Six Figure Writing

Hi from SueC here at Six Figure Writing! As a new reader, be sure to subscribe to my email list, and my RSS feed to get the most out of SFW. Thanks for stopping by!

Despite the radio silence here on SFW of the past few months, I’ve been busily working on new writing gigs and projects.  The reason I’ve been cranking up the output is that as the economy slows (and according to the “experts” I’m listening to, that’s a given) I believe freelancers are possibly in the best position to make something of the situation.

How?  By doing what we do as freelancers: Get creative.

My projects right now include some writing for other folks - blogs, articles - but also writing a lot of web content for my own web sites and publications.  In other words, I don’t just think of myself as a writer, but as the owner of publishing business.  Blogs, websites, ebooks, and also providing writing “services” for clients; these and many other products are my company’s business. (If you haven’t seen the interviews and resoruces on my Freebies page, check out the Tiffany Dow interview to see how someone can take action to build a business as a writer.)

Writers who think of themselves only as “writers”, who look for freelance “jobs” and “clients” all day, and work primarily on stuff other people will own, could be missing out big opportunities.  As a publisher, I write all I want, on anything I want, whenever I want - but I also hire other writers and designers, to build my own assets including Web “real estate” and other intellectual property.  Writers who work as publishers controlling their own content stand to weather the storm over the next few years, by opening up their options to sell not just to clients, but also directly to readers and consumers.

To light your creative fire, here are posts with ideas you can use to leverage your biggest asset - your creativity - in a financially-tightening marketplace.  One of my favorites is Pamela Slim’s post in June about what to do if the economy’s got your down.

Here’s another post from Seth Godin’s blog, about how to maintain your competitive advantage.  If you don’t read his blog on a regular basis, start now, if you want to not only keep your head above water, but thrive, no matter the economy.

What are you doing now to grow and build your business?

Related articles by Zemanta

• Where Have All the Freelance Writing Jobs Gone?

Tags: content writing, freelance, Freelance Jobs, freelance promotion, freelance writing, freelance writing jobs, make money in a down economy, make money writing, Marketing, writing for money

written by SueC \\ tags: content writing, freelance, Freelance Jobs, freelance promotion, freelance writing, freelance writing jobs, make money in a down economy, make money writing, Marketing, writing for money

A couple weeks ago, readers of my mailing list were invited to submit their home page URLs to be chosen as for a little project I am doing here on my blog: Reviewing websites to demonstrate the kinds of modifications, design considerations and other tweaks that can increase traffic to a site, enhance the user experience, and help sell more writing.

The selection criteria was simple: I was looking for sites that were writing-related, i.e., sites built by writers to promote their writing, whether fiction, nonfiction, freelance, or ghostwriting, and sites that had some basics in place, with potential to build upon (in my subjective determination!). Out of a few dozen submissions, I’ve chosen these three sites:

Two of the site owners have published books, two are freelance writers, and each site is in a slightly different stage of development and design.

I’ll be uploading video of each site at least twice: Once when I show you what to look for when assessing your site’s design elements, and next, when I describe the steps these site owners have taken to implement changes to enhance their results in terms of traffic and hopefully revenue generation.

I think as a reader of this blog you can benefit from these reviews regardless of the type of site you have, since many of these techniques are well-known and used by all kinds of online businesses and freelancers.

Take a look at these sites to see what you would do to enhance them, and if you have (constructive!) suggestions for these writers, post them here.

written by SueC

I’m reading Seth Godin’s excellent book, Meatball Sundae: Is Your Marketing Out Of Synch?, and it describes the ways some businesses are attempting to jump on the bandwagon of the new tools and services on the Internet but are not quite “getting it”. They’re trying to just layer the latest thing onto their business-as-usual product/marketing/advertising models, and guess what? It doesn’t work.

There are plenty of warnings too - some for freelance writers even. I keep asking the same questions here: Why oh why do writers not take advantage of what the Internet means for communication?? - after all, isn’t communicating our business? - and then complain and moan about how they have to choose between money and writing, between what they love and a living. Hogwash. They are just lazy about breaking out of their comfort zone, and want to stick to the dreams they dreamt years ago (seeing their name on the cover of XYZ magazine? In the window of Barnes and Noble? On Hoprah?) - while the world is changing around them. Yes, the game has changed. Publishers mostly haven’t. Neither have so many writers, I read about dozens and dozens of them on the forums. Here’s a quote (apologies to Mr. Godin for the lengthy selection), he’s talking about Kevin Ryan and Brian Kehew who published a book on the Beatles - and made $300K doing it:

“What’s noteworthy about Recording The Beatles Is what the authors didn’t do. They didn’t give the rights to a traditional publisher. They didn’t fight hard for retail shelf space. They didn’t buy co-op ads with big book chains, and they didn’t try to get on Oprah..Instead, [they] managed to sell every single copy of their book (three thousand were printed) at the very profitable price of one hundred dollars per copy. And they did it by embracing the tactics of the New Marketing…

“By self-publishing, the authors were able to accomplish several things. First, they removed a substantial ‘tax’ (85 percent of the cover price) that a publisher charges to handle thing like retail distribution, advertising, printing risk and staffing…More important, self-publishing took them out of a meatball factory mindset. Instead of publishing yet another book, a book for an anonymous, unseen group of consumers who would somehow find the book they didn’t know they wanted, the authors found a book for the readers they already knew about…Recording the Beatles has generated more revenue than 97 percent of all books ever published. And unlike other books, most of this revenue goes to the authors.”

This book is an awesome read if you’re at all concerned about making a splash or even a ripple with your writing. Isn’t that WHY you are writing? To be read? To be heard? Well, now you can, where in the old-school ways of gatekeepers, it was pretty damn tough. I’m guilty of meatball thinking too, but it’s going to be a real fun ride making all the changes.

Let me know what you’re doing - or not doing - still waiting for that publisher/agent/magazine to call? Or are you growing beyond that?

Tags: freelance, godin, new marketing, web 2.0, Writing Links

written by SueC \\ tags: freelance, godin, new marketing, web 2.0, Writing Links

As a writer, I want to take advantage of more of what the Internet offers. I recently saw online a l-o-o-o-ng discussion about why a potential publisher sent a writer seemingly contradictory messages about why they were not accepting their submission for publication. The writer was baffled. And hundreds (I think) of people responded with similar experiences.

I always wonder why so many writers still choose to follow the traditional path, instead of jumping in to market and sell on the Web. I mean, for the writer who was posting to that forum, why not tell the publishers to shove it, and publish your own stuff, on your own site, for readers who WANT IT because you know there are there (and publishers aren’t generally in the niche or long-tail business)?

Anyway, I digress. If you are reading this blog, I hope it’s because you are looking for NEW ways to make money, and MORE ways to make money, and sticking to the query-wait-query-wait-small-sale method just isn’t cutting it for you. Next up, I am working on a multi-part “how to” for digging deeper into ways to sell your work on the web.

My question (after that long rant) is: People who read this, or subscribe to my list, are all over the map in terms of experience. Where do you think you fall in terms of knowing about writing, marketing and selling on the Web?

Ex., some of you probably already have subscriber lists, successful blogs, etc. My plan is to write up basics, in a shorter format (because there are SO MANY great resoruces about getting started, like Tiff Dow’s ebook which you can find on this page) and then let readers follow along as I venture into selling direct, using affilaites, Web 2.0 and the like.

Let’s get started real quick with a couple basic musts:

• If you don’t have your own domain name, get one. You can use your own name, but honestly, if you want to build search engine traffic, you should also register a name that represents your work - like “http://american-catfish-cooking,com” if you write catfish cookbooks, for example. No one is likely to be searching (yet) for your name. So use a domain name they ARE searching for.

• Get your own email. You want email that says “suec@american-catfish-cooking.com” not “suec@hotmail.com”. My fave host and registrar for ten years is Dreamhost.

• How to find what your readers are searching for? Visit SEO Book keyword search tool.

Let me know where you are in your process, building an online presence, marketing, using Web 2.0 successfully, etc. I’d like to feature some of the better responses in a future post.

Tags: freelance writing, online writing, writing business

written by SueC \\ tags: freelance writing, online writing, writing business