Your Article Resource

Bo Sanchez of Kerygma: What You can Learn from Him about Writing

First, an introduction. For those of you who do not know Bo Sanchez, he is a Filipino preacher, founder of several organizations, and an author of several books on religion and business. If you want to know more about him, I suggest you check out Bo Sanchez’ online bio first.

That out of the way, let’s talk about what you can learn about writing from Bo Sanchez.

I first recognized Bo as a preacher because my mother’s a subscriber of Kerygma magazine, which he founded. But as I went on reading his pieces on the magazine and getting forwarded emails of his blog posts, I couldn’t help but notice how well he wrote. I became a fan boy of sorts soon enough.

And because I believe in becoming a better writer by reading works of good writers, let me show you what you can learn from Bo Sanchez about writing:
Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Copywriting, Writing Tips | 2 Comments »

Why Outline Writing is Important

While I was still in University, most of my professors told me and my classmates to write an outline before actually writing our piece, especially for opinion pieces and features.

Of course, the lazy ass that I was refused to follow their advice. After all, it’s much easier to just sit down, write and print. Especially if your deadline’s almost up!

The results? Let’s just say that it’s the opposite of spectacular. Good thing my professors weren’t evil enough to flunk me. And good thing there’s a time to revise your work.

But if you really want to save time on your writing, if you want to make it tight and the structure clear right from the first draft, then I would strongly recommend you to write an outline first.

Why?

Let me count the ways.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Writing Tips | 1 Comment »

Looking for Freelance Jobs

So how do you look for work if you don’t have clients yet? There are several ways to do it. For one, spread the word about what you do to your friends, former employers and colleagues. Tell them that you are already in the freelancing business and that you’re ready to help them if they need your expertise. Email that to them or whatever available avenue you have. Just don’t spam them, meaning, don’t bombard them with the same message in the same avenue like email, mobile phones, etc.

Another thing you should try is cold contacting. This is where you contact businesses and offer them your services. But more than just sending emails to businesses at random, you must take a careful look at each business that you want to contact. Find if there’s something in their business where they can use your area of expertise.
Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Freelancing 101 | No Comments »

Marketing Your Freelancing Business

Marketing deals with everything about selling your services. Whether you’re a freelance writer or graphic artist, you need to market your services in order to get clients.

So how do you sell your services? You can simply say that you are a writer or a graphic artist, but not a lot of people would care about that. After all, there are already a lot of other freelance writers and graphic artists out there. So you should tell them why they should choose you.
Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Freelancing 101 | 1 Comment »

Running a Freelancing Business

Wait, freelancing is a business? Yes, freelancing is pretty much a business because you have to market it and you have to deal with the pricing of your services and other stuff that other businesses do.

But to keep things simple, I’ll be focusing on the marketing, finding work, and pricing your services in this series.

Here’s an outline that discusses this topic:

• Marketing Your Freelancing Business
• Looking for Freelance Jobs
• Pricing Your Work

Posted in Freelancing 101 | 1 Comment »

How do You become a Freelancer?

There are no hard and fast rules to becoming a freelancer. Every freelancer had his/her own way of making the jump into the world of freelancing.

But there are some considerations all freelancers had to make before becoming what they are now. A number of the items on the list below may apply to you:

1. Do you have enough money to survive the first several months of your freelancing career?

This is one important consideration you have to make if you’re going to decide to become a full-time freelancer from scratch. Because you see, your first few months as a freelancer are the hardest because this is the point where you’re struggling to get clients (lucky for you if you already have potential clients before you make the jump) and establish your freelancing career.

So make sure you have enough money to help you get through these lean months. Financial experts advise you to have at least 6 months’ worth of your monthly expenses in the bank just to be safe.

2. Do you have the sufficient skills to be a freelancer in your chosen field?

If you want to be a freelancer in your chosen field, you must have at least a working idea of how to do your job. For example, if you want to be a freelance writer, you must at least know the basic concepts of grammar, spelling, etc. Or if you’re going to be a freelance graphic designer, you must know how to work with graphics software, be familiar with concepts and terms used in the business, etc.

3. Do you have the tools of the trade?

It’s also important that you have even the most basic tools that you need to become a freelancer. These basic tools include a phone, computer, decent internet connection, and the software that you need to get your job done. These tools will help you do your job faster and more efficiently. Imagine hand drawing a study of a logo and faxing it to your client who’s based in another country. See what I mean?

I know these things involve a significant amount of money and time. But I hope these things won’t discourage you in pursuing your quest to become a freelancer.

Remember, freelancers don’t have the steady pay checks that office employees have. They may also have to work longer hours than people with day jobs. But if you persist and succeed in this business, I’m pretty sure you won’t miss your old day job.

If you’re unsure about becoming a full-time freelancer right now, I suggest you do it on the side first and see if that’s something you like to do full-time.

If you want to learn more about becoming a freelancer let’s talk about, “Running a Freelancing Business”.

Posted in Freelancing 101 | 1 Comment »

What’s a Freelancer?

Now let’s go to the meat of the series. Let’s begin by defining what a freelancer is. And I’ll do that by checking Google and telling you the first definition I’ll come across with. Here it is. According to wordnetweb.princeton.edu, a freelancer is,

“A writer or artist who sells services to different employers without a long-term contract with any of them.”

While that pretty much paints a basic picture of what freelancers are, let me give you a three-dimensional image of a freelancer by showing you some of the basic qualities they have:
Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Freelancing 101 | 1 Comment »

Freelancing 101

The idea for this series came from friends who were interested in becoming freelancers but didn’t know how. And since I’m probably the only freelancer friend they know, I’m the one they ask for tips on how to go about the freelancing business.

So I wrote this give them a quick guide on freelancing – and so that they’d stop bugging me with the same questions from now on.

I also wrote this for other Pinoy* freelancers (or those thinking of becoming freelancers and who aren’t necessarily Pinoy) who might not have the resources to buy books or read blogs about freelancing, or those who might not have the time to explore what freelancing is all about.

Let’s get started. Here’s what we’re going to talk about in this series:

• What is a Freelancer?
• How do You become a Freelancer?

* – slang term referring to Filipinos

Posted in Freelancing 101 | No Comments »

How to Become What You Want to Be

So you want to be a millionaire?

A rock star adored by the crowd perhaps?

How about an authority in the niche you’re trying to dominate?

It’s easy to become these things in your head, but everything gets messed up when you try to make your dreams happen. Why?
Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Freelancing Tips, Marketing | No Comments »

MySandbox.com Review

There’s a new website in town called Sandbox at mysandbox.com. It’s rare for a local website to be advertised on TV and the radio so I decided to check out if it’s really worth the buzz. But before that, let me tell you what the site is about.

According to their site:

“Sandbox is a portal that brings all content and services you love on the web all in one place.

“In Sandbox, you can create your own profile and update your status for your friends to see. You can upload and view photos and videos, write a blog or join a forum discussion. You can also go shopping on line. You can send and receive email and download music, games and various other content.”

So basically, it tries to bring together everything that you do on the web into one place. Which begs the question: do you really need a new website to do everything that you’re already doing on the web?
Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Advertising, Marketing | 2 Comments »