WHY "MASTER DAYTON?"

"Master Dayton" might be humorous, (I mean if Ph.Ds are called "Doctors," shouldn't MFAs be called "Masters?") but in all seriousness I have made a living freelance writing and after several years I have tons of information I want to share to help out my fellow writers, regardless of age, experience, goals, situation, or background. This blog isn't pretty-but it will help if real freelance writing information is what you want.

Friday, January 22, 2010

50 Things Beginning Writers Should Know

50 Things I Wish I Knew As A Beginning Freelance Writer

So I wasn't sure how to start off a new year with my blog, especially with all the work I've been doing trying to kick off a couple of online businesses, dealing with an entirely new work load, and putting the personal life in order while dealing with about a dozen new projects. Not complaining, mind you. I love all the work that's coming in, the new sweet contract I just landed, and the amazing array of projects that seem to be coming my way, including screen writing and creative writing projects that could potentially open some really amazing doors for me. Might even get to add to the sparsest page on IMDB :)

But this is a freelance writing blog, and one I've been wanting to give more TLC to in a while, and no time like the present to begin. One thing about being a freelance writer for over 5 years now is that I've made some good discoveries, and a crap load of mistakes. Like dump truck load of them. I've also learned that as a writer there are benefits to a freelance writing lifestyle that people don't tell you about, as well as drawbacks to living as a freelance writer that no one warns you about, either. Then there are the crazy bits of freelance writing knowledge, when a stereotype like "the freedom of being a freelance writer" is correct, kind of, but not ever in the way that you imagine it.

What better way than to kick off a brand new year of writing and blogging than by making a long list of what I wish I knew before I got started – or things I've learned along the way.
  1. It's very hard to get work as a true beginner freelance writer, which is why:
  2. It's always best as a writer to have 6 months of severance pay or more before kicking off a freelance writing career.
  3. Helium.com isn't a scam, but it is a complete waste of time unless you understand backlinks and passive income – which you won't as a true beginning online writer.
  4. The best articles for Associated Content are topics with a ton of traffic but no advertisements from Google – so you get paid for traffic that wouldn't convert on a blog (top 10 movies lists are great examples of this)
  5. List articles are easy to sell on Constant-Content,
  6. But if you're writing for Constant-Content all your writing has to be top notch.
  7. eHow is a good place to build passive income if you know what to right, but
  8. eHow will yank your articles without pause if your article is even slightly in violation of their interpretation of the terms of service and writer's guide.
  9. But eHow is a great doorway to write for Demand Studios, which is pretty decent up front pay for Internet writing.
  10. Demand Studios pays pretty well for online upfront articles, but
  11. Some Demand Studios editors are out of control, which is fine when
  12. You're willing to walk away from a revision request that is beyond ridiculous for what they're paying. This hasn't happened often to me, but about 2% of all articles I write I decide not to revise (generally I revise 20% of my articles, but revisions are usually very simple and taking only 5 minutes or less).
  13. Learning the difference between passive/residual income and freelance work for hire income is critical for long term goals as a writer.
  14. Employers pay half of your Medicare and Social Security when you work for someone. This is important because once you pay your own taxes, you have to pick up the tab, meaning a freelance writer who makes $20,000 has to pay a lot more in taxes than someone who is employed and makes $20,000.
  15. Taxes are paid quarterly by freelance writers, which makes budgeting a must.
  16. There are many different types and styles of writing, and each requires a different view or approach.
  17. Online freelance writers have to be able to adapt to more than one type of writing to really succeed as a full time freelancer.
  18. Not all work is worth doing. Burn out is a major concern, as is carpal tunnel, and sometimes it's better to rest or pursue other interests as opposed to writing a bunch of $3 articles.
  19. Guru.com and Elance.com are legitimate freelance writing auction sites that writers can earn a full time living from. All the others aren't worth the time.
  20. Writing a query letter might be the single most important part of securing extra work as a freelance writer.
  21. Bidding for jobs on Guru & Elance is a great way to practice sharpening and honing your query letters.
  22. HubPages is a good introduction to passive and affiliate income, and also a good place to keep an online writing portfolio, which brings up a good point:
  23. Create an online portfolio. HubPages is a good place for this, so is Squidoo. Based on pages at both of these sites I've had people contact me for work, and this has led to some pretty good writing jobs.
  24. Marketing is critical for any writer who ever wants to make a full time income with their words.
  25. Writing is only a small part of making a full time income writing. Phone calls, e-mails, bidding for work, marketing, and negotiating prices all take up just as much, or more than writing freelance.
  26. Find a niche specialty based on what you know. Being an experienced poker player made it easy and natural for me to be a good poker writer, which made me by far the majority of my freelance writing income during my first year as a full time online writer.
  27. Getting work done on time puts you above many other writers (as basic as making the deadline should be), getting the job done early gets you repeat work and a raise.
  28. Learn to use PDFs and Power Points. This will open up doors to jobs that you might not otherwise be able to do as a freelance writer.
  29. Invest in ZipFile software.
  30. Invest in a screenshot software.
  31. Set up a blog, website, HubPage, or something to create an online presence.
  32. Spend a full day writing and editing the best sample articles ever. These should never be sold, but can be used to show your talent and ability to potential clients.
  33. Never use the home office deduction on taxes. That's an audit waiting to happen.
  34. Review restaurants when you go out with friends – because 50% of the cost of business meals are tax deductable.
  35. Don't start a book or movie blog. Just not worth the effort for the return.
  36. If you're chasing residual income and have even a little bit of extra income, outsource work. The sooner you can do this, the sooner you can reach your passive income freelance writing goals.
  37. Save all clips. Have copies of all of them.
  38. Work on your writing resume. This should look completely different that a normal spread out resume.
  39. Network. This goes along with marketing as being a critical skill that most freelance writers online or offline too often ignore.
  40. Never be afraid to ask for a raise. If employers keep coming back, there's a good chance they're happy enough with your work to pay more. If they keep offering new work before you finish what you're on, you're probably working for much less than they're willing to pay you.
  41. Learn about basic SEO and web writing. Articles for the web are often much different than what employers want for print or other freelance writing mediums.
  42. Not being an English major shouldn't stop you from being a writer. In fact, for online freelance writing not being an English major could be a huge bonus.
  43. Going to graduate school doesn't help freelancing at all – in fact you have to re-teach yourself to write for non academic mediums.
  44. Because academic writing generally doesn't pay unless you hook onto a grant team.
  45. Find some helpful freelance writing blogs to learn from. Many of the authors will be glad to respond to a well thought out question in the comments section, BUT
  46. Read over the blog first. This includes old blog posts about freelance writing because you don't want to ask a question that has been covered in the blog 100 times.
  47. InfoBarrel, Xomba, and HubPages gives writers some major opportunities to learn how to use back links, AdSense, and build some passive income while using their strengths as a freelance writer.
  48. Learn about residual income early. The options and doors this opens up down the line makes it something to at least get started with early.
  49. Work space. You need to create a solid work space to get into the habit of sitting down and knocking out articles on things you would probably never write about like treadmill reviews, concrete, mini-bikes, yeast infections, or 50 articles on green tea and health benefits.
  50. Freelancing freedom comes with a price, or maybe just a giant asterisk. More on this in a bit.
So there's a good list of 50 things I wish I knew before getting started as a freelance writer. I'm sure if I wrote on this blog with steady grad school training of resources and precision I could find 25-50 more, but at that point I'd just be showing off, or chasing the word count on my longest ever blog post of Why I'm Not Ashamed to Be a Freelance Writer.

The freedom of freelance writing – which is often one of the main draws to being a writer. Let's discuss this very briefly, as it will be worth a full sized post of its own later. But right now I'll say this: there IS a certain degree of freedom to the freelance writing lifestyle. Some call it being a digital nomad, others refer to it (perhaps somewhat incorrectly) as lifestyle design (mainly because I think Timothy Ferriss was discussing a much more passive income that freelance writing), others as an online or digital vagabond. I always kind of liked the nomad or vagabond phrases.

I can work from my current apartment in Iowa, just as I could work from my old apartment in Austin Texas, or the cabin I used to rent in Fairbanks Alaska. When on vacation I can sneak in two hours of work in the morning before Tampa really kicks into gear, or I can stay a month with friends in Oregon and work from an Internet Café while also chipping in to help renovate their house.

There is a ton of freedom. I can talk walks, I can have a beer and lunch at noon across the street at Mulligan's Sports Bar, I can grab a friend and road trip.

But a freelance writing career also acts as a tether. The work has to be done, and if I don't do it because I went on a 10 mile hike during the day, I'll be doing it from 10 pm to 6 am in the hotel room at night because the work has to get done. As a freelance writer, it can be very hard to eliminate stress from your life because you can always find more work to do, there's always something not getting done, and there's always more you feel like you could/should be doing.
So you do have freedom, and it's a freedom I wouldn't trade for the world, but it's a limited freedom that acts kind of like a tether unless you can find a way to make a full time living from residual income online. That's the reality of the freedom of a freelance writing career. That's also the myth of freedom in a freelance writing career. Finding the balance and avoiding burn out is a huge part of the equation.

So that's it for now. A very happy New Year for everyone, and I hope 2010 finds you optimistic, encouraged, and profitable. A lot more coming up soon, and as always feel free to comment. I always enjoy the interaction and will help out beginning freelance writers whenever I can.

Here's to the first post of Master Dayton in 2010. Cheers!

28 comments:

  1. Thanks for this! Comprehensive list. I'll surely be reading this again.

    I'm not a beginning freelance writer. I've been in the trade for more than 6 months now. The problem is, 25 percent of your post doesn't apply to me. I'm freelancing from Asia, which means I'm not qualified to write for eHow, Helium, Associated Content, Demand Studios and whatnot. I'm loving Squidoo though.

    Nevertheless, I agree with you on the degree of freedom the freelancer's lifestyle can afford to have.

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  2. Thanks so much for the list! I'm a relative newbie and found it to be quite helpful. Happened upon you through NJFM and really appreciate the generous sharing of experience exhibited by people like you and Felicia.

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  3. Hey guys, thanks for the comments on my little writing blog here. Crystal, glad you stopped by and hope it helps out. I am definitely a fan of the NJFM blog, and think she does a wonderful job of helping beginning writers along.

    @ Zelle, yeah there really are a lot of limits when it comes to writing from outside the US. I never thought about it until some online friends from Canada and Australia pointed out a lot of their difficulties. I am also a fan of Squidoo, have you tried InfoBarrel or HubPages? These sites also allow authors from other nations, so if you can get an AdSense account or Amazon account (both of which are usually very easy to get through HubPages) then those might be a couple of good options for you to build up the passive income.

    Thanks for the comments, guys, and good luck getting going in 2010!

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  4. To LD, whose comment and personal attacks I deleted because we don't play that game here:

    1) I have no issue with people disagreeing with me or arguing another point. But I demand a basic level of respect. I didn't kick in the door of your home and piss on your rug, so what makes you think I'm going to let you trash me and other people who comment on my freelancing blog?

    2) I had a very recent post about jerks who trash everyone in the comments, imply they're amazing writers, and then don't leave a live link for the rest of us to see how it's really done, hiding in anonymity like an unemployed 12-24 year old troll. It's here if you're actually interested:
    http://master-dayton.blogspot.com/2009/12/angry-freelance-writing-blogger-rant.html

    3) Your reference to $15 being jack crap for payment: it would be if these were expected to be flawless high quality articles. What they expect is accurate format writing one step above the average Internet slush.

    I can write a $15 dollar article in 35-40 minutes, a $20 article in 45 minutes, or 3 $7.50 fact sheets in 60 minutes. So let's pretend I'm lazy and slow and only write one an hour and only work 40 hours a week and for some reason decide to never write a $20 article or several fact sheets instead:

    That's $31,200 a year, which is more than 34% of full time workers in the U.S. make, according to the U.S. Census. It's well over what 90% of freelance writers will ever make in a year, and it's over half of the average median income for a household of two (and I'm a household of one).

    If we go by what I'm planning to make this year as a worst case scenario, I'll be in the top 43% if the census numbers hold. But back to Demand Studios.

    For writers who can produce formatted content quickly, averaging out $19-$25 an hour is very much possible. Minimum wage is $7, so while you won't be living a as a millionaire, yeah, I don't think $15-$20 an article with an unlimited amount of work online is a bad deal at all, especially when there are bills to pay or when you live in a cheap area of the country - and it's very good pay for online writing, especially for writers who haven't built up a clientele yet.

    4) If you're that much better than everyone else here, why the hell are you reading the blog of a hack freelancer like me anyway?

    That's it. Sorry for anyone offended by my going on the attack, but I'm tired of arrogant trolls who can't back up their words or don't think before they type.

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  5. Jeeze Shane - what have you done to attract the trolls - AFAIK you haven't even called Freelance writing a scam :-)

    Really good article about getting a start with freelance writing and why its not a passive income

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  6. Hey Lissie,

    Always good to see ya' around. I have no idea how I attract these people, but somehow it tends to happen in public, too. It's not so bad when when there's a cute waitress around who appreciates me making the loudmouth look stupid in public (it became a favorite hobby during the college years), but haven't figured out how that would translate online yet, lol.

    How's the move and repatriation (I have no idea if that's the right term or not, but it sounds good) to New Zealand coming along? Appreciate the positive Facebook comment, as well, and that contract has been a Godsend, that's for sure. I have found it to be true, though, if you work your arse off, do things right, and be nice eventually good things happen exactly when you need them to.

    BTW - I think I'm "no follow" in all the comments on your blog now. All right, time for the mischievous online guilt trip: *sniff* *sniff*, I thought we were "do follow" friend ;) LOL - well thanks for stopping by and have a good one. I had some friends from grad school days comment that they hate salary and would love to make $12 an hour, so I guess the point has been made.

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  7. Hey Lissie,

    Always good to see ya' around. I have no idea how I attract these people, but somehow it tends to happen in public, too. It's not so bad when when there's a cute waitress around who appreciates me making the loudmouth look stupid in public (it became a favorite hobby during the college years), but haven't figured out how that would translate online yet, lol.

    How's the move and repatriation (I have no idea if that's the right term or not, but it sounds good) to New Zealand coming along? Appreciate the positive Facebook comment, as well, and that contract has been a Godsend, that's for sure. I have found it to be true, though, if you work your arse off, do things right, and be nice eventually good things happen exactly when you need them to.

    BTW - I think I'm "no follow" in all the comments on your blog now. All right, time for the mischievous online guilt trip: *sniff* *sniff*, I thought we were "do follow" friend ;) LOL - well thanks for stopping by and have a good one. I had some friends from grad school days comment that they hate salary and would love to make $12 an hour, so I guess the point has been made.

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  8. Welcome back! I've gotten tons of tips from you, and though I'm far from going full time, I owe your blog to getting me off my butt and getting started. Ignore the haters. You're living the dream....Self employed and (sounds like) loving it! Keep it up.

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  9. Hi Prudence,

    Thanks for the warm words! It's always encouraging to hear from people getting started and getting going. A lot of my blog is directed towards part timers, college students, people just looking for options on the side. It's amazing how much of a difference just a few hundred bucks a month can make, from being a college student freelance writing to writing on the side to get a little extra income after retirement. Definitely prefer being self employed to working for anybody else, and the passive income has been absolutely kicking butt so far in February, so the work continues to get to the reward! Thanks for commenting.

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  10. Thanks for the response Mr. Dayton, I appreciate the good info. It's really good to read information that's helpful.

    Thanks,

    Firstborn

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  11. That is an amazingly informative post. My focus is on the passive income from a business, with writing supporting it. It is interesting to see a true freelancer writer's perspective.

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  12. Thanks for the compliment, Jade. I always try my best to provide some good information for my readers and visitors. I'm trying to shift my business model to what you're describing, with the passive income supplemented by freelance writing as opposed to vice-versa, so bit by bit I'm working towards that. Thanks for the kind words!

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  13. I am new at this. I have wanted to be a writer for many years, but never submitted or sold anything. I realized that there were free lance jobs, but I never knew how you went about getting started. I am going to be reading up on your blog, investigating the sites you told me about, and getting a portfolio and writers resume started. If I have a specialty, or several, I assume that is what will be reflected in your portfolio. I have been writing training modules and presentations for my company I work for, but never thought that people got paid to do this for companies outside of work! I just thought they had trainers or writers... Thanks!

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  14. Hey, glad I found your blog! I'm a former newspaper ediotr (20 years) and I've been writing on sites like Xomba, Redgage, Bukisa and others for almost a year now and am in the early stages of kicking off some blogs. Thanks for the advice on your pages.

    And about the trolls, what is it with these people? You write a simple article that in no way would seem to be controversial and someone comes along and starts cursing you and telling you how stupid you are. I just don't get it. Are these people so insecure they have to lash out at random strangers? I run into them on Reddit all the time, and Triond's forums are just full of them.

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  15. Hi John,

    Glad to have ya' around! I am a fan of Xomba, especially since they let you put affiliate links in the articles, and they rank better than ever before. Demand Studios can be aggravating, but they're good for "money now." Glad to hear you're already looking ahead on kicking off some blogs and working on building the residual income. That truly is the way to go.

    I don't know about trolls. Somehow I apparently have a way of attracting all of them. Maybe I should change colognes, lol. Hope everything is going well. When you're setting up blogs for making money, take a look at HubPages and InfoBarrel. You get AdSense splits from both, they can rank well with just a little backlink work, and they give very good backlinks.

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  16. Hey Nicole, Thanks for your input. I can't talk much about RentaCoder because I've never worked there and can't give a fair analysis. However, while some of the concerns you mention are valid, I do think it's important for me to mention that I personally have never come close to having any issues in payment on Guru or Elance, and that was with over 300 completed assignments combined between the two.

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  17. You're quite welcome Master Dayton. While I'm glad you haven't experienced an issue at the other sites, I do want you to keep an eye on their terms of service. 300 assignements? That's wonderful!

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  18. Thanks for this article. By reading it, I am learning great information to assist me with this quest for F/T freelance writer/podcaster status soon. I will be taking your 50 tips, to heart here.

    Monica

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  19. Thanks for the info. I am using your site as a one-stop resource for advice on where to look for work--your reviews are very helpful, anmswering all the questions I could think to ask.

    Here is a query I haven't seen here: I am an American citizen living in Peru, making the transition very slowly to living here full-time. However, I have family that can act as a base address in the States for me to do business 'as an American' while pitching my writing services on elance or guru as an American in Peru. In other words--'perfect native English at south of the border prices'. I can afford to work for less living here.

    Do you know if I can apply for and complete jobs from out of Peru as long as I have an American address? Could I get an account suspension this way? In other words, are there other than tax reasons that foreigners can't work for these countries?

    Thanks for all the help you provide here.

    Peter

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  20. Hey Guys,

    Thanks for all the wonderful comments and encouragement. It's really been awesome watching a community grow around this blog over the last two years of posting. Peter, you bring up some excellent questions. First of all I applaud you for getting out of the country - the value of a freelance writing career is freedom of location, and you can live much better off a lot less elsewhere.

    First of all the caveat: I am NOT an expert in international writing, what the rules are for US based websites, etc. So I'm not saying the following is good advice at all, or should be followed, I'm just giving you my point of view.

    Often there are two sets of rules in life: the rules that are actually rules, and the "rules" that we impose on ourselves because what we're doing might "seem shady." The first set of rules should be followed. The second set should be ignored completely. If you have family in the U.S. or a U.S. address (or even can rent a post office box annually), then I personally see absolutely no problem in working for U.S. only sites. If the payments are all going to U.S. accounts that you can access from Peru, then what's the problem?

    If you have an American address, use it. There's no point in handicapping yourself. As far as account suspension, it depends on one website to another. But if it's one like Demand Studios, if they don't allow international writers and you're living in Peru, then what's the difference if your account is suspended or you don't work for them at all? Either way you don't get paid so I'm not sure you have any risk.

    The other thing to look at is AdSense and Amazon share revenue sites like HubPages, Xomba, and InfoBarrel where you can write to earn AdSense and Amazon commission and they just don't care about location. I also have a recent blog post on finding private clients, and they don't care where you are in the world as long as you get the work done. In fact, being in Peru might help you because they'll see if you'll write 500 word articles for $10 each instead of the $18-20 I'm going to charge them :)

    Hope that helps. If you have any other questions feel free to ask, and I hope this helps.

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  21. Hello. Thanks for all your wonderful advice. I am a middle-aged, rookie writer. I started writing for DMS in March of this year. Prior to that, I did mostly secretarial work. I love to write, but I struggle with most of the articles I do, so consequently I haven't been able to make a living at it. Do you have any advice for streamlining the process? Thanks :)

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  22. Hi Clare,

    No problem. It's always feels great for me to hear how I'm helping others out and getting started. As for advice, one thing I have noticed is that the longer you write, the better and more efficient you will get over time - so don't worry if you struggle a little bit at first, you will get more of a hang of it over time. DMS can be difficult to work for and finding good articles can be a challenge, followed by dealing with some CEs who don't do their jobs well. For a lot of online writing in general, and DMS in particular, I would say to realize that this type of writing is often form writing: the employers want a template type of writing. So don't spend 2 hours, or 1 hour, or even 30 minutes on research: there's no reason for it. Learn the three to four main points, write the article according to a template, and if you concentrate on "template writing" instead of treating each article differently, your speed will pick up and you'll figure out what they want and what they don't. This definitely helps to streamline the process. Also, if you have a few areas where you're an expert, you can set e-mail alerts from DMS when new article titles under that specific topic are added to the database. This will help you to get articles that will be easier to write anyway since you're already an expert on that niche. Otherwise keep at it, and learn to focus only on the bare bones most important tasks of writing a good article, and over time you'll streamline the process very well.

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  23. Thank you so much! You have helped to make things easier and no doubt more profitable for me. I'll be thinking more in terms of form writing and templates, at least with regard to this type of writing. What you said about three to four main points is significant also. I will be a regular visitor your blog;there is much to learn from you.

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  24. Great post! I am a beginning writer from Asia. I have been learning writing for some time and decide to take the plunge of freelancing. Being an international(non-native) writer, I am yet to see how the life of freelancing is like. So, it's been great to see posts like yours.

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  25. Hi Amanda,

    Glad you found it helpful! As an international writer you might have to do some more leg work to figure out which sites are best for you as some take international writers and some don't, but there are definitely plenty of opportunities out there. Good luck!

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  26. Thansk for this, I am just starting out doing the freelance dance, got a couple of articles published on wikinut and one on triond just to get my feet wet but was not sure what to do next, you have given me some valuable ideas, ta for that,

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  27. I see here that you have been thanked more than enough times already, but I really wanted to tell you how much this blog is helping me. I am an unemployed mother of two teenage boys. Being unemployed is extremely hard, but it pressured me to actually pursue the career I have always wanted. I was struggling with the what, where and how, of starting out when I stumbled upon your blog. It has been a godsend. I am following your advice and have made it to number twenty-three. I have been accepted at the two freelance websites you mentioned and put up profiles on the paid blogging sites you also recommended. I plan to continue and follow your advice till the last fifty. Thank you again!

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  28. I'm not really understanding the concept of passive and residual income. I believe I almost have it grasped but any articles or book titles you could send my way that might finally make it clear for me? I haven't even begun but I'm doing my homework so I can join the ranks of freelance writers.

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