Are other writers going through a quiet spell too?

You would need to define what a quiet spell means, it's a subjective concept after all.

It's the nature of the beast that is IM, and by connection content writing that there are busy periods and less busy periods. I wouldn't sweat it - enjoy the time away from the keyboard and soon the emails will be flooding in again.

One thing I would stress though, is to examine your business model. Are you running around various content mills churning out stuff or are you instead pimping out your writing skills to a few select and loyal clients who know the value of your work and pay you accordingly. The latter, in my opinion, provides a far more reliable and appropriately valued revenue.

Hey Laurence,

Then why not spend the time till the next job appears writing a bundle of articles on a niche and selling it as a limited number of copies for sale WSO - gives you something to do - potentially gets you some new customers - makes some $$ - you could even run a "BOGOF" to generate further work and customer repeat business.

Sure beats sitting around getting bored :rolleyes:

Regards

Rufus

But then quality is also a matter of perspective. I've spent upwards of $25 on articles from writings touting themselves as "the best". As a person who enjoys reading, there really isn't much difference to some $5 articles I've had written.

Not Rufus, but I imagine it is Buy One Get One Free

(Women's shoes are BOGO a lot of the time so it's an acronym I am familiar with )

I mostly stick with online communities like this one, but that's because my other sources of income (also online) mean I don't need to write full-time. But there are definitely other ways to get business coming in that can work very well.

Laurence,


I'm sure you already tried cold contacting local businesses to offer your writing services, though here are a few ideas that you may have overlooked:

1. Consistency -- Focus on local businesses with digital products, physical products or services that can be purchased and booked online, via their online order/booking forms. These businesses need to consistently implement online marketing campaigns, in order to supplement their offline advertising plans. Next:

2. Timeliness -- Zone in on local businesses with newly launched products and services, or promos and discount deals. They most likely prepared significant marketing funds for their new offers, including sufficient online marketing $$$ for their long term campaigns, all to offset their product/service/promo/deal development costs at the soonest (quick RoI), so they can start earning income from their production investments, on top of keeping their marketing campaigns running. Then:

3. Value Added Proposition -- Zone in further on businesses that have yet to implement an affiliate system into their websites. Offer affiliate system setup services as a freebie that's bundled with your writing services. And, here's the kicker:

=>> Tell them you can give them a special discounted rate for your writing services and also generate more sales for them by using your own time and resources. This works by following these steps:

• Sign up as their tier one affiliate;

• Ask them to include your affiliate product/service links/banners and affiliate referral links/banners in your work when they publish it in their network of sites; and

• Tell them you'll use your own time and resources to implement your own online and offline marketing campaigns, in order to promote their network of sites where your work is published, so you can earn commissions from direct sales generated by those pages and a percentage from the commissions of your affiliate referrals, all while they get more sales and affiliates.

I've been doing these things for more than 6 years now. When I was still starting out, these strategies helped me build from scratch my now 6-year old ICT outsourcing company (read: no capital investment other than a couple of computers, a place that also served as our home, my own time and skills) to sign up long term contracts with 11 prominent corporations operating in industries where I have significant knowledge and expertise...

This in turn allowed me to grow our team, in less than a few months, from 4 work at home moms and dads, including my wife and I, to 140 employees and independent subcontractor service supplier companies combined, now working in my 2 Manila-based head offices and 9 satellite provincial city offices across the country. And:

I did this a year after I was gunned down twice, which left me totally blind, permanently. I'm still doing these things, with my eyes closed, for more than 9 years now

Laurence,

Thank you. Feel free to send me an email here. BTW:

Do you use a screen magnifier, or perhaps a screen reader? I use JAWS For Windows.