David Bain: Can you really make a living writing? How and where is it worthwhile publishing eBooks and what’s an effective promotional cycle once you’ve published an eBook? Those are just three of the questions that I tend to ask our special guest today, Carol Tice. Carol, welcome to DMR.
Carol Tice: Hi. Thanks for having me.
David Bain: Thanks for joining us. Carol is a long time freelance business writer who now helps writers earn more through her Make A Living Writing blog which is listed in the 2014 Writer’s Digest 101 Best Websites for Writers. She’s also author or co-author of two print business books and five eBooks for writers. So, Carol, can you really make a living writing?
Carol Tice: As a freelance writer? Yeah, absolutely. There is so much opportunity out there and only going to be more in the future. What happened in the downturn was a lot of companies got rid of staff and they started using more freelancers for all kinds of creative tasks and they learned that they loved it and that it worked out great and every study they do of major corporations that ask them how they feel about working with contract staff, will they do more in the future? Everybody says yeah. We’re going to do more and more of it. It saves them money. Freelancers get to live flexible lives. Yes, there’s collapse in the magazine sector and a lot of change going on, but a lot of that is moving online and there’s a ton of good opportunity there.
I work with a lot of writers who are doing a lot of blogging for businesses for some pretty nice money, companies are not going to stop needing to market themselves and more and more, they’re looking to freelance. The trick is to stay off of the craigslist ads and Elance’s of the world and proactively find better quality clients.
You kind of have to stay out of those sort of race to the bottom, bottom feeding world of “Please write this for me for five dollars.” But plenty of people have already tried out that world and figured out that they’re not going to be able to actually market their business successfully using those… using somebody in the Philippines who’s barely literate in English or in India or somewhere. There’s a ton of work out there.