A Busy Writing Summer Kicks Off

Insane Summer Writing Goals?

Regardless of what calendars say, to me June 1st has always been the "official" start of summer. As a new season begins, I'm also taking some time to wonder where I should go as far as my own specific writing goals. This isn't just about how much freelance writing work I want to get done this summer or how much I make, but also how I make it. While freelance writing and residual income are not necessarily mutually exclusive, they're not always the same thing, either. One website that is an example of where the two meet is eHow. You write all the articles and content, the website splits the advertising revenue with you. That continues even after you stop writing, making writing for eHow one way that ordinary online writing can be turned into passive month after month income.

I've been freelance writing in some form for about five years now, and I've managed to make a full time living at it since year one. It's not always the most financially comfortable living, but I've done all right and even had some quite good years in there, as well. I've been able to travel, enjoy freedom of schedule, explore the Northeast (especially Vermont), Alaska, and Austin Texas, and I'm on my way to the West Coast and Oregon in a few weeks here, once all the final ducks are set up in a row. But one thing about conventional freelance writing is you're always looking for repeat work, always looking for a new job, and after five years the "boom and bust" way that freelancing works can really wear on you when you're trying to create some form of order or semblance of stability in your life for the first time.

And this is where passive income comes into the picture. I've read Grizz's make money online blog and really appreciate his knowledge and honesty. I've followed a few Internet Marketers like Josh Spaulding and Jeff Herring, signed up for Court and Mark's Keyword Academy, and bought Marisa Wright's e-book on maximizing profits on eHow. I've been extremely happy with all the information this has gained me, and have been struggling between some health issues, personal issues, and family issues to put all of this information into action. I'm just hitting the point where enough has cleared up that this looks possible - although that move to Bend, Oregon, coming up in a few weeks is definitely consuming some major time.

So what's all this mean? It means that while I'm going to keep writing website reviews and giving advice on how to make a living freelance writing, I'm also going to be spending the next several months shifting most of my efforts to making passive and residual income: income that is going to keep paying me for my writing long after the actual blog posts, websites, articles, etc have been written.

Most of my writing the past year and a half was for an employer in Austin, Texas, who is an Internet Marketer. I'm withholding the name simply out of respect because I'm not sure what's considered "appropriate" or not. I was hired for 14 months and change, and then let go. There's no ill will: I was treated fantastic the entire time, had a great face to face talk about the situation and decision, received glowing endorsements of my work, and I still gladly freelance for them on a monthly basis. But that time in Austin was my dream job: get the writing done wherever and whenever you want, just get it done. Remote location working - and Austin is a great city to have that perk!

Then, it was over. So with passive income and residual income, imagine the security you would have if you knew you were making enough off of past work to make a full time living even if you didn't write anything new all year. Imagine if you had two or three different income sources that were providing you with a full time yearly income online. Aside from the obvious complete freedom of movement and freedom of time, there's also the security factor of not ever having to rely on someone else for your own livelihood.

So that's what I'm working towards now. When I first move into Bend, I'm going to have no TV, I'm not going to know anybody in the area, and no video games or other distractions. This makes it a great time to really buckle down on the work and see what I'm capable of producing in a short time period like a summer. My student loans are in deferment (I can rant again about the politics and waste of money grad school often is - but I digress), and I really don't require that much to live if I trim the budget down to true necessities.

So I've done a lot of really hard thinking about what I want to do as a freelance writer, what kind of writing really excites me the most, and what my writing goals for the summer should be to get me from another freelance writer struggling with this gawd-awful recession, to someone making a full time income off of passive online sources. Right now I can look at a couple hundred and change in completely passive income per month. I'd like to push that to three grand or more.

I work best with a clear plan that still gives me freedom to improv my way there. In other words, I do best with general goals, but don't do as well when I break that down all the way to strict day by day guides.

So for the next three months, here's what I'm shooting for to try and make that transition from freelance writer to writing for passive income online:

1. 22 niche websites monetized with AdSense or Affiliate links
   
2. 10 micro niche blogs monetized
3. 150 new hubs on HubPages
4. 300 new eHow articles
5. 10 Clickbank campaigns by using PotPieGirl's Squidoo lens strategys (50-70 lenses)
6. Get this blog up to 100 visitors a day and look at monetizing it
   

These are the main goals, and not even listed will be the normal freelance writing work, more articles to add to Constant-Content, and the heavy amount of article marketing and link building to get these articles, hubs, lenses, blogs, and websites onto the first page of Google for their respective niche keywords. The link building and article marketing in theory should take even more time to get these all to first page Google than even the actual writing.

This is also in addition to moving across the country and picking up some extra freelance work from Guru.com in order to help pay for the expenses, as well as improving what I already have set up and earning for me. I'm not naive: getting all this done without outsourcing means I'm looking at 12-16 hours a day, almost every day of the summer. And you know what, to take a shot at the life that a full time passive income could offer me, I'm willing to do that. I can rest in September when 90%+ of my work will be analyzing results and building backlinks.

I posted those goals because that's a great encouragement to me. Now it's out there, published, where anyone can see it (and ask about it) later. I'll update my own progress over the summer while still adding posts that hopefully all the rest of you will find helpful.

I guess this post also points out something else I believe about freelance writing. This advice also works for probably any process that helps you earn money online. If you're going to go, go all out. If you're going to work for something, shoot incredibly high. If you shoot for the moon and miss, you might still make it up to space. If you shoot for the mountains and miss, you're still stuck in the hills.

Freelance writing isn't easy, but it has benefits I wouldn't trade for the world. That said, even the most happy traditional freelance writer, in my opinion, would be a fool not to also invest in passive income for now and the future.

That's all for now. I hope all of you are doing well, and keep on writing. As always, my one bit of advice is get started writing online right now!

Freelance Writing: Freelance Writing Movie Reviews Online

Freelance Writing Online Movie Reviews for Money

If you're a freelance writer who loves the movies, the idea of freelance writing online movie reviews for a living can seem like a dream job. Who wouldn't want to get paid for writing movie reviews and selling them? Aside from the money, you finally have an audience who will hang on your every word while you get to go to movie theaters and watch every film that comes out.

Well if you're hoping to make a full time living freelance writing solely by writing online movie reviews, the bad news is that's probably not going to happen. And by probably, I mean almost definitely. BUT, there are many ways to make really good side money writing movie reviews, and if you have a great writing style, can think outside of the box, and are willing to learn SEO and social & Internet marketing, then there's a good chance that over time you could make an exceptional side income freelance writing movie reviews - and maybe even enough to write full time, even if it's not all simply about cinema.

There are several ways to go about freelance writing online reviews to make money, and in some ways this road is similar to freelance writing video game reviews for money. There are a few main sites to write on that will often times pay for movie reviews, and there is always the option of starting a blog and building up a following, then monetizing that blog once the traffic is right. While there are several options, most will not pay great, and getting even a solid or steady income writing online movie reviews can be difficult, but if this is your freelance writing passion, then it is one that you should pursue.

First, I've found that Constant Content is a good place to sell movie reviews online. This is especially true of reviews of brand new movies that have just been released, movie list articles (like Top 10 Post Apocalyptic Films of All Time) or movies that are in line for an award (like the Oscars), but were smaller and maybe didn't get the press as the larger blockbusters. In my experience if you're doing a review of a movie from opening night, a usage review can easily go for $28 (often times I've found by offering only usage rights I even sell the same review 2-3 times), unique rights for around $39, and I don't believe full rights are usually worth the time as the bids don't seem to go much beyond $44, and at that point you don't even have your name on it.

Once in a while you'll even sell a review years later, as there are always new start up blogs concentrating on movie reviews. As an example, at the end of 2007 I sold usage rights to a movie review of "Trainspotting" for $19, a full 11 years after the movie was released. So this does happen.

Associated Content is another place where you can sell movie reviews, although the up front pay tends to be pretty low, and PPV bonus doesn't last because once a movie has run its course through theaters, there aren't going to be a lot of people looking for it anymore. AC might get you some name recognition and more of a following than selling articles through CC, but still not nearly enough to make any serious type of pocket change.

There are two more main options, which can be (and until you make it big, should be) used if you are going to try to make money freelance writing movie reviews. The first is to create a blog and/or website and monetize it. The hardest part of this is getting a strong readership because online movie blogs and online movie review sites are EXTREMELY competitive. If you're going this route, find some good affiliate programs, but learn about SEO and search engine traffic first to get steady traffic before monetizing the site. Concentrate on Google, and consider Yahoo! traffic a bonus.

Obviously this is easier said than done, but building a readership to a blog in any competitive field takes time, and you have to be willng to be stubborn, persistent, and to do the work (and homework) to get your blog or website ranked as high in the Search Engine Rankings as it needs to be. If you don't know enough about how SEO works, Google "Justin blogging zombie" or "Grizz make money online for beginners." These guys will teach you literally everything you need to know about SEO.

The other part of setting up a killer blog or website is the writing. When you freelance write movie reviews for money, you have a lot of different options as to your writing style, focus, etc. A great writing style is important in this particular niche, because one of your goals should be syndication. That might be one of the best ways to make money writing movie reviews. If you have dozens of sites and dozens of newspapers (or hundreds, even?) that all pay you for your movie reviews on a weekly basis, then suddenly even at only $10 a pop, you can start making some pretty decent money freelance writing reviews.

Writing movie reviews for a little extra pocket change is actually pretty easy - it's turning this gig into a serious money maker that is extremely difficult, and you have to have one hell of a blog/website, a great writing style, and hopefully some serious syndication in order to make more than a restaurant meal's worth.

If you tend to watch a lot of movies and like writing movie reviews, then you mine as well freelance it for some extra cash (and then the movie tickets become tax deductible). There are a few ways to do this, and this article went over the main ways to do this through freelance writing. If you're happy with about $100 a month extra through Constant-Content, then this is fairly easy to do. If not, then be prepared for the long haul if you want any serious success freelance writing movie reviews for money. If this is your writing passion, then it should be one you're willing to fight for.