Catch up on Part One here.
How do I even start?
There are things you can do now while still working a full-time job that will ease your transition into the freelancing world.
freelance
Can You Be a Freelancer? Answer These 6 Questions to Find Out
Can you be a freelancer and work from home?
YES! You can!
You need three things.
- The want to,
- The how to,
- And the guts to say “YES”!
Ghostwriting Questionnaire Template
For my first Simple Snips, Templates & Tips, I’m going to give you a ghostwriting questionnaire template to use however you’d like. I don’t own this content, and most of it is stuff I have collected at different times, through other websites and other bloggers. I have cobbled together a questionnaire that I send my ghostwriting clients. I change this up whenever I find something I want to add or remove. Feel free to do the same.
There is no science behind this. You have to ask yourself “How am I going to get to know this client?”
You can use this as a guide, a starting point, or a template that you use forever.
Download a copy of my Ghostwriting Questionnaire here.
How do you get to know your clients? Do you prefer email, telephone, or something else? I want to know!
Do you need some help with the written word? Do you want to hire a freelance writer for your business? Do you want to talk about how gross sushi is? Email me at Chandi@ChandiGilbert.com or subscribe to my bi-monthly newsletter for quick and simple tips on how to improve your writing.
Resource Review: Is Contena Worth Your Money?
I’ve been asked by many people what I think of different pay-for sites like Mediabistro and Flexjobs. Let me just say, you try a lot of things when you’re desperate. Some have been worthy and some have been worthless.
In this post, I am going to go over the good, the bad, and the ugly from my experience with the freelance writing job aggregator, Contena. I’ve been a member since February of this year.
I had never heard of Contena before I somehow started receiving these brilliantly marketed emails from a young man named Kevin who liked to talk about how he was working from exotic islands with his wife and at first I was just all “Dude, have you even graduated high school? Do your parents know where you are right now?”
But like I said, the marketing was brilliant, and I was either too green or just desperate enough to fall into the trap!
How Being You Will Bring You Business
I named my dog Charles Barkowski after the alcoholic author and poet with a cult following.
How to Work From Home if You’re as Lazy as I am
Here are 9 tips that will encourage you to get some work done today
I am lazy, but I get paid, otherwise I never would have been able to leave my 9-5 office job. I’ll be honest, though. The first few months that I became a freelance writer, I went crazy. It was joyous.
My dogs became my co-workers. I watched The Office on repeat while I browsed Facebook and Reddit, with numerous Word documents open in the background, pretending like that somehow qualified as work. I wore pajamas five days a week. I rarely left the house even though I kept telling myself (and anyone who would listen) how much free time I was going to have to run errands and keep appointments when I started working from home.
But then Thursday would roll around and I would start freaking out because I was going to have to explain to my amazingly patient and unfailingly supportive husband that my paycheck was going to be “kind of small” this week.
And then I had to tell him that again the next week, and the next.
I kept telling myself that my happiness was worth a smaller paycheck, and making sacrifices. And it was! It still is! But eventually, my sheer laziness caught up with me. Our bills that used to be comfortably paid every month were rolling in fast and furious like a Vin Diesel franchise, and for the first time, I wasn’t sure how they were going to get paid.
And it was my fault.
Why I’m Glad it Took Me 35 Years to Find My Passion
“What do I want to do with my life?”
I struggled with that question for three decades. Sometimes, that question was followed by an exclamation point and morally ambiguous shame. Isn’t that what being in your twenties is about? I know that I am not alone.
At age 30, after working as a waitress, in tech support, at a tech start-up company, as part of a mad science operation (no, really), and in a bank, I finally settled into the corporate world.
I started making double my previous income. It was more money than I had ever earned, even if it wasn’t even that far from minimum wage. I made it all the way to an administrative position at Honda on a high school diploma and a bit of experience in, well, everything. I was comfortable, and I knew that I could work my way up the ladder. I met my husband the same year, and I felt financially stable for the first time in my life.