Bloggers get their day (and some cash, too)
Blogging can be a thankless task. Depending on what your blog is about, finding an audience can be hard, and keeping them engaged is a lot of work. But some writers manage to start something great, attracting healthy traffic and building their own online community, one blog post at a time. Some make a bit […]
Why I wrote for the Huffington Post (and why I stopped)
By Emma Woolley The Huffington Post is evil, right? It makes a lot of money from content it doesn’t pay for. It exploits writers and undermines their right to earn livings. It contributes to the overall devaluation of writing and especially web writing. I knew all of this and I still wrote for the Huffington […]
On fear and hunger: the Born Freelancer’s open letter to employers
I was having coffee recently with a colleague. Okay, actually, in my case, it was hot chocolate. Hey, it was cold outside and I needed a sugar hit. But we freelancers haven’t yet come up with a better expression than “having coffee” to denote a casual meeting. “Having tea” sounds too lightweight. “Having hot chocolate” […]
The secret to drastically increasing your income
Work more. That’s the advice Krystal Yee shared in a recent Moneyville.ca post. Over the course of 2011, she has boosted her income by 50 per cent by adding 20-30 hours per week of part-time and freelance work on top of her full-time job. She took on two part-time writing gigs, freelance graphic design work, […]
Show me the money: Invoicing tips from the Born Freelancer
Gather a bunch of freelance writers together and it’s almost always the number-one topic of conversation. The general public may expect us to be dissecting esoteric topics like the influence of Faustian legend on contemporary media, but for most of us it’s: “Got any new tips for getting paid faster?” Several posts ago Story Board […]
F*ck you. Pay me. Mike Monteiro’s advice for getting paid as a freelancer
If you’ve ever had trouble collecting payment from a client, this video is for you. Mike Monteiro, co-founder of Mule Design Studio gives his provocative (and sometimes profane) tips for protecting yourself as an independent contractor.
Crowdsource funding for your work
Now that the “age of self-publishing” is being heralded for both long-form journalists and book authors, the question of self-funding, so to speak, is on more and more writers’ minds. The ability to publish and market one’s work, using platforms like Amazon’s Kindle Singles or Apple’s iBookstore, can be freeing, once the piece is complete. […]
Picking a price point for your e-book
Being able to slap whatever price tag you want on your own work is one of the most freeing things about self-publishing, but it can also be the most challenging. Not all writers are marketing experts, and, as far as we know, a guide on How to Compete in the E-books Marketplace — with its […]
“Free” freelancing: is it ever worth it?
The past couple days, a post about unpaid internships has been making the rounds on Twitter, and its writer, Bethany Horne, has been getting a lot of support for declaring that she will never (again) work for free, after completing an internship as part of her school program. She argues that unpaid work is detrimental […]
Blogs as steady income earners: how it’s done
Freelancers maintain personal blogs for all sorts of reasons: to have an all-in-one-place online portfolio, to increase their profile in a particular community or gain a reputation as an authority on a particular topic, to experiment with different types of writing than they get to do in their freelance work, or, often, to post photos […]
