How AC Awakened My Sleeping Freelance Career

My career, which started in 1999, went into hibernation because I went in for heart surgery in 2004, then another heart surgery in 2005 and then started a battle with cancer in 2006. Now that I've got a clean bill of health, it's time to get my career up and rolling again.

My first thought was that, since I pretty much lost all my network contacts, was to establish new ones. I subscribed to all the newsletters I was receiving before all of this happened, first:

1: Absolute Write Newsletter, Including Absolute Markets
2: Writer's Weekly Newsletter
3: Brady Magazine's Newsletter
4: Write What You Know
5: Coffee Break For Writers
6: Writer Reminders
7: Funds For Writers
8: Writer's Write

It was important to me to continue receiving up to date information about the freelance writing industry, new markets and important forum discussions. This information was the backbone of my success in previous years, so I wasn't going to overlook this point.

Next, I found new resources:

1: Associated Content.com: I had heard of this site through the Absolute Write Water Cooler (there's several threads about this site over there), but I was still on the fence as to if I should sign up and start producing content or not. I have several friends who are members here and some have had excellent results, while some have not. So, it was difficult to really make an informed decision. I decided to just go for it, create an account and get going.

I wish I had followed my gut feeling and started sooner. I've decided to take the "write what you know" approach to this site (until my idea well runs dry) to produce content here. How-to articles and reviews seem to be the bread and butter of what I'm writing about and that's been working so far. What appeals to me the most about this site is I'm writing daily again.

When was the last time I've written on a daily basis and saw immediate income from those efforts? Honestly, I can't remember. I'm spending as much time writing content on here (and getting paid for it) as I did sending out unanswered query letters. The pieces don't take that long to write and edit, so that's a plus. The process of writing daily has brought me a lot of gratification and it's pushing me to work harder and find other leads outside of this venue.

I've found new confidence in my abilities because now I know, when I put myself to the task, I can write a considerable amount in one day. (I read on another AC content producer that he wanted to write 30 articles per day during the entire month of February. There's no way I could ever do that, so I'll remain happy with the two to five I've been producing.)

2: Blogs: when I went into hibernation (or hiatus, as some say), I had no idea freelance writing blogs would be so prominent on the net. I'd seen some blogging going on, but doing a blogsearch.google.com produces 100's more results now compared to two years ago. So, of course I dusted off my blog and created a blogroll using blogroller.com and started keeping up on industry news, experiences and the freelance life through this method.

3: Freelancedaily.net: even though a subscription fee is required to use this site and the newsletter (it's modest - you'll make it back in one or two issues worth of queries), this site has saved me so much market searching time. I had subscribed to two other "markets" newsletters in the past (yes, they also required a fee), but I never found work through them. With this newsletter, I was able to find at least one "gig" per issue.

I dusted off old resources:

1: Suite101.com: I've been running the Mixed Media Arts topic at Suite101.com since last year. I was trying to "break back into the freelance market" with this site when I first took the topic over, but it didn't work out. Not because they're not a good company because it's quite the contrary. I've been a member since 1999 and this is the third topic I've covered (Suite101 was my first writing job ever). Producing content for this site more frequently, though, works to my benefit and my results at AC has shown me that I can achieve this goal at Suite101 as well.

2: Epinions.com: I started with this site in 2001 and submitted reviews on a regular basis over the years. I went through my entire account at one point during my hibernation and deleted all of the reviews that had low rankings. As a result, it looks like there were huge breaks in my activity. That isn't what bothers me. I look at that site as a place to freely discuss what my opinion about certain things are and it seems to be the opposite.

They're very harsh with their criticisms of reviews and, if you don't edit the review to the adviser's or leader's taste, then you get a poor ranking. Yesterday, I experienced a situation where I received a "Very Helpful" from one adviser (because I made the changes she asked for) and a "Not Helpful" from another advisor because he didn't like the changes I made. It's interesting. I'm still on the fence about how often I'll contribute to this site (I'm thinking about one a day, but we'll see) or how much revenue will result.

I re-read important books and guides:

1: The Organized Writer, by Julie Hood: I brought her book back into practice, in addition to her Side-Tracked Writer's Planner
2: Outwitting Writer's Block and Other Problems of the Pen, by Jenna Glatzer
3: Make a Real Living as a Freelance Writer, by Jenna Glatzer
4: The Write Brain Workbook, by Bonnie Neubaurer
5: The Writer's Digest Handbook of Magazine Article Writing

My bookshelves are loaded with writer-related resource material, but those five above had served me the best. There are others that I've enjoyed like C. Hope Clark's The Shy Writer and Peter Bowerman's books.

All in all, I'm not looking to make thousands of dollars per week following these avenues. I'm looking to get back into the habit of writing daily, querying daily, following the industry daily and networking daily. I want to gradually build my business back up to the point I was at when things fell apart. Through use of these tools, specifically Associated Content.com, I know that goal will be achieved in the immediate future.