THE CHIX
RECOMMEND
HOW TO MAKE MONEY ONLINE
WITHOUT A SINGLE CLIENT.
Sick to Death of having your bank account
tied to the whim of your clients? Then this teleseminar
series could be the answer you’ve been looking for! Join the
3Chix for our 3-part teleseminar, Writing DIY. Part 1,
Researching and choosing your product, happens Thursday,
September 27 at 8:30PM Eastern, 5:30 Pacific. Get in on
the ground floor and sign up today! Click here for
details: http://www.3chix.com/writingdiy.html
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This Month in Chix Trax
Fellow Writer,
Welcome to the
first issue of Chix Trax. We’re so glad you can join
us.
Around the 20th of each month, one of
the 3Chix will be talking about issues that are important
to high-profit writers everywhere. We’ll share our
insights about what’s new in direct response advertising,
the latest trends in online marketing and creating your
own products to sell on the Internet, and much, much
more.
This month, Donna Doyle provides insight into
how you can make sure you always have consistent income,
even during the “slow times.”
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One quality we successful freelancers have in
common is our ability to take on a challenge.
By Donna Doyle
No, not just with our assignments. But with our lifestyle,
too.
We ditched the 9-to-5 grind and a steady paycheck for a
creative, rewarding career where, for the first time in our
lives, we decide how our days are spent. We can pick and choose
the hours we want to work, decide how much time we want to take
off, even surf on the internet as long as we wish without some
company software tracking our every move.
And when we're wall-to-wall with writing assignments, life is
good. Checks are rolling in. Clients are happy. And we
congratulate ourselves for having the guts to leave corporate
politics and prison of a staff job behind.
Then, at some point, the feast turns curiously famine-like.
Your client cancels a project. Your prospecting packages go
unanswered. Clients are slow to pay. All situations completely
beyond your control...
Or are they?
In this issue I'll share a few ideas to keep those copywriting
dry spells to a minimum. Ones that will earn you an income no
matter which direction the economy goes.
How to Survive The Dry Spells
1. Find a secondary
niche.
What's your niche? It's the area that inspires
you the most. It's also the one you love to write about.
It could be fundraising, real estate, or in my case,
alternative health.
But various industries go through their own economic
roller-coaster, too. What's hot this year may suffer a slump
the next. Response rates go down; postal rates increase; and
clients cut budgets. And you get left in the lurch.
So what to do? Find a secondary niche. What other subjects
would you like to write about? Once you decide, then target
clients in that niche.
In the fall of 2003, my alternative health assignments slowed
down to a trickle. It turned in to a very long, 4-month dry
spell. I knew I had to do something to bring money in--and
decided to try my hand writing about another subject I was
passionate about: personal finance.
I contacted some financial newsletter companies and received
assignments writing email blasts and online Special Reports to
their subscriber base. These were quick, fun assignments that I
turned around in a couple of weeks. And they provided some good
income until my alternative health client base came back.
Another benefit of a secondary niche? You keep burnout at bay.
When you write about one subject for years on end, it's easy to
feel stale after a while. Those personal finance projects were
a welcome break from my usual healthcare grind. And when I
returned to writing health copy, I felt more motivated,
clear-headed and refreshed. My copy was snappier, too.
2. Create Passive Income
The reality for many of us – and that includes me – is that we
can’t count on third parties to feed you, consistently, as much
copy work as you need to survive. That’s why it's a good idea
to begin looking at other avenues to make money; preferably,
ones that don't require you to do anything. Ones where you can
even make money while you sleep.
It’s called passive income. It can be an e-book you wrote and
are marketing on a website; acting as an affiliate for a
variety of products or services; or even selling a product of
your own.
When copywriter, novelist, avid gardener (and fellow
Chix) Victoria Rosendahl suffered a second car accident in 2000, her
husband came up with the design for a method of gardening
that doesn’t require bending or kneeling. They nick-named
it GardenRack.
When Victoria saw a slowdown in her
copywriting schedule, she decided to turn GardenRack into a product for other gardeners. After all,
it was perfect for folks who have stopped gardening
because of arthritis in their knees or back, and
GardenRack's height can be customized to each gardener’s
individual needs.
Victoria designed
and wrote the website and set up an online store. Today, she
enjoys a nice, passive income from sales of her innovative
gardening product.
If you have found that copywriting assignments have thinned out
lately, think about the things you know and create a product
for yourself. You can write an e-book and sell it over the
internet for very little expense. You can develop a new
product, like Victoria did, or you can look into affiliate
marketing.
Once you create your product line, set up a web site and sign
up with a credit card processor (such as PayPal), you could
sell these products for years without lifting another finger.
As time goes on you can add more products to give your income
an even bigger shot the arm.
We'll be taking a closer look at writing and selling your own
e-books in future issues of ChixTrax. In fact, we’re
offering a 3-part teleseminar series this fall on marketing and
selling your own products (Click here to get more
information: http://www.3chix.com/writingdiy.html.) So stay tuned!
Until Next Month,
Donna Doyle (along
with Beth Erickson and Victoria Rosendahl)
The 3Chix
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