a month, you'll be laughing about this, so why not crack a smile now?

5. You're prepared to invest in your business

When you've created your own job, your business comes first. This means that when you get a hefty client payment, most of that money will have to go right back into the business.

You need to be clever about how you invest this money however. Do really you need a full page display ad in that magazine? Could you save money by placing a half page ad, or a quarter page? Do you need that new software package which costs a thousand dollars?

Is creating your own job as a writing entrepreneur for you? Only you know the answer to that question.

If you want to kickstart your own writing business, you need to invest in my ebook Writing For Online Cash: Turn Your Words Into Instant Gold -- this manual teaches you everything you need to know to get started.

Technorati Tags: be more productive, make money writing, marketing your writing, Motivation, Planning, practice your writing, productivity, publishing, Writer's Web site, writing jobs

Discover how to end your writers' Web site woes

Got a Web site? Whether you're a writer who's got a site just for promotion, or you're aiming to make sales at your site, the competition online is becoming intense.

The online world is becoming just as competitive as the offline world. Yes, writers and publishers now know that a site equals SALES, which means that your site and hard work can get swamped by the Web sites of others.

So how do you compete? Easily. You out-market the rest.

I've created a new weekly ezine,  Top Words Marketing Tips, to help you to do just that. It's free, and it's for anyone who's doing business online.

You can subscribe to Top Words Marketing Tips here.

No, it's not just another ezine filling your inbox with clutter and rehashed junk. You're getting information that I've researched for my marketing clients and that WORKS. It's like having your own marketing consultant.

Enjoy. :-)

What's the perfect NEW writing career?

Career blogging, of course. You can make dollars as a blogger-for-hire for a business, or you can set up and monetize your own blog, or blogs. When you're a career blogger, you're not dependent on anyone: you're an independent professional. And of course, you can work from wherever you please, your own home or an island in the Pacific.

I've set up a new blog for the Blogging For Dollars ebook; I hope it whets your appetite for a lucrative (and fun!) new writing career.

Please subscribe to the blog with your newsreader of choice. The ebook will be released in August.

I want to make this ebook as useful as I can, so if you have questions about career blogging you'd like answered, please leave a Comment. Everyone who helps me with the research by telling me what they'd like to know will receive a complementary copy of the ebook.

Related: Free ebook: Blogging For Dollars

ebook update

Technorati Tags: blogger-for-hire, career blogger, marketing your writing

Print on Demand success: J. Michael Straczynski

paidContent.org reports:

J. Michael Straczynski wrote most of the scripts for cult sci-fi series Babylon 5. Now he’s self-publishing them as a series of print-on-demand books — and, based on sales of the first seven of 14 planned volumes, he estimates the total take will be about $1.5 million.

Now you know why I've been nagging writers to monetize their own work. ;-)

Technorati Tags: marketing your writing, POD