Back in November when I was still freelancing full time, I couldn’t believe my luck when I landed this gig. I had blogged about the business of freelancing on my own blog, The Productive Muse, for several months. But when the opportunity to write for b5media.com presented itself, I jumped at the chance. Long before I launched my freelance business, I was reading ProBlogger, Darren Rowse’s blog about blogging (Darren also is cofounder of b5media—the company that owns this one). So my history with and admiration for  Darren, b5media.com, and everyone on the b5media team goes back several years. If you’ve followed my journey on b5media.com—on The Golden Pencil and most recently on the Freelancing channel on bizzia.com—you’ll... [Read more]

There’s only so much time in the day, and sometimes despite your best efforts to plan ahead, life intervenes and scuttles your deadlines and best-laid plans. I know more than a few freelancers who have found themselves trying to juggle deadlines with family illnesses and other lesser crises. And most freelancers I know have taken on too much work at one time or another and found themselves juggling and scrambling to meet all their deadlines. So how do you avoid freelance overload? And if you find yourself in the precarious position of having to juggle deadlines with unexpected and unavoidable life events, what can you do? 1) Get honest. If you have a legitimate emergency, pick up the phone and call your client or editor right away and... [Read more]

Good Monday morning readers! Today, I’m shining the spotlight on Lisa Collier Cool, a best-selling author and winner of 18 journalism awards. She’s written more than 400 articles for the Associated Press, Cosmopolitan, Family Circle, Fitness, Glamour, Good Housekeeping, Harper’s, Hallmark, Harper’s Bazaar, Health, Health Monitor, Ladies Home Journal, Marie Claire, O the Oprah Magazine, Parenting, Parents, Penthouse, Publishers Weekly, Redbook, Reader’s Digest, Self, Woman’s Day, Writer’s Digest and many others. Lisa also is a prolific author. Her book, Beware the Night: A New York City Cop Investigates the Supernatural (with coauthor Ralph Sarchie), reached #3 on the Amazon bestseller list, and #10 on Ingram’s... [Read more]

Diversification is key to the survival of any business right now. But so is remembering your core business—what you are known for, and the services and products that allowed you to grow your business in the first place. In the well-known management book, In Search of Excellence by Tom Peters and Robert Waterman, there’s a chapter called “Stick to the Knitting.” The chapter talks about the importance of sticking with the business that you know. And it talks about what happens when companies wander too far away from their core services and products—the things that they they do best, and the things that originally contributed to their business success. In recent months, I’ve talked a lot about the importance of diversification.... [Read more]

Some people have the luxury getting their finances in order before venturing into full-time freelancing. But in this economic climate, there are many others who are in a sink-or-swim situation due to sudden job loss and other circumstances. The other day, I talked about how to prepare financially for going full time with your freelance business. But what if you don’t have time to get your finances in order before diving in to full-time freelancing? What if you don’t have time to build a months’ long cushion to get you through the lean times? Or even if you’ve been in the business for a while, what do you do if you suddenly find your work slowing down to a trickle? What can you do to stay afloat? Here are a few ideas: Cut... [Read more]