Making a living as an author depends on making choices that prevent your career from stalling out. Your level of success is directly proportional to the following 10 choices.
1. Choose to learn the business of marketing yourself.
As James Clear states in his blog 10 Reasons Your Freelance Career is Failing, you can complain, or you can learn to play the game. Writing is about more than the ability to craft words. It’s about marketing. It’s about sales skills. It’s about knowing how to package yourself.
You are going to have to spend time talking with prospects. You will lose valuable writing time “selling” your services. Expect it. In the process you will keep freelance writing work flowing into your funnel.
You need to be prepared to go looking for work when the work doesn’t come to you. The best website with a full portfolio is may land a few clients from organic search. For the most part, it’s going to close sales you hunt for by building confidence in your skills.
2. Choose to specialize.
There are certain niches you know and resonate with inherently. Start there. Expand into allied niches if you are the type that tends to get bored with one topic. Avoid providing services to a niche you don’t have a serious interest in. And don’t try to provide every service possible.
I spent two years writing technology articles for one client. While I had a happy client, it never got any easier for me. I always felt drained when I finished the quota for the month. At first, I thought I’d be able to get comfortable with the topic. As time passed, I realized it just wasn’t going to click with my abilities.
Specializing might be frightening, but it pays off. You’ll be more productive and find it easier to avoid some of the following career stalling obstacles. Gradually over time, I have narrowed the services I focus on. While there are multiple pages on my website, the primary thrust is marketing oriented.
3. Choose not to procrastinate.
This is so easy to do when you’ve taken on a project that puts you outside of your comfortable space. It can also be tempting when you have a client that’s demanding.
Unfortunately, putting off discomfort doesn’t remove it. It only delays it, at best. Sometimes procrastination quadruples the pain!
4. Choose to put in time.
You don’t have to work seven days a week. In fact, I don’t recommend it. It’s good to take a day off, not just once in a while. Once a week! I’ve learned that all work and no play, makes me a dull writer. Adequate rest, sufficient exercise, Saturday’s off—they all add up to a brain that remains healthy and facile.
At the same time if you want your career to remain successful, you have to nurture self-discipline. You have to work regular hours. Sleeping in, putting in short days, watching TV every night all adds up to time you didn’t spend nurturing your writing career. Sure you need to schedule time to remain balanced, just be sure you’re also scheduling work time.
5. Choose to treat your writing as a career.
Only so much time should be spend learning about your craft and marketing yourself. The rest of your time must be spend doing your craft.
Limit yourself to tweaking your website content once every few months, or when you really need to. Keep blogging time under control. If you treat your career like it’s a hobby, it will generate hobby-like income. If you focus on side issues, your career will stall.
6. Choose to pay yourself an appropriate wage.
When you first start out, you usually charge less to build a portfolio. That’s a good strategy. As you prove yourself, raise your rates and stop complaining that you aren’t earning enough.
You may leave some clients behind in the process. If you are really giving it all you have, and you are truly a good writer, you’ll continue to attract clients.
7. Choose to make decisions and follow through with them.
There will always be more than one path to follow. Robert Frost’s famous poem, The Path Not Taken, resonates with the fact that you may always feel some regret for a decision you can’t go back to, yet taking a path and moving down it makes “all the difference.” Your career will stall if you remain indecisive.
8. Choose to pursue at least one project each year that challenges you.
This might seem to contradict the second point, yet it complements it. Find something that aligns with where you want to be as an author next year.
Begin small. Explore new opportunities. Don’t be too afraid to take a little risk. Also, recognize that you may change direction in the future, yet stretching yourself is never wasted. Let me share my experience.
In 2007, the dream of becoming a writing coach/substantive editor was barely a sprout. However, it was there. Honestly, I spent most of the last 10 years on side-paths. That began to change when I participated in some mentoring events. More on that later.
- I built Office Live websites before transitioning to WordPress. I never became fast enough to be profitable as a web designer. Yet, this creative outlet continues to reward me in less tangible ways. I now only offer website packages to those with whom I collaborate with as a writing coach. I stretched myself last year revamping this website. Twice I hired the theme developer to step in and customize it when I couldn’t achieve the look I wanted.
- I wrote SEO articles. This work was sometimes frustrating and low-paid. Even when I reached a decent pay scale, I realized most article work had become an obstacle to what was now a clear goal—full-time work as a writing coach and collaborative editor.
- I wrote website content. This work was usually rewarding and better paying. However, it’s also in the phase-out stage.
- I dabbled in writing sales letters and other marketing materials. Stretching in this direction continues to be important for helping my clients market and promote their books.
- I tried to turn my Writing as a Ghost blog into a book on freelance writing with mixed success. Lesson learned? Make sure you get beta readers and a proofreader before going to print. Updating it would be another side-track, so it’s a low priority now.
- I wrote resumes to fill the ‘gaps.’ Determined to be really good at it without spending a lot of money on certifications, I attained the goal, only to find myself burning out. Fortunately, I walked away with one benefit—the ability to recognize what the end reader wants to know and extract that vital information from my clients. Not all was lost.
- I took some courses.
- Learning HTML and CSS is something I’ll never regret. It’s helped me communicate more effectively with the web designers I’ve hired.
- Taking a screen writing course was very educational. I’ll never watch a movie in the same way again. I may never write a screen play, yet I now understand far more about plotting because of it.
- Leaping from MS Word and Publisher to InDesign was a huge learning curve. I consider it one of the best business decisions in the last four years. Microsoft’s products were holding me back, and InDesign set me free to lay out books free from the irritating glitches of Word’s limitations and the inability to export inherent with Publisher.
Gradually, I came to realize that I should have listened to those early voices who said choose a niche. Yet, my internal voice screamed so vehemently—”You have to prove yourself first”—I couldn’t move out of my paralysis. It took until 2015 to close the door on writing resumes. I didn’t have the courage to say, “I’m no longer writing SEO articles unless they help me help my clients,” until January 2017. After nearly 10 years of floundering, I am now committed to only taking on work that aligns with my long-term goals.
So I’m probably still going to take on a WordPress website once a year that’s just at the edge of my skills. When I do so, it’s not about profits. It’s about stretching myself so I’m better able to advise you.
Word will remain my initial document format because most of my clients use it. I will continue to import the final document into InDesign. It’s advanced capabilities allow me to deliver a high caliber print-ready book and an electronic book.
9. Choose to ask for feedback.
There are Facebook and LinkedIn groups where you’ll find other authors who are happy to share tips with you. Engage with the other authors. Share an excerpt of your book for free.
You may have written your book to demonstrate your expertise and thought leadership. Encourage your readers to leave feedback on Good Reads and Amazon, telling others how they benefited from the book. When someone does, respond with gratitude—regardless of what they said. It’s possible you’ll get a reader who feels they got nothing from the book. It happens. I’ve learned that my attitude toward criticism determines whether the sting contains poison or motivation.
I’ve shed tears over the harshness of a critic. I’ve ranted. That’s my natural first reaction. It’s probably yours as well.
From the soggy Kleenex of your pity party, you have a choice.
- Will you face the criticism honestly? If you will, you’ve embraced the opportunity to make whatever you wrote better.
- Will you cling to every word you’ve written as though they were spoken from heaven? Then the power of your message may only reach those friends who love you no matter how poorly you write.
- Will you embrace the help you may need to deliver your message in a way that’s fascinating to your audience? Then you’ll continually grow as a writer.
- Will you listen to the criticism and deal with it constructively? Then your attitude will open doors.
10. Choose to find mentor support.
You may feel hiring a mentor is too expensive. I disagree, and here’s why. Investing in products offered by a number of mentors has transformed my business. Let me share my story.
In August 2014, Bridget Weide Brooks, the woman I had turned to to learn how to write more effective resumes in 2013, offered me tickets to an event she was unable to attend. I paid the $95.00 on the promise that I’d get the money back by showing up. So mid-October found me at an event put on by Kathleen Gage within walking distance of my home. I fully intended walk out of the event with my check in hand. I didn’t. Instead, I invested it toward the MP3s being recorded throughout the three-day seminar.
Power Up for Profits was pivotal. While I recognized I was not ready to take advantage of what Kathleen offers as a business coach, I learned enough at the event to put my business on a path aligned with that sprout, which had grown into a gangling, unproductive business since 2007. Within two months, I had trimmed away the renegade sucker that resume writing had become. I sold Writing as a Ghost in early 2015, retaining only a few select clients who paid well for my SEO article work and website content.
I invested in additional packages offered by Kathleen. I also began exploring other packages offered by experts within the publishing industry.
Finally in December, I was invited to participate in a webinar presented by Bill Baren. Not only did I purchase his training that day, what I heard was pivotal in pushing me to make the final transition away from playing it safe toward doing what I’ve wanted to do consistently for the last 10 years.
Am I the perfect writing coach? Do I know everything there is to know about publishing? No, and I never will. Yet, I spent too long questioning whether the work I’d accomplished with clients over the past 10 years was adequate proof. NO LONGER.
I join Bill in repeating something he’s emphasized in every webinar. Avoid the perfection trap. Aim for it at all times, yet don’t let your inability to meet some ideal of perfection get in your way.
There will never be a better time for you to write, no matter how you feel today. Seize today—even if you only have minutes available.
