Writing-World - the site for freelance writers

The type of email I don't answer...

Received this morning:

Hello,

I have been in the XXXXXXXXXX field for about 10years now and is working on my second book, XXXXXXXXXXXX If you need someone to blogs sometimes for Doll Face, please contact me.

Thanks & Smles

I is working on my second book?
If you need someone to blogs

Smles? SMLES?

And this, my friends, is why so many would-be freelance writers never hear back from the editors they send speculative emails to...

(Note: I did used to email people like this back, gently pointing out why I wouldn't be hiring them. I thought I was being helpful - and I did try to be as gentle as possible - but all too often I'd just get back a stream of abuse, so these days I don't bother. My policy now is that if you can't be bothered to take the time to write proper English in your email to me, I can't be bothered to reply. Harsh, I know, but sometimes necessary.)

Guest bloggers required at The Fashion Police!

Any fashion bloggers/fanatics out there?

We're currently looking for guest bloggers to fill a number of slots on the site in the first two weeks of June this year at TheFashionPolice.net. What you write about is up to you, and we're fairly flexible on subject matter, so all we ask is that your post be fashion-related, and that you take a look at the site before sending in your submission to find out what kind of things we typically write about, and what we've covered before.

You'll find submission guidelines here, and if you have any questions, feel free to ask!

Bad PR: Is it too much to ask that you look at my site before contacting me about it?

This isn't so much an example of "bad" PR as it is "lazy PR" - and 'lazy blogger syndrome" too, if I'm completely honest.

Over the last couple of months, our beauty blog, Hey, Dollface, has been going through a bit of a growth spurt, and this has led to an increasing number of enquiries from PRs, all of whom are keen to have their products featured on the site.

Now, don't get me wrong - I'm happy to hear from these people. We're always looking for new products to feature, and I have to say, the beauty PR industry are very on the ball when it comes to dealing with bloggers. They seemed to realise very early on that a mention on a popular blog could really benefit them in terms of selling products, and so they've been much quicker to reach out to bloggers than many other industries.

But they don't always seem to bother to actually look at the blog before sending their enquiry.

Over the last few weeks, I've had innumerable emails from PRs, all asking for the address to send product samples too. I wouldn't mind this either, if it wasn't for the fact that the address is on the blog, under the "About/Contact" section. That's the section they have to go to in order to get my email address, incidentally. Our postal address is above our email address on the page, so these PRs are actually scrolling past the information they need in order to find our email address, which they then use to ask us for our address.

If this only happened once or twice it wouldn't matter, but I seem to have spent a large part of the last two weeks interrupting my work in order to type out my address and, to be perfectly honest, it's getting old.

In order to try and streamline the process, I've taken to just using a stock email (Which contains a link to the 'Contact' page), but I'm still having to take time out to read the PR emails and reply to them. It may sound like a small thing to complain about and, indeed, in the great scheme of things, it is, but the fact is that dealing with email can be a huge time drain, especially for bloggers, who tend to get a huge amount of the stuff.

This week I've also had a lot of very basic questions from PRs which they would have been able to answer from themselves if they'd spent just a few seconds on the site - much less time than it takes to find my email address, send me an email and wait for me to respond.

So, pretty please, PR people: we love you, but is it too much to ask that you take a very quick look at the blog or website you're pitching to before dashing off an email asking for information that's right there in front of you?

"So, how much do you actually make from this 'blogging' thing, then?"

It always goes the exact same way.

"So, you're still working from home, then?"

"Yes, that's right."

"Hmmm. Still doing that 'blogging' thing?"

"I am, yes."

* Pause *

"And you actually make money from that then?"

Rubinman.co.uk in Dogs Today magazine this month

So go figure: I update five of my own blogs every week, plus one I get paid to edit. Guess which blog got some press attention this month? The one about my dog, of course...

It's ironic because, of all the blogs I'm responsible for, Rubinman is the one I pay least attention to. It started out as just a bit of fun, and we don't even run ads on it because although I know that we could probably make something of it with a bit of time and energy, it's time and energy I don't have at the moment, so I've been content to let it coast along with the occasional update, which have, admittedly, been getting more frequent over the past few weeks.

Yes, folks, it's a blog about my dog - and it was featured in an article about blogging/podcasting in this month's Dog's Today magazine in the UK, in which Rubin'sblog was described as "offbeat and amusing". Of course, I can't take any credit for that: it is the dog's blog, after all...

Freelance Writing Jobs Roundup

Author in search of a ghostwriter
Looking for writers
Bloggers required
Ghost writer needed for travel story
Press release writer required
Writer required for shoe blog
Proofreader/fact checker
Ghostwriter for screenplay
Articles needed for Florida Magazine
Technology bloggers required
Freelance editor required
Writing company seeks an additional writer
Alternative medicine bloggers

The majority of home workers work less than eight hours per day? Surely not!

In the four years (Is it really that long?!) I've been working from home, I've worked much longer hours than I ever did in an office. There are lots of different reasons for this:

1. Motivation is higher

Not having a guarenteed wage coming into the bank at the end of each month, and depending on your own efforts to keep yourself and your family afloat is a powerful motivator, I find.

2. Job satisfaction is higher

I hated working for other people; I love working for myself. It's as simple as that. I'm being paid to do something I genuinely enjoy, so of course I'll want to spend more time doing it.

3. Earning opportunities are greater

In my last few jobs, it didn't matter how many hours I worked per day, week or month - my salary would remain the same regardless. Similarly, I was paid for sick days, bank holidays and vacations. In other words, unless I was promoted (and there were no opportunities for promotion unless someone else left the company), there just wasn't a whole lot I could do to improve my take-home pay. By working for myself, I know that my earning potential is limited only by how hard I'm prepared to work, and this motivated me to work harder and longer.

4. Distractions are fewer

I know this isn't true for everyone who works from home, but without colleagues constantly interrupting me, phones ringing and other distractions, I find that I concentrate harder and am less likely to break off what I'm doing for trivial reasons.

5. Work is always there

Even if you close the door on the home office at 5pm every night and make a deal with yourself not to go back in until morning, it can be very hard to resist the lure of checking email or just finishing off that last project. It's even more difficult if you use the computer to relax, because the Internet, along with all of its work-related purposes, is always right there in front of you.

6. When people know you work from home, they take advantage of it

I'm not sure if this is the case for everyone, but my experience has been that once clients know you work from home, they tend to make an assumption that you're always available, no matter what time of the day or night. When I worked in an office, people wouldn't have dreamed of calling me in the evening or at the weekend with non-urgent queries, but they think nothing of doing it now, because they assume that I'm always "at work". I now switch the answer phone on every evening and all weekend, and try to only answer non-urgent emails during business hours, but it's amazing the number of people who contact me outwith those hours - and expect me to be available.

7. Guilt

Yes, good old-fashioned guilt. When you work for yourself, you can't avoid it, and every time you try to put your feet up and switch on the TV, a little nagging voice will pipe up saying, "You know, you really should be working," or "You could use this time to do some paperwork/marketing/start a new project/whatever." That little voice can be very hard to ignore... and sometimes I just don't bother.

Now, I don't necessarily think it's either good or healthy to work long hours as a freelancer: in fact, I know it's not. You just end up getting burnt out and exhausted, and not producing your best work as a result. All the same, I was still fairly surprised, when I looked at the results of our last poll, to see that the majority of those who answered the question "How many hours per day do you spend working?" with "Eight hours of less." I reckon those who gave this answer - or who spent even less hours per day working from home - have got things figured out better than I have in terms of work/life balance, and working smarter, rather than harder.

So tell me: what's your secret?

Poll Results: How many hours per day do you work?

More on pro-blogging and holidays

Yesterday I started planning for my summer vacation. Yes, I know it's barely even Spring yet, and no, my holiday isn't imminent - in fact, I don't leave until June 2nd. But when you're a pro-blogger, and run a blog like The Fashion Police, which generally gets between 6 - 10 new posts per day, you have to start planning in advance. Well in advance.

Do you really need to make sure that your blog is updated while you're on holiday, though? Well, yes, I think you do. Last year, for instance, I decided to just not bother. I did write some advance posts, but only a smattering, and I ended up publishing them before the holiday anyway, on a day when I was feeling under the weather and didn't feel like writing. I also requested some guest posts from our readers, but I left it too late, and by the time the posts started to come in, I was already on the plane. Great planning job, there then.

"It won't matter," I told myself. "The regular readers only make up a small percentage of our overall visitors, so the fact that a couple of weeks pass with no new posts won't make a difference, will it?"

Oh hell yes.

Work from Home freelance writing jobs roundup

Marketing and investment bloggers needed
Travel writers needed (very low pay)
Press release writer for social networking website
Need help with my book
Ghostwriter required for print and web articles
Seeking writers
Looking for beauty bloggers
Part time freelance writer

Tuesday Writer's Block: What book influences your writing the most?

This week (And hopefully every week from now on) I'm taking part in the Tuesday Writer's Block, started by the lovely Erin over at Mirkwood Cottage. As Erin explains in her own post, each week she's going to be giving us a a topic to write a few paragraphs on, and then discussing her favourite answers, so once you've read this, you should head over to Mirkwood Cottage and take part!

This week, Erin asks, "Which book influences your writing most?"

This is an easy one for me, although I'm going to cheat and pick a series of books rather than one particular tome. As I mentioned recent at Forever Amber, I was an Enid Blyton fanatic as a child, and, now I come to mention it, I still love reading those books now. The Famous Five, the Adventure Series, The Five Find-Outers and Dog... basically, if it has a bunch of kids having adventures with an animal of some description, you could count me in.