How to be a Better Freelance Writer

Be a Professional Freelance Writer

To be a successful freelance writer, you need to look like a professional. You may write in ripped jeans or pajamas, but your work should be immaculate. Your queries should be well-written, clean and perfectly formatted. Your finished products (and anything else the client sees) should be of equally high-quality. Every time the client deals with you, the client should feel as if that they are dealing with a professional who will deliver a professional product. Nothing you ever show the client should look rushed or casual.

Be a Reliable Freelance Writer

Nothing is harder on the freelancer / customer relationship than missed deadlines. Do not commit to a deadline unless you are sure you can handle it. Once you do commit to a deadline, never let it slip. For the most part, this means working toward finishing all of your projects well ahead of schedule. If you agree to produce an article in three weeks, your goal should be to finish it in two. Do not leave tasks until the last minute. If your work requires input from an editor, an expert or a client, get that input as soon as you can. Don’t wait until the day before a deadline to ask your questions. By then you are already running the risk of failure.

Be a Desirable Freelance Writer

While it is true that you can give a customer exactly what they asked for and still not give them what they want, your best chance at success is to follow their instructions. When a publication publishes submissions guidelines, read them and follow them. When an editor tells you how long they want your article to be, make it that long. When a customer gives you unclear instructions, ask for clarification. Make sure you know what is expected of you and do everything you can to meet those expectations.

Be a Marketing Freelance Writer

At some point in your freelancing career, you may have assignments stacked up for months and so much work that you can’t possibly imagine looking for more customers. Even then, take at least some time out of your week to promote your services. You never know when the magazine that ordered five articles from you over the next five months might go out of business. You never know when a customer who promised you “a ton more work” as soon as you finish the current project might suddenly lose a contract or decide to hire a permanent employee to do the job. The best way to prevent lulls in work is to always have more assignments coming. If you get so busy you can’t seem to handle all the assignments coming at you, there are always solutions. You can farm out some work to fellow freelancers or hire yourself an assistant to research articles, handle your accounting or even do your laundry. The solutions to not having enough work are always harder to find than the solutions to having too much work.

Be a Happy Freelance Writer

Don’t be afraid to put an end to a situation that no longer works for you. You may have started off with a real passion for writing about travel. After a few years though, you might begin to think that your own bed is the only bed you want to sleep in. You may have a client that never seems to pay their bills on time. You may have a client that pays well, but is simply too hard to please. These are the sort of stressors that can make freelancing seem less and less attractive. Before you give up on the whole concept of freelancing, ask yourself what you can change to make the situation better. Sometimes you have to let clients go, or change your focus or just take a vacation. If money becomes an issue, you might consider a part-time job while you review your options. Whatever the case, don’t let bad situations linger. Control your freelancing career. Don’t let it control you.

10 Ways to Make Editors Hate You Before They Even Know You

You wouldn’t think that writers would want to make editors hate them. Unfortunately, judging by terrible submissions writers keep sending in, that must be the goal. Always one to give guidance, even when it is bad guidance, I offer this short guide to making editors hate you.

Don’t get to the point. Editors are very busy. When they read a query letter or a submission cover, what they really want to know is what you are proposing and how it fits their needs. The longer you can keep yourself from telling them that, the better your chances of getting an editor to hate you.

Don’t use enough postage. Guess what? No one is going to pay the mailman just to see your submission. If you really want to aggravate an editor, send your submissions via certified mail and make them sign for it.

Get the editor’s name wrong. There’s no quicker way to get on an editor’s bad side than to misspell their name. This is a great way to get your query letter thrown away before it even gets opened. While you’re at it, get their title wrong too. That should ensure a quick trip to the garbage can.

Ignore the editor’s needs. Send the editor of an arts journal an article about ways to avoid a hangover. Send your proposal for a microwave recipe book to a publisher specializing in historical fiction. It may not quite make the editor hate you, but it will certainly be good for a laugh.

Insult other people’s work. The book you’re proposing? It’s way better than any other book in the genre and the editor should know that. Take the time to insult the competition. If you get lucky, you may just insult something the editor has worked on in the past. That should really tick them off.

Send the editor a letter that stinks. Chances are, your proposal will stink anyway. What I mean is send them one that smells bad. Smoke while you write it, or scent it with perfume. While you’re at it, use an obnoxious paper color like pink or orange. Make your query as unpleasant to smell as it is to read.

Talk money. Make it clear in the first few sentences that you expect a certain amount of money for your efforts and you will accept nothing less. Whether your demands are in the editor’s range or not doesn’t matter. Your demands will make them hate you either way.

Tell the editor how much your friends and family love your work. If you’re really out to convince the editor that you know next to nothing about the publishing industry, including the opinions of people the editor doesn’t know and has no reason to respect ought to do it.

Try to sound cocky and sarcastic. You know you’ve got the goods, why should you try to be polite and businesslike? This should make it clear to the editor just how big of a hassle it will be to work with you. Note: Feel free to use this article as a guide.

Use a cheap printer, or better yet, a typewriter. Nothing screams “not worth the effort to read” more than poorly printed, smudged text.

How to Write Quality Query Letters: Write a Great Headline

The first line of your query letter is the most important line you’ll write. If you capture the reader’s interest with the first line, your chances of selling your article will improve dramatically. Every writer should take at least a little time to study copywriting and sales letters, because a query letter is essentially a sales letter. You are attempting to sell an article by writing a custom sales letter to a single potential publisher.

The best way to start off a query letter is to treat the first line like it was the headline for your article. Center it above the rest of the text and make it as provocative as possible. Try to match the style of your target publication when you write the headline. Cosmopolitan and Woman’s Day are both publications aimed at women, but their style and content are different. In most cases, you would want to write a different headline for your query letter if you were pitching it to one magazine rather than the other.

Beyond being provocative, the headline should give the editor some idea of the format and style of your article. For example, “Ten Ways to Smash Christmas Debt” would clearly be a list article while, “Do You Blow Your Christmas Budget?” could be a list but sounds more like a quiz or a series of questions and answers. Here are some provocative headlines from recent articles on the web. Note that the style of headline matches the style of the publication. Also remember that I am discussing the headlines, not the content of the articles.

• Beat the Holiday or Financial Blues: 9 Tips for Making Yourself Happier in the Next 30 Minutes — Zen Habits
• How to Deal with Cranks, Flamers and Trolls — Men with Pens
• I Got Off My Ass and Did It –  Someday Syndrome
• What Freelancers Can Learn From The Dog Whisperer — Beyond the Rhetoric
• The 10 Free Resources Every Writer Needs — Write to Done
• When witnesses take over the news — BuzzMachine
• Doctors Observe First Known Case of Sleep E-Mailing — Techcult
• What Do Prostitutes and Rice Have in Common? — Freakonomics
• Social Media Bought My Car — Remarkablogger

After your headline, consider writing a subhead that provides additional information and clarity. A headline that is meant to attract attention is not always as informative as it is provocative. The subhead gives you a chance to explain the content of your proposed article. You want to capture the editor’s attention, and then you want to give them the essential flavor of your article before you move on to the meat of your query.

How to Write Quality Query Letters: Give yourself credit

A great article idea is the most important aspect of a good query letter, but it isn’t the only thing that matters. You don’t just need to sell the publication on your idea; you need to convince the publisher that you are the best person to write the article. Part of this process has to do with your overall writing style and the professionalism of your presentation. The other part is your discussion of your experience, writing credits and other qualifications. You need to show your potential publisher that you are a great writer. This is not the time to be humble. This is the time to brag a little about your abilities and experience.

Before I discuss what you should tell a potential publisher, I should make sure you know what you should NEVER tell them.

• Never tell them that you are a first time writer who is looking for a break
• Never tell them about your personal or money problems
• Never tell them you don’t know the subject well but are looking to learn more

Publications don’t care about your problems. They are looking for good writers. The last thing a publisher wants is to take a chance on someone who may not be able to deliver what they promise. Your goal should be to fill the publisher with confidence, not pity.

The best spot to discuss your qualifications is just before the concluding paragraph of your query letter. You don’t want to waste time or space, so limit the discussion of your qualifications to those that are most relevant to the article you are proposing. For example, if you are proposing an article about the financial impact of divorce, it is relevant to mention that you are a financial advisor and a divorcee, but those same facts would be irrelevant in a query for an article about living with chronic back pain.

You will want to mention a few of your past article credits. Again, they should be the most relevant credits you have. If you have nothing relevant, go with the most prestigious credits that you have, but relevancy trumps prestige. If you are employed as a writer for a particular publication, be sure to include that. If you have very few credits, just include the best that you have and don’t apologize for them. Just put them in and move on. Everyone has to start somewhere.

Here is a sample paragraph from a query letter:

I have been a professional investment counselor for the past fifteen years and was one of the earliest adopters of Internet trading. As a former state representative, I authored several investment fraud bills that are still on the Arizona law books. For the past two years I have written a weekly investment article for Phoenix Business Insider. I have also published investment-related articles in Worthwhile Investor, Smart Stock Analyst and Fund Advocate.

Finally, you should include, along with your query letter, from one to three writing samples. If you are emailing your query, it is acceptable to include links to articles, but if you are sending a query by regular mail, you need to include the actual articles. Remember that you want to include whatever samples are most relevant to your query.

How to Write Quality Query Letters: Be real, specific

When a potential publisher reads your query letter, you want to excite them, but don’t promise something you can’t deliver. Not only would this make it difficult for you if you did get the assignment, but a good editor can easily spot ideas that are too broad or unrealistic to make it into their publication. The best query ideas are specific and achievable. For example, if you were pitching an article for a men’s magazine, How To Make Any Woman Go Home with You is general and unrealistic (not to mention creepy) but Six Pickup Lines that Won’t Make You Look Like a Jerk is a little more specific and a little more realistic.

There are two advantages to pitching very specific subjects. The first is that it makes you look more knowledgeable. Specificity and knowledge go hand in hand. Anyone can pitch an idea about picking up women. Even “six pickup lines” is general. If you dig deeper, you might find a more unique perspective. For example, if you have studied linguistics, you might pitch, Why Your Pickup Lines Don’t Work, Six Tips from a Cunning Linguist. If you used to be a bartender you might pitch, The Bartender’s Guide to Picking up Women: Six lines that never work (and three that do).

The second advantage of specificity is that it reduces the risk of you pitching the same idea as someone else. The last thing you want is to pitch a topic your potential publisher has seen (or even published) before. There are limits to how much research a writer can do into the past topics at a magazine, especially if you want to spend more time writing articles than pitching them. Specificity gives you the best chance at originality.

Realistic ideas are the other side of that coin. If you don’t know anything about pickup lines, don’t pitch an article about them. Your query letter should start with some flash, but the body of your letter is going to have to back up that flash. You will need to give examples of what you intend to write about. You not only have to convince your potential publisher that your idea is perfect for them; you have to convince them that you can turn that idea into a great article. If you can’t convince them you are the right person to write the article, your great idea won’t help you.

How to Write Quality Query Letters: Offer them what they don’t have

The best way to convince a publication to purchase an article from you is to offer them something new and interesting. If you pitch them an article that sounds similar to a previous article in their publication, or something similar that ran in a rival publication, you probably aren’t going to make the sale. Most publications aren’t in the business of repeating the same material over and over again.

It can be difficult to come up with truly original ideas, especially when you are dealing with a publication that caters to a narrow topic. A magazine about model trains or a web site about search engine optimization doesn’t have much new ground to cover after a while. Still, if you consider yourself a knowledgeable writer about one of those subjects, you should be able to find a fresh approach to the material. You may not come up with an idea that has never been used before, but at least try to find a new way to present the material. Often, it is a good idea to get more specific. There may be many search engine optimization articles about using keywords, but if you take the time to discuss a small part of a specific technique, you might find some ground that has not been covered.

When you do have a new idea, or a new take on the subject, make sure that you emphasize that early in your query letter. The fact that you aren’t offering the same old story should be one of your key selling points in your query letter. Your goal is to stand apart from everyone else. It is worth spending a little extra time thinking about how to make your idea original. Another good way to do this is to add a little personal experience to your pitch or to pick an overriding metaphor that hasn’t been used before, such as comparing model train enthusiasts to politicians. No matter how you go about it, find something new to say if you want to make a sale.

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