Posted by Admin Team on Tue, Feb 02, 2010 @ 04:05 PM
by Maya Payne Smart
“Typical” days don’t exist for writer Stacy Hawkins Adams — she has too much going on. Her sixth novel comes out this month, and her first nonfiction book is due in March. Then there’s her monthly column for SusieMag.com, her biweekly parenting column for The Richmond (Va.) Times-Dispatch, her weekly writing projects for local nonprofits and her numerous volunteer pursuits. And did I mention that she’s the mother of two very active children?
While the content of her days varies dramatically, she has a consistent start time daily—4:30 a.m. (Talk about motivation.) This gives her an hour and a half before the kids wake up to tackle her week’s goal with the hyper-intense focus of a metro reporter on deadline. Last week, she corresponded with Facebook fans to publicize the launch of her novel. This week, she’s using that time slot to get new book proposals to her agent. But no matter what disruptions may emerge during the day, she knows she’s pushed her business forward, bit by bit.
Brand-Building
The range and volume of material that Adams produces is staggering — and it’s also increasingly common among successful freelance writers. Those who are sailing ahead amid media industry sea changes understand that agility, variety and vigilance are essential.
“It’s wise to keep your hands in various things that work well together because of the ebb and flow of book sales and publishing trends,” Adams said. “When I left my full-time newspaper job, I had my speaking and freelancing [gigs] solidified. I built the nonprofit marketing piece into it as I went along. Very few authors solely focus on just writing novels or just freelancing.”
As Adams notes, diversification doesn’t mean pursuing totally unrelated projects. She produces high-quality work quickly by sticking with topics that she knows well and cares about. The social themes, familial issues and spiritual journeys she documents for periodicals also appear in her books. In her latest novel, “Dreams That Won’t Let Go,” she explores family members’ ability to love unconditionally and release one another to live their dreams. Her first nonfiction book, “Who Speaks to Your Heart,” explores how to connect more often and more deeply with God, a challenge her fictional characters often face. Adams has thus positioned herself as a heart and mind specialist of sorts — and, in doing so, created a very strong brand.
Transparency Rules
While a common thread runs through her patchwork of working relationships, the diversity of her work has ethical implications that she’s sensitive to as one who earned an undergraduate degree in journalism and spent 10 years as a staff newspaper reporter before going freelance. For example, she wondered if serving on community boards or helping nonprofits with marketing disqualified her from writing for newspapers. “When I was on staff at the newspaper, the lines were rigid,” she said, “and later I found that the rest of the world doesn’t work that way.” Her policy is to disclose any relationships or affiliations that might be perceived as conflicts of interest — and to let her editor make the call about whether the topic is off-limits. “I go to my editor and say, ‘I know this person’ or ‘I serve on this board’ or ‘I’ve helped with this endeavor.’ ” So far, she said, nothing’s been deemed off limits.
Cross-Promotion
In addition to her professionalism, Adams’ visibility across many platforms — books, magazines, online, in the community — also makes her a valuable contributor, because she brings her followers with her wherever she goes. This is a bonus for any media outlet that’s struggling to hold onto readers.
In fact, Adams says she spends more time marketing her work to readers than she does writing it. “I thought you write the book, birth the book, hand it over and say, ‘Take care of my baby,’ ” she said. “But the more time I put into trying to explore new marketing ideas and opportunities, the more willing my publisher is to put dollars and support behind the effort.”
Law of Attraction
Her willingness to experiment also means that when her fiction publisher has new promotional ideas, they often test them out on Adams. Blog tours, hair salon signings and elaborate launch fetes, she’s tried them all — with great success. Rather than do a signing at a chain bookstore that draws maybe 10 people, Adams has created elaborate events around her novels’ themes and gathered crowds that celebrated much more than the books.
She honored her mentor and a local community group during the launch of “Watercolored Pearls,” a novel about women coming into their own. And when “The Someday List” was released, she invited two celebrities, an actress and a recently retired broadcaster, to share their someday lists with attendees. On Saturday she debuted her novel with an hourlong Facebook chat that included free giveaways and music releases—all tied to the latest book’s theme of dream fulfillment.
One would expect no less from an optimist who describes herself as “one who sees a brick wall and instead of giving up, prays about whether to climb it, walk around it or find a way to burrow through it to the blessings on the other side.”
Posted by Maya Smart on Fri, Jan 01, 2010 @ 09:00 AM
Fluent in English, Spanish and Portuguese, freelance writer Manuela Zoninsein could have reported with ease from anywhere in the Americas or numerous other locations. But Zoninsein, born in Rio de Janeiro and raised in Evanston, Illinois, instead flew to Beijing with no Mandarin under her belt to carve out her niche.
"On one hand, I think it was rash and crazy to go somewhere where I had no background in the language," Zoninsein said. "But I felt for the long term it was a really strategic move."
Indeed, relocating to Asia in August 2007 paid off. In just two years, Zoninsein racked up an impressive client list, which includes Newsweek , Engineering News-Record, Monocle, Travel+Leisure Southeast Asia and Time Out Beijing. She also publishes her own newsletter, AgriGate, which explores how information and technology exchange can promote development and sustainability.
She laid the groundwork for freelance success abroad before leaving the U.S. by applying for intensive Mandarin study fellowships and building relationships with English-language publications that sought reporters in Asia. "I networked my butt off," she said. "I took classes at Mediabistro, pitched a ton and got to know folks at Newsweek and Engineering News-Record. I still write for both of those, and I'm so grateful."
Still, Zoninsein describes her arrival as a "crash landing" and wishes she had done even more to get ready. "I prepared myself in terms of professional connections, but not in terms of appreciating the place and learning about the culture," she said. She advises freelancers who hope to venture abroad to try to seek out U.S.-based experts who can recommend literature, history books, and cultural guides to give them a feel for the place.
"You need to get a good sense of what people have said before," she said. "A month before you go, set up a Google feed, follow people on Twitter and become well versed on what people are talking about. The earlier you begin that process, the better."
Zoninsein is based in Beijing but has spent the last few months studying Mandarin at the National Taiwan University in Taipei, supported by a HuaYu Scholarship from the Taiwanese Ministry of Education. She's kept her freelance business going in Taiwan, expanding her beat, tackling editing assignments and filing two to three stories a week. Initially, she had to use translators, interview English-speaking sources and cover areas that didn't require strong Mandarin skills, such as food and restaurant reviews. But her portfolio has since grown along with her language skills.
"It was difficult and frustrating at first to not be able to get on the street and talk to people," she said. "Chinese people don't trust journalists, and they don't trust foreigners. They don't express their opinions openly. There's just not a tradition of free press and interviewing people on the street. What comes out in the Chinese media is usually an official line, and I'm now getting to the language level where you can start parsing that line and get people on record whose opinion differs."
Zoninsein also reached a place where editors recognize her as a go-to person for food, travel and architecture stories in China. The freelance writer who was pitching a story a day just to make inroads at publications now admits she hasn't sent a formal query letter in six months. "It's become much more of a conversation," she said of her interactions with editors.
Here's her advice on how you can do the same:
- Pitch trade publications. "Get hooked up with an industry pub," Zoninsein said. "They pay well and have been less affected by the economy. They have a real need for articles and don't get as much love from freelancers as other publications." Engineering News-Record, a publication serving more than 70,000 paid subscribers in the construction industry, is among her top clients.
- Choose a few specialties. "I want to become associated with a few certain genres, categories," she said. "Once you develop a beat, you know what the issues are, you have sources who contact you, you have a foothold in a certain industry, the research time goes down, your brain is constantly thinking in that mode." She uses her iPhone and Microsoft Word (on her computer) to keep a running list of hundreds of story ideas.
- Prove your expertise. "It may sound wonky, nerdy or techie," she said, "but that means now publications will let me write about anything from infrastructure to travel pieces regarding train or airplane travel and that's been really incredible." The deeper your knowledge is, the less competition you will have.
- Stay in touch. "My career is very much built on my relationships with editors-maintaining contact, building up my brand and being consistent," she said. Talent and story ideas aren't enough. You must constantly stay on your clients' radars in order to thrive.
For more in-depth information on how to create a steady stream of freelance writing opportunities, check out Writing Coach's "7 Secrets of Profitable Freelancing in a Recession Kit."
Posted by Maya Smart on Thu, Dec 03, 2009 @ 07:38 PM
by Silissa Kenney
When freelancer Debra Galant lost her New York Times "Jersey" column to another writer in 2003 after five years, she faced "the lack of control you can have as a journalist." In an instant, it seemed she'd lost her platform, her audience, her voice--and she wanted them back.
It didn't take long for her to regain them, albeit through an unexpected medium. A birthday gift from her husband--the domain name DebraGalant.com--quickly transformed her into an online publisher. One thing led to another and she started a personal blog, Debra Galant Explains the Universe, before launching a more ambitious project, Baristanet.com, in May 2004.
Today, Baristanet is a noted hyperlocal news site covering Montclair, Glen Ridge and Bloomfield, New Jersey--an area Galant calls Baristaville. It captures 9,000 to 10,000 hits a day and boasts six-figure annual income. For her part, new media experts have crowned Galant "queen of hyperlocal blogging."
"It really had to do with branding myself," said Galant. "People knew me as a writer and I didn't want to lose that. I realized I could leverage that and get my readers back by creating something myself."
Allison Lehr, a faculty member at The Zicklin School of Business at Baruch College in NYC and an MBA in entrepreneur management, says creating a recognizable brand is increasingly important as companies and individuals vie for the limited attention of overwhelmed audiences. "People are bombarded with so much information these days," she said. "You have to make it easier for your readers to find you and cut through the clutter."
The Baristanet brand is part local news, part entertainment. Posts can be glib and humorous. As its About Page declares, the site aims to be "a true online community and the destination for breaking local news, airing opinionated views, and yes, poking fun at suburbia whenever possible."
The site often breaks news ahead of the weekly newspaper, The Montclair Times--thanks in part to dedicated readers' tips--and covers stories that would never make it into the paper. In a single day, Baristanet posted about a reader's frustration with a confusing parking ticket and a local heroin drug bust. And when the article "Does The Recession Make My Butt Look Big?" asked if tough economic times lead to more high-calorie food consumption, 92 readers weighed in.
Baristanet started small with Galant writing all of the stories and a partner handling the business side. In the first few years there was really no money to speak of. It helped that costs were low. Contributors worked from home and the site was hosted on a $15 per month platform. Freelance work and her husband's salary and health insurance bought Galant time to let the site grow.
"It was kind of a Tom Sawyer model," Galant said of the site's early reliance on unpaid user-generated content. "People would come play with it because it looked like fun."
For Galant, though, the goal was always to build a profitable business and she began building a team to support that ambition. In the fall of 2004, Liz George, Galant's current partner, joined after Galant's initial partnership dissolved. George, an NYU J-school graduate, writes and edits posts and answers requests from readers. Today 11 part-time employees man the site in rotating shifts.
The site turned a profit by 2006 with the help of strong advertising revenue brought in by the sales team. Now the popularity of the site does much of the selling for them. Advertisers from local businesses to arts institutions to colleges and universities all seek out Baristanet inventory. Sales slowed a bit in the spring and summer, hurt by the sputtering economy, but have resurged this fall.
Galant's ability to churn profit out of local news prompted interactive journalism expert Jeff Jarvis to call her a "walking, talking example of hyperlocal working" at the New Business Models for News Conference at City University of New York Graduate School of Journalism in November.
But Galant says this is just the beginning. "We're just starting to look strategically and get beyond the day-to-day--who's in charge, who's writing--to try and think a little global," Galant said of the enterprise's development. "We're beginning to ask: What is our property, what have we created, how do we protect it and how do we grow it?"
Part of the growth challenge is management. Because each team member works remotely, email is a major means of communication, which can also make it difficult to always be sensitive to feelings. "People want to be praised when they do something right, and sometimes you're just trying to get through the day, make your phone calls and catch up on your own thing," Galant said. "It's a lot to juggle."
Another challenge is sustainability. Frequency of posts is a key aspect of success. Readers expect the site to be updated continuously and Baristanet has a minimum of five posts per weekday, with many days seeing upwards of 12. They limit weekend posts to one or two a day.
"If you are planning to hang up your own shingle, then you better have a bunch of different articles," Galant said. "If you're an expert in canine depression, you want everyone with a depressed dog to read your site. You can't have that same article about the depressed basset hound."
But all of that content isn't posted without risk. It spurs reader engagement of the positive--and negative--varieties. "I actually had a dream one night that I was murdered by one of my readers," Galant said. "There were 340 comments and I was trying to click on them but couldn't get in."
Plus, she has another audience to think about. In addition to Baristanet, Galant has gotten two novels published by St. Martin's Press, "Rattled" and "Fear and Yoga in New Jersey," with a third, "Cars from a Marriage," coming out in April 2010.