However, the one thing that drives me mad with criaglist is the way that you can’t search the entire database without going through each one separately.  Such a waste of time.

Now I know that may be useful if you want to buy a car or rent a flat, but if you are looking for on-line work through where location isn’t an issue, then it’s not so good.

I have just added a widget to this site that stops that.  It lets you search the entire database of criaglist and  It’s really simple to use.  It opens up a whole host of freelancing gigs that you may have not seen before. The only downside is that the widget asks for a zip code which, if you aren’t in the USA is hard to get.  If that’s the case go here and click on ‘rest of world’

This will then take you through the steps to search the whole of Europe or just selected countries.  Then select ‘jobs’ and under types of jobs you could put in the keyword ‘freelance.’

I just did a quick search and got over 200!

Happy hunting

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After some initial research it seems that there’s a lot more to being a freelance technical writer than I first thought.  It’s not just a case of writing instruction manuals or re-writing complicated text into an easy to understand format.  Oh no, the life of a freelance technical writer is much more involved.  However, I’ve found out that freelance technical writers do seem to get paid more, so it might be worth a deeper investigation.

I can’t really find a definitive job description of a freelance technical writer.  Largely because technical writing jobs can consist of many things, including exploring technical applications, experimenting with them and analysing them.  I think it largely depends on the type of freelance technical writer job that you want to apply for but from first looks it seems that there’s lots of investigating into programs and software before even thinking about writing.

It also seems that there’s more to the job than merely writing, you need to solve technical problems and test how programs function or don’t function as well as talking to business analysts, consumer research…oh the list goes on.

So after premliminary looks, it seems that being a freelance technical writer isn’t for me after all, I mean, it all looks too… dare I say, technical?

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Photo by Clurr

When I was writing the title to this post, I got really stuck on whether to call it an ‘introductory’ email.  Should it be sales letter?  Or an email pitch?
I’m not sure, but you know the kind of thing I mean, it’s the email that you send to someone whom you don’t know, asking for work and offering your services.  They are really tricky things to do because the temptation for the reader to press the delete key is huge.
Why should they open and read an email from someone they don’t know and give them work?

When I first started out in freelancing, this was my first hurdle.  I wanted to write for publications but I couldn’t get the editors attention at all.  All my emails were either going straight to ‘junk’ folder or the trash can and I really wanted that to change.
Over time, it did change and now I can happily send a batch of emails out and expect to hear a response.  It may be a ‘not right now..’ response or a ‘let us know of any other ideas you may have…’ response but it’s something.  It’s a reply that I can work on and respond to and build up a relationship from, it’s not the deafening silence that leaves me checking email every five minutes and wondering if they ever really received my message in the first place.  So here’s the first thing I did:

I found out exactly who to send my email to.

That sounds so obvious doesn’t it, but believe it or not, at the time I didn’t think it was important.  I would look at the contact information on the magazine, web site or whatever and bang out my little email to them.  But I was so wrong.  If you want a response never use a generic email address.
Any email like contactus @ thismail.com  is a sure-fire way of getting nothing back.  So first off, decide who you want to approach.
For me, I needed to find out who the commissioning editor was.  Or the features editor.
It’s different people for different lines of work, but you need to find out who owns the purse strings and get their email address.  Not their secretaries or their assistants, but theirs.  And it’s so easy to do.  Do some research on forums, ask your contacts or you could make a  phone call to the switch board and ask for it, but if you are picking up the phone, be warned!  You may actually end up talking to the commissioning editor in person, so have your idea/pitch/sales spiel ready to go.

If you hate making calls, and have tried all other avenues with no results, then  send a message to the generic email address asking for the contact information you need.  This sometimes works.  A quick two line email asking for the right email address takes no time at all and in return, you may get the information you need.

The next step is writing the thing, but this would take too long a post, so I’ll save that for later.

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So I just joined twitter.
I’ve been avoiding it, mostly because
a) I didn’t see the point.  I mean, who cares if I’m cooking curry for dinner, or washing my socks?  I hate those things on Facebook and besides, I can never think of anything amusing to say.

And…

b) I didn’t understand how it worked. I know that’s a really lame excuse, but put it together with point a) above and the motivation for understanding the programme is none existent.

Then two things happened.
The first is that my friend is about to have a baby, any day now.  And because I don’t see this friend in person on a daily basis, or call her on a daily basis, I won’t know exactly when she’s had her baby.  To solve this problem (my friend has a lot of on-line friends) she’s going to ‘tweet’ the announcement.  Now that really is something to twitter about, so it would be good to follow her on twitter.

The other thing that made me join twitter,  is that I’ve noticed that more and more freelancers seem to be using twitter as a platform for gaining more work.  This post in particular highlighted the potential to me, and also describes what to do in really simple terms.
I think the best points in the article are to ‘be helpful and kind,’ (always a winner) and I love the bit that explains how ‘work will find you.’
I understand that this is a slow transition and you need to work with twitter, follow people and offer interesting information, so I’m going to give it a go.  I have, however, just had my first stumbling block when I realised that my user name had been taken. 

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Photo by Noel Zia Lee

I love the start of a new year.  All those possibilities, all that potential.  I love getting a new diary and filling up the first few pages with plans, ideas and dreams.

So what’s in store this year?

My plans are to build my passive and online income.  I’m totally in awe of those who are making over $1000 a month from previous online projects and I plan to investigate as much as possible into making that amount as well.
So far, I’ve set up another blog, started to submit articles to a content paying site and, well, that’s as far as I got.  I have made some money, but the truth is, I’m finding it hard to keep up the motivation for these kinds of things when the initial return is so little.

I only started with Bukisa in December, hoping to be part of the great eHow Experiment, but the second week into the month, I got a large project to complete and….. didn’t get chance to submit any more articles.
In my last update I had written 8 articles and earned $0.40.
Since then, I submitted one more article, and having just checked, my earnings are now at $2.00.
My articles are earning money for me.  So it’s passive income, even though it is in tiny, tiny, tiny amounts.  I’ll submit some more articles, and keep with it as much as possible keeping those wonderful few who earn $100 a month from content paying sites firmly in my mind.

My new blog has only been live a month, and just has a few posts on, but has earned $1.00 already from Adsense, and I love working on that, so I plan to continue with it, build up traffic, and perhaps launch some other niche blogs as well.

I’m told that the lack of initial return is the biggest stumbling block in trying to gain passive income and it’s where most people give up.  From my research, it seems that any kind of income made online seems to be a slow burner.  So, this year, I intend to embrace that concept and commit to it as best as I can.

If you are looking for ways to build up passive income, (and in this kind of financial climate, who isn’t?)  then here are a few sites to inspire and show that it can be done on a large scale.
I admire each one of these brave bloggers for showing their earnings online and if they are to believed then…    wow.

Caroline Middlebrook
Brilliant blog and made $1498 in December from various projects online

Work at Home Mom
Made $2654.18in November.  I can fully understand why she’s no longer posting monthly earnings reports, but had to point her out because she’s doing so well.

Tyler Cruz
$6,663.94 from his one blog in December.  I don’t know if it’s true, but it is very inspiring.

And Passive Family Income who is wonderful for giving and sharing ideas.

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It was whilst we were sitting in her new apartment, looking over the French countryside that she told me that many of her previous clients were still in contact with her for treatment.

‘How?’ I hear you ask as the English Channel was separating them.

She was treating them by giving advice over the telephone and it was working.
That was the idea for her book, all the stuff that she had in her head she was going to write it down so that people with bad backs, sore knees, headaches and all the other stuff that 99% of the population suffer from could treat themselves.

The result is her book, DIY Physiotherapy just launched and available at Amazon and I can not recommend it enough. Seriously.
If you are a regular reader of this blog (God love you) you’ll know that I stress quite a lot about being ill and not being able to work. Like most people I don’t like pain. And like most freelancers I suffer from the symptoms of long periods being sat hunched in front of a PC.

I get aches and pains and as I’m writing this, my lovely husband is suffering from a stiff neck. He is also a freelancer and is working despite walking around like he’s still got the hanger in his jacket.
But, we have the book.
We have the wise, wise words from my lovely friend and tonight I will be treating my husband and not getting stressed about my next head-ache/back-ache/arm-ache/fill-the-blank-ache, because we have this little gem of a book.

If you suffer from stuff like this, but are one of those freelancers who thinks, ‘It’ll work itself out, I’ll just work through the pain,’ then this book is for you.
At the moment it’s available for the ridiculously low price of £5.99 due to some kind funding that my friend got, but I don’t for a minute think it will stay at this price as word gets around.

I’m hoping to have an interview with her soon, so if you’ve any questions let me know.

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You can use Yudu as a publishing tool giving you the opportunity to share your work be it in the form of text, videos, images or audio.  I thought I’d ask Brian Critchfield, Yudu expert more about the site and to explain exactly how the whole thing works and how freelancers can benefit.

Here’s his answers to some of my questions, but if you’ve anymore, check out the FAQ or email them directly.

How did YUDU come into creation – has it been years in the making?

 YUDU Media has been in existence for about 7 years now. It started out as a bureau service converting printed publications to digital publications. The company built a tool-set to help them with this digital conversion and saw an opportunity to share this tool-set with the general market to allow experts to self-publish their content digitally. In April, 2008, the company launched yudufreedom.com as a basic self publishing tool. Then in September, 2008, it relaunched as yudu.com with a much more feature rich application.

Can you give me an example of how a freelancer could take full advantage of YUDU and make money from it?

The uses for YUDU are endless. As a freelancer, the first capability it gives you is to turn your content into stunning digital publications in eZine format. This protects your content much more than a PDF would and also gives you the chance to add live links, add video, audio, and Flash to your publication. The biggest differentiator is that YUDU gives you the mechanism to market and sell your publication to the masses.

As a freelancer, you now have a place to sell your works. Or you could provide ongoing content through a subscription managed by YUDU’s subscription tools. Or you could use YUDU to post your portfolio so that you can send a link to potential clients. Or you could offer free content as a way to capture reader information. All of these could be accomplished through YUDU. Like I said, the possibilities are endless!

Any success stories from YUDU that you can share? 

That is the fun part is hearing from users how much they love using YUDU. One that I just wrote a blog post about is Muchmor Canada Magazine who started using YUDU to publish their monthly magazine because it gave them a much greater tool-set and much greater distribution. Another one I wrote a blog post about is Hereke Silk Carpets, who uses YUDU for publishing their product catalog. This small business can now look much bigger than they are and can sell all over the world using YUDU’s tools and community. 

Thanks Brian for answering my questions and explaining about Yudu!

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Obviously you have to be extremely organised and have the right kind of management and logistical  skills that’ll help you, help others to be organised.
You could either specialise in physical clutter, which is literally moving objects, sorting wardrobes and doing house clearances, or on the time management side, where you de-clutter a client’s life and help develop schedules and routines.

And in times like these, becoming a clutter consultant could be big business.
UK company Clutter Clearing explain on their site that the credit crunch has meant that more people are looking to de-clutter in order to save money.
They even have 11 ways of how you can do this,  including: making money out of the space you create by renting it out, managing your space so that you can shut off unused rooms and turn down heating and lighting and therefore reduce your bills.

They also hold training days and have free downloads, so if you fancy becoming a clutter consultant, it’s worth checking out.

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Bukisa is a very easy site to navigate around.  Basically, you think of an article, write the content and hit publish then, hey presto, you’re in business.  The more people who read your articles, the more you earn, so it works in your favour to promote the site and your content.
You can write, or put up videos about anything, from ‘How To Make a Cup of Tea,’ to ‘What I Ate for Breakfast,’ to ‘Easy Ways to Look Younger and Slimmer.’

Now you can tell with those three example headings (that I literally just thought of as I’m typing) that if they were all up on Bukisa, some would get viewed more than others.  I’m guessing that no one would care what I ate for breakfast and who doesn’t know how to make a cup of tea, but easy ways to look young and slim?  I’m a’clicking on that.

As you make money from Bukisa with the amount of views you get, I’ve discovered it’s important to get a catchy, striking heading that will make people click.  Because once you’ve published your article, it’s the heading that pops up on the front page for a short time and it’s the heading that people see in the right hand column when their viewing other articles.

The other thing I’ve realised is that it’s all about networking on Bukisa.
I’ve left one or two comments after articles I’ve liked.  But, those comments have made people friend me (they were nice comments) and also view my articles, which again, results in more money.

The last thing is building up a network.  So far I only have one person in my network and I’m not going to push this too much until I can comfortable say that writing articles for Bukisa is worth doing.

And at the moment, I’m not convinced.
I’ve only written 8 articles, some were longer than others and some were done in minutes, and I mean minutes, they were straight from my head and into the site.   Looking at which articles earned me the most, it has to be the first one I did, where I researched keywords.
I used the word tracker tool and then Google Adwords tool and got myself a bunch of keywords to sprinkle my article with.
This was all fairly easy, but the subject topic, it has to be said is a bit dull.  Who really need tips on packing?  Having said that the article has got me 34 views.  Not huge, and as a result, my earnings are terrible.  I’ve had two page views over the weekend for all my content, so obviously some of my articles are being seen by no one, and I have made exactly $0.40

See why I’m not shouting about writing for Bukisa all over the place and trying to build up a huge network?
Once I’m bringing in $100 or more a month, comfortably, then I’ll start to build up my network sharing all my tips and tricks.  For now, I’m going to think up some sensational headlines, get a bank of keywords and see how they do.
I’ll update on my progress next week, but hey, if you want to have a go and join my network then please do.

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Photo by Gaetan Lee

Have you ever thought about it?

I do.  In fact, I do it quite often.  I think about where I expect to be financially next week, next month, next year and then I think about how I can make it happen.

I work as a freelance writer.  I love it.  It’s scary but I love it.
I love it because I get to be the boss of my own day, I get to decide what jobs to work on and what to turn down and I get to have the liberating and wonderful feeling of being in charge of my future.  But, and it’s a bit but (‘scuse the pun) it’s scary because if I’m ill or need to take time off, then there’s no money coming in.  Even worse there’s no networking or approaching potential new clients and that’s really frightening.  That’s the reason why I’m determined to diversify and put my eggs in a whole load of different baskets instead of just the one or two.

I was sat writing an article for Bukisa last night and realised that this was not going to make me any money, fast.  As I typed out the short and sweet little article, I reminded myself of how much I normally charge for my freelance writing and how much these few paragraphs were going to make me.  It’s not even comparable.  But then I remembered my vision, to have a passive income, and I kept typing.
These articles won’t make me much in the short term (although they might, and that would be very nice) but they will continue to make money for a long time to come, hopefully.  So, I’m keeping with the challenge and building up a bank of content that can continue to bring in the pennies.

I’m also going to start a niche blog.  I’ve looked at the 30 day challenge, it looks like fun and it looks doable.  This blog makes me some money from the Google adsense adds I have at the side (and thank you to all the lovely readers who’ve clicked on them) so a couple more sites doing this will add to the baskets for my eggs.

I’ve a few other ideas, but that’s it for starters.
And to be honest, how much time can I actually spend on these other projects whilst also doing my job?  Not much is the answer, but I feel like it will be worth it.  Oh, and I’ll also blog about how I’m doing so you can see if it’s something you want to do to supplement your freelance stuff.
In five years, I want a part of my income to be passive.  A big part if that’s possible.  I want it to roll right into my bank account and I want to think about how glad I am for trying out new stuff that doesn’t pay much right away.
How ‘bout you?  Where will you be in five years?

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