The extra income was all from the content marketing work I’d taken on. Even better? I’d spent only about 20 percent of my time on that work.

Since then, content marketing has become a staple in my freelance writing business. It has helped me weather the storms when magazine and newspaper income has dried up, and provided a consistent source of assignments and money when I’ve wanted to work on personal projects such as two novels or my website The Wordling. 

What content marketing offered was simple: I routinely earn $1 to $2 USD per word for my content marketing stories, the revisions are almost non-existent, the agencies I work with pay as soon as I submit my work, and I’m often given ready-made assignments from clients instead of having to come up with my own ideas.

For much of my content marketing work in the last few years, I made between $300 and $400 an hour. My highest rate for a content marketing piece was $475 an hour.

Curious about exploring these kinds of freelance writing jobs? Here’s what you need to know about content marketing.

Great alternative careers for journalists: Content marketing

Put simply, it’s when a business decides to use content (blog posts, articles or case studies) as a way to build a relationship with its customer. Good content marketing isn’t about actively selling products or serving an agenda. It’s about providing information, advice, resources and trustworthy content to a business’s clients and customers.

Here’s the all-important distinction: If a business asks you to write promotional content, such as brochures or sales newsletters, that’s not content marketing. That’s pure and simple marketing copy.

In truth, content marketing writing often isn’t all that different from the kind of work you’re probably already doing as a journalist or freelance writer.

Why is content marketing a good opportunity for writers? Let me count the ways.

1. Great pay

Let’s get straight to the good stuff. Content marketing writing pays well. I averaged $300 to $400 per hour even at the very beginning, but even if you’re a less experienced writer, finding the right clients could easily mean 50-cents-a-word assignments right off the bat.

That said, you do need some clips and credits. A new writer would do well to start with blog posts that pay $50 and graduate to greener pastures after getting some experience, especially with traditional media.

Why? Businesses love to see recognizable names in your portfolio, and they’ll often pay more if you have solid experience and specialized knowledge of their niche or topic.

In stark contrast to the falling rates many of us see for pieces in newspapers and magazines, in my experience, content marketing rates have only been going up. The more efficiently I work, the more I make.

2. Enjoyable work

In my experience, writing good content for businesses isn’t all that different from the work you may be doing as a freelance writer for websites or even newspapers and magazines (with the exception of hard news reporting, of course).

The point of content marketing is to deliver information to readers that is well researched, trustworthy and entertaining. As a content marketing writer, I’ve been asked to write service stories (how-to pieces), trend stories and profiles in exactly the way I would have written them for a magazine or newspaper.

And if I’m going to write the same types of stories as I normally would, I’m quite happy to earn substantially more for my time.

A common misconception among writers is that content marketing writing equals blogging. Since I don’t particularly enjoy blogging for businesses, I’ve stayed away from doing those jobs, and I still get enough work that I routinely have to turn down assignments that don’t appeal to me. Likewise, if you love the idea of writing posts for a company’s blog but don’t want to work on case studies, you’ll likely be able to focus on the work you prefer.

3. Efficient edits

This is probably the biggest sell of content marketing writing for me: the ease and efficiency of edits.

Compared to traditional media, businesses run with a much higher sense of urgency. When a business fails to be efficient, in content or anything else, they lose money. So they learn to get things done pretty quickly, even if they’re a big hairy corporate that requires multiple levels of approval—and this drive for efficiency works in your favor.

Because business clients are less likely to ask for multiple revisions and aren’t content specialists themselves (which is partly why they’ve hired you), I find they request fewer—and easier—edits. When I spend less time on revisions, I have more time to devote to my next assignment — and I boost my hourly earnings.

As an entrepreneur myself, the efficiency of most business clients appeals to me greatly. And as a writer who likes to get paid on time, it appeals to me even more.

4. Quick(er) payment

Speaking of efficiency, have I mentioned that no matter whether you work through an agency or directly with a client, you’ll often be paid within a week of submitting your work?

Of course, this depends on your clients and their policies. But in my experience, many clients prefer to pay quickly.

And some platforms, such as Contently, will pay not on acceptance, but on submission, which does wonders for your cash flow.

If you pick your clients wisely, work with reputable agencies that have established relationships with clients whose names you recognize, and negotiate your contracts well, you’ll find that chasing invoices will quickly become a thing of the past.

5. Consistent work

One of the biggest problems freelancers face—and a common reason why many quit freelancing—is irregular cash flow.

Traditional media (and even websites) often simply don’t have enough work to give to you on a monthly basis. Even when I had stellar relationships with editors, I could never get more than one article in their magazines each month. Unless you’re blogging for a publication or get on board as a columnist, it’s very difficult to get regular slots in a publication.

Not so with content marketing writing. In fact, if you provide consistently good work that needs little or no reworking, you’ll find that you can rely on assignments on a weekly basis from the same clients, sometimes even more. This dependable work helps you forecast your income for the month and more importantly, find some stability in your cash flow.

For all these reasons and more, I’m convinced that content marketing writing is a fantastic opportunity for writers to get paid for their skills. If you’re looking to land higher-paying writing jobs, even as you work on breaking into your dream publications or writing your novel, content marketing could help you make more money as a writer.

If you’re wondering what opportunities exist for freelance writers in 2024 (hint: there are plenty!) then make sure to register for the free webinar coming up on September 26, 2024 called How to Successfully Break Into Journalism in 2024! You’ll learn about the different types of journalism and what you may best be suited for, and the top skills successful journalists need and what it can lead to.

This is an updated version of a story that was previously published. We update our posts as often as possible to ensure they’re useful for our readers.

The three encouraging comments that seemed wonderful when you started the blog don’t seem quite so wonderful now that you’ve been consistently blogging for a year with not much result. Has all that precious time been wasted?

Not if you can find gold nuggets in your archives.

Whether you’re a blogger who has quit or a blogger who continues (even begrudgingly), your blog archives can be a very good source of material for both active and passive income that can build over time.

Here are some ideas for digging revenue-generating material out of your blog archives.  

1. Ebooks

Let’s get this one out of the way first, because it’s the go-to method of revenue generation for writers and bloggers. And it’s not a bad one.

Creating ebooks is a fantastic way to convert your existing work into cash.

The only problem with this approach — especially if your blog hasn’t quite found a big audience yet — is that the cash can be sparse initially, and selling ebooks isn’t quite as profitable as most writers hope. But ebooks can be a fantastic source of passive income.

2. Apps

You’d be surprised how many opportunities exist to write for apps, or to partner with app creators who need content for their creations.

I know many writers who produced content for several apps a few years ago. This model has changed somewhat and you’re more likely to get work if you email app developers directly and offer your services. , 

Think of all the apps you use — a fitness tracker, say, or Google’s marketing skills app, Primer. Someone had to write all those tips about sleeping well and measuring your metrics, right? That someone could be you.

3. Articles and guest posts

I love writing about the art and craft of writing, and especially the business of freelancing. Freelancing is a lifestyle that gives me flexibility, location independence, and financial freedom. Along with contributing to several writing-focused publications, I also run a website for writers, The International Freelancer.

You know what I do when I’m running out of ideas? I look through my blog posts for articles and guest posts to pitch.

But I don’t just copy any old blog post and send it to editors. I look through each post and take out one key point, then pitch a story around that point only. I’m repurposing existing content, yet still providing new value.

4. Personal essays

Come on, ’fess up. You know you’ve ranted and raved on your blog. You may have published that awesome rant and let it gather dust, or you may have deleted it later out of embarrassment.

Either way, dig it up and see if you can rewrite your rant in the form of an opinion piece or an essay.

5. Online courses

Two years ago, I created a personal challenge on my blog to send 30 queries to major national and international publications within 30 days.

As I pitched and heard from O, the Oprah magazine, Wired, MIT Tech Review, and The New York Times magazine, and landed a blogging gig with Psychology Today, my readers eagerly followed my progress.

My success with my queries spurred them to try their own challenges, but questions kept popping into my inbox: How did you organize your ideas? How did you find editors’ names? When is the ideal time to follow up?

A few months later, I floated the idea of an e-course called 30 Days, 30 Queries that would show writers how to pitch and get assignments from national magazines by sending 30 queries in 30 days.

Within days, I had four-dozen signups. In just over a year, my course has generated $30,000 in revenue and I’ve since launched more courses and created a six-figure online business.

If your blog is educational, e-courses are almost a natural progression. Your readers will happily pay for access to your expertise.  

6. Webinars and video trainings

If you have an online business, webinars and video trainings (either free or paid) are the new frontier to explore. The sooner you get involved, the better!

If you’d like to see one in action, here’s one of mine.

If you struggle to choose an idea, pick a bunch of posts about the same subject and use them to get started.

7. Advertising or promotional material

If you’re a business-minded freelance writer, you know how much work and content can go into promotions, either for individual products or your business itself.

Content is the engine on which online marketing runs. As a writer — with a blog full of content — it’s a fantastic idea to take old posts and tweak them to create new promotional material.

Is there anything I’ve missed? How do you repurpose your old blog posts for cash? I’d love to know your thoughts in the comments!

This post contains affiliate links. That means if you purchase through our links, you’re supporting The Write Life — and we thank you for that!

This is an updated version of a story that was previously published. We update our posts as often as possible to ensure they’re useful for our readers.

Pitches or query letters are often the scariest part of freelancing for both new and experienced freelance writers.

But master the art of the pitch, and your freelancing life suddenly gets a whole lot simpler.

One of the best ways to do it is to stop thinking of your pitches as a creativity showcase and start thinking of them as sales tools instead.

How?

Every time you finish writing a query letter or pitch, run it through this quick checklist to make sure all your i’s are dotted and t’s crossed.

1. The basics

Since this is a checklist, after all, let’s get the basics out of the way first to make sure you’re not making obvious mistakes.

• Is the editor’s name spelled correctly?
• If you’ve mentioned the name of the publication, is it accurate?
• Did you check spelling and grammar?
• Does your signature have your website URL in it?

2. Call to action

Yes, your query letter is a showcase of your skill and your ideas, but in the end, it’s also a piece of marketing. Most writers will forget that and focus far too much on the story idea and the actual writing in the query letter.

Remember, all good marketing ends with a call to action.

That doesn’t mean that you have to reach out to an editor at The New York Times with an email that says, “Buy now!”

But I do recommend closing with something that requires the editor to respond to you.

“I’d love to chat over the phone; let me know if that’s something you’d be open to,” is a sentence I’ve used in my pitches.

“Would you like to see some clips?” is another one that can get you an immediate response.

If you prefer to keep it simple, “please let me know at your earliest convenience,” is a good way to close, too.

3. Subject line

Increasingly, a good subject line can be the difference between whether your email gets opened and read right away or delegated to that “later” folder that never gets looked at.

It used to be that if you were writing for the web you had to focus a lot on headlines, but if you were writing for traditional media (or their websites), you could get away without much effort. That doesn’t work any more.

New media, old media, run by a corporation or a solopreneur, we’re all competing for the same attention spans. No matter who you’re pitching, it’s almost imperative you look at the way they handle their headlines so you can package your own story idea cleverly in a format that will fit into that publication’s lineup.

One way to do this is with a double-whammy headline — using a two-part headline to grab a busy editor’s attention and tell them right away why you must write this article.

The good news is if you write interesting headlines, you almost guarantee yourself quick responses to your pitches. So it’s definitely worth putting some thought and effort into them.

For fantastic examples of subject lines (and headlines) that work for news and feature stories, I recommend visiting Mother Jones to see how they tackle some serious issues with clever headlines.

4. Your first sentence

Here’s where journalists win out over bloggers every time: Journalists have it stamped on their brains that the first sentence of their story has to lay out pretty much everything. We live for that perfect sentence and — no exaggeration — will spend hours getting it right.

But in the end, it comes down to this: Does your opening line captivate me? Does it make me smile? Does it make me want to read on?

That’s a lot of pressure to put on one little sentence, so I typically give students who take my 30 Days, 30 Queries course a bit of leeway. Start with one interesting paragraph. Does it make the editor want to read the next one?

Here’s an example from one of my own query letters:

Over her husband’s funeral pyre six years ago, Heena Patel, then 21, was informed by her in-laws that he had died of AIDS.

Don’t you want to know what happened next? That’s what an effective first line should make you want to do.

Here are nine of my query letters that sold to top publications, including TIME and The New York Times. Notice how I start each one?

5. Your bio

If you’re like most writers I know, you have a catch-all bio that you copy and paste into an email every time someone asks you for one. Don’t make this mistake.

When you’re pitching, you need to highlight your strengths and minimize your weaknesses in regards to the particular publication or editor.

So if, for instance, you’re pitching a technology website, you would highlight your degree in information technology — and perhaps not mention that you quit your tech job after two months because you hated the industry, instead starting your own small business.

But if you were pitching an entrepreneurship blog, that’s exactly the story you’d want to highlight.

Do away with those generic bios that you’ve been cutting and pasting into everything and start personalizing them for each pitch. It can be the difference between the editor thinking you’re perfect for the job, or wondering if you’ve got the credentials to report on the topic.

6. Timeliness

One of the easiest ways to make sure your pitches get quicker responses is to make them timely.

Editors are notorious for sitting on ideas for months on end, so make your pitches time-sensitive by giving editors a reason they need to publish your work now.

You can do this by tying your pitch into a current event, an anniversary or a promotion. It won’t work for everything you write, but a time-sensitive angle can fast-track your query process.

7. Clarity

Have you made sure your story idea is sound, sliced thinly, and can be expressed in a single sentence?

The one thing missing in most pitches, and probably the top reason most queries get rejected, is clarity. If you don’t clearly know the angle, the purpose, and the gist of your story, how do you expect the editor to get it?

The clarity in your pitch has to be both about the idea and the execution of that idea. Or simply, what do you want to say — and how are you going to say it? You need to be able to answer both those questions in a single sentence each.

For instance, for my first story for The New York Times, I pitched a story on how plastic roads in India were solving the problem of both the battered and damaged roads, as well as improperly disposed waste plastic. That quick summary tells you pretty much everything you need to know about that story. (Read the pitch and the resultant article here.)

New writers who have trouble selling ideas have often overburdened one poor article to do too many things. You need to able to define your story idea in one single (short!) sentence. Coming up with a good headline, as discussed above, can help you achieve this clarity.

Remember, querying is not creative writing. In trying so hard to write well, we forget that in essence a query letter is as much about showing off your writing prowess as it is about making a sale.

Your queries, basically, are sales tools. They’re a means for marketing.

And with the checklist above, you’ll be well on your way to making that sale.

If you’d like some help perfecting the craft and joining the hundreds of students I’ve helped break into top publications, including The New York Times, TIME, CNN, ABC News, National Geographic, Vice, Marie Claire, O, the Oprah magazine, and so many more, check out my course 30 Days, 30 Queries. See you there!

This post contains affiliate links. That means if you purchase through our links, you’re supporting The Write Life — and we thank you for that!

This is an updated version of a story that was previously published. We update our posts as often as possible to ensure they’re useful for our readers.

Here’s what I believe, though: You can’t increase your income by doing more things; you can only increase it by bringing more value.

How can you bring more value when you’re already doing your best work and putting yourself out there to be the best of your ability?

Simple. Add new skills to your repertoire that will enable you to either bring in more money or charge more for your services.

Let me give you some ideas.

1. Learn to negotiate well

When I train freelancers, this is the first thing I tell them. The resistance I encounter is pretty much universal.

No one jumps up in their seat and says, “Yes! I can’t wait to ask for more.” Instead, most people try to shrink down further because if it wasn’t bad enough that they had to leave their comfort zones and indulge in marketing, now they have to push even more when that marketing pays off?

I get the resistance. I do. It’s a natural instinct and of course, you don’t to want to seem like you’re only in this for the money.

But here’s the thing I’ve learned: If you want more money, you have to ask for more money. It’s that simple.

This is where the whole value idea comes into play. People don’t just give you more money because you said they should (though sometimes they do), but more so because you’ve proven how valuable you can be to them.

So prove why you’re worth it. And then ask for more.

2. Start to diversify

Also known as: Add other income streams.

You can diversify in terms of the types of writing you do. You can diversify in terms of the subject areas. You can even diversify geographically, so that when clients in one part of the world are struggling with an uncertain economy, there are others in parts of the world that are booming.

What made a massive difference in my own career was adding in high-paying work that was also easy to get given my journalism experience. For me (and many others), that ideal work proved to be content marketing. I went straight from earning $100 an hour as a journalist to $400 an hour in content marketing — in less than a year.

3. Learn to repurpose your work

That series of articles you wrote for a finance blog — could it be turned into a short ebook to be sold on Amazon? How about taking one of those points and turning it into an entire article of its own? Could you create an infographic? Write a personal essay based on the topic of your article? Create a video?

There are so many ways now available to freelancers to get paid for work, but you do have be creative about it and you have to be willing to experiment with new technologies.

Not all of it will stick, but if you’re using old content and repurposing it to create something in a different format or for a different market, your work is cut down massively and you get paid repeatedly for the same research and ideas.

4. Learn and practice new marketing strategies

You might get discovered. It’s great when it happens. It doesn’t happen often.

What does happen often is that you knock on doors. And you knock on more doors. And some of them are opened and you get invited in and others are slammed in your face. Then you go and knock on more doors.

The more doors you knock on, the more chances there are that some might open.

Do I need to go on, guys?

There will be a point in your freelancing life when you have regular clients and you’ve got money coming in each month that you can rely on. That’s great. Even so, if you want to grow your income over time, you constantly need to be finding newer higher-paying clients and replacing your lowest-paying ones with them.

Get skilled at it. Learn how to do it most effectively. Experiment with all the strategies other freelancers talk about and see what works best for you.

And if you need ideas, I’ve put together a report in which I share 29 marketing strategies that have worked wonders for me. Some take as little as five minutes! 

You won’t always be marketing aggressively, but you will always be marketing. It’s a good idea to get used to that.

5. Invest in your education

How do you consistently add to your skills? You learn, of course. You take free courses, paid courses, online courses, offline classes — whatever suits your personality, your budget and your geographical situation.

If you want to stay current in the market and increase your income, you need to constantly learn and stay one step ahead of the marketplace. Remember what I said about the only way to increase your income is to add more value?

You add more value when you make your client’s life easier by offering a diverse set of skills.

You don’t have to know it all. No one does. But make the effort to invest in learning about things that interest you. It’ll pay off, literally.

Listen, every writer I talk to says they want to make six figures. But “I’d like to earn more someday” is not a plan. If you want to make six figures, passively sitting back and waiting for it to happen won’t make it happen.

You need to create a plan, act in certain ways, and have marketable skills. You need to know how much you need to earn on a weekly or monthly basis to be able to hit your target and you need to be able to adjust course when you don’t reach your goal two or three months in a row.

Anyone can make six figures. Even you. But you have to commit to it.

Are you committed? If so, help is available. In my course Higher-Paying Freelance Clients, I’ll walk you through the many strategies available to you to bring home not only new high-paying clients, but consistent, recurring income that you can use to create a lifestyle you love. See you on the inside! 

This post contains affiliate links. That means if you purchase through our links, you’re supporting The Write Life — and we thank you for that!

This is an updated version of a story that was previously published. We update our posts as often as possible to ensure they’re useful for our readers.

Photo via Roman Samborskyi / Shutterstock 
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Here’s a truth that changed my life: Those 30 unfinished projects I have lying on the backburner? I’m not going to be able to finish them all this year.

Shocking, I know. But if you’re anything like me, you secretly hope you’re going to make tiny bits of progress on each of them and then, magically, they’ll get finished in one go. It doesn’t work like that. Ever.

Even if you’re prolific writer with no life (guilty— I wrote 240,000 words in the last six months in personal projects alone), you’re still only going to be able to tackle between two and 10 projects a year. There are people who write a book a year and others, like novelist Dean Wesley Smith, who can write a novel a month.

You decide where you fall on this productivity scale.

Even if you were superhuman like Smith and wrote a quality novel a month, that still means that you have to pick 10 ideas from your long list (I’m hoping you will take a few weeks off here and there to recharge your batteries).

Which brings us to the difficult task of picking projects that are the most important, the most beneficial to our careers, or the most potentially profitable. Then we must run with them.

At the beginning of this year, I undertook the maddening exercise of selecting ideas. It drove me nuts. Of all the dozens of ideas I wanted to be working on, how on earth was I going to pick six or fewer? This is where the whole “being realistic” thing comes into play. Sure, you could pretend you’re going to write two novels and three nonfiction books in a year while blogging three times a week and bringing in freelancing work to pay the bills. All on top of raising your three children.

But deep inside, you know the truth. It’s not going to happen. Aren’t you better off picking a project and sticking with it? Isn’t it better to finish it, send it out into the world and hopefully make money with it? Or perhaps you learn from your mistakes and move on to the next. Isn’t that a saner way to do things?

I have a gazillion ideas that beg for my attention every single day. When that happens, I throw them into an idea file. I have projects selected for the year and I will focus on them. Next year, I will make another list, pick again, and every idea will get its chance.

Once you’re done with the step involving picking your projects for the year, you should think about how long each will take. Do you need a whole year to finish your novel, or can you get it done sooner? Perhaps it will take even longer. How are you to know?

One of the best ways I know to estimate how long a project will take is this:

1. Figure out how many new words you can write in an hour. We’re talking new words and not rewriting. For me and most writers I know, this number is around 1,000.

2.  Think about how many hours a week you have available that you can devote to writing new words. Again, we’re talking first draft, new words only. If you need to revise work, set a different time in your week to do that. You don’t want to mix the writing part of your brain with the revising part, because that’s what leads to five-year novels. Trust me, I know. Let’s say that this number is five hours. That is, you can devote one hour a day to writing new words while taking weekends off. This means you can write a minimum of 5,000 new words a week.

3. What’s going to be the total length of this work? Sometimes this is hard to predict. Almost always, however, you’ll have a rough idea. If you’re writing a nonfiction book such as this one, you know it’s more likely to be in the 30,000-word range rather than the 100,000-word range. Similarly, mainstream fiction will be 80,000 words and romance novels will run a lot lower. Based on the scope and market of your project, how many words do you think your project is likely to run? For the purpose of this discussion, let’s say that number is 60,000.

4. Let’s do some math now, shall we? If your manuscript is 60,000 words and you’re writing at a pace of 5,000 words a week, you can easily deduce that if you work diligently, show up at the page each day, and write your 5,000 words for the week regularly, you will have a completed first draft in 12 weeks, or three months. If all your manuscripts are similar in length, you could easily finish four manuscripts by the end of the year, working only an hour a day. Not bad.

5. Finally, pick a daily target and put aside everything else and focus on hitting that day after day, consistently. This target could be project-based, such as “one short story a week,” or process-based, such as “1,000 words a day.” It could even be time-oriented, such as “one hour a day.” Choose what works for you, but make sure it helps you feel positive and optimistic about coming to work every day. By focusing on the daily target and not the project as a whole, you make progress every day. Before you know it, you’re typing the words “The End.”

This is why production schedules help. They allow you to see, in black and white, how staying on track can get you to your goals. When you’re feeling unmotivated and discouraged, look at your production schedule and see the date on the calendar for when you’ll be finished, if you stay on track.

Once you know what your deadlines look like for each project that you’ve picked out for the year, mark those big deadlines in your calendar. Break those big deadlines into smaller chunks if you can.

For instance, with this book, my goal was to write a chapter a day, regardless of the word count. Some days I wrote much more than that, but one chapter was my bare minimum. That was my daily deadline. If you’re working on a larger project, such as a novel, you could have deadlines for the 10,000-word mark, the halfway mark, and so on. Mark each of those milestones on your calendar so that you know how on- or off-track you are as you move through the work.

If data and spreadsheets inspire you, as they do me, create some of those as well. Personally, I have a notebook that I use in which I’ve written down dates and word counts like this:

November 1 (Sunday): 1,000 words

November 2 (Monday): 1,000 words

November 3 (Tuesday): 1,000 words

Then, I cross out the word counts as I move forward. Sometimes, I’ll work ahead. When that happens, I allow myself the flexibility of taking time off or giving myself leeway for when, undoubtedly, life gets in the way in the form of a sick child, a fried brain or a car breakdown.

Moreover, if you’re a freelancer or work in an industry that already drowns you in deadlines, you need to juggle so you don’t end up with four work deadlines and a novel deadline in the same week. The week you’re traveling abroad for work is not the week to schedule the start of a new book project. Having a production calendar helps you keep daily word counts in sync with the rest of your life.

No matter how you eventually publish your work, you’ll have to create room in your day for dealing with pesky publication issues as well: Edits, back cover copy, design, blogging, promotion, events and so on. While you may be able to continue your writing during those times — and you should! — sometimes it’s impossible to fit everything into a single day. Allowing for that helps keep self-loathing at bay.  

My favorite reason for having a production schedule is that it keeps me from getting hung up on or too attached to one single book or project. The day after I finished my first novel — a feat that took five full years — I began work on this book.

It was bad enough that my first one had taken that long, but I didn’t want to spend the next three months obsessing about agents, publishers, and advances. While those things were important and got their time, I also wanted to move on to newer work so my self-esteem and career goals weren’t tied up in a single book.

This is fairly common among writers, as you might already have noticed. They’ll finish writing a book and then spend weeks, months, or years trying to get it published while writing nothing else in the meantime. A production schedule or calendar allows you to have more work in the pipeline so that there’s something else to focus on when you’re finished with the current project.

Let me add, right away, that to the creative writer, “production schedule” seems like a very business-like, no-nonsense term that grates like fingernails on a chalkboard. Calling a book a “product” is like someone calling an article “content.” I don’t like it.

Yet, I’m a firm believer in looking at your work as art when you’re in the process of creation and a business when you’re looking at it from a career standpoint. In that sense, think of yourself as a publisher who has books to ship. By doing so, you have the best of both worlds: The creativity that comes from the art, and the money, sales and motivation that comes from a business.

Just because it’s numbers doesn’t mean it has to be dry. Find beautiful and artistic calendars for your walls that you can color in when you meet your goal for the day. Or, if you’re like me and you enjoy crossing things out, buy a moleskine and cross out word targets as you go along. The more fun and entertaining you make it, the more likely you are to stick with it. Just remember to make it simple and not overly complicated.

Now you have a road map, a production schedule for a year, six months, or however long you’ve planned ahead. A road map can tell you exactly what to work on and what lies ahead. It shows you that if you commit to the work every single day, you will have a finished project in your hands — or three — by the end of the year.

All you have to do is show up.

Have you used a production schedule? How did it help you meet your writing goals?

There are dozens, if not hundreds of places for writers to find content marketing clients: job boards, LinkedIn, through agencies, via websites such as Contently that match writers with businesses, and of course, by contacting potential clients directly.

With the exception of websites that allow you to put up your portfolio and let clients find you, most times, you’re going to have to be proactive about contacting potential clients and finding work. And you do this by sending a Letter of Introduction — a short email introducing yourself, mentioning your clips and credits, and outlining why you’d be a great fit to do content marketing for this business or agency.

A strong LOI can be the difference between getting thousands of dollars worth of work within a week and never hearing back from anyone.

But if you’ve never before written an email that sells you and your writing services, it can be intimidating. Here’s what to include in your Letter of Introduction to increase your chances of landing content marketing clients.

1. Your writing experience

You may be a new writer, but if you’re sending an LOI, you need to be able to convincingly show the person you’ve contacted — whether that’s an agency or a potential small business client — that you’re capable of producing the work.

You can’t do this if you have no writing credits. This is why, if you’re a new writer with no clips, I recommend networking and finding clients in other ways (through Contently, for instance) before you start sending out dozens of pitches.

2. Your business and content marketing experience

Ever written brochure copy for a corporate client? Blogged for the Indian restaurant down the road? Put together a case study for an animal rights organization?

That’s all experience you should highlight. If you’ve ever written for a business or worked for a business or association, pick the most relevant experiences and highlight them — even if you did the work for free. There’s no need to point out your volunteer status; what matters is that you did the work and you did it well.

3. Your understanding of their business

Enough talk about you. Let’s talk about the business. When you send an LOI to a small business or a corporate client (this doesn’t apply as much when pitching agencies), the one and only question they’re really asking is: What’s in it for me?

So make sure you provide a good answer to that by first making it clear you understand what problem they’re trying to solve and what need they’re filling with their business. This could be as simple as referencing some of their older content and explaining how it helped you (if you’re the target market, that is), or pointing out that no one else seems to have the same unique selling proposition (USP), which really helps them stand out in the market. Compliment them, but be sincere.

4. Your understanding of their needs

One of the best ways to make your LOI stand out and get immediate responses is to do as much research on the company as you possibly can and find a couple of areas where they can do better. I’m not a big fan of the “you suck at this and I can fix it” approach, but I do sometimes point out obvious areas of lack that I’m sure the business already knows about and likely wants to improve.

Some brands get a lot of cold pitches from writers, and most of those aspiring freelancers don’t do their research, so showing you put in the time and effort to really learn about this particular business will set you apart from everyone else.

For instance, you might find the content marketing strategy for that budgeting app you use has a lot of information about creating and sticking to budgets, but not enough on how to organize those savings they’re creating through budgeting. By proving that you understand their needs, not only do you make clear that you’re interested in what they have to offer, but you highlight the fact that you’ve invested time in learning about their business and are keen enough to come up with solutions without any guarantee. Especially when you’re new, this can get your foot in the door.

5. Your niche

When it comes to content marketing, it is absolutely essential to choose a niche and make clear to your potential clients what that niche is. Businesses don’t just hire freelance writers, they hire writers with expertise in a subject — their subject.

A writer who specializes will always win assignments more regularly than a writer who writes about “everything.” While writing skill and reporting ability are more valuable when it comes to journalism and freelance writing for publications, deep knowledge of a subject and the ability to convey it is the prized skill when it comes to writing for businesses and brands.

My rule of thumb: When connecting with individual clients or corporates, mention one, at most two, areas of specialization that are relevant to their business. When contacting agencies, give them at least three or four niche topics you can write about so they have an easier time placing you within their existing client base.

6. An invitation to connect over the phone or Skype

While freelancing tends to be accomplished over email, business is frequently done on the phone. Most editors I know absolutely hate having to answer phones in the middle of the workday. On the contrary, most entrepreneurs cannot understand why you’d waste half a day with emails flying back and forth when you could easily pick up the phone and sort it out in less than ten minutes.

What I suggest is that you give people options, and let them choose what works best for them. If they prefer email, continue on. But if they’d rather discuss working together on the phone, make sure you’ve offered them the option. This is one effective way to make their job easier, so they want to work with you right from the start.

An effective Letter of Introduction can be the sharpest tool in your content marketing toolbox. Even better, once you’ve written a good LOI that you know works and can get results, all you need to do is tweak it for new clients.

You write it once, and you reap the rewards repeatedly. That’s why it’s important to get yours right from the get-go.

Do you pitch potential clients regularly? What do you include in your LOI, and what do you leave out?

I learned how to write great queries and pitches, I practiced brainstorming specific and targeted story ideas, and I found myself a few informal mentors who would answer questions and offer support. I downplayed the fact that I was in India.

Despite all this, my career stagnated, and I didn’t know why.

To shake things up, I started experimenting with my approach. Instead of hiding that I was based in New Delhi, India, I started positioning it as a unique advantage. Within a year, I had landed assignments from The New York Times, TIME, Global Post, Marie Claire, and Ms. Magazine.

As a writer based outside of the U.S., I needed to use slightly different strategies than my peers in those countries. Here’s how to use what I learned to advance your own career as an international freelancer.

1. Highlight who you are and what you’ve done

Let me be clear: It’s essential that you focus on your prospect’s needs, be that a corporate client or an editor at a regional magazine. Figure out exactly what your client needs so you can create the perfect pitch.

However, the problem with pitching from India, China, Costa Rica, Nigeria and other countries is that many editors won’t even look at your story ideas until you’ve convinced them of your professionalism. Perhaps they’ve been burned before, or they simply don’t trust someone they can’t easily reach should something go wrong.

As an international writer, often you’re going to need to prove your capability more than an American writer would. Your credits, portfolio and experience can go a long way in opening these doors. When you’re writing a query or a Letter of Introduction, make sure to focus on who you are and why you’re the right person for the job.

2. Ask if they’d like to chat over Skype or the phone

One of the best things I ever did for my career as an international freelancer was getting on the phone.

Living so far away from many of them, it was almost a given that I’d never meet my editors. However, being able to see someone, connect with them and have a laugh or two can help cement a relationship — and potentially lead to more work (or at least more email responses).

So I did the next best thing: I asked if we could Skype or chat over the phone. Even if an editor doesn’t take you up on your offer, asking the question can make you seem accessible and not quite as remote as travel-wary editors might think.

3. Don’t put your phone number or address on your website

This is a bit of a controversial point, but in my experience, funny or unpronounceable regional names and unfamiliar area codes can scare off people who aren’t used to working internationally.

If your clients are international editors at major magazines and newspapers and like the idea of finding people in remote places, you might not need to worry about this advice. However, if you write about health or are looking exclusively for small business clients, your specific location can be a deterrent.

If your location has no relevance to your work, leave out the specifics. This advice might even hold true for writers living in remote parts of the U.S. or U.K.; you can be just as professional a writer living on a farm in Wisconsin as you would be in New York City.

4. Have an awesome website and online presence

Until a prospective client or editor hires you or agrees to talk to you over the phone, the only thing they have to judge you by is your website.

Your website must shine. It needs to say, “Hey you, undecided over there in the corner, here are the 10 different ways in which I’m the perfect writer for you. Click that button and hire me right now.”

Whether you have a static site or a blog, an active social media presence or a small one, make sure it reflects your professionalism and skill as a writer.

5. Make sure you show up in Google searches

In 2006, quite by accident, my website started showing up as the number one search result on Google for “freelance journalist India.” At the time, I didn’t realize the significance of this accomplishment, especially since I hadn’t been trying to optimize for keywords. What happened next forever changed the way I look at my website.

Editors from high-profile media outlets, such as US Weekly, ABC News, Marie Claire, NPR, Cosmopolitan and more, found my website while searching for freelance journalists to cover stories in my region. I’ve been contacted by NYC literary agents, by government departments, even by a political campaign (I politely declined).

The lesson? SEO is crucial. Make sure you show up in Google searches related to your city, country or region (and of course, that the search history is mostly positive). You never know when an overworked editor will need a writer familiar with your area.

6. Focus on building a portfolio of online work

At least initially, write for publications with online archives or clickable links.

Early in my career, I neglected to focus enough on online publications. Even though I’d been published in some impressive publications and had over 100 bylines after my first year in the business, I had no proof: Much of my work was in local publications and wasn’t available online. I’d been published in 20+ countries, but editors had no way of verifying that.

Make sure your work will be shared online, or find another way to share high-quality images of your work in your portfolio.

7.  Add humor and personality to your communications

Your emails, your website, your About page: all are opportunities to showcase that despite the differences in nationalities and location, you’re pretty much a person with the same needs, wants and desires as your editor.

Your U.S.-based clients might often feel that they have nothing in common with you because you live in a place they’ve only ever seen on the news. Make yourself vulnerable, share a glimpse into your life and show them what you’re really like. Find something that helps you create a connection and a bond, like a shared hobby or interest.

What do you do differently as a freelancer based outside the U.S.?