Freelance Writing Jobs

Do you know the “MAGIC WORDS to Use in Goal Setting?” Let’s recap our financial goals and then I will share my “Magic Words” with you.

OK, so we’ve decided that you want to make money as a freelance writing professional and we did some pretty basic math to see what it would take to accomplish your annual goal for this year. Based on the number of hours you can commit to your business, we backed into the amount you would need to make per hour to accomplish your annual financial goal. We took a look at how many freelance writing jobs you responded to last year and how many of those you landed.

That should give you a rough idea of how many ads you will need to respond to this year. This is of course based on the percentage of your income that comes from online ads. If you are using other methods, figure out what percentage of your business (income) comes from each and then do the same math for each. If you are not using other methods, I’m certain I can help you discover some ways to find new clients this year.

You might be in a specialty where you don’t work on an hourly rate so just readjust your numbers based on “per project” or however you charge for your work. You get paid X per project, you bid on X number of projects, and you landed X number of those. Divide the amount you made last year off of the total projects by the number of projects - and that was your income per project.

Ok, so that leads us to setting the goals themselves. You will want to come up with an annual financial goal. You should then break that goal down into individual monthly goals as well. You might travel certain months, your writing products might be seasonal, etc. I want you to get in the habit of rewriting your goals at the beginning of every month. You will probably want to set a goal for number of new clients, maybe have an article submission goal, continuing education, and any other goal that will help you grow – business or personal. Come up with a list of maybe 5 to 10 concrete goals and jot them down.

I’ve been in sales and sales management for over 20 years and I’ve done a lot of goal setting over the years. I’ve seen just how powerful it is to commit yourself to your goals – especially when you put them in writing. But be careful, because without using the “Magic Words,” it can be so powerful that it can actually be limiting.

I owned a pager and cell phone company for many years and I can’t tell you how many times we were running around like maniacs trying to get our deals closed on the last day of the month. We usually did hit our sales goal and it was almost eerie how often we would exceed our goal – within dollars of a $10,000 goal! But what I found out years later was that we were actually limiting our success with our word choices.

I can’t help but wonder what our numbers would’ve looked like if we simply changed our goal from, “We are going to do $10,000 in sales in February” to “We are going to do AT LEAST $10,000 in sales in February.” Even more powerful would be, “We are going to do AT LEAST $10,000 in sales ON OR BEFORE February 28^th.”

So when you are setting your goals this year, be sure you incorporate those Magic Words (AT LEAST and ON OR BEFORE) into your goal. Here are some examples:

I am going to make AT LEAST $60,000 ON OR BEFORE December 31, 2008
I am going to make AT LEAST $5,000 ON OR BEOFRE January 31, 2008
I am going to find AT LEAST 3 new clients this month
I am going to submit my favorite article to AT LEAST 5 magazines this month
I am going to commit to AT LEAST one area of continuing education this month
I am going to contact my valuable clients AT LEAST 6 times this year
I am going to update my blog AT LEAST 20 times this month
I am going to loose AT LEAST 20 pounds ON OR BEFORE July 4^th

You get the idea … keep your goals specific yet open to EXCEEDING your goals. Type or write them out and post them somewhere you will see them daily.

I would LOVE to see what you come up with – so feel free to email me your goals. Let me know if I have permission to share them in an upcoming newsletter or not. You can also add them here in the comments section. Sharing our goals tends to keep us more accountable too. It’s also great to partner up with one or two others to help each other stay on track.

Good luck with your new assignment and let me know if you have any questions or comments. And, of course, remember to … MAKE EVERY DAY COUNT! *SmiLes* Suzanne 

Freelance Daily

Let’s Get Started on Your Game Plan For 2008! 

You will hear me talk about my sales and sales management background, but I actually considered myself a consultant (to my customers) and a coach (to my sales reps). Even though none of you “work for me,” I still consider myself in the unique position to use my experience in both sales and management to help “coach” you to success. Hmmm … Suzanne Franco, The Sales Coach to Freelance Writing Professionals … I like it! And just like my other “coaching” positions, I will not be successful until each one of you are successful. 

Because goals will be different for each and every one of you, I can’t list out your goals for you. But, I can give you some guidance on how to best set your business goals. Please make adjustments for your specific goals. I will assume that everyone here wants to make money as a freelance professional.

So first, you need to decide how much money you would like to make at your business this year. Then you will need to decide how many hours you have per day/week/month to work on your business. You can divide the annual financial goal by the number of hours you have available this year. That will give you the hourly rate you would need to earn to accomplish your goal. You should know what your time is worth per hour and an average pay rate for your specialty. This way you can see if you are in the “range” to meet or exceed your initial income goal. If you are in the range … great, if not, you will need to find more hours … or settle for less money. 

Now that you know what you are shooting for let’s figure out how to get you there. If you’ve been responding to online freelance ads you should have some idea of how many ads you’ve had to respond to before you’ve landed work. Let’s do some more math. If you replied to 100 ads last year and landed 5 gigs … what kind of income did that give you? Will that be enough to get you to your goal this year? If not, we will need to make some adjustments. You will either need to respond to more ads, take a good look at your ad response letters, or learn some new ways to market yourself. 

I’ve started a list of possible ways to market yourself as a freelance writing professional and I will eventually take you through them one at a time. If you are drawn to any of them in particular, please let me know. If I see a trend it will impact the direction I head. 

How To Market Yourself As a Freelance Writing Professional:

Well, I’m not a big fan of “New Year’s Resolutions,” but with the start of a brand new year, I suppose I do reflect on the past year and set new goals for myself – both personal and professional. 

As you may or may not know, I don’t come from a writing background, but a sales and marketing background. In sales we are BIG on goal setting and it’s amazing how powerful your mind really is if you use it to its fullest potential. I know … I know … Suzanne I’m a writer – NOT A SALESPERSON! Well, one of my goals for 2008 is to help you see that we are ALL salespeople to some extent – and writers are no exception to that – well, that is if you want to “sell” your work and get paid.So as I dive further and further into “your world” - the fascinating world of writing, I invite you to take a peek into “my world.” I promise to keep it FUN and I hope you will just have an open mind to learning something new.  First Sales Tidbit for this New Year:  In the “sales world” we use a “Sales Days Calendar.” Assuming a Monday – Friday work week (and excluding holidays), we will have 252 “sales days” in 2008. We have 12 sales days remaining for the month of January and today is 20% of your work week – so … let’s both MAKE EVERY DAY COUNT!!!   Have a terrific day! Suzanne Franco, Freelance Daily