Usually this blog is about creative writing. Sometimes it is about the thoughts that I just can’t get out of my head until I expel them onto the page: an experience that has moved or wounded me, or something that I am angry about. Today though, my post is about the other hat I wear, the one as a freelance writer. My freelance writing company Nillu Writes has its home on another page of this website, and that page is all business. It’s about what I can do for clients.

For exceptional reasons I am allowing my freelancer side to intrude on this blog. And that’s because I am excited that one of my freelance writing articles is to be featured in an e-book released this week by business blogger and author Carol Tice, founder of Make a Living Writing.

In the e-book, entitled Start Here: 40 Freelance Writers Share How They Find Clients, Stay Motivated, and Earn Well Today, you’ll find tips on topics including:

- getting paying gigs with no writing clips

- how rejection makes you a better writer
- landing magazine writing gigs for your dream markets
- approaching past clients to find new work leads
- which stats to track to drive up your earnings
- the tell-tale signs to refuse a job

- marketing tips to multiply your response rate
- unusual places to find story ideas
- improving your website

My article, ‘How Introverted Writers Can do Painless Marketing’, nestled within the e-book, talks about:

- using social media that suits you

- one-on-one, in person queries
- making business cards a talking point
- letting your website do the talking, and,
- choosing to listen

Between you and me, the first draft of the article suggested stand-out business cards such as edible ones for food writers. You’ll have to take a look at the e-book to find out what happened to that idea. Let’s just say, looking back, it’s clear that the whole point of business cards is to keep them not consume them. Still, always good to think outside the box, right?

This site is currently a WordPress.com one and as such, my understanding is I am not allowed to sell books using affiliate links (somehow that always seems a dirty term to me. Must get over that). Neither am I able to sell the book myself using my own shopping cart, both options that Carol has kindly offered to the writing team. As I mentioned in a previous post on safeguarding your contacts/content, I am considering upgrading from a WordPress.com site to a WordPress.org site because it gives you more autonomy in website functions.

For now, if you are interested and the e-book looks like it would be useful for you, it can be bought on pre-sale from Carol’s site from tomorrow and will be officially launched on 26 February.