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Family Circle Magazine Short Story Fiction Writing Contest Deadline Approaching

Susan Gunelius — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 14:00:24 +0000

If you’re an aspiring short story writer or fiction writer of any kind, then you might be interested in the 2010 Family Circle Fiction Contest. The submission deadline is September 8, 2010, so you have just over a month to polish your 2,500 word or less original short story! There is no entry fee.

The winner gets money and a prize packages from MediaBistro.com, including:

$750.00
A gift certificate to 1 course of your choice from MediaBistro.com
A 1-year MediaBistro.com AvantGuild membership
A 1-one year MediaBistro.com On Demand Videos membership

You can submit up to 2 stories, but to enter you must be 21-years of age or older and from the United States. Entries must be written by the entrant and unpublished, and they must not have won any other prize or award already. Entries must be typed on 8-1/2″ x 11″ paper and should include your name, address, daytime telephone number and e-mail address (note that email address is the only piece of information that is optional) on each page. Send your entry to: Family Circle Fiction Contest, c/o Family Circle Magazine, 375 Lexington Avenue, Ninth Floor, New York, NY 10017.

You can get all the details and rules here.

This would be a great contest to add to a writer’s list of credits! Good luck!

Do you like getting information about writing contests on Freelance Writing Jobs? Take the poll below and let me know if this is something you’d like to see more of on Freelance Writing Jobs in the future.

How Do You Track Your Income?

Noemi Twigg — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 13:07:45 +0000

The benefits of being your own boss outweigh the advantages of working a 9 to 5 job – we’ve already established that. Sometimes, though, we might forget that there are certain responsibilities attached to being a freelancer. For sure, we KNOW these responsibilities are there, but especially for those new to the freelance business, little things might slip by you every now and then.

When it comes to taxes, the need to track your income is paramount. After all, how will you be able to declare your income and compute taxes accurately if you do not follow some one system or another?

This post is the result of a comment I saw on some forum regarding one woman talking about a client who forgot to send in his 1099 before tax time. As a result, she forgot to declare that as part of her income. The job was a one-time deal done at the beginning of the previous year, explaining the lapse. For many freelancers, one-time deals are not that uncommon, and if you are not careful, you might find yourself facing a similar situation as the one I just described.

You may be thinking, so what? Well, this just might bite you in the butt later on, when the IRS sends you a revised tax statement. If it’s a small job and it’s just one, then no worries. However, if you neglect to declare a considerable amount (or several jobs amounting to a lot of money), then you’ll end up having to pay maybe several hundreds more.

So how do you track your income?

Obviously, this depends on your personal preference. I suggest keeping separate files for different items such as receipts, bank statements, invoices, etc. Whether you use a box, a filing cabinet, an expandable folder, an Excel file, or some other software, it doesn’t matter. The bottom line is that your filing system will help you NOT to overlook any income that you make so that when you declare your taxes, you can be as error-free as possible.

FWJ readers, care to share your income tracking system with us?

Book Writing and Publishing FAQ – Do I Need to Write My Book Before I Try to Get an Agent or Publisher?

Susan Gunelius — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 14:11:09 +0000

While I certainly don’t claim to be an expert about book writing and publishing, I have had 6 books published by major publishers, and I’m writing my 7th. Therefore, I feel like I can answer at least some questions about book writing and publishing.

Keep in mind, if you ask 20 authors, agents, or publishers the same question, you’re likely to get a wide variety of answers. With that in mind, my answers to the questions in the new Freelance Writing Jobs Book Writing and Publishing FAQ Series are my opinion and based on my own research and experiences. Different tactics have worked just as well or better for others. In other words, don’t take my answers as law, but do consider them as suggestions based on my own learnings. Also, keep in mind that these answers apply to people who want to be published through traditional publishers, not through self-publishing or print-on-demand publishing houses.

With that said, here is the first question in the Book Writing and Publishing FAQ Series:

Does my book need to be completely written before I approach publishers or literary agents?

There are a couple of situations that can affect the answer to this question, so there isn’t a clear yes or no answer.

If you’re a first time fiction author, than it’s highly likely that a publisher or agent won’t even consider your query unless you have already completed your manuscript. The reason is simple — they need to know that you can actually finish what you started and your book won’t fall flat ten chapters in. While you won’t be asked to show a publisher or agent the completed manuscript until they review and approve some sample chapters, they will want to know that it’s done, the word count, and that it’s waiting for them to read whenever they’re ready.

If you’ve already published a fiction book through a well-known publisher and your sales numbers show that your book had some success, then you might not have to write the complete book before you try to sell it. You might only need a few sample chapters and a great query letter and summary. If you have an agent or relationship with a publisher already, you can ask them what they want to see from you for your next book idea.

Now, let’s talk about nonfiction book publishing. Typically, you don’t have to write a complete nonfiction manuscript before you can start querying agents and publishers. However, you will need a well-written query letter, proposal, and annotated table of contents. You should also have a few sample chapters written in case an agent or publisher request them. Publishing nonfiction books is different from fiction in that much of your success at working with an agent or publisher is based on your platform — your ability to prove that you have a way to reach a large audience and push sales of your book.

It’s important to understand that nonfiction book publishers evaluate proposals and often modify the direction of the book to suit their needs and vision of the marketplace. If you write your entire book before you secure a publisher, you might end up having to rewrite the entire thing. Furthermore, nonfiction book publishers typically determine the word count for books they publish, particularly for first-time authors. Therefore, you don’t want to spend months and months writing a 150,000 word manuscript only to have a publisher tell you that they don’t want the manuscript to be more than 70,000 words.

Of course, if you’re worried that you might not be able to write a complete book, then you should consider writing the complete manuscript before you query agents and publishers. Once you sign a contract to write a book, you’ll be given a deadline when you need to hand in your manuscript, and for nonfiction books, that deadline is often a lot sooner than you might expect. It’s not uncommon to get a nonfiction book deadline of 3-months!

Image: stock-xchng

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Building Your Freelance Writing Brand – Part 4

Susan Gunelius — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 14:43:04 +0000

It’s time for Part 4 of the Building Your Freelance Writing Brand series here on Freelance Writing Jobs, and today, you’ll learn about manipulating search engine results and how to handle negative conversations about your brand online. You can find links to Parts 1-3 of the series at the end of this post.

First, it’s important to understand that this is not a lesson in search engine optimization, although some of the suggestions in Part 3 and Part 4 of the Building Your Freelance Writing Brand series certainly do apply to SEO as well.

With that said, here we go…

What kind of results do you get when you Google your name or your freelance writing brand name (if it’s different from your personal name)? Are they the results that you want people to find when they type your name into the Google search box? If not, then you have some work to do if you want to build your online brand reputation and build your business. Fortunately, writers are in the perfect position to do exactly that because we’re great at creating content! With a bit of strategy, we’re positioned to be the best content marketers!

The key to manipulating search engine results is to leverage the power of the compounding effect of blogging and content sharing as discussed in Part 3 of the Building Your Freelance Writing Brand series. Generating incoming links to your own amazing content and getting others to write about you and your amazing content are the free and easy steps that you can take to begin the process of adjusting search engine results for your name.

Here are some ways to do it:

Offer to write guest blog posts on popular blogs that rank well for search engine optimization (use a site like MyBlogGuest.com to find guest blogging opportunities), create your own branded content, offer your services for interviews on interesting blogs, podcasts (poke around BlogTalkRadio.com to find shows that match your niche), or create your own video content and publish it on your own YouTube channel. Again, anything you can do to create amazing content that people want to talk about and share is a step in the right direction to getting positive information about your brand to the top of search engine results.

But what if someone says something negative about you online? What do you do? What if that negative information shows up high in search engine results for your name?

First, don’t panic. If you’ve been creating amazing content, making connections with other online publishers, and sharing and conversing with people across the social web, then you’ll already have a handle on your search engine results and these types of negative comments are unlikely to really affect you. However, if they do appear too high in your search results for your name, then you have three effective choices, which I refer to in my upcoming book, 30-Minute Social Media Marketing, as flight, fight, or flood. Here is how the concept works:

1. Flight

If someone says something negative about you online, which you’re worried could damage your online brand image, you can avoid it entirely — flight. Consider the source of the negativity. Often a negative comment, particularly if it comes from someone who has his or her own reputation as being known for publishing such comments, will disappear quickly if you let it. Also, the more time you spend online, the more you’ll notice that some people start conversations simply to incite others. In time, you’ll get better at identifying these people and ignoring them.

2. Fight

If the source of negative information related to your brand is an online influencer with a strong following or the negativity is spreading quickly, you can step into the conversation and add your side of the story — fight. Just remember to always communicate in a manner that accurately reflects your brand image. Furthermore, if you’ve already been creating amazing content and networking and building relationships with other people across the social web, then your reputation might already be well established and your network of brand advocates (those people you’ve connected with and built strong relationships with) are likely to come to your defense!

3. Flood

If a negative result shows up too high in search engine results for your name, you can flood the Internet with positive content fully search-engine optimized to rank high for your name in order to bury that negative result. There are many useful search engine optimization resources and websites. I’ll write a post with some SEO tips here on Freelance Writing Jobs soon. In the meantime, one of my favorite resources is SEOmoz.org.

Bottom-line, you can be in control of your online brand reputation and make sure potential clients, publishers, and employers find the results that you want them to find when they Google you by creating amazing, shareworthy content, making online connections, building relationships with those connections, and monitoring your online reputation (i.e., Google results). Stay tuned for Part 5 of the Building Your Freelance Writing Brand series where I’ll talk about how to monitor your online brand reputation.

Read Parts 1-3 of the Building Your Freelance Writing Brand Series

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

Tools to Record Interviews Using Skype

Susan Gunelius — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 14:00:41 +0000

Last week, I published an article called 5 Online Tools Freelance Writers Can Use to Make Life and Business Easier, which offered my suggestions for free and cheap tools that any freelance writer can try. One of the items on that list was Skype, which enables you to make free calls (including international calls) from your computer. Skype is free and not only helps freelance writers manage client communication, but it’s also an incredible tool for conducting audio and video interviews.

Want to see a sample of a video taken via a Skype call? Check out the videos I took using Call Recorder for Mac (discussed later in this post) for Newstex.com. The video recording feature in Call Recorder allows you to record both parties on the call (using a picture-in-picture feature) or just one party (which is great for those of us who work at home in our pajamas). You control everything on your end. The person on the other end of the call just needs a Skype account, a webcam, and a microphone.

Convinced these tools work well? Take a look at some of the great choices to record the audio and/or video of your own Skype calls.

1. Call Recorder for Mac

I use Call Recorder and love it! It’s easy to use, cheap, and takes seconds to install. You can even download a free demo to give it a test drive before you buy the software. When you’re ready to buy, it’s only $19.95.

2. Total Recorder

Total Recorder for Windows comes in three versions from $17.95 to $53.95 with the more expensive versions offering more capabilities such as video recording. Even the base version allows you to record online audio from any source, such as Skype, webinars, and more.

3. Pamela Call Recorder

If you want a free, bare-bones audio recorder that works only with Skype, then the Pamela Call Recorder Skype Extra is a good solution for you!

There are some other options to record Skype calls, but the above are the ones I have used or have heard positive things about from others who have used them. Do you have a preferred tool for recording Skype calls? Leave a comment and share your suggestions!

Getting through the Summer Writing Blues

Susan Gunelius — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 17:00:31 +0000

As the summer is winding down here in the northern half of the world, it’s easy to feel frustrated. Writers have a tendency to lock ourselves in our offices sitting behind our computers and getting lost in our own minds. Let’s face it. Even if we’re writing from the beach, we’re still trapped behind our laptops and usually lost in our own minds.

With just a few weeks left before children head back to school and we lose yet another sunny day, let’s take a few minutes to remember that writing can be addictive, but it’s important for our mental and physical health to step away from our computers, escape from our minds, and enjoy life.

Take walk. Sit by a pool. Heck, you could even wash your car. As long as you get outside and breathe some fresh air between projects, you’ll have a chance to enjoy of the great weather before it’s gone and you’ll feel better for it.

Now, I should mention that I am terrible at taking my own advice. I skipped going to the pool with friends and family today so I could finish a project for a client. However, I’m always first to tell people, “Do as I say, not as I do.” If I could just listen to my own advice, I’d surely be healthier and less stressed. Alas, that’s easier said than done.

Am I alone in my addiction to writing? Am I the only writer who can get so lost in my own head that you let life pass you by and need to sit back and remind yourself that there is more to life than words?

I’m guessing I’m not alone, and I’m hoping the readers of Freelance Writing Jobs will join me in helping each other step away from the computer once in a while.

What do you say? Care to join me for a drink by the pool? Let’s do this!

What do you do to make sure you enjoy the summer weather when projects are calling your name? Leave a comment and share your tricks to get away!

Image: stock.xchng

Outsource Part of Your Freelance Writing Work

Thursday Bram — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 14:00:23 +0000

When a client signs a contract with you, as a freelance writer, he’s paying for your writing ability. Without prior permission from your clients, you should never hand off any of the writing involved in a project to someone else. But that doesn’t mean that there’s nothing in your work flow that you can outsource. You can speed up projects and free up time for new clients with some careful outsourcing.

What Do You Wish You Didn’t Have to Do?

One of my pet peeves is conducting interviews over the phone or in person, simply because I can’t write fast enough to get an accurate transcript of the interview. I started recording such interviews quite a while ago, but since I still would want a transcript of the whole conversation, a recording actually requires me to spend more time on an interview. But there are plenty of services that will turn a recording into a transcript overnight. The prices are low enough that it makes sense for me to outsource transcription. If I clear an hour’s worth of time that I’d otherwise spend on transcribing an interview, I can write enough to not only cover the cost of getting the transcription done but also earn enough to take myself out for dinner. Based on my average hourly rate, it’s a good deal.

The same can hold true for many of the tasks that go along with writing: bookkeeping, technical tasks and so forth can all go to someone else. Making the decision to outsource such tasks should generally come down to the cost and benefit. Not all outsourcing frees up time for writing, after all, and if you aren’t going to be able to be more productive in the time you’ve cleared, it’s harder to justify the financial aspects of outsourcing as a freelancer.

When Should You Outsource?

Because of the cost of certain types of outsourcing, some careful consideration is in order before most freelance writers start outsourcing anything. At a bare minimum, it’s necessary to compare costs and benefits to make sure you come out ahead. Furthermore, there are different tasks that are more worthwhile to outsource at different stages in your freelancing career. If, for instance, you’re nearer to the beginning of your career, the only area outsourcing really makes sense is marketing, where an outsourced project like building a website provides the opportunity to attract numerous clients. At that end of the spectrum, it’s less likely that your workload will be able to pay for help on smaller tasks as well as your own bills.

But a freelancer with a bigger practice may be in a position to hand off more tasks to. Some freelancers rely on a virtual assistant for everything from scheduling to research. It can become a question of the value of your time: not only can it be worthwhile to free up more time for writing, but if you need to make sure that you have a little more free time, as well, a little outsourcing may be the key.

When Clients Do Not Pay

Noemi Twigg — Sat, 24 Jul 2010 12:01:23 +0000

It’s every freelancer’s nightmare – when a client suddenly disappears after the goods have been delivered. You find a client, and you strike a deal. At the agreed time, you turn in your deliverables. Your client – and the money due you – is nowhere to be found.

If you’re dealing with a person face to face, it might be easier to follow up on the payment. If you’re dealing purely via the Internet, it will be much more complicated. Worst case scenario – you do not get paid for your work. While this hasn’t happened to me yet, I am very much aware that it could happen. Indeed, maybe it has happened to some of you.

How does this affect your taxes? Can you write it off as a business loss?

The answer depends on how you declare your income. There are two options – the accrual method of accounting and the cash method of accounting. The former method means that you report your earnings even if you haven’t received the money yet. Let’s say you got a job order right before you report your taxes. You will be receiving an X amount of dollars for the job order, but not till a few weeks later. Using the accrual method, this amount is already part of your earnings even if you do not have the cash with you. The cash method is pretty straightforward as well – you only report whatever cash you have actually received for your work.

The good news is that according to IRS Publication 535, if you use the accrual method of accounting, you can write off unpaid invoices as a business loss. However, if you use the cash method of accounting, this does not apply.

5 Ways to Breathe New Life into Old Content

Susan Gunelius — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 23:12:00 +0000

Andrew Rosen published a post on Splashpress Media’s BloggingPro.com site today called “Bringing Old Content Back to Life: 5 Ways to Revive a Blog Post” that applies to freelance writers, too, so I wanted to share it with the readers here on Freelance Writing Jobs.

A big part of writing is knowing when it’s time to remember that you don’t always have to reinvent the wheel to make an impact on an audience. If you write evergreen content for a blog or other media that can get lost in the clutter over time, then there is absolutely nothing wrong with bringing that content back out to the front and center of your stage. The trick is to revive it in a manner that makes it interesting again.

Andrew offered five great tips to do exactly that. He suggests that to revive old blog posts (and these tips work for various forms of online content) you can do the following:

Repost old content, but do so within boundaries so your search engine rankings are not negatively impacted by it.
Feature old content in a list such as a “Best of” list.
Include a link in a current post to related and valuable content in a past post.
Resubmit old posts to social media sites like Twitter and Facebook.
Rewrite old posts so they’re not exactly the same as the original but still communicate the same evergreen ideas (with new thoughts added as appropriate).

These are great ideas, and you can follow the link above to read Andrew’s entire article with all of his suggestions for breathing new life into old online content.

The concept also works when you write for multiple clients. Just because you already wrote about a specific topic for one client doesn’t mean that topic is off limits when it comes time to write for another client. The key is to rewrite the content for the specific audience that will read it and include unique ideas and concepts each time you write about the same topic.

If you’re an expert in a particular area, then you’ll undoubtedly be called upon to write about similar topics again and again. You’d go out of business if you only wrote about a certain topic for one client then never touched it again. As long as the words, structure, and voice are unique in each article you write about the same topic, your varied clients will get a piece that their audiences will gain value from.

Bottom-line, great content can live many different lives. It’s up to you as the writer to give it the various lives it deserves and get it in front of the various clients and audiences that can benefit from it.

What’s your top trick for breathing new life into old content? Leave a comment and share your tips.

Image: stock.xchng

Building Your Freelance Writing Brand – Part 3

Susan Gunelius — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 00:42:11 +0000

Freelance writers are positioned to build powerful brands online because a huge part of brand building online is based in creating content that people want to read and share. Part 3 of the Building Your Freelance Writing Brand series explains why creating content online matters (you can read Parts 1 and 2 by following the links at the end of this post).

It all comes down to Google.

What do you do when you need to find information about a product or business? The vast majority of people answer that question with a single word, “Google.”

That’s because search engines (with Google being the most popular search engine by far) have become the number one way for people to do most kinds of research. Traditional publishing and traditional marketing have both fallen victim to the power of the Internet. How can a small business owner or a freelancer compete against the deep pockets of large companies and agencies that already own space in the online world?

Again, the answer is simple — Google.

Thanks to the social web, the world of online competition has become flatter than ever. You don’t have to invest millions of dollar on ad campaigns and search engine optimization consulting services. You can do it yourself as long as you’re willing to write, communicate, and follow the three steps of branding described in Part 1 of the Building Your Freelance Writing Brand series – consistency, persistence and restraint.

Let me explain how it works.

The more content you create online using your brand name (including blog posts, articles, forum comments, blog post comments, videos, podcasts, and so on), the more chances there are for Google and other search engines to find that content and send traffic to it via keyword searches (which is particularly important when it comes to your own branded online destinations, such as your blog or website) thereby helping you build your branded online platform.

I refer to this process as the compounding effect of blogging when I explain it to small business owners who are wondering how a business blog can help them, but it applies to freelancers, too. In fact, everything you do online where you can use your brand name adds to the compounding effect of blogging by increasing Google search results for your brand and driving traffic to your branded destinations as described above.

The following steps further explain how the compounding effect of blogging works to increase traffic to your freelance website, but don’t forget that all of your social media activities can add to the compounding effect of blogging:

You have a freelance business website that includes 10 pages. That’s 10 entry points to your business website for Google to find, index, and deliver in relevant keyword searches.
You add a blog to your website, and you publish a blog post everyday for a year. Now you have 365+10=375 entry points to your website for Google to find, index, and deliver in relevant keyword searches.
You publish posts on your blog and those posts offer interesting, useful, helpful or entertaining content that your audience finds value in. In other words, those posts are shareworthy.
People find your blog content and realize it’s interesting and shareworthy. They share it on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Digg, StumbleUpon, etc. with links back to your blog. They blog about it on their own blogs with links back to your blog. Now, the number of entry points to your website (via your blog) has increased exponentially. Your Google search traffic increases as all of these additional incoming links to your blog and website boost your Google search rankings, and traffic to your site from referrers across the Web increases, too!
Your website went from a static destination with 10 standard entry points to an interactive, engaging site with hundreds or thousands (or more) of entry points and an increase in traffic from search engines and referrers! You can’t buy that kind of exposure!

The compounding effect of blogging really is that simple. It’s about creating shareworthy content and entry points, and it’s a form of marketing that freelance writers would be crazy not to use!

Bottom-line, what’s the first thing potential clients do when they get your pitch, resume, or query? They Google your name. You can use the online content you create to show how prominent your brand is online and to ensure the search results they find for your name are good ones.

Stay tuned to learn more about manipulating search results and responding to negativity about your brand online in Part 4 of the Building Your Freelance Writing Brand series.

Read Part 1 and Part 2 of the Building Your Freelance Writing Brand Series.