Celebrating Writing Milestones!

I Am One Happy Freelance Writer

Sometimes you toil for months or even years (years especially if you tend to be stop-and-go like I am - always the sprinter, always had trouble with marathon running) wondering why you can't hit that huge freelance writing or passive income breakthrough that so many people have hit before you. Sometimes you see only slow snail-paced movements and you start wondering if you'll possibly have the energy to finish the race to your goals before becoming too exhausted to do anything but quit.

And then sometimes....and then sometimes...

Sometimes you hit that week that not only changes your perspective or your business, but it also changes your life. Based on the title, you want to take a guess on what the last few days in August have been like for me? :)

Well to copy I quote I came up with earlier this week: "The ceiling that marks the limits of what I can accomplish seems to be flying further and further away with every passing week." Wednesday I landed the largest writing contract I've ever had, and it's a beauty. In fact, it's probably going to push me into the next tax bracket. I call that a nice problem to have. The next day on Thursday I broke through a barrier I've been chasing since March 1st, over a full 5 months ago when I made $19.83 in one day with AdSense. I finally broke through that $20 in one day barrier, and so far in August my total passive income is destroying the 15% a month growth I've been aiming for (and almost averaging) this year.

Back on May 30th, so beginning of June for all intensive purposes, I wrote this blog post about passive income, encouraging people just starting out to keep with it, even though it's hard to see the work. One of my biggest points was that in the beginning it took 6 months for me to get to $40 in one month, but after two years my AdSense had single months where it grew that fast, or close to that much. I also stated that I expected to make the $100 jump from $200 a month to $300 month in about 4 to 5 months, less than half the time it took me to get from one hundred a month to two hundred. Well I hate to make an early call, with Murphy's Law and all, but barring Google dying or an atomic bomb disaster of a month, I can already call it: I'm going to blast past $300 this month, only 3 months from the time I was celebrating the $200 mark.

That's a snowball effect, and it's a beautiful thing when it's working for you instead of against you. Hopefully you'll all not only enjoy this day and these accomplishments with me, but take encouragement, as well. I'm not the most tech-savvy person, and in fact that's one area where my smarts don't help me a lot. It takes me a long time to figure out basic SEO stuff that came easy to other people. I'm not a natural at all at marketing myself or pitching to clients to get huge writing jobs. But I know my craft, and I'm stubborn as the most bull headed mule you'll ever meet. So I'll learn. Very slowly, and with many nights banging my head against the wall, but I will keep going to learn what I have to and accomplish my goals through sheer work if nothing else.

I'm sure there are many ways to get to where I am faster and with less pain than it took me...but the point is by being good at what I do, by working on my craft, and by hammering away I managed to get here. I'm going to make more this year than I ever have in a year despite a really ugly first few months, and next year might take me right out of the middle class bracket...which is pretty freaking cool. The passive income is growing and snowballing and giving me more freedom than ever, and getting me close to the point where I can start doing some serious outsourcing to ramp up the passive income projects even more.

If I can get here by pure force of will and stubbornness, what's stopping you?

It wasn't that long ago that I was unemployed with no prospects and no emergency funds, and it wasn't that many years ago when I was homeless for a while. If you really want the dream of a freelance writing or passive income, just keep fighting for it.

I can tell you from first hand experience these breakthrough moments are absolute bliss, and even better than you imagine.

Thanks for sharing this moment with me, now go and make one of your own!

Entry Level Writers: Don't Get Discouraged

Entry Level Writers: Think of Writer Reporters

One of the hardest things for beginning freelance writers to learn is stubbornness. Fortunately for me this has never been an issue with my family, which admittedly has led to many problems in my life but has made me perfectly thick skinned for quick success in a freelance writing career. But not everyone else is like me in that respect, and I think there are tons of talented entry level writers who could be so much more, but get beat down early and never make it back up the mountain to the success that they should be having. While being a full time freelance writer definitely has it's benefits, the freelance writing market is not as easy a place to scrape a living from as many people would have you believe. Still, there are more ways to break into the market than ever before, and if you are completely focused in on your goals of becoming a freelance writer, then you shouldn't let early troubles get you off course. The following is a list of the most common things that deter beginning freelance writers from their goals and some advice or suggestions for preventing the same from happening to you.

#1: Stopping Before Getting Started
This is actually one of the most common problems that shoot down the budding career of an entry level writer. There are many ways this can happen.

• Writing only a few articles, promoting them, and not seeing enough income back.
• Information overload that causes writers to lose heart.
• Not seeing the results on popular writing websites other writers brag about having.
• Getting so bogged down in 20 different writing styles that the entry level writer never gains traction

There are several ways to combat this common stumbling block. The first and most important part is something I've preached on from the 4 Year College Writing Plan to my post on 50 Things Every Freelance Writer Should Know: which is to get started writing NOW and to write something each and every day. "Research" DOES NOT COUNT. This isn't accusatory - this is something that I still struggle with even after several successful years in the business. Make sure each and every day you do some actual writing that you get paid for. This is especially important for beginning online writers who are aiming for passive income. Think about writer reporters, and how they have to keep hunting down leads for a story. There's no quit there, and there can't be any quit for any entry level freelance writer who wants to make it in the online writing world.

Even if it's only a few bucks a day, that will motivate you more than nothing. Every article you actually write gets you a little closer to your writing goals, while all the research you do doesn't get you any closer than the so called "writer" who sits around thinking all day about how nice it would be to make a living writing and does nothing to get there.

#2: Getting Overwhelmed
There are many different ways this can happen, and part of the freelance writing life is that once in a while things do seem to just avalanche all at once. Especially if you're not used to setting your own hours, or haven't found your main source of income, this can be a very common problem that happens relatively often early on.

One of the best things you can do is to concentrate on one or two main sources of income while doing your research to learn more. You're going to learn more as an entry level writer becoming efficient at one or two sources than trying to dip your toe into 10 different websites.

Early on I was rather lucky. I found Constant-Content, and I stumbled onto Guru.com, and I had no money, no job options, and two busted legs from a car accident so with enough room on a credit card for a year long subscription to Guru, I only had these 2 sites to work with and HAD TO make them work.

Demand Studios, Constant-Content, Elance, and Guru.com are examples of some freelance writing sites where entry level freelance writers can learn the ropes of writing career and can actually work their way up to a full time income. Associated Content would be an example of a site that's easy for entry level writers to break into, but one that you would want to move on from eventually. But early on it's a decent confidence builder, and the potential for passive income makes it a decent place to have some articles once you learn how to efficiently search keywords.

Other sites like eHow, Xomba, InfoBarrel, and HubPages are great places to use writing skills to get into the passive income writing market and to figure out what the difference between the two are. Because while great writing skills can help you earn passive income online, they're not enough.

Choose 2 or 3 at the most to get started with, and get to work. Getting some income in from your efforts while being able to learn online writing skills through experience and trial and error will be the best way to speed up the learning process and keep you moving in the right direction while also keeping you from getting overwhelmed as a beginning freelance writer.

#3: Not Willing to Take Risks
Now as any freelance writer reporter can tell you, there are good risks to take and bad risks to take. You don't want to take shady sounding jobs from Craigslist that sound like a rip off waiting to happen. But I know many people who want to write online who decide they're going to write for one website and only one website or write one type of writing and only one type of writing, and that's it. There are even other writing blogs that recommend this path and all I can say is that in my opinion, this is some of the worst possible advice out there.

A content writer can write content, and that's it. Whatever the price content is going for is the best you can possibly hope for. But press release writers can make very good money for what is usually an easily written and templated one page PR. Ghost writers have more options, as do technical writers, editors, copy editors, copy writers, specialty content providers, writer reporters, and other types of freelance writers.

One of the reasons I survived the early lean months and eventually excelled was because I was willing to learn new types of writing. I had never wrote a press release the first time a client asked me if I could, but I knew that for $50 I was willing to learn. Press release writing turned out to be a fairly lucrative bit of writing for me, as I often could knock one out in an hour with no problem at all and charge $50+ for it. Ghost writing landed me some major projects, as did e-book writing. As my sales letter writing continues to improve, that could knock the income door off its hinges and to an entirely different level.

But none of that would have been possible if I was only willing to write what I was comfortable with. As an entry level freelance writer you will have your strengths and weaknesses, and the same is true once you are an experienced and full time online writer. But that being said, you shouldn't limit yourself to only one type of writing. Unless you're one of the top 10% sales letter writers in the world, that's a good recipe for going broke.

Take some risks beyond your comfort zone and expand yourself as a writer.

#4: Giving Up Too Soon
This is very common. Become a successful writer doesn't happen overnight. Not even close. You need to commit time and hard work to building a full time writing career. If you can put yourself in a situation where you have a full time job and just do writing on the side, I strongly recommend that as the way to go. Can you work even when you don't feel like it? Are you learning how to pitch yourself better with each and every query letter? Is your income slowly (or quickly) climbing with every month?

Many people have the energy for 6 week, 2 months, or maybe even half a year, but the hard core writers are separated from the pretenders at that point as many people don't have the drive to go on, or feel like they're being suffocated or overwhelmed by the sheer amount of work they didn't even imagine was there for writers to do.

Many decent writers give up literally a month or two short of beginning to hit the full time income level, when every experience based lesson is learned and the "A-HA" moments all directly lead to higher pay. If you really want to make a living writing, keep at it and don't quit. Enough work will get you to where you want to be.

That's it for now. This is a little shorter than the usual monster sized freelance writing blog posts, but it'll have to do. Hope ya'll are doing well, and as always feel free to leave a comment and I'll try my best to respond in short time.