Payment for stories and articles varies considerable between magazines.

You can expect to receive £25 to £50 from a weekly mag for a short story or article.

Some magazines simply give you free gifts or free subscriptions. Do not discount these. You are getting your ‘name’ out there as a writer. Some magazines who offer only free gifts are well-respected and a story or article published there can be listed as a very relevant and authorative source on your ‘Writer’s Portfolio.’

The rate for a well-written story or article on a popular monthly magazine (and some weeklies) is usually around £100 for a 1,000-2,000 words story or article (and the limit will be the same word count, so there is no point in writing more in hope of receiving a bigger cheque - the article will be too long and will be rejected).

Popular magazines (including some weeklies) which publish ‘It Happened To Me’ stories, offer up to £250 for a story with pictures, but be careful with these - you need to get your ‘facts’ right (even if they are fictitious…).

It will be much more difficult to get a story or article published in the highest paying popular magazines, especially if you are a new freelance writer. Some, like ‘Cosmo’ will expect to see proof of your publications first. The ‘quality’ of their magazine depends on using well-known and respected freelance writers alongside their editorial staff. So try these when you are more established in the writing field.

The highest paying popular magazine which does consider new writers is Playboy. Playboy Magazine (US) publishes a wide range of stories and articles. These do not have to be adult in nature. In fact, a good thriller is often more likely to be accepted for publication. Remember, this is a predominantly male audience, so have this demographic in mind when you write. Playboy will pay up to several hundred dollars for a well-crafted story.

However, before you all start writing for Playboy, remember this is one of the hardest places to get your story or article published. Everyone wants to write for Playboy! They pay top rates, but in return they expect top stories and they have plenty to choose from…

Never reject the idea of writing stories and articles for low-paying weekly magazines. The story or article will take less time to write and is much more likely to be published. The editors of weeklies need constant written content and the turnaround (acceptance or rejection) is usually much quicker.

Ok, that should answer the question: How Much Money Can I Make Writing For Popular Magazines?

You have now submitted your story or article and you have a rough idea how much you are going to earn (or how much authority you can achieve) if your written work is accepted.

In my next post, I will tell you how to organise your written content and submitted stories and articles. It may be a drag, but every successful freelance writer must organise their work. I will show you how I manage this with minimum effort.

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How Much Money Can I Make Writing Stories And Articles For Popular Magazines?

Today, I will tell you how to submit your written work as stories and articles to popular magazines. This will not be a ‘writers course’. You can find articles on plot, structure, characterisation, etc,. all over the internet and in many books (and a few articles here in the pages of Writing-Resource). We can talk about actually writing stories at a later date, if you wish. But in the meantime, let’s get started submitting your written work.

The Freelance Writer For Popular Magazines Needs The Following:

• Loads of good quality paper to print out your stories. Not the ‘top quality’ (It can be too thick), but very close.

• A good printer. If your article is hard to read because the print is faint, why should an editor bother?

• You may also want to make yourself a letterhead to look more ‘professional’, but this isn’t strictly necessary (and you would need one for every different ‘persona’).

• Good Quality A4 envelopes, lots of them. You will probably be posting your story more than once (but see the warning below). You will also want to insert a Return Stamped Addressed Envelope with each story. You may not get your story back this way, but it will prompt the editor to reply to you with an acceptance note, re-write advice, or a rejection slip.

• Postage Stamps. However, unless you are sure of the weight of your story or article (or if you are posting your copy abroad), you will need to go to the post office and get it weighed and the correct postage applied. Editors will not be happy about paying extra top receive a freelance article which is not covered by postage.

• Address Labels: the label on the SAE will be to you, so you can make quite a few of these to set you off, but it looks more professional if you also use a printed label with the Magazine’s address, rather than handwriting the envelope you send to them.

• A Spreadsheet or some other form of record keeping log to record your progress. I’ll write more about this more in a later post.

• A Filing System. Again explained in a later post.

What type of story or article should I write?

This depends on the demographic of the magazine - the audience they are writing for. You can check out more about this on my previous post about Writing For Magazines

How To Format Your Story Or Article

• The usual format will be double spacing. Margins should be 3cms at top and bottom and around 3.17cm on the right and left hand sides.

• Each page should be numbered (usually at the bottom).

• Each Page should contain a Top Note with: The Story or Article Title on the top left (aligned left) and your name (or pen name) on the top right (aligned right) with the date the story was completed below this.

• The First page or Front Page

The Body of The Front Page should contain:

1. Your name and address in single spacing. Two single spaces below this type your contact telephone number with your email address one single space below. All of this should be typed ‘letter style’ on the right hand side and aligned right.
2. The Title of your story or article in bold. This should be placed around one-third of the way down the page (or two-thirds from the bottom) and centered.
3. You may wish to write a very short description of the story or article a double space below the title, but keep it very short and to the point.
4. A double space below the title (or below the short description) you can type ‘A Story By’ or ‘An Article By’ and then a single space below this type your name, also in bold (still centered).
5. About 2 double spaces below this and left-aligned, you can type your publishing rights.
6. If you are a British writer you type: Rights granted: FBSR (which means ‘First British Serial Rights’). This gives the purchaser of your story or article the right to publish your writing one time only and you retain the copyright. If they wish to publish the same piece of written work somewhere else (on the internet for example) they should pay you again for this privelidge. Not all publishers abide by this, but it is an important point to establish your copyright terms up front.
7. Two double spaces down from this, type in your Word Count (ie. ‘Approx 1,000 words’).

The Second Page:
(from now on, everything is in double spacing).

1. Begin your story or article half way down the page. This allows room for editorial comments to be written at the top.

All other pages begin at the top.

Short Stories:

• Paragraphs: The usual accepted style is indented paragraphs, therefore it is always better to write your story or article this way.

• Changes of Scene should have two returns on the double spacing to identify that this is a change in the storyline.

Articles:

• Articles can be written in the same format as stories, if this suits the magazine’s style. However, some magazines prefer articles with headings, and bullet points or numbers. In the latter two cases, do not indent your paragraphs; all of your writing shouild be aligned left.

At The End Of The Story Or Article:

• Hit ‘enter’ twice (in double spacing) and then type a line (underscore) in the center of the page.

Your story or article is ready for submission… except for:

The Cover Letter:

1. All short stories and articles should have a cover letter. This will be set out in single spacing. It should contain the address of the publication (with the editor’s name if possible) aligned on the top left. The top right of the letter should contain your name, address and (2 spaces below) your telephone number and email address, all aligned right.
2. The remainder of the Cover Letter will be aligned left.
3. Hit ‘return’ about 4 times and type the date.
4. Hit ‘return’ a few times more and type your salution (usually addressing the editor by name).
5. Hit ‘return’ twice more and type your short letter of introduction. Double return between paragraphs (but not too many).
6. Double return and type ‘Yours sincerely’ (no capital S on sincerely).
7. Hit return 5 or 6 times more and type your name.
8. Hit return twice more and type ‘Encl:’

Here is an example of a covering letter to an editor:
(And apologies - I cannot get the spacing to work in wordpress - you will have to add this yourself to your letter)

Dear Mary Bloggs

Please find enclosed a short story of approximately 1,000 words entitled ‘THE ULTIMATE BETRAYAL’, which I hope you will find suitable for The Weekly Gossip’s ‘5-minute fiction’ slot.

I have enclosed a S.A.E. for your convenience and look forward to hearing from you.

Yours sincerely

Enid Jones

Encl:

That’s your cover letter done. All you have to do is sign it. You are ready to post your first piece of written content to a popular magazine.

Important Notes:

• Never be tempted to submit your written copy to more than one magazine at a time. You are giving the editor First British Serial Rights (or something similar, according to country). This means the magazine can publish this particular article or story before it is published anywhere else. You can only offer these terms to one editor at a time.

  When you begin writing for popular magazines this will take patience. You have just submitted a great story and you want to see it published ASAP. You want to make some money from your writing too. Nevertheless, you have to wait.

  While you are waiting for the editor’s decision, write more stories and articles and send them off to other magazines, or even the same magazine if their editorial policy allows this (many do not). The Successful Freelance Writer is constantly writing new stories and articles anyway. So be a little patient and you could be rewarded.

• Do not staple your pages together. Use a paper clip. Many editors like to read one page at a time amd not have to struggle with a bulky article. Some editors hand out separate pages to their editorial staff. Staples make this difficult.

• Do not be tempted to place your well-crafted written work in a plastic folder. I know it is tempting to do this (you fear some of the pages will go missing if you don’t), but have you seen an editor’s office lately? There will be piles of submitted stories and articles for them to read through. Plastic folders are slippery and could cause the pile to topple over. Not a great idea to keep on an editor’s good side.

So now you have completed your first submission of writing work for popular magazines. Doesn’t that feel great? All you have to do now is sit back and wait for all that money to roll in for your extremely well-written story or article.

I will write about how much money you can earn from writing articles and stories for popular magazines next time

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Freelance Writing For Popular Magazines - Stories and Articles

I am not strictly ‘a morning person’. I prefer to do my Freelance Writing work late into the night and get up as late as possible. Nevertheless, the late night part of my writing schedule is about organisation and structure of my written content, plus marketing. Because, despite having a heavy head in the mornings, that is the time I get my best writing ideas.

Are you like me: someone who wakes up with a head full of written content? I know that sounds strange (and it could well be down to working on my freelance writing projects just before I go to bed), but this works for me. I hastily grab pen and paper and sit with my morning coffee, jotting down everything which comes into my head. As I write notes, more ideas appear. They may be disorganised, but I can deal with that later, when I am fully awake.

Much later in the day, when I am more alert, I organise my notes according to projects and type up the articles for clients, or for blogs and email posts.

In the morning I am a creative person and later in the day I become an organised one, because I work according to my body’s rythms.

My partner, on the other hand, is not a ‘morning person’ in any sense of the word. His brain does not appear to function much at all until he has had at least two cups of coffee and some cigarettes. As to writing, he can hardly produce a single word (written or spoken) until he is fully awake. But come the evening, he is busy typing up all his freelance writing work and his ideas flow at the same time as he organises them.

Two different patterns of writing, but they both work, because we know what works best for us.

As a freelance writer, it is very important to know when you are at your most creative and when you are at your most organised. This way you will type your best written copy and be much more productive. There is no point in working against your body’s natural rythm. It will burn you out and your writing will not be as effective as it could be.

So think about this, the next time you type that copy. Have you found your best time to write?

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Finding Your Best Time To Write

The posts at Writing-Resource have been delayed again. This time because of a sad loss which affected several of us here. I apologise for this, especially after my recent post asking Can You Deliver As A Freelance Writer? It seems that I could not. But there are some times when you simply cannot produce written copy, even when you are a professional Freelance Writer, so please accept those apologies.

What I have been doing in preparation for writing again, is browsing the web trying to generate that ‘writing spark’ and I found it in an unexpected place - a guest post on ProBlogger, about Writing and Publishing Ebooks.

In fact, as the author, Mary Jaksch, says, this is The Comprehensive Paint-by-numbers Guide to Writing and Publishing Your Ebook and she should know as she is a successful author, with a wonderful ebook called From Tragedy To Triumph which I highly recommend.

But “Ebooks?” I hear you say. “I want to be a copywriter and produce great written content for websites, magazines and commercial advertisers. I would like to write a book and have it published in hardback, but ebooks? Will I really make a living as a freelance writer this way?”

Yes you can. And the successful freelance writer will produce written copy for all sources, if they want to make a living from their writing skills.

If, like me, you write a great deal, you can easily make an ebook, either to promote your freelance writing site, or to give as a ‘freebie’ to your email subscribers, or of course to sell.

People who enjoy writing always have a pen in hand and some paper ready. They write about anything which takes their fancy. They usually have no choice. If something produces that ‘writer’s spark’, then they have to put pen to paper, or fingers to keyboard. Often writers will have reams of hastily scribbled notes and they wonder if they will ever be able to use them.

So why not use all that unique written copy to publish some ebooks?

As Mary Jaksch says, once you get going, it isn’t that difficult.

I have a host of those hastily scribbled notes and files, on a wide range of subjects, including the internet, health, self-help, travel and, of course, writing, and I am going to put them to good use. All I have to do is organise that unique written copy in a coherent fashion and produce some well-written ebooks on those subjects.

With the correct marketing, those ebooks should make me a nice extra income and once the books are written, published and marketed, this is latent income - no extra work involved!

Thanks Mary, for that excellent post. You have shown me another outlet for my written content. All freelance writers have to be open to using their writing skills in every area possible, if they really want to make a living from writing, and I intend to keep on doing that. So just wait, those ebooks will be published any day now.

You may even see one of them advertised on Writing-Resource. Who knows?

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Successful Freelance Writing Tips|Make Extra Money With Ebooks.

Since I wrote about my first foray into freelance writing, I have been thinking more about ways we can make a living as a writer other than via the internet. In fact, if these methods are applied with as much time and effort as we give our online writing work, they can become quite lucrative in their own right.

It is simply that the promotional methods the freelance writer uses in this case will sometimes be different.

I wrote about sending ‘letters to the editor’ and writing short ‘true stories’ and articles for magazines, and although I said that this pursuit did not earn me a fantastic wage, it did earn me some money for my writing and I am convinced that, had I developed this form of writing for profit over time, it would have become a winning formula. This is based upon freelance writing for magazines in the UK, but I would suspect that these tips are relevant to writing for popular magazines in many different countries. So I’ll explain the methods I used in more detail below.

Freelance Writing for Popular Magazines

Writing for magazines requires as much research as any other form of freelance writing. However, in this case you will be buying (or borrowing) a whole bunch of magazines to study from cover to cover, including the ’small print’. You need to study the following:

The magazine’s demographic:

• Who is the magazine aimed at? Male, female, teen, middle aged, elderly, career women, stay-at-home mums, confused teenager…

What message is the magazine conveying?

• Conservative, liberal, a particular religion, a radical point of view, an ‘upbeat’ message, an angry message, irony, humour…

The style of writing used in the magazine

• Is the language formal or chatty, gossipy or informative? Is English (or American) grammar used, or are more popular and current language styles and multi-cultural terms preferred?

What is the magazine’s stated purpose and policy?

• You will often find this on the inside page with an intro from the editor, or in the small print at the bottom of the page.

Advertisements in the magazines

• The freelance writer must study magazine advertisements very carefully. These are the life blood of the magazine, so your story or article must be in line with the message the advertisements are conveying, or it will not stand a chance.

Readers Letters

• What type of letters make it into print? Are they mainly ‘how to tips’, or little stories in their own right? Are they allowed to challenge the editor’s comments, or are they all in agreement with the message conveyed by the magazine?

Authors Bio

• Many magazines require an author’s bio from all submitting freelance writers. This will often be accompanied by a small passport-size photograph.

• Here you have to decide whether you want your face emblazoned across the country if your story is published, or whether you would prefer to use a picture you have obtained somewhere else (a helpful relative may allow you to use theirs, but ask first). You have to make sure that the image you use is relative to the persona you are using, so you may not wish to use your own photograph in any case.

• If you use an image from the internet, do make sure you have obtained it from a stock photo source which allows this. And it should go without saying that you do not want to use a well-known person in your ‘identity’ image, if you want to get your story published without entailing any legal comebacks later.

Finding out where to submit your article

• For readers letters, the address and details of what is required should be on the same page as the published letters.

• Details on submissions of stories and articles for publication will usually be found in the small print on the first page of the magazine, or inside the back cover, along with credits to published authors and contact details for the magazine. Check these carefully. Sometimes the submission address will be the same as the magazine’s address, but sometimes it will not, especially if the magazine belongs to a publishing chain. If you submit your article to the wrong address you cannot expect busy editorial staff to resubmit it for you. It will most likely get thrown in the nearest bin instead.

Submitting Readers Letters

• There is an ‘art’ to this, depending upon the magazine in question. The tone of your letter should be friendly, but polite. It must be proof read in the same way as a full size story or article. You will usually be addressing your comments to ‘the editor’ or a the person whose name appears at the top of the letters page. Please get this right.

• If your letter refers to a recent discussion or an article in the magazine, so much the better, but remember that magazines are edited weeks in advance of publication, so you need to be quick off the mark if you want this type of letter to be considered.

• If your letter is on a more general theme you have more scope regarding time. However, you will want to keep in mind that a letter about buying swimwear will not be considered relevant for publication in November (unless you are writing for a travel magazine) and a recipe for Christmas Pudding is unlikely to be published in May (it may be held back for publication later, but this is not usually the case).

• The outline of your readers letter will be in regular letter format (although many magazines prefer double spacing over single - if you are not sure, use double), with the address to the magazine on the left, your address, telephone number and email address on the right, and then continue on the left hand side with the date, the salutation to the editor or person you are addressing, perhaps a very brief note about the letter you are submitting (this depends on the magazine). Follow this with a line of text in bold which describes the contents of your letter.

• You should then type your ‘Readers Letter’, sign it beneath, and then type your full name (or pen name).

• Some magazines do not acknowledge readers letters, but many do, so you will want to enclose a stamped, self-addressed envelope with the letter. This will allow you to keep a note of where the letter has been sent. I will explain why in part 2.

Submission by Email:

• As more and more companies embrace the internet, many magazines over the last few years have started to accept readers letters (and sometimes stories and articles too) by email in addition to ’snail mail’. However, If you choose email submissions, you must remember that your email has even more likelihood of disappearing for ever in someone’s email box than the paper version. In my experience, you are also much less likely to have your letter acknowledged.

• Nevertheless, if you have written a letter which is in answer to a recently published article, then email would be your best bet to make the next edition of the magazine and not get sidelined as ‘old news’.

Ok, this is a very long post and I have yet to cover writing stories and articles for submission to popular magazines, so I’ll save that for part 2, along with more details about how to organise your freelance writing work, to make life easier and your work more profitable.

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Freelance Writing For Popular Magazines

But in order to get those clients, you need to promote yourself first. I wrote yesterday about how I began my freelance writing career in a small way, by submitting letters, stories and articles to the editors of popular magazines. The stories and articles always contained an ‘introduction’ about me and a short resume of my writing work.

This still is one way of promoting yourself as a freelance writer. But another way many writers advertise is via a blog or website.

Websites are essentially static. The majority of the freelance writers’ websites I have seen contain a small number of pages. The main page usually contains a picture of the writer plus a short personal resume. There are links to other pages such as contact details and a page outlining the author’s ‘freelance writing credentials’: books and articles published; writer’s associations they belong to; and any other contributions they are making in the writing field.

But the majority of successful freelance writers who promote their business via the internet also have a blog, either linked to from their website, or providing the main focus of their online work.

Blogs are dynamic. SEO ‘experts’ tell us that the search engines love dynamic, constantly updated written content, which is why most successful freelance writers use blogs as a source of promotion.

I would argue that this isn’t always the case. A well optimized website could in some ways do the same job. However, this would take a great deal of time and dedication to link building, including producing copious original articles to post to article directories, rather than to the writer’s own site. In light of this, many freelance writers chose to take what they think is the easy route to promotion and post those articles to a blog.

Of course, the best form of internet promotion for a freelance writer, or anyone else wanting to make a living on the internet, would be to use all of these methods, along with many other ways of encouraging traffic, organic and socially led.

The interesting part about being a freelance writer who promotes their business on the internet, is that, unlike many other sites and blogs which require search engine traffic as their main source of income, a freelance writer’s blog can benefit from social bookmarking as well as being high in the serps. Because being a freelance writer on the internet is all about building a reputation for yourself and your writing skills.

Which is all very well if you can write day after day in an engaging manner. Although at least, unlike writing for a client, on your personal freelance writing blog you have a much wider range of subjects you can write about.

The problem here is, because you are promoting yourself as a freelance writer, you have to communicate well and demonstrate your ability to produce good, effective written copy at all times.

The average blog writer can get away with poor grammar, typos and other mistakes, which can present barriers to communication, but do not necessarily prevent their readers enjoying their posts. However, someone wishing to demonstrate their skills as a freelance writer can hardly post a blog entry filled with errors. They will have to check and double check their every word.

There is also the quandry that a freelance writer wishing to gain clients, will have to take care how they present themselves and what they write about.

For example, a writer wishing to be employed to create content for a soda company, can hardly write a post arguing that soda is bad for your health. Likewise, a writer with a strong political stance could lose future copywriting work if a prospective client felt the views expressed were liable, by association, to effect sales of their product.

So setting up your freelance writing blog to demonstrate your marvelous ability to produce good, unique written content isn’t quite the easy prospect it may appear to be at first.

And if, perhaps, you are thinking that this is a cry from the heart, about posting entries to Writing-Resource and having to watch my every word… Well, it isn’t really. I have other blogs where I write about my feelings and even my rants.

But on a freelance writing blog I try to watch my typos and my political stance.

Sad, but true…

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Can Freelance Writers Blog Effectively?

I had always enjoyed writing, and had a couple of published articles under my belt, but these were for academic journals. They offered status and (eventually) better career prospects, but no actual cash. It was perfectly clear that a career as a freelance writer would not be found there.

So I joined a writer’s group and sought their help. Everyone there was making a living of sorts from writing, but it was not a glamorous life. They were writing letters and short stories to popular magazines and usually earning the princely sum of £25 a time.

Never mind. I had to start somewhere…

I bought every popular mag I could find and scoured the letters pages and the short stories and articles. Most of the content was dire. It ranged from ‘tips on descaling your kettle the easy way’ to ‘having fun as an over 60′, or from ‘interesting women’s health issues’ to ‘the latest celebrity hairdos’.

Did I really want to produce written content like this?

Did I have a lot of choice…?

So off I went. I wrote pages and pages of ‘letters to the editor’, ‘gripping short stories’, and everything I could think of to write on ‘women’s health’. I asked ’searching questions’ about ‘celebrity marriages’, ‘how to bring up a toddler’ and even threw in the odd political rant.

And within a few weeks I had made my first sale.

It was a truly inspiring piece; accepted by a Christian weekly (no ‘unsuitable words’ allowed). I told a ‘happy true story’ about an elderly couple who had overcome adversity. Totally fictitious of course. And the piece must have been well liked, because the editor sent me a cheque for £50.

I was a professional freelance writer… of sorts.

That cheque was my motivation. Ever more fictitious truths spilled onto my keyboard to be posted the same day, all with a covering letter telling the editor something about me. My persona ranged from my own (young mum) to elderly gran, from Christian to Athiest with Buddhist or Pagan thrown in for the ‘New Age’ magazines.

Each week in the mail new cheques would arrive. £10 for a ‘readers letter’; £25 to £100 for a story, or a voucher for the latest yoga or hypnosis cd from the new age mags. It wasn’t a great wage. In fact in my capacity as a ‘professional freelance writer’ I earned much less than I earned teaching, but at least the money went some way towards paying the bills.

Then the university offered me my old job back. The accountants had had a change of heart. And although the higher salary would be nice and I loved teaching, I was also rather sad.

I would no longer have time to communicate with the nice lady readers of the Christian weekly on their ‘writer’s thoughts’ page, or share a discussion about the latest soaps on the TV mags.

It was time to get serious again…

But that short burst of freelance writing stood me in good stead. I now live in a ‘foreign country’, where teaching my chosen subjects isn’t a viable prospect.

So now I’m back producing written content, for everything from slimming, health and travel, to adult content for sex sites. Freelance writing pays a little better nowadays and today I write mainly for the internet. But writing this post has jogged my memory about those UK mags and their readers.

I wonder if they would be interested in more ‘fictional true stories’?

Hmmm, who can I be this time…?

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Becoming a freelance writer… of sorts

But is this really what being a Freelance Writer is all about?

Just because you are a good writer does not mean you can deliver what your clients want. And if you cannot deliver, you will never make a go of writing as a profession.

And if you cannot deliver, you may be the best writer in the world, but you will never be a huge success.

Working and succeeding as a freelance writer takes time, resources, a strong belief in yourself, absolute committment, and the ability to write good copy on things you really could not care less about…

Let’s say, for a moment, that you have set up your freelance writing business correctly. You have developed a credible and trustworthy brand name, you have generated a ‘presence’ within the industry and on the internet, but you are still in the early stages of your writing business. At this point in time you will offer your writing skills to anyone who will pay you a reasonable rate.

How would you cope when commissioned to write about something you personally find intensely boring?

Would you be able to deliver?

If you are just starting out as a freelance writer, you may well answer: “Yes, of course I could.” You may think that as long as you produce a standard writing format (problem, empathy, example, build up, climax of problem, recommendation and example for solution) you can use this to write about anything.

A successful freelance writer is, indeed, able to do this and do it well. However, they would be lieing to you if they said that writing like this is never boring. It can be boring as hell!

And if you suppose you will be able to refuse to write about things which do not interest you and still be a freelance writing success, you will be wrong.

Only the writers at the very top of the freelance tree are able to pick and choose their projects and they have made the ‘top spots’ through years of hard slog and dedication… and years of writing copy which has not thrilled them one little bit.

But a new freelance writer will not have this advantage and will soon discover that much of their work involves writing about things which simply cannot garner their interest.

Writing, day after day, about things which you are not particularly interested in can be tedious at best and sometimes even exhausting. However, to prove him or herself to be a trustworthy, professional writer, anyone intent on making a living as a freelance writer has to cope with this and deliver that written content, on time and full of inspiring words.

Could you deliver under these circumstances?

Because, if you cannot produce good, written copy even when the going gets tough or down right boring, you will never be a successful freelance writer.

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You can write, but can you deliver?

We come from a variety of Freelance Writing backgrounds and felt we could bring something a little different to the internet. We envisaged a writing community, with a forum, a blog with our thoughts and details about updates, a group of freelance writers website and blog owners could call on to produce good, unique content on a wide variety of topics, and a course of private ‘Writing Skills’ tutorials.

The latter suggestion was made by a talented writer and qualified literature and English grammar teacher who also came up with the original idea of Writing-Resource in the first place.

However, owing to circumstances completely beyond her control, this member of the group is, at present, unable to take part in Writing-Resource. Although a couple of us are also qualified teachers, literature and grammar are not among our main teaching areas. We write, often very well, but we are not qualified to teach writing skills.

Some business owners would decide that this does not matter and carry on with the private tutorials plan anyway, but we are not like that. We want to provide real value, not rip off our clients.

Therefore we have decided to change the focus of Writing-Resource, until such time as our tutorial teacher can return. From this point on and until further notice, all tutorials found at Writing-Resource will be free for personal use. They will be copyright and we do not want them used, without our express permission, anywhere else, but they will be free for you to read or copy for your own personal use and to gain important writing skills.

Within the next few days, we will be posting all the present writing skills tutorials in pages here at Writing-Resource.

Writing-Resource will still be offering unique content for those who wish to purchase this. You may be interested to know that we offer content on a variety of subjects most others do not (including engineering, electronics and adult) as well as written content suitable for many different niches.

The address to contact us initially about your Written Content Requirements is posted on our Contact Page.

We will also continue to run our sister website Tell Your Story, where anyone is welcome to contribute a story (fact or fiction), an opinion, or anything else you would like to see online but are wondering where to post it. We do of course vet all written content before it is posted to Tell Your Story. We welcome a variety of writing, including tech and adult, but we will refuse any written content that is in any way against the law, so please be sensible when you email your stories to us. The email address is on our Contact Page.

All posts at Tell Your Story are copyright the original authors. You are very welcome to post your stories anywhere you choose as well as posting them there. They are your property and you are entirely responsible for them.

Writing-Resource also envisages setting up a Writers Forum in the near future (once we have sorted this site out). The forum will be open to all (as long as you register), and we will hope that this provides a place to share writing and publishing tips and lively debate of many different types.

However, most of all, we want to get the Writing-Resource Blog up and running, with regular updates, not only of new features at Writing-Resource, but also to post our opinions on a number of issues and to provide more help on how best to write and earn a living from Freelance Writing online. So that is our first priority at this time.

That’s it in a (rather large) nutshell. Over the next few days, Writing-Resource will be undergoing quite a few changes (maybe even a change of look). We will be very busy sorting out all the material we have ready to post, but making sure that it is easily accessible for everyone to find will take time and organisation.

So, if anyone popped in here a few weeks ago and is now wondering what happened to Writing-Resource, I hope this goes some way to explaining the lack of posting and new content over this time.

But please bear with us as we make all these important changes to Writing-Resource, because we think the wait will be well worth your while. We intend Writing-Resource to be a unique and valuable part of the Freelance Writing world.

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Writing-Resource - Changes Taking Place

Nevertheless, work still continues here and we are on schedule. I have just finished writing out our TOS (Terms of Service), which was a mammoth task in itself.

After a short break to recoup some energy, I will continue with the tutorials for our writing skills membership site.

It’s a hectic life providing good written content and writing skills tutorials, but the team here at Writing-Resource know we have excellent skills and experience to share and that makes it all worthwhile.

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Writing-Resource Update