One of the things that I’ve adjusted to with web writing is that income from blogging and article writing often comes from ad revenue or affiliate sales. I don’t like to come across as too spammy with ads or to push products or services on other people. It’s just not my style. But I do use ads to generate income as a web writer.

I try to limit the number of ad and affiliate programs that I’m involved with. These are the ones that I use and like so far:

• Adsense. I remoed Adsense ads from most of my personal sites and blogs because I could just never quite figure out how to make them work for me. However, I do have these ads on some of the specific sites that I’m a writer for and they do well for me in terms of generating a decent chunk of passive income every month. So the verdict is that I like Adsense when someone else is figuring out the ad style and placement for my posts.
• Amazon Affiliates. This is my favorite way to promote product and get revenue. That’s because I actually like everything I promote through this site and I think Amazon is a good place to buy stuff from. I use this on multiple sites through both sidebar ads and text links.
• Kontera. I started using Kontera text links on a few of my sites. I like it so far. It brings in some extra income and isn’t overwhelming to look at on the sites.
• Magpie. I’ve just started trying out the option of doing ads on Twitter using Magpie. So far I like it. You can change the settings so that you don’t post ads too often and you can control which ads go live on your account. That said, I haven’t seen any earnings through it as of yet.
• Clickbank. I’ve also just started using this one since everyone tells me it’s the one to use. No opinion on it yet.

What ad programs and affiliate programs do you use and like?

I started working as a freelance writer nearly ten years ago. I went full-time with this work approximately five years ago. There have been a lot of ups and downs in that time, particularly in regards to the finances of being a freelancer. When the recession hit, I definitely had my fears about losing money as a result of the changes in the economy. This made me wonder if it was smart to be basing my career on work as an independent contractor. What I discovered is that the recession has only strengthened my conviction that freelance work is right for me.

Some of the core reasons that the recession has made me happy to be a freelancer include:

• I’m already used to fluctuations in my income. A lot of people have been hit hard by the economy because of the fact that the recession has altered their income. It’s the nature of freelance work to have an ongoing feast-or-famine income stream. I’ve learned to adjust to and accommodate for this. As a result, the recession hit me less hard than some of my friends with mainstream employment in terms of adjusting to income changes.

• My levels of fear about my job haven’t changed much. The recession has struck a chord of fear in the hearts of many. People who always thought that their jobs were stable are now biting their nails as their bosses sit in closed-door meetings to discuss potential layoffs. I definitely had a few moments of worry about how the recession would impact my freelance career. However, this worry wasn’t a whole lot worse than any of the worries I’ve had about my freelance career. I already took a big risk when I chose to go full-time as a freelancer. That’s when I dealt with those worries. Today’s worries about the recession are minor in comparison.

• I like my work. A lot of my friends with mainstream jobs really don’t like what they do. Those who still have jobs feel stuck because they can’t move on to something better when good jobs are so scarce. Those who have lost their jobs have mixed feelings about not having a job they didn’t like in the first place. People who get involved in freelance work do it because they enjoy it. I wake up each morning and like what I do with my day. I can say that whether there’s a recession or not.

I’m not saying that I’m glad that we’re in a recession. It’s definitely not easy for anyone including those of us who freelance for a living. However, I think that being a freelancer has put me in a better position than some to deal with the issues arising out of the recession.

As I mentioned yesterday, I’ve been working on some new writing goals. I love the fact that my freelance writing career has been very diverse. However, I feel like this diversity has also caused the problem that I haven’t made or met a lot of writing goals even though I’ve been writing professionally for nearly ten years. I’d like for that to change.

Part of my line of thinking is this:

I would really like to take a one-year sabbatical from freelance writing to pursue some personal growth and make some other life goals. I don’t know what will happen in that time. Although I assume that I will come back to freelance writing after that, I don’t want to bank on it. So … if I were to never return to freelance writing after that, what would I have liked to accomplish during the time that I worked as a freelance writer.

A few of the goals that I’d like to meet in the next three years are:

• Catalog of Work. I have a pretty good portfolio that links to a lot of my work. However, I’d really like to get a clear catalog of all of the work that I’ve completed. I want to be able to see all that I’ve accomplished in a clear manner.
• One Dozen Magazine Publications. I have been published in a few magazines but I have not pursued this as much as I would have liked over the years. I’d like to achieve the goal of being published in one dozen different magazines during the course of my freelance writing career.
• Finish a Personal Book. I have worked as an author on multiple books. However, these books were all commissioned or suggested by the publisher. I have several books that I’ve started on my own which I have not completed. I would like to complete one.
• Complete 5 Collaborative Writing Projects. I really love collaboration and I haven’t done enough of it. It doesn’t matter what the projects are but I’d like to complete at least five of them with writing as my part of the project.

There are some other goals that I have in mind but I haven’t figured out the details of them yet. These are the ones that I’m certain I want to complete in the next three years.

What are your writing goals? Are you ready to put them out there for the world to see?

People who read this blog regularly know that I’ve had some ups and downs with my writing lately and that I’ve been trying to set some new writing goals. There are quite a few goals that I’ve got in mind (see tomorrow’s post if those goals interest you at all) but the big one is this:

I’d like to take one year off from writing.

I love the work that I do but sometimes I feel like I’m getting burned out. I write literally hundreds of articles per month in order to be able to have enough money to pay my bills. When you write that much, you start to say the same things again and again without meaning to. You start to write without thinking. And you start to find it really difficult to work creatively.

I think that there are a lot of solutions to this problem but the one that makes the most sense to me is to take a sabbatical. I’d like to take a year off to just sit still and think about what it is that I want to do with writing for the rest of my life.

The fact is that I’ve always been a writer. I think I will always be a writer. But I’m not sure what that means. I don’t know if I want to write books or keep blogging or set some other writing goals for ten years down the line. I’m not sure if I want to write full-time forever or if I want to write part-time and then do some other creative work part-time. I may want to go back to school at some point.

The problem is that I don’t feel like I can make those decisions during a time when I’m still writing. I feel like I need to step back and take a breather. I need to put things in perspective. I need time to listen to what my own heart is actually saying without having to also hear the clatter of the keyboard.

So that’s my big goal - to take a one year sabbatical in order to be able to make some solid heartfelt decisions about where I want my writing to go from there.

I won’t actually be doing this for awhile. I have some other writing goals I want to meet first. And I have to put some financial things in place. But what I’m working on is a three-year plan. I’m hoping to work solidly at writing for the next three years and then to take the fourth year off.

What do you other writers out there think about this? Has anyone else taken a sabbatical from their writing career? Did it work for you? Would you like to do it?

I don’t know if I want to be a freelance writer forever. I have a lot of different business interests that I want to pursue and this may not be the one that sticks. Despite that, I’m really glad that I get to be a freelance writer right now.

Some of the things that I love about this work include:

• Working from home works for me. It’s not something that works for everyone but I love working from home. I love the option of solitude vs. working in a coffee shop or co-work space. I love the chance to get some work done before I’ve showered. I like being in my space.
• I love a flexible schedule. I love being able to work when I want to. I actually stick to a pretty good schedule but I love how easy it is to change me schedule if there are things that come up that I want to do instead of working.
• There’s a great freelance community. I like the fact that there are so many other people doing the same thing and communicating about it online and that I get to be a part of that community.
• Research is interesting. I write about a lot of different topics so I get to spend time researching really interesting topics. That’s fun!
• Work options are diverse. If I want to I can work on blogs, books and academic-style writing in the same day. I pretty much stick with blogging but I like that I have different options so that things don’t get boring.
• I’m the boss. Ultimately I really like that I get to say which work I do and don’t take. It lets me do the work I can really support and believe in and commit to which I think is important.

And it also pays the bills so I can’t complain about that either!

I write for a variety of different clients including many that I do ghost writing for. However, there are a few particular websites that I write for regularly under my own name. These are sites that I’ve been a writer on at least a few months. Some of them I’ve written on for years. I clearly have a commitment to them and hope to keep writing for them for a long time.

I write for these sites because they are great sites and I love to be a part of what they’re doing. Some of the best of those sites are:

• HubPages. I love writing different articles for HubPages. I can create whatever content interests me and publish it through the site. Lots of other people are writing great stuff here as well.
• DialAPhone. I am lucky to have the opportunity to write regularly about mobile phone news and information for this site. The other writers on the team are really great and I always read their stuff too!
• The Money Saving Blog. I’m the main blogger on this site which allows me to research and write about the important topic of saving money and living frugally.
• Houzz. This is an interior design site that I write for a couple of times per week. It’s the only site that I get to write photo-rich text for on a regular basis.
• Real Deal Technologies Blog. I love writing about business topics and I get to do that here.

These are just my favorite spots to write for regularly. I’m so lucky to have the chance to do these jobs steadily!

I mentioned here in yesterday’s post that I enjoy the fact that the writing business means constant change. It’s true that I enjoy the changes that happen in this line of work. However, I have to admit that sometimes the changes mean stress. The biggest cause of this is what I call the swinging door of freelance writing. Clients are constantly opening doors and closing them on us due to their own situations and financial restraints.

This affects me more than other writers because I strive to take on jobs that are going to be ongoing. I don’t apply for one-off jobs or short-term jobs (like writing a single batch of articles). I just feel that it requires too much effort on my part to learn the terms and style of a client that I’m only going to write for once. Also, I really like to promote my own work to improve web traffic for my clients and that’s hard to do when you’re only writing for them once or twice.

Since I take on jobs that are designed to be ongoing, I get hit harder when those jobs end. It’s frustrating to build up a portfolio with a client, get used to using their system, get good at promoting their specific type of work to the right industries and then to be told that they just don’t need you or can’t afford to keep you on anymore.

I counterbalance this by steadily applying for new ongoing jobs. I check freelance job boards on a near-daily basis and apply to all of the ongoing jobs that appeal to me. There are only about 1 or 2 per month that I actually get all the way through the hiring process of and decide to work with them. Still, this means that there are 1-2 clients per month that I’m learning a whole new system for (and often a new industry as well!)

And each month there are 1 or 2 existing clients who need to lighten the work load or let go of me altogether. So the swinging door continues. I’ve learned to accept this and to not get too worried about it. I know there will be other jobs when one ends. Nevertheless, I would say that this is one of the bigger sources of stress in my life as a freelance writer.

When people ask me about how I became a writer, I try to find the most succinct method of describing the wandering path that led to getting paid to write full time. The truth is that I’ve always done writing in one form or another but I also kind of just fell into writing for pay.

I’ve been writing creatively for as long as I can remember. I have saved stories that I wrote in elementary school. I’ve kept journals since I was ten. I have started writing a few different novels over the years (although none are even close to being finished). And I always kind of thought that I’d like to “be a writer” (meaning author books) someday.

But when I actually started getting paid to write, it was because I needed an immediate income and writing is what I do best. I won’t lie; I got into writing by doing academic writing for other people. A lot of writers have an ethical issue with this. As for me, it was just a job. I wrote high school papers, college papers and even a few thesis papers. Students paid me to earn them A’s with my writing. This eventually led into working with so-called paper mills online.

I didn’t particularly like this work and it doesn’t pay that well but it helped lead me into full-time web writing. I learned how to do online writing and how to communicate via content management systems. this improved my resume enough to start getting online jobs writing SEO / keyword articles for various firms.

From there, it was just a matter of beefing up my resume with more and more experience. I started to apply to every writing job I could find because I needed the money. Some of the more interesting writing jobs I took on included:

• Writing horoscopes. I did this for a few different places but the first job was a job writing horoscopes for an Asian fashion magazine that only lasted a few issues before going out of business.
• Doing music reviews. I got to do CD reviews and live music reviews for a number of different online sites and even a print magazine (Skope). I actually didn’t enjoy this job very much although the perks of attending free live music were nice. And I did meet some cool musicians.
• Lots of “adult” writing. You’d be surprised how much money the adult industry pays to writers. I’ve done reviews of online and DVD porn. I’ve been a ghost writer for a porn blog supposed to be written by a young gay porn star. And I’ve written reviews of local strip clubs.

I also did a lot of slightly more legitimate writing including web content and writing articles for various magazines. Oh, and I wrote a couple of books as well.

These days, I make my money off of blogging for businesses. I don’t just write the blog content. I also promote it around the web using all of the social promotion tools available to writers. So I’m now basically working in the business of social media which involves doing some writing as well. It’s just another twist and turn on my writing path.

I’m working on some new writing goals for my future so this path is going to change once again. But I’m happy with where things are at for now. And I like that writing always changes!

Things have been quiet around here as I’ve been trying to re-work my writing life. It’s not the best idea to let a blog be quiet but I’m fairly comfortable with the ebb and flow of writing here on Real Words. That’s because Real Words is where I write about my writing life and my writing life is something that ebbs and flows. My experience with writing changes regularly and the changes in this blog reflect that.

I’ve got a better plan in mind for writing again so Real Words will be resuming normal posts now. However, you should know that I’ve been a lot more active on my other blog, Diary of a Smart Chick, than I have been here. And that I’ll continue to be very active over there.

Diary of a Smart Chick started as a place where I could gather the links to all of my other writing around the web. It continues to serve that purpose. What I do there is to write about the topics that I’m writing about elsewhere and link out to those original articles as appropriate. When you write for certain websites or clients, you have to stick to specific topics or points of view. Diary of a Smart Chick lets me expand on my thoughts about the topics I’m writing on for others.

I’ve also started two new daily features on Diary of a Smart Chick. I’m featuring a Photo of the Day every evening which showcases some of the playing around I do with my camera. I’m hoping to learn photo editinf software soon and to let the blog be a place where I can track the progress of that experience. And I am also featuring a Book of the Day each morning which is just a short description and my opinion of a book I’m reading or have read in the past.

I hope you’ll check out what I’m doing over there and give me some feedback even as posts resume here about writing.

It’s been awhile since I’ve been active on this blog. My activity here seems to go in spurts. The reasons for delays are many and varied, of course. Recently, there have been two big causes for being quiet on the blog. The first is that I ended up going out of town and didn’t have a lot of time to be online while I was gone. The other is that I’m working on a new writing schedule and I’m still trying to figure out where my personal blogs fit in to that.

I’ve got some new plans and goals for my writing life. I’m still in the planning stages of setting those goals. As I create them and commit to them, my need for a more efficient writing schedule is changing again.

Messing around with the schedule that I keep is something that I do regularly as a freelance writer. I do my best work in the morning so I try to get a lot done though. What “a lot” means changes, however, depending on whether I’m currently more focused on blogging, bigger writing projects or social promotion stuff. I also play around regularly with which 2-3 days off per week I want (weekends vs. weekdays is always a big questions for me). And finally, I’m hoping to take some extended vacations in the next couple of years so I’m trying to schedule for that as well.

The new schedule is almost worked out. When it’s ready, I’ll be back to writing regularly again here. And I’ll have a lot more to say about my specific goals and plans as a writer.

In the meantime, I’d love to hear from you about your thoughts on a writing schedule. Do you keep one? What’s the part of it that changes most often?