KLF Writing Services

The new year is a great time to start thinking about how you are going to step up your writing career. The Success in Writing Series is meant to provide you with helpful tips on how you can get more clients, narrow your niche, and write about the things you want to write about. Let's start with your resume.

Review the Resume
How long has it been since you even looked at your resume? I confess, it's been over a year since I looked at mine, but I intend to rectify that situation immediately. If you happen to have a crippling fear of writing your own resume, don't be afraid to seek out some help. Personally, I write my own and then have one of my friends look it over because that's her niche.

Chronological or Topic?
For most writers, a chronological resume may not be feasible. If you worked on an awesome project that was done in two months, you don't necessarily want to put those dates down. For you and your client, it might mean that you kicked ass on it. For those reading your resume, it might mean that you only stuck around for two months. Consider a topic heavy resume instead and maybe even make more than one resume to fit your purposes.

• Make sure your contact information is up to date and check your email signature to make sure it's up to date as well.
• Make a resume by topic so that if you do SEO work, but you really want to only do health and beauty work, you have a resume for each one.
• Offer references and samples as needed. You don't need to include them on the resume, but you do need to indicate that they are available.
• Use headings and subheadings. They make your resume look more professional and they also make it easy for potential clients to focus on what's important to them.
• Keep topic-specific samples handy so you don't have to write a sample for every client you pitch.
• Write a pitch. You get paid to write, so don't waste your time re-writing a pitch for every client you want to approach. Write one pith and then modify it for each client.

There is nothing to put the writing community in a panic like the loss of a major site or the reduction in work from a major site. You'll hear a lot about having other eggs and lots of other financial advice from people working in the same place that you are. The truth is that you may have to think outside of the box (like writers aren't already).

You can make money from your blog, selling your articles, getting private clients, and all the other ways that online writers already know about, but might not use. And yet, there are ways that you haven't even thought of.

Raise Money for Someone Else

It's not like you don't know how to market or write to an Internet audience already. Now put that to use in another area. If nothing else, soon enough it will dawn on you that if you can market for someone else, surely you can do it for yourself.

Look to sites like For the Schools, where you can earn cash back for schools, but you can also earn some for yourself. In fact, you can literally dictate how much you earn because you get to decide how many people you invite. In turn, you get a bonus every time someone signs up. You can donate it to the school or keep it for yourself. What would I suggest? Charge a nominal fee (maybe 10%) to set up the account and then give everything else to the school. You'll be able to help the community, make a bit of money, and endear yourself to the school and local businesses, who might just need a marketing professional.

Mystery Shop

Believe it or not, you can make some decent money as a mystery shopper. How does your writing come into play? Reports and headaches, that's how.

Every report you write goes back to the mystery shopping company. They have to be able to read the report and pass it along to their client. When push comes to shove and bonuses are available, is that company going to look to you-- someone who provides well written reports that don't have to be completely rewritten before going to the client, or someone who may or may not turn in a legible report every now and then?

There are other things you can do. Edit, tutor, sell items online, create copy for friends who want to sell items online, charge a fee to teach other people how to make a living online, and lots more. You're a writer. Do what you do best and get creative!

I've been debating this issue for a little while now. I'm a very frugal person, so the idea of hiring someone to fill out paperwork or something similar is just about beyond my scope. However, I've learned that everyone should have access to a lawyer and certainly every business should have access to one. Frugal or not, sometimes it's cheaper to let someone else handle the legalities. Let me just share an example or two of why this is so.

I have very little problems with payments from clients. Every now and then I may have to send a reminder. Every now and then I have to send multiple emails. This doesn't happen very often, but when it does I probably waste more time trying to get paid for the work I did than actually doing the work. Even though I'm not spending cash out of pocket, it still costs me because it wastes my time.

And then there are the completely non-paying clients. I've only had one of those. I stopped writing until I got payment, which means I pretty much stopped writing for her altogether. Apparently she was doing the same thing to other writers, who lost untold amounts of cash. How much energy do you have to waste getting payments?

Sometimes you are better off to hire a lawyer than to waste your time. You see, a lawyer has the time to do the research and learn that someone like this has scammed plenty of writers. What's next? Because the lawyer had time, the issue got presented with a lot more merit. I mean there is a huge difference between one person taking you to court for a bill and mulitple people getting involved in a class action lawsuit.

And then there are issues with insurance, and in my case, things like real estate. I don't know the first thing about transferring a deed. But my lawyer does. See, I could spend days working on that stuff to make sure I do it right. But if I charge $20 an hour and my lawyer charges $100, it's worth it to let my lawyer spend 2 hours working on something he is familiar with instead of me spending all week trying to make sure I've got it right.