The $75,000 Writer: Follow the Dollars to Freelance Commercial Writing

Winners of Are You Ready to Hire a Virtual Assistant? entry prizes: April wins Five ebooks on writing from Anne Wayman and Tracy Fitzpatrick wins one full copy of Astraware Classic Collection, which includes Astraware Sudoku, Astraware Solitaire, and Astraware Board games. Congratulations!

This entry’s prizes: One copy of Business Daffynitions: Humor from the Workplace from Joe Heuer, the Rock and Roll Guru, one full copy of Orchidia PC game from Joyboost, (See Meryl’s Orchidia review.) and one copy of Andy King’s Website Optimization. As usual, just post a valuable 30+ word comment by July 6.

Either Peter Bowerman’s name or books came up in the newsletters on writing that I regularly read. Eventually, we exchanged a few emails and I enjoy his knowledge, honesty, and writing. He produces a valuable newsletter and of course, his books are worth every dollar. I’m honored to have him as a guest blogger.

The $75,000 Writer: Follow the Dollars to Freelance Commercial Writing

Imagine This: The editor of a magazine you’ve written several pieces for says yes to a recent query. You outline the parameters of the piece and the conversation turns to money. He says, “Let’s try something a little different this time. Figure out how many hours you think it’ll take to do the piece. Factor in time for research, background reading, travel to and from appointments, brainstorming, interviewing, writing, and editing. Then multiply the hours by $75 and give me a figure.” You return with a number, he says “fine” and you get to work.

Has he lost his mind? Is this a freelancer’s wistful fantasy? In some writing arenas, maybe. But in freelance commercial (corporate) writing, the above-described scenario is pretty much right on the money. And speaking of money, instead of flat fees with potentially vast and open-ended investments of time, here’s a field where fees are based on hourly rates of $50-125 or more, and all time counts.

A Lucrative and Growing Opportunity
In the few decades, prolific downsizing in Corporate America has resulted in the outsourcing of an enormous amount of writing projects to well-paid freelancers. How can you get your share? Who do you contact? Well, for starters, there are two main groups of prospects: End Users (EU) and Middlemen (MM).

End Users (EUs)
EUs are the corporations, large and small (as well as non-profits, universities, and more), that will be the end-users of the writing. With large companies, approach Corporate Communications, also known as “MarCom” (marketing communications). With smaller ones, try marketing, sales, or finally, HR.

A manager with a huge telecommunications firm in Atlanta noted, “Most people would assume that a company of our size would do the bulk of our writing in-house, and they’d be wrong. It’s amazing how much writing we outsource. My writing needs these days are pretty steady, and I pay anywhere from $65-85/hour, depending on the writer’s experience.”

Middlemen (MMs)
MMs – companies often hired by EUs to execute these projects – include advertising agencies, graphic design firms, marketing companies, PR firms, and event production companies – to name the key ones. Few of these entities staff writing talent, preferring instead to hire the right talent for a specific job, and only when needed.

• Ad Agencies/PR Firms: These entities, which can be huge, do staff copywriters for high-profile ad campaigns but will often bring in freelancers to handle “collateral” (marketing brochures, newsletters, sales sheets, etc.). Small agencies offer better opportunities for freelancers.
• Graphic Design Firms: This group tends toward the smaller end and rarely have on-staff writers. They include many “lone rangers” (one-person shops), several of whom have put many thousands of dollars in my pocket over time. Cultivate relationships with the most talented designers at the larger firms. The good ones all eventually go freelance and if they like you and your work, you’ll be on their “A-list.”
• Event Production Companies: These firms handle all aspects of huge corporate conventions, conferences, product launches, etc. That may include show literature, videos, speeches, web content, signage, and more. Contact major convention facilities to get the names of the big players.

Who to Contact?
For all the above MM clients, contact CDs (Creative Directors: often hard to reach), ACDs (Assistant CDs: easier), AEs (Account Executives), PMs (Project Managers). Find them through the actual category listing in the Yellow Pages or through an annual business listing publication.

Beyond the Yellow Pages…
Where else can you find your prospects? Most good-sized metropolitan areas have a weekly business publication ending in “… Business Journal (i.e. Los Angeles Business Journal, Philadelphia Business Journal, etc.) Check www.amcity.com for the full nationwide listing. Get their Book of Lists, an invaluable annual resource listing of the top businesses in dozens of categories.

Whatever your goals or circumstances, the commercial writing field offers a lucrative and growing opportunity for those with good writing skills. Isn’t it time for a raise?

About the author: Peter Bowerman, a freelance copywriter, speaker and business coach, is the author of the award winning Well-Fed Writer titles – how-to “standards” on lucrative freelancing for businesses (www.wellfedwriter.com). In 2007, leveraging the successful self-publishing of his first two books (52,000 copies in print, and a full-time living for five-plus years), he released The Well-Fed Self-Publisher: How to Turn One Book into a Full-Time Living. (www.wellfedsp.com).

Assorted Blogging History Lessons

We haven’t forgotten to announce the winner for the prize with Do You Own Your Web Site? entry. One commenter is on vacation and we’re waiting for him to let us know what computer he has.

This entry’s prize is a full copy of First Class Flurry PC game from Chanon Sajjamanochai of Viquagames. Meryl’s First Class Fury review. This only comes for Windows PCs, not Macs. You have until June 14 to contribute a valuable 30+ word comment.

I met Janet Lee Johnson in 2004 under unusual circumstances as she’ll explain here. Though the reason for our initial meeting is long past, we stay in touch. I enjoy having discussions with her and exchanging ideas. It’s not often you meet someone who puts fun in work and marketing. Most companies still do thing traditionally… read: boring. Not Janet.

Assorted Blogging History Lessons

… History is a fun subject, now that I no longer have to pass any tests. I couldn’t think of a better subject for my guest post for her blog’s 8th birthday celebration (congratulations meryl.net!) than to relate a little of the history that Meryl and I share from what some might call the ugly teenage years of blogging.

In fact, this post might be called “Sordid History Lessons,” had Meryl not been quite so sweet about our initial meeting.

I met Meryl in late 2004 while serving as VP Marketing for Marqui, a CMS startup out of Vancouver, BC, bent on moving into the US.

I was the lone marketing person there at the time (we were a bootstrapped startup with fewer than 25 employees) and we desperately needed to get into the awareness, minds and (we hoped) hearts of developers.

In August of 2004, a group of Marqui advisors, including Marc Canter, were brainstorming about breaking through the cluttered CMS space and into developer awareness when someone had the auspicious idea of paying developer-centric bloggers to blog about us.

Marc was tasked with coming up with the program and a short-list of bloggers who had the developer community’s ear. He did so, and Meryl was one of the first he identified to be a part of our “paybloggers program.”

My job was to manage the program, give the bloggers something to talk about every week, in case they needed it, and generally provide any support they needed. Oh, and run the rest of Marqui’s marketing at the same time.

Mine was a rough entry into the blogosphere when I started seeing emails pass amongst those chosen to blaze new ground and blog for us – these people were wicked writers! And back then the blogosphere was a lot more like the “wild, wild west” than it is today. These people had opinions, they weren’t afraid to leverage the pulpits they’d spent time nurturing, and I’d just better get used to it.

Our terms?

n exchange for $800/mo., we asked our bloggers to link to our site once a week, to state clearly that they were being paid to write about Marqui (we provided “blogger flags” to select from) and write whatever they wanted to about us.

We’d promised not to censor anything, and we didn’t. We promised to publish everything, and we did. We got trashed, we got praised, we became the poster child (no pun intended) of an ethical debate — should bloggers actually get paid to post?

The jury is still out on that question. In fact, we found that the best way to engage in the discussion was to do it ourselves, and I started blogging immediately as the debate began to rage — to give our perspective, straight from the horse’s mouth.

And while I nursed my initial wounds and bruises from our many detractors, and while my skin became thicker and hair grayer, and while I was finding my voice in my initial, tentative posts I found there were many wonderful, decent people “out there” too.

And Meryl was a pioneer for me in that role. She was not brash. She did not bully. She actually tried to write about the product. She selected the “sensible lady” as her blog flag… I’ve always pictured her that way. Smiling with a confident — yet gentle — look in her eyes.

Hers was a welcome, guiding hand and wisdom from the blogosphere that I will always appreciate, and I will never, ever forget.

About the author
Janet Johnson calls herself a bridge: turns out after 24 years in the business, she is a technologist for marketers, and a marketer for technologists. She is in her bliss when collaborating on projects that bring social media into organizations. She lives in Portland, Oregon, blogs here, and follows Meryl on Twitter from here. Her Facebook page is largely neglected, as she lives in the moment when not tackling strategic issues.

Links: 2008-05-30

• Stay out of the Recession with Email Marketing
• A New Game! What happens when self-published books skip the editing process. [Link: Lori Cates]
• 70 Million Definitions of “Blog” and Counting: I love an intelligent discussion and this is one.
• Friday Word Fun: Why do we drive on a parkway and …
• Where to Find Quality Web Templates and Blog Themes

And for fun because we’re allowed:

• 89 useless facts [Link: Ritu B Pant]
• 10 real-life superheroes
• Caller complaints: Fight back against telemarketers
• RadioTime: Listen to radio… local, international, and internet. Site relaunched with a new design. Disclaimer: I’m one of the guilty parties behind the site changes. The content, of course. Free service. The only thing that costs anything is RedButton, which is TiVO for radio. You can try it for 14 days.

Remember to join the birthday celebration! Lots of prizes and easy to enter.

Marketing Books Online

With book coverage in print and newspaper sales declining, authors and publishers must extend their reach to the Internet if they want to boost book sales and publicity. Furthermore, authors are more involved in marketing their books than in the past as publishers can’t or won’t do enough.

Print publications still play a valuable role in books’ lives though the Internet offers many other advantages for promoting books:

• No need to rely on battery power, electricity, or a working Internet connection to read print.
• People leave finished copies of printed resources in doctor’s offices, coffee shops, and other public places for others to pick up.
• No shut down needed upon flight take off and landing.
• No taking it out of your carry on or briefcase to get through airport security.
• Fewer distractions and information noise as you don’t have links and animation enticing you away from your reading.
• Knowing where something starts and ends. The Internet consists of connected pages making it easy for someone to jump from page to page endlessly.
• Just open and read. No booting up, waiting for loading applications and pages, signing on…

Authors and publishers need to make the Internet their partner in marketing books. The Internet offers the following benefits:

• Cheap: It costs as little as $5 a month to have a Web site and $0 for a page on sites like MySpace, Facebook, and Bookhitch. Plus, add the book to your e-mail and discussion board signature for noticing when people read your e-mails and posts.
• Search: Search engines and Web sites help people find books on topics of interest.
• Access: Contact reviewers and bloggers who cover your book’s topic offering to send them a review copy. Also contact sites that publish book reviews like BlogCritics. The Internet also provides a great way to connect with reading groups. Many reading groups invite members to submit questions for the author to respond or hold a conversation online through chat or a Web-based application.
• Network: Forums, online groups, and social networks allow you to connect and interact with potential readers and reviewers.
• Link: Contribute articles to article libraries, online magazines, and other online resources where you can have a byline that links to your Web site or book ordering page.

Start or boost online book marketing with help from the following resources:

• Steve Weber, author of Plug Your Book!, walks the talk with his blog and Myspace page on this topic.
• Christopher Diggins’ Marketing Your Book Online guide
• 101 Book Marketing Sites
• BookSistah Blog often covers book marketing. Sophfronia Scott also has book and writing articles in EzineArticles.
• SalesRankExpress has a tool for checking a book’s Amazon sales rank.
• Future Perfect Publishing blog often covers book marketing.
• 27 ways to sell more books doesn’t focus on online book marketing, but authors can integrate its tips with online marketing.

Why Marketing and Sales Need to Team up

The Pitchers: Sales

Let’s say you have a new baseball team in town and it’s almost time for the first game of the season. Your sales force is ready to sell a variety of package deals for the season. However, there’s a major stumbling block as they prepare to approach potential buyers. No one knows about the package deals or even the date of the first game.

No one tipped the local sports writer or the local TV news of the upcoming grand opening game. What happened to the marketing department? There’s no marketing research, no publicity, and no idea where to begin targeting sales. Sales will flop and will make the sales department look bad, but it’s marketing’s fault since they didn’t do their job.

The Batters: Marketing

Let’s switch and see things from the marketing team’s view. They do a grand job of posting banners of the first game in town. Marketing has pulled together piles of reports with data on the audience, their baseball attending habits, and game spending habits. Many people arrive for the game opener, buy a ticket for the game, and it’s successful.

Or is it really? The sales team is invisible. There is no one to build a relationship with the fans. No one has sold them packages for attending more than just the opener. Sales could go far beyond than one game. They could even help build relationships that go beyond the season. Marketing did a great job, but with poor sales the team may not make it and everyone loses. Where was sales when marketing promoted the event?

Who gets the credit? Who gets the blame? In the war for profitable bottom line, turf issues should be put aside.

Who’s on First?

Marketing and sales play for the same team in different positions. Marketing leads to sales by creating programs focused on direct marketing principles that are tied to the sales team’s success. Marketing puts together a multi-step game plan to ensure each interaction with prospective fans lead to more and deeper interactions. Using shared business goals as a driver, the two work to meet those goals.

Marketing and sales should constantly communicate with each other to ensure effective timing, clear understanding of the company’s message, and smoother handoffs. Sales can determine the target market by evaluating current and past sales. The results help marketing professionals sharpen their pitch so they can hook the right people.

“Do Not Read This Blog Post”

That’s not a typo in this entry’s title. It must be negative week as I came across two compelling entries on using negativity in writing.

Admitting Weaknesses

I took an superb online writing class from Jeff Sexton, the author of the Accentuate the Negative post. He gave great examples of how showing the downside of a product or service could gain more credibility than one that has nothing but raves.

Remember Avis? “We’re number two, we try harder.”

I’ve been fortunate to work with clients who use my services again. However, I had a client that didn’t work out. When I stopped working for the client, I asked for a testimonial and said that I didn’t expect a positive one. The client chose not to do it.

But it’s understandable as few want to go on public record making a negative statement about someone’s work. I don’t think I could do it as I prescribe with Lyndon B. Johnson’s approach — criticize people in private. I read a story about the former U.S. president who asked a staff member who did something embarrassing aside where he lectured him. I couldn’t find the story — if anyone knows the story, please let me know.

Using Negativity to Create More Clicks

The second entry comes from David Meerman Scott. In Do Not Read This Post (yeah, I read it and stole his headline — actually, doesn’t putting “” around it indicate I’m quoting him?), he discusses the use of “not” and the importance of delivering on the headline. Take care and “Don’t let people think that you really are being negative or exclusionary.”

Exclusivity also increases want. Example: Google’s Gmail. To get an account required receiving an invitation. Somehow Google pulled it off without coming across as “exclusionary.” Though plenty of blogs had comments from those who had not received an invitation feeling left out or not “in the in crowd,” the whole campaign didn’t emit a negative tone.

Like Scott says, have fun with using the negative approach.

Marketing to People with Disabilities

Nadine Vogel has a great article on marketing to people with disabilities, but it is not available online. Her article references a U.S. Census Bureau report that says 20% of adult Americans have a disability. 20%! That’s one out of every five people you talk to. With numbers like that, why would marketers want to overlook this market?

One reason Vogel provides is that “People are generally uncomfortable with disabilities.” True statement. This year, I am taking a break from doing PTA Web sites for two local schools. I’m friends with one of the women who does the webmaster job and she tells me about people contacting her with requests.

I never had this many or these types of requests in my five years as a webmaster for one school. It isn’t long before the tune sounds familiar. People who take over my job receive more calls, requests, and comments than I did when in the job. Over time, I have figured out that some people may not be comfortable telling someone what to do when that person has a disability.

It sounds silly plus I have friends who ask me to do many things for them, but it’s the only logical explanation. My friend takes her duties seriously — so I know it’s not a factor of she isn’t keeping up. In my corporate career, I saw co-workers receiving constant phone calls and visitors while I had a hardly a drop. I understood about the phone calls, but not stopping by?

Seeing this makes a girl question herself. Was there something wrong with my personality? Did my voice annoy them? Or did the plain fact I was deaf make them uncomfortable?

No matter. People with disabilities have the same wants, needs, and hopes as an average person. We want people to like us. We want to succeed. We want to have family and friends. We want to look stylish. We want to come across as smart and valuable.

Marketers did get one thing right — targeting the Baby Boomers. If they can target that market because of “age,” then they should be able to take a similar approach with people with disabilities. Guess what? Many of these Baby Boomers face disabilities that come with aging.

Don’t shy away. Talk to us. You might be surprised and you might impress the boss.

Is a Blog Right For Your Business? (Part II)

Participating in the Community

Reading other blogs or feeds is a great way to learn how to carry a discussion. Find other blogs covering topics similar to yours and check them out. Disagree with their opinions? Write about it and explain your reasons. Cross-blog discussions are common, and that’s where trackback comes in handy.

Trackback is a blog feature. If you decide to comment on another blog posting in your blog instead of in that blog’s comments page, then you link to the conversation through the trackback link. Trackback is similar to the permalink, the permanent URL for the blog entry, but it has a different URL for copying and pasting in your blog’s trackback box.

Aside from the technical aspects of operating a blog on a daily basis, subscriber list size and Web site traffic are good indicators of what kind of reaction you’ll get when opening a blog. Starting from scratch with little traffic means you have a long road ahead and lots of work to do. There is no magic formula anyone can sell you for $97 to make your blog an overnight success. But with some perseverance and ingenuity, your blog can engage many prospects and clients.

Pick a Topic… Any Topic…

Considering there are numerous blogs out there, pick a niche topic when starting a blog for a better shot at attracting and keeping an audience. meryl’s notes focuses on three areas: webby, geeky and wordy. In reality, this is too much. What I should do for my readers is create three separate blog entry points, so those interested in writing, newsletters and Internet marketing get nothing but the wordy entries. Those interested in Web design get the webby stuff and the technophiles receive the geeky content.

I also manage a personal blog separate from meryl’s notes. Bionic Ear about cochlear implants and deafness. This could fall under the geeky category, but it’s a personal blog and doesn’t belong in meryl’s notes. This blog is written for a different audience.

Blogs as Tools

The blogging tools for both of my blogs come with syndication capabilities so those using feed readers or aggregators can read the content through the software. When sending a new issue of a newsletter, comment on it or link to it in the blog, that way the blog and feed readers will get the goods, so all three bases are covered.

Blogging tools aren’t just for, well, blogging. Such tools are an excellent way to help you update your Web site more often than you otherwise would. I use it to manage the list of tableless Web sites. Using blogging tools is much easier than the way I managed it before, updating the HTML files by hand. Though using a blog tool, it isn’t a blog. In this case, the blog tool has become a content management system (CMS).

Small business owners don’t have a need for the fancy and pricey CMSes out there. They find it easier to use blogging software to manage their sites or hire someone to adapt the tool for their site.

Blogs have found a place in businesses and people are finding creative ways to use them. Some companies have a blog on the intranet for communicating project status, jeopardies and metrics. Some use them for knowledge management. With information pouring in, blog applications provide a way to share, organize and process the information.

Being a follower can be good or bad. No one wants to walk off a cliff with the lemmings, but everyone wants to succeed. Best practices won’t help, since the decision to blog depends on the organization’s mission, needs and goals along with its target market’s desires and needs. A blog about lemmings? There is one, sort of. Or maybe you’d like to start your own and talk about dumb business moves.

Part I of article is here.

Is a Blog Right For Your Business? (Part I)

Lemmings are cute, but dumb. If you tell them to jump off a cliff, they will. Just like the people who start blogs because everyone is doing it. After a little while, the blogs die. While cleaning a list of blogs, I deleted countless sites because the sites and blogs no longer existed. The people ran out of steam or had no reason to start them in the first place.

How do you know when a blog is right for your business? Learn why people start blogs, how they find their niche and how blogging tools do more than just hold blog entries.

Some people like to read blogs, others like to read newsletters, still others like to rely on feeds and some read a few or all of them. No matter the method the information is distributed, each medium has one thing in common: content. Having a blog connects your newsletter, your Web site and your business with all of these readers and delivers important content in a particular style.

Blogging Topics

I’ve been blogging since June 2000. If you review my early blog entries in meryl’s notes, you’ll notice they’re more personal. When blogs first hit the scene in the late ’90s, they were personal diaries and journals. Like the blog business, my blog has transformed from personal to business speak, although I still add personal notes here and there.

A few bloggers tend to talk about their work, their products and their little world. That might work for celebrities where fans want to know everything about them, but it doesn’t work for the average business person.

Other business people want information on how to succeed and when a blog spends time hawking products offering information of no value, few people will return. The people whose products sell well are the ones who provide valuable information. Readers already know what kind of information they’re getting, so they trust that when they buy something, it will be of the same or better quality. They reflect this value in their blogs.

Questions to Ask

No one wants to be a lemming (I would hope). How do you decide whether or not to set up a blog? The answer isn’t black or white (what did you expect?). Ask these questions:

• Can you regularly update it — at least a couple of times a week?
• Do you have something to say other than just linking to others?
• Do you read other blogs or feeds?
• Can you provide information of value to others not just to yourself?
• How large is your newsletter subscriber list?
• How many unique visitors do you get on an average day, week or month?

The big decider is whether you can write in the blog almost daily. The people behind the high traffic blogs post multiple times a day. Though resourceful, merely linking to other sites doesn’t give visitors much reason to read yours.

Read Is a Blog Right for Your Business? Part 2

Links: 2007-09-14

• I love Wikipedia, but I know it’s not 100% reliable and sometimes you need more than one resource. Beyond Wikipedia: 20 References You Can’t Do Without points to other resources.

• I started reading The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, but wasn’t impressed. 10 Overrated Business Books (and What to Read Instead) also thinks 7 Habits is overrated.

• In addition to 10 Tips For Marketing Your Book Online, check out Plug Your Book.

• 5 Tips to TRULY becoming your OWN BOSS

• Proofreading Test and Tips — I prescribe to the “put it away for a day” proofing method.

• Contests (writing) and Agencies to Avoid [Thanks, Sage]

• Marketing Lessons from Apple

• “You Ain’t All That!” — A Marketing Copy Autopsy

• Games for the Brain