I was listening to the recording of The Renegade Writer’s Become a Confident Writer Teleclass and they mentioned that adage: “Editors are just people.”

Now, I know from experience that they’re lying—but I’ll get to that in a second.

First I think it’s important to note that one of the prerequisites to being a writer seems to be a tendency toward perfectionism. We tend to be our own worse critics and are quick to note anything anyone says that seems to agree with that inner voice. Sometimes we’re right, and sometimes we’re wrong.

Back to my first point: editors aren’t just people; they’re overworked, over stressed magicians who put out fire after fire in such a way you never even see the sings on the page when you receive the magazine. But sometimes it seems as though they are talking a different language—especially when they send you comments on a recent piece.

As someone who used to sit on the other side of the screen, here are five translations for comment revision requests. Continue Reading

I couldn’t help but chuckle at this recent story from The Boston Globe on the overuse of exclamation points.

Remember when email first came into prevalence? I do. Suddenly writing in all caps meant you were virtually yelling at someone. Typing made it easier to EMPHASIZE YOUR WORDS in a way that handwriting just couldn’t. With a quick touch of command + b, u, or i your words could be bolded, underlined, and italicized. Fancy!

Christopher Muther, the author of the piece I read in The Boston Globe, blames two men with the overuse of exclamation points in society today.

In 2008, they wrote a book called “Send: The Essential Guide to Email for Office and Home.” It created a minor sensation, partially because the authors condoned the use of exclamation points.

“ ‘I’ll see you at the conference,’ is a simple statement of fact,” they wrote. “ ‘I’ll see you at the conference!’ lets your fellow conferee know that you’re excited and pleased about the event.” –Christopher Muther

One Boston University psycholinguist quoted in the story says that exclamation points can “mitigate the brusqueness of a brief reply by indicating the writer’s enthusiasm, sincerity, surprise…”

I recently wrote a blog post on the perils of email communication where I was involved in a situation where my brief email replies were misconstrued as rude by the recipient. I wonder, now, if I had included a bunch of exclamation points, or, heaven forbid, smiley face emoticons, at the end of my sentences if they would have softened my message. I’ll never know.

I run a blog where I publish stories about weddings in Maine. Photographers submit photos of a particular wedding, and the bride fills out a questionnaire about their big day for their blog post. These questionnaires are consistently dripping in exclamation points.

I get it. Your wedding day is exciting! You’re marrying the man of your dreams! It really is a dream come true! But I omit most of these exclamation points in the blog posts because, well, all the excitement is kind of hard to swallow. Continue Reading

Marketing is integral to the success of any freelancer, and the difference between mediocre freelancers and professional ones is often how smart they are at marketing.

As a freelancer, you also need to realize that marketing isn’t all about working hard, it is about working smart. The main thing you want is to get paid, and your marketing should only be a means to this; you wouldn’t want to spend your time and effort marketing yourself only to have little time for your projects.

Writing is one of the simplest ways to market yourself. Some of its major advantages are:

• Literally anybody can do it.
• People don’t have to see your face, so you have nothing to be afraid of.
• It doesn’t take as much time and resources as other forms of marketing; you only need to know how to type and how to edit, and you’re good to go.

One thing about writing, though, is that its advantages are its disadvantages, and the fact that it can be done by anyone means you should be smart with your approach. This article will be sharing 7 smart ways you can use your writing to grow your freelance business; some of these tactics will only take a few hours, but they can contribute immensely to your freelance business. Continue Reading

All too often, freelancers look at their clients as one-off opportunities. They do a job, complete a project, and when payment exchanged, they wave good-bye and never look back. But regular contact with former clients should be an integral part of your freelance business.

Call it public relations or just good business practices, but treating your clients as part of your regular business network– not just as cash cows– can be a wonderful strategy.

Not only will clients feel that you care about them for more than just a paycheck, they will also feel more inclined to recommend you to their colleagues for future projects. The time you devote to nurturing those client relationships becomes a kind of investment that can lead to returns later down the road.

If the rapport is particularly strong, you can also ask clients to be active promoters of your services by having them write recommendations and testimonials that you can later use for your own marketing efforts. In other words, maintaining good client relations means more and better business for you.

Here are five tips for strengthening your business relationship with clients. Continue Reading

Freelance business owners often struggle with the question of whether to hire a contractor or an employee. Many claim that contractors are the way to go, hands down; still others have only hire employees and claim they would never do anything different. So, what should you do when faced with this decision? Is there one that is better over the other, overall, or does the “right” choice depend on your type of small business?

When mulling over this decision, it is important to realize that you actually need to consider four simple questions. Answer these questions specifically to your business and you will be better educated and more confident in your choice between hiring employees or contractors as a freelancer. Continue Reading

The magazine I work for is looking to hire a part-time graphic designer to help the production department with creating print ads. The team has interviewed a few good candidates already, but nothing has stuck.

In fact, there was one woman who the team really liked. She showed us some great samples of her work, she had a flexible schedule, and looked like she would be the perfect hire to join our team. Our art director gave her a take home assignment on a Friday, hoping to see something on Monday. She gave this woman a logo, some copy, and a specific ad size to see what she could come up with in a specific amount of time. We never heard back from her.

Disappointed? Yeah! We were hoping this woman would knock our socks off. But she never sent in her graphics test. This led us to two conclusions: that she didn’t really want the job after all or she was creatively unable to do the work we needed her to do.

When I read this blog post on All Freelance Writing about freelancers providing a free sample to potential clients, it made me think about our situation. In this post, author Chris Bibey talks about a situation where he met with a client who wanted him to provide a free sample, based on their particular needs, within 24 hours. This is something freelancers should expect from time to time, Bibey says, as some companies will trust in your skills while others are more skeptical—especially when they have never worked with you before.

My advice is as follows: there is nothing wrong with providing a free sample to a potential client as long as you feel that it could turn into a paid gig. Unfortunately, there are people out there who collect as many free samples as they can from as many writers as they can find. When everything is said and done, they did not pay a dime yet have plenty of unique content. —allfreelancewriting.com

Over time, Bibey says, you will get better at discerning who is fishing for free content and who is a serious potential client. Continue Reading

Once a week, we feature a fantastic freelance-themed comic from the talented N.C. Winters. Why not also take a look at our comic archive? Continue Reading

Working as a contractor–or freelancing as it is often termed–is both a great stepping stone to running your own business and a viable career in itself. For the uninitiated, there can be numerous hurdles to overcome on the way to starting and having a successful freelancing career.

As a former freelancer myself and having employed more than a few, I have observed some of these hurdles firsthand. This article discusses some of the ins and outs of both freelancing and running a small business.

This article is also available in French. Pour nos chers lecteurs de la langue Francaise, je suis heureux de vous informer que vous pouvez lire une traduction complete de cet article: Le guide complet du débutant freelance. Continue Reading

Every other week we roundup some of the highest quality articles and resources that benefit freelancers from across the web. We present these articles here on various helpful topics. This week we have articles on pricing ecommerce web projects, creating remarkable guides, pushing past fear, and more.

Pricing Ecommerce Web Design Projects

It’s a common enough question, and one that always leads your average freelance web designer to take a deep breath and sigh ‘Well, let me see …’. There are many factors that influence the cost of an ecommerce web project, but when you communicate the vagaries to clients, there tend to be three that can have a huge impact – and are often only dealt with summarily: products, postage and payments.

On Criticism, Cynicism & Sharpening Your Gut Instinct

Time and time again, creative people are given two pieces of advice: (1) Listen to your critics and seek feedback, but also (2) Ignore your critics and follow your intuition. Clearly, there’s a powerful contradiction here in need of reconciliation.

Creating Ultimate Guides and Using Them to Build Your Marketing List

You’ve seen them – ultimate marketing guides to Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, and other important digital marketing resources. Creating ultimate guides are a great way to attract traffic, links, and social shares to your blog or website. The issue most people run into is with the number of blogs out there (especially ones on online marketing) – how do you create an ultimate guide if there are already tons of posts on a given subject?

Continue Reading

View engaging conference lectures, interesting how to discussions, and high quality freelance advice via video here on FreelanceSwitch.

This week we look at A new way to think about creativity by Elizabeth Gilbert. In this video “Eat, Pray, Love” Author Elizabeth Gilbert muses on the impossible things we expect from artists and geniuses — and shares the radical idea that, instead of the rare person “being” a genius, all of us “have” a genius. It’s a funny, personal and surprisingly moving talk.. Continue Reading

Traveling for work can be a blessing—or a curse—depending on how you handle it. I have to drive a fair amount for my job, but many freelancers spend hours in airports, train stations, and bus terminals.

I found some handy tips on staying productive while traveling on Inc.com. I thought I would share some of them with you while adding some hard-learned lessons from my own time spent on the road.

Wear Comfortable Clothing

I don’t mean an all out sweat suit—though, really, what is more comfortable than that? Comfort to you will mean something different than comfort to me.

When I was flying through Madrid, I noticed something very different between myself and the other women walking through the airport. I was wearing black yoga pants and sneakers while all the other women were wearing skin-tight jeans and stilettos. Apparently, these women’s feet didn’t swell at all due to the change in altitude. Lucky them!

When I’m on a long flight, I need to be comfortable. That means layering. I find planes, trains, and even buses, to be ridiculously cold, so if it’s summertime, you’d better bet I’m packing a pair of socks into my carry on as well as something cozy for my arms. Continue Reading

You just finished a six week long project. You thought it came out great, so you didn’t expect their email, telling you they just weren’t happy with it. Now what?

Park your emotions. It’s easy to get worked up from negative feedback, particularly for a freelancer who is naturally quite tied to their work. But separating business and emotion are key to success anywhere. It’s okay to get heated up, but just give yourself some time to simmer down before you react. Go for a run, sleep on it, or vent to a friend until you feel more level headed. Continue Reading