Suess's Pieces

I received the following email and thought it might help other freelancers to read my response. The author of the letter agreed to let me post the email anonymously.

Hello Emily,

I am a budding freelance writer. Truth be told I have been a budding freelance writer for more than three years now. I have spent a lot of time writing for low paying content mills, and to be honest I feel that I am pretty much burnt out from it. At the moment I am burdened with low paying clients, and I spend over 12 hours per day writing articles just to pay the rent and eat!

I am constantly reading that there are good paying clients around and I do not doubt that, but so far I have not had any success in attracting their attention or even finding where they are. I don’t think I am a bad writer, and I have a couple of decent clips on Yahoo, Blog Critics, and places like Hubpages.

I really don’t know what it is I am doing wrong. It seems to me that I am missing a piece of the puzzle. I know it all takes hard work and effort, and I am certainly not adverse to rolling up my sleeves and getting stuck in. I have just wasted so much of my effort thus far digging in the wrong fields. I am worried I will be burnt out before I realize my full potential as a freelance writer.

Kind regards,
Burnt Out

Dear Burnt Out,

My advice for you is threefold: dump the content mills, stop searching for work, and stop blogging for other writers.

I know what you’re thinking, but let me explain.

I spent some time writing for content mills back in the day, and I’m not surprised you’re unhappy. It might put food on the table, but it’s uninspired work that pays poorly with unreasonable deadlines. My first piece of advice to you? Fire them as clients.

I know you’re dependent on freelancing for your income, so phase them out if you have to. But you can’t accept better jobs if you’re spending 12 hours every day writing drivel. You also don’t have time to improve yourself or your business with such a workload. When will you update your portfolio? Your website? When will you blog for your business?

You also can’t build an impressive portfolio if all your clips are content mill samples. The best writers still produce subpar work when they’re burnt out and underpaid.

My next recommendation is that you stop searching for clients at all. Do you know why content mills can make outrageous demands and pay so little for the work? Because writers keep applying. And the only writers willing to apply to them have convinced themselves they’re desperate for the work. Trust me, the mills know this and they’re all too happy to exploit it.

So change up your business model. I haven’t searched for a client in a few years now, because at some point I realized I was wasting my time. Instead I’ve invested time and money assisting potential clients in their search for me. I built a website and blog and made friends on social media so that when people searched for “Indianapolis freelance writer” they found me. Then they contacted me.

All I do these days is respond to the requests for quotes that land in my inbox and reach out to potential clients in my network. I don’t cold call anyone ever. I don’t scour openings on Elance or oDesk or Craigslist.

Back to the website stuff for a minute. I’m not a keyword expert and I don’t know all the ins and outs of search engine algorithms, but I have common sense and know how to improve my chances of being found online. I recommend you do the same using “freelance writer” or “content writer” with a local qualifier like your town, city, region, or country to bring in search traffic. That’s how they’re going to find you.

The next problem is: what will those people find on your site when they get there? When potential clients see you’ve been blogging to other writers or complaining about the horrors of content mill writing, they’re going to be confused. You need to be posting content for people who hire writers not for other writers. At least until you’ve established a solid client base.

It’s great to commiserate with people who understand, and I don’t know where I’d be without my freelance writer friends, but none of them are ever going to become my next client.

I recently separated my blogs. I have the professional blog for clients and this blog for writing whatever the heck I feel like. But I have a full-time job paying the bills at the moment, so I have some freedom in that regard. If you don’t have the time to run two separate blogs, writing to a client audience should be your priority.

Now, I’m not saying this next part describes you, Burnt Out. But it’s worth putting out there for all the struggling freelancers:

Sometimes I think new writers see talented, successful writers running classes and giving advice to budding writers and they think they need to mimic that behavior to be successful. Great freelance writers have freelance writer followers! Great freelance writers are mentors and give advice! I should do those things to be a great freelance writer too!

Unless you’re in the business of educating new writers right now, it’s not a profitable way to spend your time. If that’s something you want to pursue later, awesome.

I hope this helps you, Burnt Out. Let us know how things go.

Emily

One of the things I’ve decided to do as a result of feedback from the web copywriting instructor at Mediabistro is focus on building the professional side of my web presence.

Don’t worry, this blog isn’t going away. And neither is any of the content. I’m just making a formal announcement so that those of you interested in my copywriting and freelance writing content know where to find it.

Read the blog here.

Subscribe to the feed here.

Or subscribe by email.

This week I got feedback on Assignment #1. So, let’s discuss.

My assignment was to write about myself and my online identity. I put together a one-page narrative with links to my website, blog, social media accounts, and the sites where I contribute content. A few days later, the instructor returned the assignment with commentary. I’ve excerpted some of that feedback (mainly the critique) to help you get a feel for what goes onside inside the virtual classroom.

The Short Version

For any of you who don’t care to pick through the details, here are my thoughts on this week in a nutshell:

• If these courses pay for themselves in any way, it’s in instructor feedback. They spend a lot of time writing thoughtful commentary.
• I don’t think many people take Mediabistro’s Copywriting courses to learn; I think they take them to learn to make money. I find this a little off-putting, but I realize that I am the weird one here with the social organizing background and the liberal arts education. The vast majority of students I’ve encountered so far are marketers and advertisers through and through.

About My Website

“Think about the proportion of that top banner compared to the portfolio samples and the elements beneath it on the home page. It’s great to see you and to have that hero shot of the city that places you in IN, but perhaps if the other elements were bigger you could explain more the business challenges along with the samples in one shot rather than the ‘…’ to the subpages.”

The instructor had more to say about improving my website, most great suggestions except for one thing: I’m working off a template. Changes to the writing? That I can do. Changes to design? Imma need a bigger budget for that. For now the size of site elements and the “…” cutoffs are beyond my control.

So I got some useful feedback, but I’ll have to bookmark it for later.

UPDATE 4/13: Thanks to some helpful people on the internet, I’m able to make some of the suggested changes to my website. Hooray!

About My Social Media Accounts

“I think your LI is looking fine for the most part, but your Twitter seems kind of all over the place, and while most people use this channel as a microblog, if you are selling social strategy remember those that want to hire you are probably holding your feed to a higher standard …. Your Facebook seems more focused on the author challenges, and while I am sympathetic, I would suggest keeping the publishing content about the pitfalls of the business separate from the marketing writing one. Suess’s Pieces also got kind of lost at the bottom of many of your web site pages.”

My Tweets are all over the place, but my God are they ever representative of the things that matter to me. I started the @EmilySuess account in 2010, and most of my followers would wonder what the hell happened to me if I limited myself to updates designed to impress potential clients or employers.

For me Twitter truly is social. I chat with people I like. I stay in touch with real-life friends. And I think this has worked for me so far for two reasons: 1) I’m a part-time freelancer and 2) I am my own brand right now. If a potential client doesn’t like that I’m vocal about women’s rights or they think retweeting my friend’s giveaway is off-topic, I’d probably find working for them a soul-crushing experience. They’re choosy. I’m choosy. It works out in the end.

But! I do realize where the instructor’s coming from. I’m not sure a separate business account is the way to go, but I’m giving it some serious thought. In the meantime, I’ve got a couple of client accounts to share during the application/proposal process for new gigs.

My excuse for Facebook is that I post what engages people. Ninety-nine percent of my Facebook followers are fellow writers, not clients. When I attempted posting client-focused content, it just bombed. That’s life on the internet.

About Writing for Small Business Bonfire

“[The Small Business Bonfire] seems like a colorful, energetic site, but unless they are paying you … why not just write about similar topics on your other blog or sites instead?”

Of course they pay me. People think this a lot—that I write for Bonfire for free—I can’t figure out why. It worries me, though, for reasons I don’t care to get into at the moment.

About Writing Self-Publishing Content

“Well, you obviously know a lot about this topic and just from glancing at some of your publishing posts, I share many of your concerns …. My question here too is whether it is worth your time to offer this advice for free rather than teaching a class about it down the road or being on a panel where you get some sort of compensation?  I believe writers should really strive to get paid or compensated on practically everything that they do, and I see that you are really busy with your job and already have so many outlets, so I guess consolidation is what I am pushing as a thing to consider.”

Back to the money thing. I get it—that’s why most people are taking this course.

I would never suggest a writer write for free or for the promise of “exposure” ever. I believe in making money for what I do. But, dude, money isn’t everything. Writing about self-publishing and teaching authors how to not get scammed by dubious assholes? That’s a labor of love. I will never charge a penny to share what I’ve learned about the industry. Ever.

In fact, the The Self-Publishing Services Directory is making other people money. I’m okay with that.

More next week!

Want to read past posts? Browse the Ad Copywriting Certificate Review Archive

Emily paid the full price for enrollment in Mediabistro.com’s Ad Copywriting Certificate program and is not being compensated in any way for her reviews.

Life got kind of busy there for a while, and I took a break from MediaBistro’s Ad Copywriting Certificate Program. But I’m back now, and ready to share what’s going on in the next course: Copywriting for the Web.

This week was week one, so it was mostly introductions and settling in to the program. It’s a six-week course with a challenging, jam-packed syllabus. The class looks to be more promising than the last for a few reasons:

• This is not the instructor’s first time teaching the course.
• I’m more comfortable turning assignments from this course into portfolio pieces. (I can’t design an ad to save my life. But respectable looking website templates are pretty easy to come by.)
• While an obsession with Mad Men made me think I wanted to do more print, TV and billboard advertising, the truth is I don’t. Web and interactive copy—that’s my thing.
• It’s not the holiday season anymore, and I feel like I’ve gathered my wits some.

I’m working on Assignment 2 for this week, which includes picking from a couple of instructor-provided options to create web copy. I’ll be writing a home/landing page, an about/mission page, a banner ad, and identifying audience segments and writing relevant social media content for three social media platforms. (I’m going with the obvious here—Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.)

It might not sound like a lot of work, but it’s a sizable commitment for someone like me who has a day job and a freelance writing business and still tries to find time for life’s little frivolities. You know, things like eating, sleeping and laundry. There’s plenty of reading involved in a course like this if you’re like me and want to scarf down all the supplemental links too.

The first discussion for the course was held Thursday night, but I didn’t make it. So more on that aspect of the course in a future post. If you have specific questions about the program, toss ‘em in the comments. I’ll answer them to the best of my ability. If you’d like to contact me privately, that’s cool too. Just use the contact form to send me a message.

Read other review posts:

In Review Week 1: Mediabistro’s Ad Copywriting Certificate
In Review Week 2: Mediabistro’s Ad Copywriting Certificate
In Review Week 3: Mediabistro’s Ad Copywriting Certificate

Emily paid the full price for enrollment in Mediabistro.com’s Ad Copywriting Certificate program and is not being compensated in any way for her reviews.