Month: January 2013

Categories
freelance writing writing

How to Harness the Power of Your Writing to Land High-Paying Gigs

Guest post by Kelvon

“Power is nothing without control”. I guess most of you are pretty familiar with this quote.

Let me share with you a story of a friend of mine.

My Friend’s name is Hulk. I guess most of you know him through his mystic virility and destructive aspiration.

Yes, he’s an American character who smashes whatever he sees in order to achieve a particular objective.

The upside is that nothing encumbers him from doing what he intends—he was blessed with such a devastating power. However, the downside is that my friend can’t control his power.

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Categories
freelance writing

10 New Year Goals That Can Boost Your Freelance Writing Business

We all love making New Year resolutions. But the crazy thing is that most times, for most people, this love is short-lived.

We enter the New Year clinking glasses and vowing to do blah, blah, blah.

Then the end of January arrives and we are back to our old selves- breaking our “vows” and relenting in our efforts to get better.

As for me, I hate making New Year resolutions! Why?

Well, because my resolutions don’t live past the first week. Infact, I broke some of them on January 1st. And I bet you’re somewhat like me.

Why does this happen?

Well, it’s not because people don’t know what they want. And it’s definitely not because we lack commitment.

The answer is quite simple.

Many resolutions are mere dreams. Many dreams are unrealistic. And the dreamers don’t like to face reality.

It is for this simple reason that setting goals rock!

Resolutions aren’t goals because there are no set out plans to achieve them. This is why most aren’t achieved.

Setting New Year goals with set out plans on how to achieve them helps you track your progress throughout the year. Even if those goals aren’t achieved by December 31st, you’ll be rest assured that you’ve made some progress, no matter how small.

So, here are 10 New Year goals that you need as a freelance writer if you really want to make any progress this year.

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Categories
Getting Things Done writing

The Pomodoro Technique, Meditation, and Stress-free Writing

Guest post by Bill

I don’t know about you, but I live a pretty busy life. A wife, kids, and a 40-hour work week. I also write eBooks and articles. In 2012, things got so hectic that I had to find some way to slow it down, regain my sanity, and figure out a way to fit everything in to an already full schedule.

In order to cope, I really threw myself into meditation. It all started with a self-induced, 4-week meditation challenge that I originally posted about on the Jobs in Ayurveda website. I’d toyed with meditation before in the past, but never seemed to make it a daily habit–primarily because it takes time and a little effort in the beginning. Finally, I was willing to put forth the effort.

I knew that any habit requires a few weeks to take hold, so I decided I would meditate for at least 15 minutes every day for four weeks. I can’t tell you that it changed my life right away, but I have noticed some significant benefits since I completed the first challenge (I did another free 21-day guided meditation challenge on Deepak Chopra’s website that brought many more benefits than my original challenge).

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Categories
writing

How to Use Inverted Commas, Brackets and Capital Letters

Inverted commas (quotation marks), brackets and capital letters can be quite confusing to use for some people. This lesson is a quick reminder and is not meant to be all-inclusive or definitive. In the three sections below, you’ll learn how to use these common punctuation marks and make your blog posts pop. See the writing tips page on this blog for more useful writing tutorials.

When to use inverted commas or quotation marks

They are used to enclose direct speech or a quotation. Which ones you use is up to you. One school of thought says that double inverted commas (“they look like this”) should be used for direct speech, and the single ones (‘they look like this’) for quotations.  Some publishing houses, bloggers and writers believe the opposite. I don’t think it matters which one you follow, as long as you’re consistent throughout your writing so that your readers are clear about what you mean.

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Categories
freelance writing

How I Went from Earning $12/Article to $250/Article

Guest post by Sarah

If you’ve read the bio on my new website, “Write Your Revolution,” you already know that web content writing is a career I stumbled into by accident.  I never set out to be a professional writer (in fact, I hold a nearly-worthless degree in Environmental Studies), but when a former website flipping client asked me to consider writing content for the stable of niche sites he owned back in 2007, I jumped at the opportunity.

I started out at pretty “bottom of the barrel” prices – making just $50 for three 500-word articles.  At the time, I was ecstatic.  I was only earning about $12/hour at my day job, so the fact that I could pick up half a day’s salary with a few pages of content represented a huge shift in my ability to pay my mounting post-college bills.

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