The Right Way to Earn Money From Freelancing

I follow quite a few people on social media who are writers and they seem to be so good at getting the work published online on blogs, websites and in online anthologies and online magazines.

But lately I've been taking a closer look at the work they're getting published and where, and I made a surprising discovery.

I admit that I've been feeling a tiny bit jealous that they all seem to get so much of their work published. I kept wondering, how do they do it? I thought their work must be really good.

However, it seems that all their published work is unpaid. They seem to be submitting it to non-paying, online markets. And sometimes it's even WORSE than that. They submit their work to websites where you have to PAY for every submission.

I swear it made me do a quick Porky Pig impersonation. "A b-a-b-a-b that's crazy, folks." Why would anyone do so much writing and then not only give it away for free, but also pay someone else to publish it online?

Jealous? Not any more. There is no way I would let my work be published on someone else's blog or website so that they can earn money from my hard work. I know some would say that free publication can be great marketing. But not when you're giving it away all the time.

If you want to earn money from freelance writing, then your work needs to be submitted to a paying market. I advise against ever paying to submit work. I won't even enter writing competitions unless they're free. I figure that if I enter a writing competition and I win, that's great. It means I've earned money from my writing. And if I don't win, I still have my story or article and I can submit it somewhere else and even submit it to a paying market.

To be really successful as a freelance writer, you need to be fearless and don't hold back when it comes to finding markets for your work. Never think that it's not worth submitting your work or your idea for an article because it might be rejected. It might also be accepted.

And no matter how small the submission (reader's letter, joke, tip, etc), do it. Even if you don't earn much at least you'll earn something. And some of these smaller pieces can actually earn you a good ROI for the few minutes that it took you to write it.

Keep submitting ideas and stories all the time. Aim for 30 submissions in 30 days every month. That's 300 submissions a year. Can you imagine the success you'd have? And they don't have to be huge pieces of work. Like I said, even a small joke or a tip can earn you up to $100 for just 5 minutes work.

Make some of your submissions to printed markets like magazines, and others to online markets. If you keep up the 30 submissions a month, you can't fail.

And don't make excuses like, you have a full-time job or you have a family. These are just excuses because we always make time for the things we love.

And one of them should be writing.

https://ruthiswriting.com/books/MCWS1.html

Blog or Website? What’s the Difference?

Someone emailed me recently and said they wanted to set up and earn money online, but they weren’t sure if they should have a blog or a website because they didn’t know the difference between the two.

And a quick search online showed me that many people were asking the same thing - what’s the difference between a blog and a website?

The answer is that essentially, there is no difference, except that a website can be a site that is static and never changes, whereas a blog is updated often.

Mostly, a website is used for business, whereas a blog is akin to an online diary.

Many people combine the two and have a website with set pages (home page, about page, contact page, sales page, etc) and a blog section that they update with their latest offers and new stock announcements.

The reason people have blogs is because they are easy to update if you use blogging software, and search engines love sites with regular, fresh content.

Also, people who want a personal site where they regularly upload photos and stories about their life (travel, food, health, kids, etc), tend to have a blog and use blogging software like WordPress, to make it quick to update.

I use both. I have my website where I regularly upload new writing articles and my latest book information, plus I have this blog where I post shorter articles, and things that are time-sensitive such as open writing markets, or introductory price reductions of my books.

My ebook, Build a Lucrative Niche Website In a Month, is also about creating a niche blog, because it’s the same as a niche website.

Ultimately the choice is yours and you can call it what you want. A blog or a website.

https://ruthiswriting.com/books/MCWS2.html

Why Do You Want To Write?

It's great to want to be a writer, even better if it's how you want to earn your living.

But before you can take it to the next level, you need to know what kind of writer you want to be. What is it that you want to write?

When you imagine yourself as a writer, what are you doing? What are you writing?

Are you writing books? Articles? Copywriting? Journalism? Fiction? Non-fiction? Essays?

What is it that you want to write?

They say that once you go somewhere in your imagination you can go there in life.

But what if you don't know where you want to go and what you want to do?

I had the same issue when I first began writing, so  I did everything. I tried every kind of writing that I could. I tried whatever appealed to me. And that taught me not just what I was good at, but also what I wasn't good at. Writing erotic stories was something I was really, REALLY bad at.

I also learned what type of writing I enjoyed.

So if you're sitting on the proverbial fence, or you don't know what kind of writing you want to do, just start. It doesn't matter what you do, just do something. Take a course, buy a book, start journalling, start searching online, enter a competition, find some writing prompts.

Once you begin you'll feel motivated and soon you'll know what you want to do.

The Monthly Challenge Writing Series

https://ruthiswriting.com/books/MCWS1.html

The Easy Way to Write More

Wouldn't it be great if you could write more than you do now? What if you could sit down and find that you're far more productive and write more articles, book chapters, and stories in one sitting than you ever could before?

Is that even possible?

You bet it is, and it doesn't even have anything to do with writing faster.

If you want to write more, you need to want to do it.

Does that sound too simplistic? Well, it isn't.

You see, if there's one thing I've learned in life, it's that if you don't want to do something then you either won't do it, or you'll do it badly, or slowly. It's something all we humans inherently do. You'll know what I mean if you've ever watched a sulky teenager doing a household chore that they don't want to do. See the hilarious short video below: "How to avoid washing a car by Kevin the teenager - BBC"

It doesn't matter what it is, if we don't feel excited, motivated or we simply have no interest in doing something, we just won't do it.

And if 2020 taught us anything, it's that working from home is harder than going out to work because there's no boss, no set hours and far too many distractions. Being at home doesn't provide the motivation to sit down and start writing.

But the truth is that you can't wait for motivation before you start. Motivation won't show up for work until you do. I know, because I battle with this problem every day. 

The only way to defeat it is to have more bum in chair time and shut off all distractions. I have a computer that I use exclusively for writing so that I don't have all the usual online distractions to deal with. I have nothing on it but my writing files, and when I have to go online, I switch to my other computer and transfer my files on a flash drive.

You can't find motivation but it can find you.

And it always finds you when you're already working.

Want more help getting started?

Download my Monthly Challenge Writing Series and work your way through them all.

They'll get you started quickly.

https://ruthiswriting.com/books/MCWS1.html