Writing for Free: Part Three: Nearly-Free

A popular post from November 2012

By Josi S. Kilpack

A few years ago, like many of you, my family and I were facing a lot of financial-stress. I won’t go into details, but suffice it to say there were a lot of conversations in the dark of our bedroom at night that tiptoed around “What are we going to do?”  

I had just begun my Sadie Hoffmiller series and hadn’t yet gotten royalties (I get royalties twice a year) and I have no skills beyond raising kids, running a home, and writing novels. I looked hard at what I could do to bring in some income and in the process I stumbled upon some interesting options I hadn’t known existed. None of these turned out to make a lot of money for me, and yet they expanded into other things that have been very interesting. This is by no means a list of everything out there—not by a long shot—but they might be a starting point in helping you generate ideas that might pay off for you in the long run.

·      Demand Media is a company that provides content to all kinds of companies, like Livestrong and eHow. They get their content through a sister company (or maybe it’s the same company, I don’t know for sure) called Demand Studios. As a freelance writer, you can join up and take on ‘assignments.’ I joined and took four assignments I then spent the weekend writing. I knew that the content would be bought and sold and resold and that I would get a royalty, what I didn't understand was that my royalty would be, in some cases, pennies. It wasn't what I expected, so I didn't pursue it, and yet every couple of months I get money deposited into my PayPal account. I’ve probably only made $200 over the course of the three years since I did these articles, but I received a PayPal deposit a few weeks ago for $14, which means the articles are still selling. It’s important to note that most of the articles didn’t include my byline—in fact, maybe none of them did. So I didn’t get value out of audience, I did, however, get value in writing to guidelines as each of them had a very specific format to follow. And I got the value of ‘practice’ in my writing. As I said, it didn’t pay off the way I wanted it to, but it was a reasonable use of time none the less and it’s still generating money, which I find fascinating. If I had more time, I would love to write up more of these articles—they are short and simple—and see where it could take me. Who knows.

·      At the same time I wrote these articles for Demand Studios, I put an ad on Craigslist, advertising myself as web content writer. I had managed my own website for a few years and gotten some encouragement and tips from my friend, Able Keogh, who writes web content for a living. I knew my credentials for this type of work were weak, but I put it out there all the same. I got one call, we talked for a little while, he said he’d call the next week and then he never did. I was insecure enough that I never pursued it further and soon took over the bookkeeping for our company and didn’t have the extra time anyway. I didn’t think much of it until he called back almost a year later. He offered me a freelance job of writing ‘blurbs’ about different music loops. I learned more about music loops than I ever thought was possible. He paid me $5/blurb, and in time this expanded into rewriting several websites he owned as well as a separate freelance rewrite he sent my way. In all, I probably made close to $1000.00 over the course of a few months working with him and could probably still be writing for him if I had the time--I was the one who said I couldn't continue the work. The most powerful part of this experience was the connections I made through it. He ended up re-doing my website and continues to function as my webmaster, though I do 99% of the work myself. What started with $5 blurbs that took me an hour to write due to the time I was spending trying to understand what the heck music loops were, resulted in a few different websites in my portfolio which, should I decide to explore this field further, gives me more of a foundation than I had.

·      When Heather Moore started this blog, we wrote for free. About a year ago, she said that though she couldn’t afford to pay us for the time we spent on the blogs, she did want to show that she valued it. She pays us a small amount per blog that we post. It’s not a lot, but it’s something and it does increase my motivation to blog here, which in turn strengthens the blog, which in turns grows an audience.

Again, this is not a do-as-I’m-doing list or a request for you to do any one of these things, but I do hope that it helps you realize what might be out there and the value that can be wrapped up in seemingly small opportunities. You have to go into these things with an understanding of what your time is worth and what your goals are, but assuming you are clear on both of those things, there are some really interesting free or nearly-free opportunities out there that can expand you as a writer and, possibly, put a little money in the bank.

Writing for Free: Part Two--How?

A popular post from November 2012

By Josi S. Kilpack

Last week I talked about why a writer would want to write for free. I talked about the value, other than money, of getting your name out there. It basically comes back to the old adage “Being in the right place at the right time” but I am a big believer in the fact that those people have actually been in many places at many times which increased their odds until things came together. Writing for free is one way to do that.

Now that you’re convinced that writing for free has value beyond the dollar signs, how do you do it?

Step #1 is to remember what your goal is that you should only write for free if you're building your name or building your audience. Both goals require that your writing be “seen.” If you have publishing credentials, you have a better chance of getting exposure through larger venues such as newspapers. If you haven’t published yet, you will likely need to start smaller.

Step #2 is to ask yourself is what you read. Do you have an online magazine you read? Do you have a blog you follow? Do you read the newspaper, an in-print magazine, or follow a particular publication of any kind? Make a list of these things with the understanding that starting with what you know is a writer’s bread and butter. Note that I said STARTING WITH :-)

Step #3 is to ask yourself what you are an expert at, and I use the term ‘expert’ very loosely. Are you a parent? Did you go to college? Do you play a sport? What are your hobbies? What are your families interests? What’s your favorite sports team? Where do you vacation? Again, make a list of these things which are essentially topics you already know stuff about. It goes back to step two, starting with what you know.

Step #4 is to compare your two lists. Where do the lines overlap? Does your local paper that you read each week have a recipe section you can share your favorite sugar cookie through? Does the online writer’s magazine you read once a month accept submissions for articles about writing craft? Find one or two of these things and then brainstorm some topics. Find out how to submit and make sure you follow the submission guidelines. If you’re a blogger, see if another blogger would trade a guest post with you—this expands both of your audiences. There are a lot of free options out there so do a little digging and see what feels like a good fit.

Step #5 is to make sure you get a byline. A byline is a sentence that gives you credit for having written whatever words are being put out there. It's how someone finds you later and it's where you get the value of your free writing. Make certain that anything you write for free, you get credit for. Some places will only let you list your name—only you can decide if that’s still of value for you—but most places will let you include a website or a sentence about your credentials. BEWARE OF SUBMITTING WITHOUT A BYLINE. Not only do you want to use your time wisely, but if you don’t attach your name, someone else could take the credit.

Free-writing to avoid:

• Blogs without comments.
• Blogs/websites that are poorly designed and therefore don't reflect well on you.
• Anywhere that you read articles without a byline for the writer.
• Non-reputable papers, blogs, websites, etc.
• Anywhere that wants you to pay for the opportunity.

Next week we’ll discuss “Nearly-free Writing” and how that works and if it’s worth your time.

Writing for Free: Part One--Why?

A popular post from November 2012

By Josi S. Kilpack

Part One: Writing for Free. Why?

I am a writer by trade, and craft, and determination and while there are other reasons for me to write, if I didn’t make money from my writing, I wouldn’t do it—or at least I wouldn’t do it the way that I do it now. As much as I appreciate and respect the idea of writing because I love it or that money should never be a writer’s motivation—I don’t necessarily agree. I write to pay the mortgage and orthodontist and to buy cute shoes from time to time. Before I was making decent money, I was writing so that one day I would.

And yet, I also write for free. Sometimes. But writing for “free” is actually a little mis-leading because the word “free” makes is sound as though it’s valueless. And that is certainly not the case and I recommend always, always, always writing for value. While I write some things without getting a direct monetary kick-back, I only write for free when I believe that the value, though not in dollars, is worthy of not only the time I put into the writing, but the time that free-writing takes away from my paycheck-writing.

There are two main reasons to write for free: Building a name for yourself and expanding your audience. I have done both and made a lot of important connections, while also honing my abilities, through blog posts, articles, and book reviews I wrote when I was a complete newbie. I first met Annette Lyon through an article I submitted to a magazine. It wasn’t very good and she told me how to fix it. It was the first article I’d ever done but led to many other opportunities (The most important opportunity was getting to know and becoming very close to Annette who has been a very important part of my journey since then--i.e. value in spades!) Back when I started, I needed people to recognize me, to know that I was here, I was relevant, and part of this community. It took a long time for me to get “inside” but it started with writing for free and making connections.

These days, I write for free chiefly to expand my audience. I want to capture new readers for my novels and getting my name out there, in multiple places and venues, helps me find people who will never find me on a bookstore shelf.

For example, I contribute to the Newport Ladies Book Club blog that is designed around the series I have done with Julie Wright, AnnetteLyon, and Heather Moore. We each try to post once a month. I don’t get paid for it, but it supports the series and I believe that the value both in marketing and networking is well worth the value of the time spent on the blog posts I contribute. I gauge its effectiveness through comments left on the posts I put up there and people who mention the posts later. Blogs are interesting because it takes time to build them up and it takes consistency to keep them in the forefront of the reader’s minds. I have backed off a great deal on my personal blog that I’ve had for years because of time and because I lost my focus and started talking more about me than I did my books. I haven’t quite determined what I want to do with it, which makes it ineffective, but I’m glad all the posts I’ve written are still there and available to people if they want to learn more about me. Maybe I’ll pick it back up again, but maybe I won’t. I’m struggling to see its ‘value’ whereas I feel like the Newport Ladie’s Book Club blog has value in it already.

I have written free-articles for my local paper, for online magazines, and for other people’s blogs for the exposure it gives me to their audience. I try to use a variety of formats (online vs. in print) in order to capture the readership that can be found in that location. I recently signed up for a large community of ‘free’ writing opportunities that pays nothing, but has a good reputation and often has articles picked up by larger venues. It’s my hope that writing for this company will perhaps help me break out of local-community type writing.

All that said, I am aware that every hour I spend writing for free, is an hour I’m taking away from my novels. I have to choose this carefully but I find when the balance is good, writing short stories or articles helps me to relax from the longer format works. I suppose it's the equivalent of taking a walk at lunch everyday for someone who works behind a desk. I get to explore different skills I’ve developed, learn new things, and challenge myself in new ways. I’ve found this to be a very important part of my writing and encourage other writers out there to look around themselves to see what “free” writing options might be available to them.

Next week I will talk about what to look for in “Free” opportunities and how to best plan your writing and make it work for you.

A Time to Please

A popular post from January 2011

by Annette Lyon

After yesterday's inspiring and fun post from Julie, today's topic will sound downright dry. Maybe even wrong. She made some fantastic points about loving what you do and that if you aren't having fun, if you aren't writing for yourself, it'll show.

And yet.

There is a time to write to please. Learning how to do literary acrobatics can be useful and profitable.

But I'd better back up. First of all, know that I'm not talking about fiction here. Everything Julie said applies to fiction, and I say a big, "amen!" to her post.

Today I'm talking about freelance non-fiction.

While I'm a novelist, first and foremost, I make twice as much from freelance work each year as I do in royalties, split pretty evenly between editing work and other freelance writing projects. (I'd like to think some day that will change, but most writers who make a living at it earn more on non-fiction than on novels, alas.)

In this economy, the extra money has been useful. When a child comes to you with dreams in their eyes to join a school team and perform, the last thing I want to do is squelch that with, "Uh, sorry, but we can't pay for it." So I continue to wear three hats: novelist, editor, freelance writer.

With one of my first freelance writing gigs more than a decade ago, I also got one of my most valuable educations. Fortunately, the editor who'd hired me was willing to teach me (and rehire me, because I'd learned from her lesson).

I finished and sent off an article she'd requested, pleased with how it turned out. It was published with a completely different opening. Several phrases and words were changed rather dramatically. My gut reaction was annoyance; I knew full well that everything I'd written was grammatically correct and just fine.

But with a second reading, I clued in: What I'd sent in didn't match the voice of the publication. Their voice was far less formal that I'd written the piece, more like good buddies having a chat. I studied the final version and realized that if I wanted to keep writing for them, I'd have to learn to write in that voice, stat.

Writing that way was hard; their voice was so specific, and it didn't come naturally to me. (Ironically, when done right, the voice came across as easy and breezy, but each word was wrenched out of me.) But I did learn. The result: I was hired again for several other projects for about two years, when the editor changed jobs.

I was lucky; not everyone would be willing to train a newbie. I knew that. So moving forward, I studied magazines in a different way, looking for length of pieces, voice, evergreen topics, angles, the advertisers, and much more. Even if I never wanted to pitch to a particular magazine I was reading, I still tried coming up with article ideas, just for practice. And it's paid off.

Recently, the lesson of writing for an audience/boss was hammered home again, in a good way. I was hired by a company to write technical scripts. (That alone is funny to me; there's a reason I freak out when the printer fails and I cry out, "Honneeeeeey!")

They gave me two trial scripts. Before starting, I read the company's style guide, which took a couple of hours all by itself. (And whoa, what a style guide it was! SO specific on phrasing and terminology and usage . . .) I researched my tail off on the topics and worked hard on those trial scripts to make them as close to what the company was looking for as I could.

When they came back edited, a comment said, "Wow. I don't think I've ever seen a trial script so clean!"

I was promptly asked how much work I could handle a week.

Just a hunch, but I'm thinking not all their first-time writers spent as much time studying their style guide. My extra effort paid off in spades. (And helped finance some Christmas presents and several other things.)

Booyah, people.

Lesson of the day: She who reads the style guide, does her research, and turns in the copy they're looking for, comes out on top.

Titles, Schmitles

by Annette Lyon

With all due respect to Steve Almond, his latest article in Writer’s Digest wasn’t exactly en pointe.

This is the first time I’ve disagreed with a word he’s said. Usually his fiction column is a great resource, and I find myself mentally cheering him on with each example and explanation. (His piece on metaphors a few months ago was priceless.)

But this month . . . not so much.

In it he touts the importance of picking a title for your work. He claims that those poor souls who don’t pick a title might not be ready to show their work to the world, and then he proceeds to give a lesson (a pretty great one, actually) about how to come up with titles.

All well and good . . . if authors of published novels actually picked their titles.

Which happens, oh, about 1.3% of the time.

Okay, I made that statistic up, but in my experience, that might be guessing high. Sure, Dickens and company got to pick the titles of their books (really catchy ones, too, like David Copperfield and the one that makes you so eager to read it, Bleak House). But in the last, say, ten years, I’m aware of maybe three novels that hit shelves with the title that their authors submitted.

Writers are good at writing. We aren’t so good at selling stuff. That’s the marketing department’s job. That’s also why they hire professional graphic designers to make the covers—so prospective customers might actually pick up the thing and read the back liner . . . and maybe walk out the door with it.

And it’s why they get to pick the title. By and large, these guys have a ton more experience than we writers do in seeing what kinds of titles sell books and which ones land on their faces.

When they’re wrong, well, the author pays the price, because generally you’ll be at their mercy. You might be able to give suggestions or ideas, but in the end, they get the final say. The one exception might be with short stories, but if you’re planning on writing novels, there’s very little point in fantasizing about what they'll be called.

If you’re lucky enough to keep your title, party on. Throw confetti and toast your success.

But I know too many would-be writers who obsess about their titles, to the point of avoiding the nitty-gritty job of making a great book behind the brilliant title. A catchy name isn’t going to sell your work to an agent or editor. Knock-your-socks-off writing will.

Don’t get me wrong; I’ll probably use some of Almond’s suggestions when coming up with something to call my next manuscript before I submit it. But I won’t be married to the title, and I won’t be remotely surprised when (not if) it gets changed.

So I’ll be focusing my efforts where they really matter: Writing the best story I’m capable of.

Then I’ll let the marketing folks worry about assigning a title and a cover to it. That’s their job.

I think mine’s much more fun anyway.

Tax Deductible Writing Expenses

By Heather Moore

Do you have to be published to deduct writing expenses from your taxes? Yes. And you have to be receiving some type of payment for your work.

But if you aren’t published, you still need to keep track of your expenses. Once you receive that first magazine article payment or royalty check, you can claim “operating at a loss” for previous years of writing expenses. For more details ask your tax consultant.

What type of expenses count as writing expenses?

1. Purchase of any books. You're a writer and everything you read is educational. Keep track of the receipts for any books you purchase and jot down the mileage to and from that store.

2. Mileage in pursuit of writing or promoting. Keep track of your trips to the library, book signings, critique group, writer’s conferences, post office, copy store, etc.

3. Meals fall under a unique category. If you eat while on the road, going about your writing business, you can only claim 50% of the bill as an expense.

4. Business use of your home. In a nutshell, you divide the square footage of your office by the total square footage of your home, and you come up with a percentage. Then you take all of your utility bills and times them by this percentage. The amount becomes what you can claim a deduction.

5. Writing equipment and supplies. Keep receipts for purchases such as paper, ink, pens, computer, printer, website hosting fees, and promotional materials.

Every cent adds up when the final tally is totaled. If you are methodical, you’ll be surprised that often you are able to expense more than what you are making. Taxes for your writing career will be a nice zero.

Generating Articles

by Annette Lyon

I've had a lot of success in recent months selling articles to magazines. In addition to hearing, "Congratulations," and "I'm jealous," I'm also hearing, "How do you get your article ideas?"

You can learn about ideas, finding angles, and writing what you know in writing magazines and books. I did all that for years and still couldn't seem to manage to come up with many concrete, specfic ideas.

But below, I'm about to spill what I finally learned about getting article ideas.

1) Read the ads, not the articles.
Contrary to what you might think, magazines make the bulk of their money from selling ad space, not from selling subscriptions. If you pitch an article that might sell them more ad space, you have a better chance of getting your foot in the door.

Several months ago I noticed that a magazine I subscribe to had a lot of ads from companies specializing in modest clothing like extra-long t-shirts and formal dresses with sleeves and low hemlines. I pitched an article on how to dress fashionably and while fully covered, complete with side bars that had resources for companies that carried such clothing. The magazine snatched it up. (And can you guess where they turned to for selling ads that month? Yep. My side bar contact information.)

2) Look months ahead.
Several magazines actually post their upcoming topics online. Such listings are a freelancer's goldmine. If an editor is looking for something about easy Halloween costumes for the October issue, by all means, send one in! Just be sure to read deadlines and note lead times. Magazines don't go by the typical calendar. When the rest of the population is thinking summer, editors are thinking winter or even spring.

3) Follow trends and twist them.
If you've followed a magazine for a while, you know what topics they've covered and what they like. Capitalize on that. Find a similar but untapped topic. If they recently ran an article about sending a child off to college, pitch one about how parents can keep in touch with that child once they're AT college.

4) Find what you know that's abnormal.
I recently threw together an article last minute that I thought was rather obvious and lame. The editor took it, I thought, because she needed to fill a space and was desperate. But I've had lots of people tell me they thought it was wonderful, and the editor has used me several times since then. Turns out that not everyone knows this stuff after all, and I can capitalize on that fact.

Everyone has knowledge that no one else does. The trick is finding out what you know that others don't. You might be surprised how much you know that you can share.


Use a few of these tips, and you could be selling some articles of your own. It's easier than you might think!