Category: Freelancing

  • Making Money with Blogger Outreach

    Making Money with Blogger Outreach

    Thirty five years after the invention of the internet and we’re still discovering new ways to approach doing business using this incredible technology. Entrepreneurial individuals have been partnering with blogger outreach services to look for new ways to monetise their writing. Traditional routes to becoming a writer or journalist have been long and difficult to break into. They’ve involved lengthy courses, endless internships, or knowing the right people. The good news is that everything has changed with the rise of the internet – anyone with a skill for crafting good prose can be a writer if they have the drive, plus one of the great at&t internet plans, or a plan from a different provider, to help them stay connected at all times and get the most out of their writing possible.

    Blogger Outreach for your Brand

    It’s indisputable that the internet has also presented more opportunities to brands looking to find new audiences too. But not everyone is a digital marketing expert and budgets have to be spent carefully. Here’s why a blogger outreach strategy should be a part of your brand from day one

    Successful blogs are built on trust. People return to the same blogs time and time again as loyal readers because they respect the authenticity of the writer and their output. So when a blogger recommends a brand or product to their followers those individuals are far more likely to take that recommendation on board.

    By working with a blogger who has an authentic following you’re effectively using their social capital to advertise your product. Word of mouth referrals are extremely powerful in the world of marketing and should never be underestimated. An ethical blogger will never recommend products that they don’t personally believe in. Make sure that when you’re selecting bloggers to work with there’s an affinity between your brand and the writer. If your product or the brand doesn’t appeal then your email is likely to land in trash folder.

    Are you a Blogger looking to Monetise?

    Chances are that this isn’t the first article you’ve read about monetising your blog. You may have even have tried putting adverts on your site or affiliate marketing techniques. Curating a loyal following and then working with brands you love is most definitely a productive way to make money from your blog.

    But a word of caution. Stay on target and make sure you stick to products and brands that make sense for you. If you go off topic for the money you’ll start to lose the authenticity that you’ve spent time building up. It’s better to wait for the right brands to come up than have your message all over the place.

    A great place to offer blogger outreach opportunities is if you’re running a blog as a part of your business. Recommending products and services to your audience that fit with what you offer is a great way to build up a relationship with new brands. Aligning yourself with the values of those that you work with can boost your reputation. Your audience will thank you too if you share a hidden gem with them, especially if the brand you recommend solves a problem that they were having. Working with the right brands can only ever improve the relationship you have with your audience.

  • Does Blogging Help Your Handmade Business?

    Does Blogging Help Your Handmade Business?

    The short answer is yes; blogging for handmade business’ can totally be a way to help get sales! The long answer to “does blogging help your handmade business” is that it is not entirely straight forward. However there’s nothing difficult about blogging and it’s something everyone can do as part of their business!

    I’m not going to tell you how to set up a blog here (although I do suggest you go with WordPress as a platform). There are hundreds of people on the internet who will teach you to put together a WordPress site better than I could. However I am going to tell you the kind of things you want to write and how they will boost your handmade business through blogging.

    Identify Your Ideal Customer

    I’ve said it on other posts about running your handmade business, but it is always worth saying it again. Especially here. Identify who your ideal customer is. Once you know who they are you can start to work out what kind of blogs they like to read (if they like to read them at all!). Knowing where your customer hangs out online and what they like doing is key to marketing to them.

    Assuming your ideal customer is a blog reader you want to work out what kind of content they’ll stop and spend time reading. For example if you make kids accessories then a parenting blog might be your ideal customers thing. They might like to read about your story and your kids, and about the tips on how you’ve brought up great, well rounded, mini versions of you.

    I make costume accessories for live action roleplaying. This means my ideal customers are the people who do the hobby and who need costume. Although I link to my shop frequently on this blog I never make sales from the leads I make here. However I do make lots of sales from a related website that I run. Several years ago I started up a community website that deals with all aspects of playing roleplaying games. Because I chat with lots of my customers I’ve found that lots of them come specifically from an article I wrote on how to put a great costume together for LARP.

    Once You Figure It Out, Keep Writing!

    Once I figured out the kind of content that was sending customers to me I immediately started planning new articles. In my case I identified that the costumes I’d taken drew people in from Facebook and Pinterest, but the content of the article was what made it sharable on social media (and indeed sent it vital within the community).

    Essentially the articles that I was writing allowed my products to solve a problem that my visitor had. The question that my visitors were asking was “how do I put together a great costume for my character?” My article never directly says “buy my products” but they do provide pretty pictures and a link which then encourages customers to take a look around the shop. There’s also a small call to action near the bottom suggesting that if people would like a similar outfit they can head on over to my Etsy shop! I don’t enjoy doing the hard sell; I’d rather people came to me because they really, really wanted something that I make.

    Communicating Your Brand Values

    Blogging is unique in that it can communicate alot about you and your business in a very informal way. When considering blogging for handmade business you really do need to make sure that your brand values are absolutely clear in your mind and that every post you make helps to reinforce them.

    Although it can seem daunting to reveal lots of information about yourself on the internet don’t be too worried. Try to avoid giving out information that would make you vulnerable (such as your address and your holiday dates) but remember that people love to see the person behind the business when you’re a small handmade company.

    Stick To A Schedule

    It is the hardest part of blogging. And I should know, I’ve been blogging for over a decade now! Start with twice a month, or if you’re feeling on top of your game once a week. The most successful blogs get updated frequently with great content and a couple of times a week would be a great thing to aim for.

    Remember to think outside the box when you’re writing posts. For instance if you make gorgeous tote bags then a day out would provide you with the opportunity to shoot lifestyle images. You can blog about what you did for the day (it could be anything from a trip to the city to a trip to the seaside) and include the photos in your blog post. Don’t forget to link to where your readers can buy the product!

    Remember that the more content you produce the more readers will come back to read it.

    Collect Email Addresses

    As soon as you set your blog up you should get a mailing list set up too. Who you decide to use to host your mailing list is something for another post, but make sure you get collecting those email addresses ASAP!

    Why? Because it means that Etsy and Facebook aren’t in control of me contacting my customers. You never know when a service might either close its doors or charge you to be in touch with the people who want to hear from you. On Etsy you also can’t send messages out to everyone interested in your shop so a mailing list really is essential for you to keep in touch with your customers.

    I offer in my shop a 10% discount when you sign up to my mailing list. It is always good to offer an incentive, it much increases the chance that readers will give you their email address if they think they’re getting something in return. That could be some digital downloads, a percentage coupon, or even a monetary coupon. Whatever works for you and your business – and that’ll be different for everyone.

    Blogging For Handmade Business

    So with all that in mind, hopefully you’ll consider starting your blog and writing about your product. The traction you can get if a blog post goes viral on social media is incredible and it could end up making or breaking your shop. It’s all about creating content that is beautiful, useful, and also on brand for your business.

    Good luck!

  • I Am A Journalist; Tell Me Your Story

    I Am A Journalist; Tell Me Your Story

    I’ve been a freelance journalist for… well… about six years now I guess. Perhaps seven? I can’t remember, I’d have to dig out the first invoices I sent to know for sure. I’ve done a fair bit of writing in that time for all kinds of outlets, and the one thing in common with all of them is that people always have an opinion.

    In all honesty, people having an opinion about your writing is generally what you’re looking for. It’s great, I love it when people interact with the things I’m saying and potentially even open my eyes to things I’d not considered before. What I don’t love is when people say to me “you should have included this” or “why have you never told this story?” Because the truth is that I usually didn’t include that or tell your story because nobody has ever told me that this thing existed.

    Contrary to what many people believe, I don’t while away the hours searching the internet for an exciting story to write about. I’ve come across a few by accident over the years but rarely is this how a magazine starts. So here’s the lowdown on how it works with me. I suspect not every journalist or every field works the same way, so assume that these are guidelines rather than firm rules.

    Tell Someone

    You know how people hear about your cool thing? You tell them. You might be aware of something called press releases – well this is the formal version of “telling someone.” Every week I get numerous press releases drop into my inbox from various companies and charities telling me their news and their future plans. You want to do this as far in advance as possibl too – I’ve got a press release from the National Portrait Gallery sitting on the end of my desk announcing a gallery show for June 2019! That’s 10 months away!

    Remember though, 10 months in journalism terms isn’t that long. While blogs and daily media might work on an editorial schedule of just a few days ahead, it can be much longer for other forms of print publication. One magazine I write for is published every two months. To get a feature out in the May 2019 issue I need to have submitted it by the start of April at the very latest – ideally half way though March would be better. And for that feature I might have to source interviewees, images, and then spend time actually writing the feature in a way that is going to be right for the outlet. You’ve gotta give me a few weeks notice on that – two months ideally. So then you’re talking half way through January to let me know for a June event. You see how time can start to mount up?

    Tell Them All About It

    I’m not going to lie – the more info you give me the better. I don’t just want a vague two word description. See if you can write an A4 side with all the details about your thing in it. Do the work for me. Provide me with some nice soundbite quotes from someone in your organisation or someone relevant in the field (a short paragraph each is great). Give contact details (an email is fine) of people who will be happy to speak further to me. Then make yourself available. Ideally on Skype so that it’s free for me to call you.

    And don’t forget to tell me the date if it’s time sensitive. You’d be amazed at how many people don’t tell me that.

    I’ll be honest, if you don’t include these things then the likelihood is that your press release will be hitting my gmail trash pretty quickly. If you do include all those things, you’ve got a good chance of being printed and then filed into my monthly filing system of things to try and make articles out of in the future.

    Send Pictures

    Make them good. A picture tells a thousand words, apparently. Don’t steal the images from elsewhere. Provide a headshot of yourself if it’s relevant.

    This is a good time to hire a photographer if you’re not one yourself. If you can’t afford to hire a photographer then find an enthusiastic photography student and see if they’ll do a trade. If not a friend with a camera outside is better than nothing.

    Make the images as big as possible. Don’t shrink them down for me. Don’t make them black and white unless there’s a bloody good reason. Don’t send them in the email – provide a link to a dropbox or google folder in the press release. Even better, set up a “media” or “press” section on your website, and have all your press releases and media downloads available there. I’ll probably bookmark your page and keep checking back if you do that.

    Have A Story

    “Sandy runs a photography business” isn’t an interesting story. There are thousands of people out there like sandy. Here are some things that are stories:

    • Sandy runs a photography business and has just won a national award for entrepreneurship because of her unique approach to business.
    • Sandy runs a photography business and has set up a scheme working with youth offenders teaching them photography so that they can become independent businesspeople like her.
    • Sandy runs a photography business and is one of the founders of a charity working with women in refuges helping them to find meaning in their lives again and explore their trauma through art.
    • Sandy runs a photography business and has recently spend two months travelling in Afghanistan documenting how young women are embracing photographic technology that they’ve never had access to before.

    Seriously, if you’re doing that last one then I want to know about it. I could pitch that story to half a dozen outlets this afternoon.

    How Do You Find A Journalist?

    It depends where you want to get your story published really. In magazines and on blogs authors will usually have their byline at the head (or the bottom) of the article. If it’s online you should be able to click the link and find their contact details. If it’s print then you might need to do a little google. In print magazines too on the first page (usually where the contents is) there’s almost always a section that tells you who the magazine’s regular contributors are. If in doubt give the magazine a call and ask them who you should send press releases too. You might get the email of someone working there. Or they might put you in touch with a freelancer who writes that kind of content for them.

    You can also look on social media to find them. Most journalists I know are on social media a lot because they spend large chunks of their days sat at the computer. The Twitter hashtag #journorequest is a pretty good one to follow. Lots of journalists post there.

    So, that’s that really. Nobody will write about you if you don’t tell them what you’re up to. You have to be your own publicist. Or hire one I guess.

  • Making A Living From a Sewing Business

    Making A Living From a Sewing Business

    I’m not quite sure how it happened. One day I had a single product that I thought might sell to a few roleplayers, the next I was making half my monthly income from sewing and embroidering costume pieces! Well a little more than a few moments – about seven months to be exact. My sewing business had taken off!

    I made a few commissions in 2017 and had a listing or two in my Etsy store, but I didn’t really kick it off until January 2018. And here we are at the beginning of August and I’m so backed up with orders that I’m not quite sure what to do! It’s a good situation to be in and I’m not complaining at all! So while I ponder the future, I thought I’d put together a few thoughts on why I’ve managed to do so well.

    Everything is Top Quality

    This absolutely had to come first. I didn’t want to put out shoddy work at any point in the process. Everything is beautifully finished. No raw seams on view. Hand stitching is done wherever hand stitching needs to be done – even if you can’t see it.

    I use great quality fabrics and great quality threads. That means that the embroidery is lustrous and the fabric sturdy enough to stand up for the kind of abuse you get at LARP.

    My Branding and Photography is On Point

    Mosswood Studio Costume Pouch for Empire LRP

    I had quite a strong idea of what I wanted my branding to be like when I started. Black and white, reasonably minimalist, but while maintaining a somewhat timeless and esoteric feeling.

    In the end I settled on some relatively modern block lettering, with a cute little black and white octopus design. The whole thing is easy to reproduce in two colours on every bit of digital and print branding. I even have little labels that I sew into everything I make.

    I’m not saying that I’m an expert with graphics or branding, but I did read a few books on the subject and spent some time thinking about it. Plus I guess my background in History of Art means that I’m starting from somewhat of an advantage.

    Hand in hand with branding goes photography. Again I’ve got some experience here; a year working in London as a specialist fashion and product photography set me up with some good techniques and a keen eye for detail. I started with clean, clear images that were overwhelmingly shot on a grey background. Everything that could be shown on a mannequin was. I believe it made a huge difference compared to the usual LARP imagery that you see.

    More recently I’ve been experimenting with slightly more styled and creative photographs as you can see here. I used to really enjoy shooting ‘flats’ at work – or flat-lays as the internet now seems to call them! If this style of photography will make a big difference or not remains to be seen. However I can’t see that it would do any harm and I do enjoy putting the images together. I also rather enjoy shopping for props for my photos. But perhaps I should do a little less of that or I won’t have any money!

    I Advertised Organically

    Putting a little advertisement on a LARP website that I run was a smart idea. I kept the advert clean and simple, chose some pictures that were reasonably generic but had striking, bold colours, and popped it in the sidebar. It’s brought my relatively huge amounts of traffic. If I didn’t run a related blog in the same niche as my business, I’d definitely be paying to be featured on one.

    I also made gifts for friends. They posted pictures of their kit online, and people would ask where it was from. It generated several hundred pounds worth of orders. Word of mouth referral is a very positive thing in hobby communities. It’s a very genuine form of marketing and is also extremely effective. Would I have made and given those gifts anyway? Of course, I would. I never asked them to post online nor expected a referral. Anything I got was a bonus, and it’s how you should look at things if you give them away to friends. I sometimes also send free goodies to my customers along with personalised postcards, business cards, etc. In this way, they might also tell their friends about such additional benefits and spread the word about my business.

    Influencer marketing is different of course, and that’s my next step. Shortly I’ll be contacting some of the ‘big names’ in LARP media production and seeing if they’d be interested in doing an exchange. I reckon some unboxing videos might be nice too, I really take pride in how I package and send my orders.

    On top of that I also posted in various sales groups on Facebook that are related to the hobby. Because I’m not a new voice in the community I think this carried far more weight than it would if I was an unknown. Although saying that, I posted in a Pagan sales group and made a sale within 12 hours… and I was a complete unknown there!

    You’ve Got To Do What Works For You

    Fundamentally you could do everything the same as I did and it just might not work. This handmade goods marketplace is so fickle, you just have to keep trying. A variety of approaches works best though, I think. It means that you’re not putting all your eggs in one basket.

    What If You Don’t Make Enough Money?

    It’s a fear that everyone starting their business has. Or at least a fear that they should have. But the reality is that being a self-employed creative professional should usually pay far better than a comparable job working for someone else. There are other benefits too, like working the hours that suit your lifestyle and being able to take time off for the things you want to do, but lets be honest the cash needs to add up as well.

    This infographic shows the difference in earnings between self-employed creative professionals and those employed in similar jobs in the US – it’s a fascinating read!

  • I’m Heading Back to CoSchedule

    I’m Heading Back to CoSchedule

    Back when I had the time to write more regularly (before my Masters degree took over my life) I was using CoSchedule to manage LARP Guide. It was a Godsend. No word of a lie. It saved me so much time that although LARP Guide wasn’t making me any money, it was more than worth every penny.

    Well, with a plan to kick LARP Guide back into action, the first place I’m turning is to CoSchedule again. My plan is to run a campaign reposting *all* of my previous blog posts to the LARP Guide social media profiles again. I pondered briefly if I could get away with just using the Facebook post scheduling interface that is available to pages, but I just couldn’t face it. That sounds like absolute hell, and I just don’t have the time when I’m trying to build businesses, write a PhD, and have a bit of free time to myself as well!

    So here we go again.

    If you’ve never looked at CoSchedule for managing social media you really should. It is built around the most brilliant editorial calendar that allows me to see and schedule all of my WordPress blog posts. Then I can see when all my individual social media accounts are posting too – just take a look:

    The one thing I used most, I think, was the drag and drop scheduler that allowed me to take my WordPress drafts (of which there are many – I just jot ideas down as new posts when I’m on the go) and just drag them on to the calendar. It was that feature which allowed me to keep up with my relentless editorial calendar. When I saw a gap I’d just look through the post list and figure out which was most appealing to write next – before dropping it in to the gap and setting myself a reminder to work on the content.

    And then there’s the social media feature that tells me when I should schedule my posts for. It’s brilliant. I know almost nothing about social media, other than the fact that I have to use it if I want any readers. So this feature is brilliant for me. It takes all the difficulty of choosing when posts should go live by analysing past performance of social media platforms and posting at the best time.

    And then there’s the performance reports. I should really delve into these a little more in the future, I’m sure they’ll tell me all kinds of things about the content that I *should* be producing for the blog. But for now I just look at the numbers and watch them go up. It’s kind of fascinating, even though I’m not really quite sure what they’re doing. Big numbers are good though, right? As long as the graph is heading upwards then I’m happy to be honest – and CoSchedule gives me the tools to make the numbers go up.

    I struggle to understand why you’d run a blog without this kind of tool today, to be honest. And I’ve been running blogs for well over a decade now. If only things were this easy ten years ago and CoSchedule had been around perhaps I’d have hired people to do this stuff for me a long time ago if it had been this easy! 😀

  • Gaining time and sharing duties with CoSchedule!

    Gaining time and sharing duties with CoSchedule!

    So seventeen months ago I launched www.larp.guide. Shortly after we launched I got Leah on board as a contributor and ever since I feel like we’ve been going from strength to strength as a blogging partnership.

    But there’s one problem with LARP Guide – it’s that I never get enough time to post. You see, Leah posts every Monday. And I have a scheduled YouTube post from Vicki every Thursday. And we try and put some photos up on a Wednesday from an event that recently happened. And this month I’ve started running interview pieces on a Saturday to feature the work of some amazing LARP costumers out there. And then we have occasional guest posts from people like Callum.

    I do all the administration on my own at the moment. So that’s four posts a week that I lay out in WordPress, find images for in my archive, keyword, link out to social media… quite frankly it’s a time sink. And it’s one that I find laborious sometimes (I dedicate a couple of days a month to this crappy admin). Quite frankly what bothers me most is that I don’t get any time to sit and come up with tutorials and things. I’ve made garments up about six months ago that I’ve *still* not written up a tutorial for and drafted out patterns in illustrator so that more people have access to simple kit tutorials. And I have dozens and dozens of inspiration posts that I want to write featuring beautiful kit from artworks. But it’s not going to happen while I am wrestling with the administration of the blog on my own.

    But Leah went full time at Mandala Studios at the end of March (hurrah for freelance employment!) and she’s offered to help me with some of the administration. I had to find a collaborative solution.

    Enter CoSchedule! I feel like I want to just show you their overview video first so that you can see how things work.

    How am I using it at the moment? Mostly for the calendar. It’s so useful to be able to see everything laid out easily, I can see what posts I’ve completed and what posts still need work.

    Screen Shot 2016-04-28 at 08.33.59

    Do you want to see what my old system looked like?

    2016-04-28 08.36.47

    I mean, it worked ok and I kept up with things. But I would miss an awful lot of posts I’d had ideas for because I didn’t get them ready, and I had no way of easily seeing which I’d missed and shuffling them up later. With CoSchedule I just plonk an idea down in the week I want to write it for, and if I don’t get round to writing it then I just drag and drop it to a later date – simple!

    Plus the other major benefit is, you know, being paperless. I used to quite often take the massive lever arch file full of LARP Guide paperwork down to my local cafe and work there on scheduling upcoming posts. But being able to just take my laptop is so much easier, plus it means I only have to take up a little table rather than a big table, which I’m sure makes them happy when I’m busy.

    CoSchedule also allows me to see what social media I’ve scheduled. It’s good to get social media out every day, it keeps your content in your audiences mind. You can just click options on and off with the calendar until you see exact the info that you want.

    Screen Shot 2016-04-28 at 08.45.40

    And the best bit about the social media scheduling is the great tools that they give you within each post to do it. If you upgrade your subscription plan you can even write templates to automatically schedule social media updates to go out after 7 days, 30 days, however many days you want! All you have to do is work out what you want to say, and then CoSchedule will do the rest.

    Screen Shot 2016-04-28 at 08.48.07

    Another handy feature for LARP Guide is the ability to make notes of events in the calendar. This is what my calendar for June looks like for example, reminding me that I not only have to go and play some events, but I need to schedule in the photos afterwards too. I also have draft posts scheduled for most of the rest of the year for photos… lets see if I can keep up with the plan!

    Screen Shot 2016-04-28 at 08.50.14

    I’ve not yet invited Leah to collaborate with me in CoSchedule. To be honest, it’s a chunk of money and we need to do a bit of fundraising first. But I think when we get Leah involved we’ll really be able to work more effectively as a team – and perhaps we’ll take a third editor on as well!

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  • The Lamentation of Google Reader

    In 2005 Google launched its brilliant Reader service. It pulled in the RSS feeds from your favourite websites and displayed them all in an convenient and easy to read format on one page. When you scrolled past something it marked it as read and it didn’t display it again. It was utter elegance in it’s simplicity. It just worked.

    If you never used it, this is what it looked like:

    Google-Reader-screenshot (1)

    In March 2013 Google announced that they would be removing Reader on the 1st July 2013. It may have had a small but niche following, but geeks all over the world despaired as they rushed around to find a replacement service.

    There was not a good replacement service. Well, I never found one anyway.

    Until today.

    I have tried many RSS readers, none were quite satisfactory. Some wanted me to view content primarily on my phone, some were just plain ugly and some just ate memory resources (I’m looking at you RSS Bot).

    Today I found Slick RSS, an extension for Chrome.

    It looks like this:

    Screen Shot 2014-11-19 at 09.29.50

    And that’s pretty much exactly what I want. I’ve not yet checked if it syncs across both my computers but I’d settle for a working RSS feed on just one right now. It’s better than none.


    Of course the real question is why I need a RSS reader. The answer is that going to websites and places like Pinterest of Facebook Pages is dangerous when you’re a freelancer with a serious lack of self control. I went on ohmyveggies.com this morning to check if she had a new recipe that I might fancy cooking tonight and ended up losing myself on there for the best part of half an hour. An RSS reader gives you the news you want to see and absolutely nothing else. Which is good if you need to be a bit more single-minded with your approach.

    Tools should work for you, not against you. Websites and their RSS feeds are a tool for me. I use them for both work and personal use and since I love what I do for work, it can be hard not to get engrossed in the websites on a personal level while I’m visiting places to keep up with the latest news.

    This also means that I can subscribe to services and forget about them while still keeping on top of things. For instance the latest press releases from an art gallery or the feed of new product releases from a camera manufacturer. All things that I wouldn’t ususally think to check every day by going to their website, but an RSS feed makes it very easy.

    And ultimately since I seem to be going down the blogging route for at least part of my income, this means that I have lots of the latest news right at my fingertips, every day in the morning when I sit down to have my first cup of tea of the tea. Perfect.