Full-Time Freelancing

Not too many years ago, most employers preferred a snail-mailed or faxed resume over one submitted via e-mail. Today, however, it is a different story. According to a recent article in the Freelance Work Exchange, only 4% of employers said they preferred to receive resumes by e-mail in 1999. By 2000, the number had skyrocketed to 48% – and you can be sure this year’s number will be even higher.

Given this trend, it’s not only new graduates who are currently in the market for help in writing eye-catching resumes that stand out amongst the competition.

Could resume writing turn out to be a lucrative side business for you while you’re building your copywriting career? If you’re interested, you might want to e-mail Louis Hart at memberservices@awaionline.com for information on AWAI’s Resume Writing Program (which comes complete with resume-writing software and a comprehensive instruction manual).

Meanwhile, here are a few tips from the AWAI Resume Writing Program that you can use when preparing your own resume to go after new clients …

When Writing Your Resume, Remember the No.1 Lesson You Learned About Copywriting: Know Your Prospect

In this case, you are not pitching a sale to a prospective buyer of a product/service. Your audience is the editor, publisher, or marketing director who is looking for a piece of copy or an article that will get the most attention or bring in the most money. Your potential client/employer – be he a CEO or Mr. Perkins at the corner bakery – wants to know what YOU can do for HIM.

In order to write an effective resume, you have to put yourself in your prospect’s shoes and think like him. Ask yourself what he would be looking for in a copywriter. Ask yourself how you can make yourself stand out and look unique.

Have you written articles or successful sales letters in the past? If so, list them and (if you’re sending your resume by fax or snail-mail) include copies. Do you have an impressive education? Make sure you mention it.

Here Are Some Other Important Things to Keep in Mind While Putting Your Resume Together …

1. Keep your job objective focused. If you want to write copy for a health, travel, or financial publication, say so. Avoid listing a number of different interests. If you have too many, you cannot be considered an expert in any of them.
2. Use bullets to help zero in on your accomplishments and achievements – and use specific numbers and details to add to your credibility. (Sound familiar?) These are the types of things a prospective client/employer wants to see:
   • You increased a company’s sales by 53%.
   • You authored 5 published articles in ABC magazine on hidden hot spots throughout Europe.
   • You increased a renewal rate by 37%
3. Make sure your contact information (name, address, phone/fax/e-mail numbers) is at the top of the page.
4. List your most impressive (relevant) accomplishments first.
5. If copywriting is a career change for you and you feel that you don’t have enough experience to create an impressive resume, don’t worry about it. Experience isn’t a “must” to land a job. However, that doesn’t mean you should try to fill up your resume with other irrelevant things. Instead, you might want to structure it this way:
   • Objective
   • Summary of Experience
   • Accomplishments
   • Professional Background
   • Education
   • References
6. Never, EVER put the following things on your resume:
   • your salary expectations
   • personal data (age, sex, marital status, etc.)
   • cutesy gimmicks
   • your photo
   • your reasons for leaving your previous job
7. If you’re going to submit your resume via e-mail, the best way to do it is to cut-and-paste it into the body of your message instead of including it as an attachment. Attachments are too-often filed and lost instead of printed and read. Also, a potential employer might delete your attachment rather than risk getting a virus by downloading it. (Don’t forget that your e-mailed resume must be formatted like a plain-text document. Boldface, italics, underlining, and color will be lost during the cut-and-paste process.)

The Best Spare-Time Business

In just 6 hours and 35 minutes, you can be in business earning $60 – $150 an hour writing simple resumes. That’s how long it takes to “create” what is without question the world’s easiest spare-time business.

It’s a great way for you to earn additional income while getting another freelance business off the ground … or anytime you just want a little extra cash! Learn how you can become a resume writer today!

This article appears courtesy of The Golden Thread, an e-letter from AWAI that delivers original, no-nonsense advice on how to build your freelance copywriting business. For a free subscription, visit http://www.awaionline.com/thegoldenthread

Perhaps the greatest single problem people have today is “time poverty.” Working people have too much to do and too little time for their personal lives. Most people feel overwhelmed with responsibilities and activities … and the harder they work, the further behind they feel.

This sense of being on a never-ending treadmill can cause you to fall into the reactive/responsive mode of living. Instead of clearly deciding what you want to do, you continually react to what is happening around you. Pretty soon you lose all sense of control.

Here’s my solution to the problem:

On a regular basis, I stand back and take stock of what I’m doing. I evaluate my activities in light of what is really important to me.

I recommend you try this simple exercise. It doesn’t take long … and it will help you master your time rather than becoming a slave to the constant flow of events and demands we all face daily.

I used to think time management was only a business tool, like a calculator or a cellular telephone. It was something you used so you could get more done in a shorter period of time and eventually be paid more money. Then I learned that time management is not a peripheral activity or skill. It’s the core skill upon which everything else in life depends.

In your work or business life, there are so many demands on your time from other people that very little of your time is yours to use as you choose. However, at home and in your personal life you can exert a tremendous amount of control over how you use your time. And it is in this area that I want to focus.

Personal time management begins with you. It begins with your thinking through what is really important to you in life. And it only makes sense if you organize it around specific things you want to accomplish. It’s important to set goals in three major areas of your life …

These are the reasons why you get up in the morning, why you work hard and upgrade your skills, why you worry about money and sometimes feel frustrated by the demands on your time.

What are your personal and family goals, both tangible and intangible? A tangible family goal could be a bigger house, a better car, a larger television set, a vacation, or anything else that costs money. An intangible goal would be to build a higher quality relationship with your spouse and children, to spend more time with your family going for walks or reading books. Achieving these family and personal goals are the real essence of time management, and its major purpose.

These are the “how” goals … the means by which you achieve your personal, “why” goals. How can you achieve the level of income that will enable you to fulfill your family goals? How can you develop the skills and abilities to stay ahead of the curve in your career? Business and career goals are absolutely essential, especially when balanced with family and personal goals.

Remember, you can’t achieve much more on the outside than what you have achieved on the inside. Your outer life will be a reflection of your inner life. If you wish to achieve worthwhile things in your personal and your career life, you must become a worthwhile person in your own self-development. You must build yourself if you want to build your life.

Perhaps the greatest secret of success is that you can become anything you really want to become to achieve any goal you really want to achieve. But in order to do it, you must go to work on yourself and never stop.

Once you have a list of your personal and family goals, your business and career goals, and your self-development goals, you can then organize the list by priority. You must decide on the most important things you could possibly be doing to give yourself the same amount of happiness, satisfaction, and joy in life.

There are three key questions you can ask yourself continually to keep your personal life in balance …

“What is really important to me?” Whenever you find yourself with too much to do and too little time, stop and ask yourself, “What is it that is really important for me to do in this situation?” Then, make sure that what you’re doing is the answer to that question.

“What are my highest value activities?” In your personal life, this means, “What are the things I do that give me the greatest pleasure and satisfaction? Of all the things I could be doing at any one time, what are the things I could do to add the greatest value to my life?”

“What is the most valuable use of my time right now?” Since you can only do one thing at a time, you must constantly organize your life so that you’re doing one thing, the most important thing, at every moment.

Personal time management enables you to choose what to do first, what to do second, and what not to do at all. It enables you to organize every aspect of your life so you can get the greatest joy, happiness, and satisfaction out of everything you do. ********************************************** This article appears courtesy of The Golden Thread, an e-letter from AWAI that delivers original, no-nonsense advice on how to build your freelance copywriting business. For a free subscription, visit http://www.awaionline.com/thegoldenthread

The first step to take before writing your next direct-mail piece or article – even before you do any research or interviews – is to set your goals and objectives.

You usually have multiple objectives when you’re writing. They could be to increase sales, generate revenue, educate consumers on a new product, increase name recognition, strengthen a relationship with vendors, or any combination of these. So clearly defining your copy’s purpose before you start can make the difference between average copy and phenomenal copy.

Most copywriters don’t take the time to write down their goals and objectives. If you don’t take the time to write them down before beginning, you can easily focus too much effort on one objective (which may not be the most important one), or unconsciously bounce back and forth between objectives, thereby confusing your reader.

Here’s an example of objectives a hospital may have for a direct mailing: The marketing director wants to increase sales. The COO wants to increase name recognition and build relationships with vendors and suppliers. Stockholders want to generate revenue immediately. And physicians wish to educate consumers on what they do and what they have to offer.

Here are specific steps to take to make sure you clearly identify your objectives – and follow through on meeting them:

1. Ask everyone involved with your copy – editor, client, whoever – “What do you hope to gain from this piece?” Write down their answers. Even if you think you know what they’re going to say, DON’T ASSUME ANYTHING.
2. If you’re writing an article and not a sales piece, what are the requirements of the publication? What do its readers want?
3. Analyze the way the identified objectives interrelate. Is it possible to meet everyone’s objectives and still create an effective, polished sales piece? If not, what do you drop or modify?

A good acronym to adopt in setting any objective is SMART: Specific, Measurable, Action-Oriented, Realistic, and Time-Bound. Let’s take a look at how this can be applied to writing copy.

SPECIFIC: A specific objective covers at least one of the five W’s: who, what, where, when, and why.

Who does this target? What do I want them to learn? Where is it going to be published? When will it run? Why am I doing this? A general objective for a DM piece is to increase sales. A specific goal is to increase sales by getting 50 new leads per month.

MEASURABLE: Measurable objectives allow you to be sure they’ve been met.

You can easily measure the specific objective of getting 50 new leads, for example. It’s more difficult to measure an objective like educating your target audience about a new product … but still possible. You may need to use follow-up phone calls or other evaluation methods to see if the objective was met. ACTION-ORIENTED: If your objective is to get 50 new leads a month, what action will you take to meet this objective? What will you do to ensure that you meet the marketing director’s needs with your copy? Who will you interview to make sure you cover all your bases? Where will you do your research?

REALISTIC: Setting realistic objectives means creating objectives you’re willing AND able to work on. If you don’t have enough time or the necessary resources to complete the project, your objective isn’t realistic and you need to revise it.

TIME-BOUND: Set a timeframe to finish the project and to accomplish major steps along the way. For instance, set dates to complete your research, to write the lead, to complete your first draft, to edit and rewrite, and to submit.

Setting objectives before you begin writing is crucial. Whether you’re a seasoned writer or just starting, knowing who you’re writing for and what they need to get from the copy is your key to success.

[Ed. Note: Kelly Robbins is a healthcare copywriter and marketing coach/consultant. She publishes The Healthcare Marketing Connection, a free e-zine on healthcare marketing tips. You can reach her at Kelly@KellyRobbinsLLC.com]

This article appears courtesy of The Golden Thread, an e-letter from AWAI that delivers original, no-nonsense advice on how to build your freelance copywriting business. For a free subscription, visit http://www.awaionline.com/thegoldenthread