Laura Spencer - Freelance Writing Jobs | A Freelance Writing Community and Freelance Writing Jobs Resource

Obstacles You Are Likely to Face on the Road to Bigger Clients

By Laura Spencer on June 25, 2010. 5 Comments

For the past few months, I’ve been talking about how to find freelance writing jobs with larger, mostly corporate clients. The reason some of us want bigger clients is because the projects they offer are often longer in duration and pay more than many smaller client projects. In this series, I’ve listed 12 high paying writing positions that companies often seek to fill. I’ve identified five places to look for corporate writing jobs. I’ve also specifically described the writing fields of technical communication, marketing communications, and medical writing. We’ve discussed mentoring and client meetings. You’re pretty well prepared to go [Read more…]

How to Show Your Freelance Writing Prospects that You Mean Business

By Laura Spencer on June 18, 2010. 2 Comments

Many of us have the goal of finding better writing clients who pay more and come back to use our services again and again, but we often sabotage our own efforts to get better gigs. Sometimes the sabotage consists of not having enough confidence to even apply for the best writing projects. When this is the case, we’re defeated before we even start. Other times we sabotage our own marketing efforts without even realizing it. In this post, I’ll list five ways that you might be sabotaging your freelance writing business. I’ll also explain how you can avoid self-sabotage. Five [Read more…]

Categories: Freelance Writing Tags: bad impressions, freelance writing obstacles, self-sabotage

Do You Have the Confidence to Apply for the Bigger Jobs?

By Laura Spencer on June 11, 2010. 4 Comments

Lack of confidence can be a major roadblock for a freelance writer. We’ve already explained how a lack of confidence can keep potential writers from starting their freelance careers. Did you know that lack of confidence can also keep freelance writers from applying for bigger, better paying gigs as well? It’s true. Some freelance writers don’t get corporate writing jobs simply because they don’t apply for them. It can be really tempting to stay in your comfort zone and focus on what you’ve always done as a writer. This is perfectly fine if you’re happy where you are (and many [Read more…]

Categories: Freelance Writing Tags: gaining confidence, lack of confidence, self-confidence

More Tips to Help You Prepare for a Client Meeting

By Laura Spencer on June 4, 2010. 12 Comments

Last week we discussed how freelance writers should dress for a client meeting. The Freelance Writing Jobs community pitched in with lots of good tips and additional advice. While a professional appearance is important, there’s much more to getting ready for a face to face client meeting than what you wear. In this post, we’ll provide some additional tips to help you get ready for a meeting at your client’s site or your prospective client’s office. Ten Tips to Help You Get Ready for a Client Meeting Here are ten tips to help you get ready to meet in person [Read more…]

Categories: Freelance Writing Tags: client meetings, face-to-face meetings, how to prepare for client meetings, preparing for face-to-face meetings

How Should You Dress for a Client Meeting?

By Laura Spencer on May 28, 2010. 19 Comments

What’s the appropriate way to dress for a client meeting? Apparently, there’s a great deal of confusion on this topic. Freelance writer, Jesaka Long, describes an instance on her blog when she attended a client meeting and saw another freelancer at the same meeting in a tee shirt. (Fortunately, Jesaka had the good sense to dress professionally for the meeting.) We freelance writers enjoy our freedoms–and one of those freedoms is the ability to wear whatever you want when you are working from your home office. You don’t have to look too hard to find tales of freelancers working in [Read more…]

Categories: Freelance Writing Tags: appropriate dress, client meetings, dress for success, professional dress

Nine Tips to Becoming a Better Writing Mentor

By Laura Spencer on May 21, 2010. 6 Comments

You’ve decided to mentor some newer, less experienced writers. Good for you. As we’ve discussed earlier mentoring is a valuable resource for those who are trying to improve their freelance writing skills. Mentoring can also be a wonderful way for an experienced writer to give back to the writing community. Acting as a writing mentor is not as easy as it might seem, though. There are challenges and difficulties that mentors most overcome in order to be effective. Last week we provided nine tips to help you get the most from your freelance writing mentor. This week we are going [Read more…]

Categories: Freelance Writing Tags: freelance, Mentoring, mentors, writing mentor

Nine Tips to Get the Most from Your Freelance Writing Mentor

By Laura Spencer on May 14, 2010. 3 Comments

A writing mentor can help you jumpstart your freelance writing career. But, like any other resource, a writing mentor will help you the most if you approach your mentoring resource wisely. An experienced writing counselor can often provide that valuable second opinion that so many of us want about our decisions and our writing. Using the wrong mentor, or approaching your mentor ineffectively, could mean that mentoring won’t be as beneficial to your writing career as you had hoped. Nine Tips for Mentees Are you a mentee? Do you have a writing mentor already? If so, this post should help [Read more…]

Categories: Freelance Writing Tags: freelance writing career, Freelance Writing Mentor, Mentoring, writing advisor, writing coach, writing mentor

Do You Need a Writing Mentor?

By Laura Spencer on May 7, 2010. 25 Comments

Mentoring can be a shortcut to learn what you need to know about writing for corporations. Let’s face it, learning from the pain and embarrassment of someone else’s mistakes is much more comfortable than making those same mistakes yourself. Nobody likes to make a mistake, but I think we all agree that some mistakes are inevitable. A writing mentor can keep you from making the worst mistakes and guide you through the rest. Where Can I Find a Mentor? You may be thinking, “This sounds great, but how can I find a mentor?” Finding a writing mentor is easier than [Read more…]

Categories: Freelance Writing Tags: finding a mentor, Mentoring, mentors, writing mentor

Medical Writing–What’s It Like?

By Laura Spencer on April 30, 2010. 11 Comments

Medical writing is not one of my specialties. It is, however, one of the higher paying freelance writing fields. For this post, I’m trying something different. I turned to my Twitter community and two medical writers stepped forward to share their medical writing experience with us. Lorraine Thompson of MarketCopywriter Blog and Darline Turner-Lee of Mamas on Bedrest & Beyond both specialize in medical writing. I asked each writer the same questions about medical writing. I think you’ll agree that their answers are helpful to freelance writers considering the medical writing niche. Getting Started As a Medical Writer Medical writing [Read more…]

Categories: Freelance Writing Tags: Freelance Writing, Medical writing, Medical writing careers

Use a Skills Inventory to See What Writing Jobs You Can Do

By Laura Spencer on April 23, 2010. 8 Comments

Lack of experience and lack of confidence are two of the biggest obstacles that any writer can face, but for those who are actively trying enter the corporate writing market these barriers can seem to be nearly insurmountable. It’s easy to talk yourself out of trying something new. Believe me, I totally understand this hesitation. One of these reasons that I stayed a corporate staff writer for so many years is that I talked myself out of becoming a freelance writer. It is true that some writing specialties do require more training than others. If you find this to be [Read more…]

Categories: Freelance Writing Tags: corporate writing jobs, skills inventory

The Scarcity Myth, Persistence, and Corporate Freelance Writing Jobs

By Laura Spencer on April 16, 2010. 14 Comments

There’s a myth out there about corporate freelance writing jobs that I’d like to bust. Namely, that they are more difficult to find than other freelancing jobs–especially in a troubled economy. Usually, the scarcity myth goes something like this: “Companies are laying people off. That means there will be fewer jobs for us freelancers. You know how bad the economy is…” (I can’t tell you how often I’ve heard this concern expressed in freelancing circles.) Yet, for many companies the exact opposite is true. They’ve let people go, but they still have the work to do. Guess who gets to [Read more…]

Categories: Freelance Writing Tags: Corporate Freelance Writing Jobs, Persistence, Scarcity Myth

Seven Reasons Writers Don’t Get the Better Paying Writing Jobs

By Laura Spencer on April 9, 2010. 9 Comments

The topic of this series has been how to earn more money as a freelance writer. We’ve touched on some of the higher paying writing fields and discussed The Types of Companies That Need Freelance Writers. Today, I’m going to cover a slightly more sensitive topic. Today’s topic deals with mistakes that writers make that can keep them from being selected for better paying gigs. Seven Mistakes That Can Affect Whether You’re Hired There are times when you aren’t selected for a writing project and it isn’t your fault. There’s a lot of competition out there, and not everyone can [Read more…]

Categories: Freelance Writing Tags: Better paying writing jobs, mistakes

Marketing Communications–What’s It Like?

By Laura Spencer on April 2, 2010. 9 Comments

Marketing communications–have you ever wondered if it could be right for you? As I posted earlier, marketing communications is one of a dozen, or so, highly paid writing fields. It is a good freelance writing field because nearly every company needs to market their product. According to the most recent salary figures from Indeed.com the average income for a marketing communication writer is $62,000 a year. However, a talented marketing writer can earn much more. Fortunately, I can also share my own experiences in this field since this is where I started as a writer. Also, many of my current [Read more…]

Categories: Freelance Writing Tags: freelance marketing communication, marketing communications, marketing communications writer

Technical Writing–Seven Challenges

By Laura Spencer on March 26, 2010. 9 Comments

Freelance technical writing is a great opportunity, but from time to time most technical writers face challenges. Last week I wrote an introductory post about technical writing. When I wrote it I didn’t actually intend for it to sound like a recruiting piece for technical writers, or a plug for the STC. While everything I wrote was true to my own experiences, I did leave out some of the major challenges that all technical writers face. This week I’m going to fix that oversight in this post by listing seven challenges that you may face as a freelance technical writer. [Read more…]

Categories: Freelance Writing Tags: drawbacks of technical writing, technical communication, technical writing, technical writing jobs

Technical Writing–What’s It Like?

By Laura Spencer on March 19, 2010. 17 Comments

Technical writing–have you ever wondered if it was right for you? As the information economy expands, there are more job opportunities for technical writers.

Categories: Best of FWJ, Freelance Writing Tags: technical writers, technical writing

Corporate Freelance Writing Jobs–Five Places to Find Them

By Laura Spencer on March 12, 2010. 10 Comments

Many writers are interested in finding a corporate freelance writing job. The advantages of a corporate freelance writing job are many: Corporate freelance writing jobs tend to be long term. Also, if you have a contract with a corporation, you can usually count on being paid. Plus, let’s face it, it looks good to have a well-known corporation in your portfolio and on your writing resume. Finding a corporate freelance writing job can seem daunting if you don’t know where to look. In this post, I share five places where you should focus your marketing efforts if your goal is [Read more…]

Categories: Freelance Writing Tags: Copywriting, Corporate Freelance Writing Jobs, Freelance Writing, technical writing

Contracting vs. Freelancing in Large Corporations

By Laura Spencer on March 5, 2010. 9 Comments

If you’ve been a freelance writer for a while, you may be scratching your head and wondering about the title of this post. More specifically, you’re probably wondering why I’m contrasting freelancing and contracting. Unless you’ve incorporated your own business you probably already know that in the United States, at least, most freelancers are treated as independent contractors. When tax time comes, U.S. based companies who paid a freelancer or an independent contractor over the specified amount (in 2009 it was $600) will send them a 1099 form for tax purposes. It may seem to many that freelancing and contracting [Read more…]

Categories: Freelance Writing Tags: contract, contract work, Contracting, Contractor, freelancing, Large corporation

Types of Companies That Need Freelance Writers

By Laura Spencer on February 26, 2010. 16 Comments

Do companies hire freelance writers, or do freelance writers mainly create web content? You bet that different types of companies hire writers, and some of those projects pay quite well too. If you have solid business writing experience and good skills, chances are good that you can find writing work within a company. Last week we examined a dozen high paying writing fields. Today, we’ll explore how the size of a company affects the work that it offers. We’ll look at some general advantages and disadvantages of writing for small, medium, and large companies so that you can make the [Read more…]

Categories: Freelance Writing Tags: business writing, freelance writers, large companies, sole proprietor, sole proprietorship, startup, startups, type of companies

Where the Writing Money Is

By Laura Spencer on February 19, 2010. 16 Comments

You may already have a pre-conceived notion of what type of work a writer does. In the past, if you told someone that you were a writer they would probably think that you had written a book or wrote a column in a newspaper or magazine. In this Internet savvy age, many writers create content for websites. A few writers who do this believe that web content creation is where most of the writing opportunities are today. While it is true that there is a huge demand for web content, there are still many other opportunities for writers. Writing in [Read more…]

Categories: Freelance Writing Tags: corporate writing, Freelance Writing, high paying writing jobs, professional writing, Writing success

To Earn More, Offer More

By Laura Spencer on February 12, 2010. 8 Comments

So, you’re a freelance writer and you want to earn more money? Guess what? You’re not alone. Many freelancer writers feel exactly the same way. They’d like to earn more money, but they’re not sure how to go about it getting the jobs with higher pay. Now, I’m going to say something that might absolutely shock you. Good writing isn’t enough. It probably should be, but it’s just not. Good writing alone will not get you those high dollar jobs. There, I said it. Let the lynch mobs line up at the door… The fact is, if you want to [Read more…]

Categories: Freelance Writing Tags: corporate writing, higher paying writing jobs, technical writing

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