A Look Back at 2019
It has been exactly a year since I’ve updated this blog, which seems like a lousy way to run a business as a personal finance freelance writer.
The purpose of this blog, simply, is to give updates on the type of work I’m doing. It’s also a way to inform potential clients what kinds of writing and editing services I can offer them.
I spent most of last year writing for three clients: A blog post twice a month for a mortgage website, blog posts as a ghost writer for a marketing firm that then sold them to real estate agents, and a newsletter aimed at baby boomers for a marking company. Two of those clients stopped publishing, and the company that I was ghost writing for decided to move its writing to its in-house staff.
What does all of this mean for me so far in 2019? I no longer have regular clients and I’m looking for new ones.
This has happened a few times to me during almost 12 years as a freelance writer. It goes with the business. But rarely do all of my regular clients fall away at the same time.
To add to the pain, two of them, the mortgage site and the boomer newsletter client, have refused to pay me for the last month of work I did. I’m still trying to resolve this, and will write about this more in the future, most likely at personal finance website I own.
What does this mean for potential clients? Mainly that I’ve spent the past year honing my craft in three areas:
Blog writing with original sourcing
For years I wrote for MortgageLoan about how to get a home loan, using my skills as a reporter to interview sources for stories each month. I last wrote for the site in July 2019, though they updated the site in October to make it look like I wrote a recent story for them. I didn’t. They just put a new date on an old story.
Newsletters
For the last three months of 2019, I wrote a daily newsletter for a marketing firm that was trying to help advertisers get their product in front of baby boomers. I compiled information about recent news topics with my personal voice to give boomers a quick look at things that affected them. I covered about four issues per day.
Ghost blogging
I’m not a fan of doing ghost blogging, mainly because it doesn’t allow me to have a byline and a link to get people to this site so they can find me and hire me for more work.
But it pays the bills, and a marketing company hired me a few years ago to write short blog posts that real estate agents could use on their websites to make it look like they had written a blog. The best part was I was writing about personal finance, a topic I specialize in, as a way to help potential homebuyers learn how to afford to buy a home.
It was a great job and one I’ll miss, mainly because it allowed me to write about a topic I’m passionate about.
And that’s my ultimate goal as a freelance writer — to write about things I enjoy that can help people live better lives. If I can help your business spread your joy to customers, contact me.