The Struggling Writer

No, I haven't quit Examiner

2009-06-23T10:16:00.003-07:00

Despite my lack of updates both here and at Examiner, I'm still (in my warped mind at least) working for them.

Memorial Day week both my personal and professional commitments disappeared. I had no pressing obligations so it ended up turning into a vacation week. I got back to everything else, but I've found it hard to get back to Examiner.

My income is still a laughable $0.40 per hour. Examiner didn't seem to care that I wasn't posting because I never got spanked for being a slacker. So I have neither the carrot nor the stick to motivate me. Plus every time I think about posting, I think of that awful publishing tool (have I ranted sufficiently about how much I loathe that insert-your-favorite-expletive publishing tool?) and I find other things to do.

The work is still personally important to me and I really do want to get back. In fact I'm miffed at myself for missing my Father's Day post since I feel the needs of fathers of disabled kids are distinctly different that those of mothers. I'll have to do a late Father's Day post.

I'm going to try getting back this week, but I'm going to be working 12-hour days all week between actually-paying writing and caring for my niece so it's going to be hard to find time for pro bono work. But, as I say every week, next week will be different.

Are your charitable donations going where you think they are going?

2009-05-03T11:43:00.001-07:00

Today's Arizona Republic reports that a network of charities getting donations from the Combined Federal Campaign has been using that money to pay for vacations in France while supplies they claimed had been sent to hospitals sat in warehouses. The worst part is their actions are entirely legal.

Read more...

Not posting to Examiner = bad

2009-05-02T14:16:00.004-07:00

With my badly organized schedule I went three days without posting and my hits dropped to 6-7 per day. Regular posts are important.

An interesting posting experiment would be to post an article but not network it and see how my hits rise. Then share it the next day without posting a new article and see if I get a bump. Although I'm sure the whole Digg, etc. thing is important it would be nice to quantify how important. I might do that sometime.

Today's article took flocking forever to get up, mostly because I was fighting with how to embed the Google map. My biggest problem was that damn information bubble which goes outside of the window since the map is small but I couldn't figure out how to get it to default to off. In case anyone is interested, the answer is to look for the parameter "iwloc=<something>" and change it to read "iwloc=near". The answer used to be to remove the iwloc parameter entirely but that's apparently no longer true, one reason it took me so long to figure it out. The problem with the whole "internet is forever" thing is there is a lot of outdated information out there, most of it without dates so you can't tell it's old junk.

One more rant about how much I hate the Examiner publishing tool. I'm now at the point where I just write the whole thing including HTML offline then cut and paste into the source window, which at least keeps me from wanting to throw my computer out the window every time I post an article. However the stupid tool likes to mess with my code even if I put it directly in the source window. It removes white space, closes tags, inserts non-breakable spaces and more. I really wish there was an option to just paste HTML and have it posted without the stupid software second guessing me. 99% of my unhappiness with Examiner comes from the awful publishing tool.

Finally a couple of useful tidbits. I found an AP Style Tipsheet which is useful because Examiner uses AP style. I'm sure there's a more comprehensive one, but that's a nice quick collection. Plus I found one way to locate pictures is to search on the Examiner site itself. For example search for "dog" then when the results come up click the AP Photos tab. These are Associated Press photos that Examiner has already paid for and examiners can use, with proper attribution of course.

Telephone Pioneers of America Park, a park built for people with disabilities

2009-05-02T14:14:00.000-07:00

Parents of disabled children in Phoenix have an exceptional recreational resource and yet few seem to know about it. Telephone Pioneers of America Park is a facility designed from the ground up for full accessibility. It was the first barrier-free park in the country.

Read more...

Please, please, please stop using Snap!

2009-05-02T10:13:00.002-07:00

There is a special place in hell for webmasters who use popups and an even worse place for those who use Flash popups since they exist specifically to bypass popup blocker. One of the new blogging fads is to use Snap to provide flash popup previews of links. In my book this is one of the most annoying things ever invented for the web since it's just popups masquerading as a supposedly useful tool.

The previews are useless since they are too small to read. You still have to click on the link so the popups just waste time and bandwidth. Blogs become minefields where you have to carefully navigate your mouse between links so you don't actually set off an explosion of preview windows.

Thanks to PSA: How to Turn Off Snap Pop-Up I discovered getting rid of them is easy. When you get one of the windows look in the top right corner to see a gear symbol. Click on the gear and then on "Disable" from the dropdown menu. Another dialog will appear asking if you want to disable for all sites or just the current site. Click all sites, then Save. You'll get a message that tells you to reload the current page to turn off Snap and you are done.

The instructions above might be a little off since I already turned off Snap so I can't look at the dialogs to be sure of all the steps. I don't see a way to turn it back on, but why would I want to?

Death to popups!

Examiner stats are weird

2009-04-29T13:07:00.004-07:00

When I posted my state budget article, I saw a big bump in traffic just ten minutes after doing all my Digg, Twitter, etc. stuff. When I posted my swine flu article yesterday I expected the same but I got virtually nothing. Hours later I still had only about a dozen hits. I assumed that there were so many people talking about this swine flu nonsense that my voice was lost in the crowd.

Then today I pulled up my stats for yesterday to see the damage, and I see 126 hits compared to 38 for Phoenix and 49 for the channel. I've noticed discrepancies like that before. Examiner stats for today seem to be wonky but they clear up at the end of the day. The lesson is don't pay much attention to the current day's stats.

Now that I've done a couple of blatant Google-bait articles, I'd like my next one or two to be more useful informational resources. However, I need to get my real work done first. I find I have to tear myself away from Examiner to do the stuff that actually pays my mortgage. It's hard to get interested in writing about business accounting practices or taking telephonic legal depositions, but I need to do that before doing the "fun" writing.

Swine flu hysteria strikes again

2009-04-28T12:23:00.002-07:00

It's been my experience that parents of special needs children have a different attitude than other parents toward incidents like this swine flu scare. Either they get philosophical about it, too busy with actual problems to worry about media-invented ones, or they panic unreasonably. I'm hoping Phoenix parents are in the first group rather than giving in to the frenzy.

Read more...

[Yes this is a blatant Google bait article. It's the frenzy of the moment and at least marginally relevant to my topic.]

I beat the averages

2009-04-28T08:34:00.004-07:00

My article on the state budget cuts attracted more traffic than usual, just as I expected it to. Yesterday I got 79 hits while the average Phoenix examiner got 37 and the average Family & Parenting got 75. I was a bit reluctant to post it since I don't like controversy and there was enough in there to annoy both liberals and conservatives (the voice of reason usually angers extremists) but no obnoxious comments yet.

If I were brave I'd go bait the conservative and liberal examiners hoping to drive their traffic over to my site, but nah. I really hate arguing politics.

My channel manager has sent a number of emails on how to generate hits, like one about good keywords for Earth Day. Yesterday she let us know about an article done by the Seattle Xbox Examiner on a website that educates parents on game ratings, suggesting we F&P examiners do stories on it and get some good crosslinks.

I'm still hitting my stride so I'm not doing as much of the marketing as I should be, which is the story of my professional life. That's the lesson for today, kids: be a better marketer than Uncle Andy. I plan to post another entry on this blog later today about sharing articles using sites like Digg.

ETA Oh and I should mention the surge in traffic brought me to my second dollar with about 2.5 hours of additional work. I'm getting there!

Arizona state budget cuts: Help disabled kids or help abused kids?

2009-04-27T10:49:00.000-07:00

Parents of special needs kids in Phoenix and throughout Arizona are protesting attempts by the state government to cut programs providing therapy and other services to their families. The common cry is care for children with disabilities is a necessity not a luxury. While true, other programs are necessary as well.

Read more...

How to protect kids against Phoenix summers

2009-04-26T15:49:00.000-07:00

With the first 100-degree day of the year less than a week behind us, this is a good time to review the dangers our kids face from the hot Phoenix weather. Heat is insidious and the dangers it poses can creep up on us. The risk is magnified for many special needs kids.

Read more...

My first dollar with Examiner

2009-04-26T07:42:00.003-07:00

I've made my first dollar with Examiner. Whoopee. I've spent nearly ten hours to make that dollar.

Up until now when I've seen examiners report monthly statistics I assumed they were saying these were the average page views for each day of the month. Nope, they are the views for the whole month. As an example, for March 2009 the average Phoenix examiner got 1,118 views and the average Family and Parenting examiner across all markets got 1,301 views. In other words the average person makes $11-$13 dollars per month working for Examiner.com. Combine this with Examiner's claim that the typical person spends 3-6 hours per week or about 20 hours per month writing and promoting their work and that means you can earn about $0.50/hour doing this.

To be fair, the average examiner is frankly pretty lousy. Most people don't post enough or make any effort to market their work. In the Absolute Write Examiner thread one examiner says "...I should pull down over $200 this month. Granted, I worked my butt off for it, but at least it was writing fun stuff." It is possible to make a reasonable monthly income but I'm getting increasingly concerned over the time investment.

So far, except for my first posting, each day I've posted I've met or beat the Phoenix average and come close to the F&P average. I certainly think beating the minimum is the least Examiner writers should aspire to. I have got to find ways to streamline my publishing process though.

I've decided I'm not going to waste time looking for graphics. I'll post photos if they are relevant to the article but not just for the heck of it. I've never liked the attitude that web surfers are illiterate boobs and won't read books without pictures. Whether or not it's true, I don't believe the extra time poring over Creative Commons photos to find a decent one results in enough traffic to matter.

I'm also going to step back from keywords. Yes keywords matter, but I'm not going to obsess over it. I'll tweak on the text a bit, but some articles just don't lend themselves to keywords. For example I'm planning to write an article on how kids with cognitive or communication delays are at greater risk in Phoenix summers because they can't ask for a drink of water. That's a "push" article, information I push on my readers, not information someone would actually search for.

My last article was posted much more quickly than my first ones because I bypassed the crappy, crappy publishing tool and just wrote the HTML code myself and pasted it into the source box. I'm old enough to remember the rise of WYSIWYG word processors and how great they were compared to the old "switch to the preview window" method, but the whole point is the WYSIWYG tool has to be better than typing the code by hand. I don't see that with the FCKeditor Examiner uses.

The other thing I've decided is that each week I will come up with four evergreen ideas so I get at least four postings. I will also keep an eye on local and national news to look for tie-ins I can use for three more articles, ideally posting every day. However I have two non-writing days each week that I care for my niece and I need to write those pieces in advance so I can just post, share and walk away in a few minutes. One of those days is today and I may or may not get my piece up. I'm still getting my schedule down.

Still, I remind myself that I enjoy writing this and I feel I'm doing a service. As I've said many times, this is my charity work so it doesn't have to be massively lucrative.

PS I can't decide whether to use title case or down case on my blog titles. I have traditionally, and inconsistently, used title case but I think the standard, certainly the one Examiner uses, is down case. Sometimes it looks silly to me and other times not. Life as a writer is so complicated.

Shortening URLs from Examiner.com

2009-04-25T11:56:00.004-07:00

I imagine a conversation going like this.

Parent: I have a child with disabilities.

Me: What a coincidence. I have an online column about raising special needs children.

Parent: Great! What's the address?

Me: Examiner dot com slash x dash eight seven nine three dash phoenix dash...oh, you've walked away.

Those long Examiner URLs are fine in an email, forum post or other medium where people just have to click, but are useless for business cards or conversation. Luckily sites like TinyURL and bit.ly exist to convert long URLs to short ones.

Using them is easy. Go one of these short URL sites and paste the long URL you want to shorten. It will give a shorter URL that anyone can use to reach your site. These shorter addresses don't expire or get used by anyone else and the service is free. Users are taken directly to the destination without going through ads or anything else.

I use bit.ly for my Twitter posts since their URLs are a few characters shorter than TinyURL. With Twitter, every character counts. However I don't like using them for other purposes because people would find them confusing. "Where's the .com?" would be the reaction I'd expect.

So I use TinyURL for my main Examiner page. You can specify your own alias with TinyURL (bit.ly does this too) to create an address easy to remember. I may be http://www.examiner.com/x-8793-Phoenix-Special-Needs-Kids-Examiner but I'm also http://tinyurl.com/phxspecial - which one do you think is easier to remember?

AMC Theaters settles discrimination lawsuit in Arizona; Harkins continues to fight

2009-04-25T11:55:00.000-07:00

In order to settle a lawsuit filed by Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard, AMC MultiCinema Inc. has agreed to increase the number of theaters fitted with digital captioning and descriptive video services. This makes their theaters more accessible to hearing and vision impaired customers.

Read more...

How to advocate for children with disabilities

2009-04-23T18:09:00.001-07:00

You are an advocate for your child whether you know it or not. You don't have to be standing outside the Arizona Capitol holding a picket sign to stand up for your child's rights. Every time you take him somewhere you are saying he has the right to be at this shopping center, this park, this school or this airport just like every other kid. Although the law requires reasonable accommodation for disabled children, sometimes we have to ask for that accommodation. The most effective technique is "Be firm but don't be a jerk".

Actually, I don't use the word "jerk" but this is a family site.

Read more...

Are You Using Business Finance Software?

2009-04-22T14:13:00.002-07:00

One of the clients I write for distributes financial software for small business. A common theme I use is that many small businesses use cobbled together bookkeeping. They combine consumer financial applications, spreadsheets, scribbled notes and shoebox filing systems because they feel their business is too small to need a complicated financial package. I respond that a business of any size needs professional bookkeeping software.

Don't you hate it when you are too dumb to follow your own advice?

Yes, I have a system that combines Quicken, two Excel sheets and my failing memory to keep track of my massive *cough* business empire. It has worked well until today.

My primary client was reconciling her 2007 taxes and asked how much she had paid me that year. I looked it up on my project spreadsheet and got one number and then on my tax spreadsheet and got another number. Uh oh. After some investigation I realized I over reported my 2007 income and overpaid my taxes by nine whole dollars!

If I had underpaid I'd file an amended return but I'm not going to bother over $9. Like so many things it comes down to hourly rate. The time it would take me to file the amended return would eat up the $9 in no time. I can't imagine the IRS will send me to jail for giving them too much money. There is a lesson here though. A real financial package would have prevented that mistake by correlating invoices with income. So one more thing to add to my to do list is "Buy financial software".

Is Examiner Worth It?

2009-04-22T09:24:00.004-07:00

Aspiring writers out there maybe be wondering if they should follow my example and write for Examiner or similar ad revenue sharing sites. To misquote Reverend Lovejoy from The Simpsons, "Short answer no with an if, long answer yes with a but."

Short answer: No. If you are serious about being a writer, low paying sites like Examiner are not effective ways to make money or build your clips. Buy a copy of The Renegade Writer and skip the entry-level assignments.

Long answer: Yes, but know what your real goals are and be prepared to do all the work involved, not just the writing.

There is more to life than money and there is more you can get from an assignment than a paycheck. I'm excited by this opportunity and I am happy to have the chance to provide advice to parents of special needs kids from Phoenix or anywhere else. However I'm fully aware this is going to be a junk income stream which will pay less than half my minimum writing fees. I can't devote much of my time to it.

If you write for Examiner, maximize your hourly rate. I looked at the Phoenix Special Needs Kids category and immediately a hundred ideas popped into my head. I can write article after article with no research, banging out each in matter of minutes. This means I can easily keep up with 4 articles per week and ideally I will do one a day.

Don't ignore marketing! This means networking with people face to face or through forums. You don't have to be obnoxious, but be prepared to tell people about what you can offer. I meet with therapists and doctors every week and can spread the word through them to Phoenix parents. I plan to attend meetings and classes where I can find other parents. I allow people to follow me through Twitter and email alerts. I share my articles through sites like StumbleUpon and Digg.

Learn SEO and by that I mean the whole thing, not just keywords. Learn about cross links, about how to write for the web, about how to build interest in your site. This is not just about writing a few words and waiting for the money to roll in.

Think of other ways to generate income. Become an Amazon affiliate and provide links for products you mention. Write articles on flat fee sites like Demand Studios designed specifically to drive traffic to your Examiner site. Revenue sharing jobs require you to squeeze every penny out of them to be worth your time.

Overall, have a plan. Don't just join for the sake of joining. You don't have to be a full-time writer to take your writing income seriously.

If you do decide you are ready to to join Examiner, tell them http://www.examiner.com/x-8793-Phoenix-Special-Needs-Kids-Examiner sent you.

First Examiner Article Up

2009-04-21T11:39:00.002-07:00

I posted my first piece on Finding a pediatrician for children with disabilities. I just want to say I HATE Examiner's authoring tool. It's so "for dummies" that it's harder for those of us who know HTML. Ugh! I think once I get it figured out and make some of my own templates I'll be fine but it took me forever to get my first article up.

I'll detail each of these later but I'll point out that I did keyword research to find the right title, put in a creative commons photo because people love pictures and added a Twitter link (yes, you too can follow me on Twitter). I know I should go in and Digg, Reddit and so on my article but I'm spent now.

Live On Examiner

2009-04-21T09:02:00.002-07:00

I am now the Phoenix Special Needs Kids Examiner. Although I haven't posted my first article yet (I'll do so later today) I've already made $0.02! Easy Street, here I come. I suppose I should point out that I'm being sarcastic since I've seen some people post those kinds of statements as proof they are "prufesshunal riturs".

For those who want to know the timeline, I applied on March 18. I got an email on April 16 asking me to confirm my interest over the following two days. This email mentioned a few interesting facts:

Must write 4+ articles/week
Average examiner spends 3-6 hours per week writing and promoting
I retain full rights to my work (unlike most sites that take all rights)
Pay structure varies on traffic and ad revenues but runs about a penny per page view. Other examiners report the same.
Examiners must submit to a criminal background check. It seems like an odd requirement but I have had a more thorough one done as a respite care provider so it's nothing new.

I replied and got another email on April 17 asking for my headshot, bio and PayPal information to be sent within the next three days.

On April 20 I got my login information, my URL, and was introduced to my channel manager. I am to post my first article within three days then wait for it to be approved by the channel manager. Future articles can be posted as fast as I can write them. The email ended with a list of style notes and tips for building traffic. They also need me to complete a W-9 form.

I'll post my first article in a bit and let you know how long it takes to get approved.

New Gig: Phoenix Special Needs Kids Examiner

2009-04-16T15:11:00.002-07:00

I just got accepted to Examiner.com as the Phoenix Special Needs Kids Examiner. It's one of those "we pay you a part of the revenue sites". I've been reading about it and my hope is that I can swing $10-$15/hour writing for them.

"Wait a minute," I hear you say. "Didn't you quit a $10/hour writing assignment? What's going on, you big hypocrite???"

To which I reply, "Shut up!"

But seriously, folks, I thought a lot about the low pay. This is WELL below my usual writing fees and it's exactly the kind of job that I don't think writers should take as a rule. However, sometimes there's more to life than money.

I've talked occasionally that a big part of the reason I'm a freelance writer is it allows me to help care for my niece who has many neurological disabilities. All this time I've looked for an outlet that I can write about special needs kids but I have to balance that against the fact this is a job and I need to make money. I can't afford the time to write just for the heck of it.

This is a subject I know well and am passionate about. I can bang out postings with a minimum of research, thus improving my hourly rate. I don't expect this to be a lucrative assignment, but it's something that's important to me. After a few months if I'm not making some minimum rate I'm going to have to seriously consider walking away from it, but I'm hoping I can make this successful enough that I can justify my time.

The problem with LTK was that I didn't care about the subject. I had little control over content or keywords. The time spent formatting and cross linking and other nonsense was absurd. I'm excited about Examiner, not for the money but for the opportunity to help people in Phoenix and elsewhere deal with the issues surrounding raising a child with disabilities. My only regret is that I didn't get this assignment a couple of months ago because there have been some rather disturbing events surrounding state benefits to families with disabled kids but that's not going to end soon.

I plan to write about my Examiner experience a lot here, talking about techniques I'm using to generate traffic, find article subjects and so on. My plan is to openly discuss my earnings but I need to double check that with Examiner first. Some places forbid their people from discussing earnings, usually because they don't want people to realize just how little their authors make. In this case I think an earnings discussion is necessary because if you do take an assignment like this, you have to make it as lucrative as possible.

Cross Fertilization Makes Writing Stronger

2009-03-22T09:29:00.002-07:00

One common thing new writers wonder about is where we get our ideas. Like a lot of things, the more you write the better you get at it. In particular as you write about multiple subjects, you find ways to link subjects to come up with new ideas and interesting perspectives on otherwise dull subjects.

Months ago I wrote a number of articles on window blinds and in the process learned a lot about how blinds help control the temperature in a room. Now I'm writing about portable air conditioners and am struggling to find good ideas. I can use what I know about window blinds to talk about supplementing air conditioners with good quality blinds. If I still had that blinds client, I could then write an article for them on how to supplement blinds with portable air conditioners.

I've written dozens of articles for a company that provides training on Microsoft software. I have a client now who trains on HAZWOPER certification. Many of my Microsoft articles can be repurposed for this new client since the basic concept of training is the same no matter what the subject. Less research = faster articles = more money.

Although the blank page is never fun, as you expand your background you will have a broader knowledge base to draw on when creating new work.

Possible Resurrection

2009-01-11T13:18:00.004-07:00

After months of letting this blog languish, I'm cautiously optimistic that I might start posting again. I'm certainly not promising anything but I'm hoping to integrate updates into my schedule.

My downfall really started with my How's This For Motivation? post. Losing a significant pillar of future financing didn't motivate me; it swept my legs out from under me. It's only very recently that I've started to feel any kind of incentive again.

This has been complicated, as always, by my niece. As I've mentioned before, a big chunk of my life is dedicated to helping raise my niece, Maria, who has many severe neurological disabilities. She's had some issues and her other caregivers have had some issues so it's all been a mess. Then again I remind myself that Maria's mom has a "real" job and still managed to show up at work now and then through all of this so that's really not much of an excuse.

I'm grateful to the writer I'm subcontracting to. She has steadily provided work for me every week for a couple of years now and having work appear in my in box certainly has helped me keep writing. It's not enough to live on by any means, but it's been a big help financially and emotionally.

However as I look back on the last year I haven't grown at all. I did the same amount of work December 2008 as I did December 2007, and that's not a good thing. Part of the problem is that I build my work schedule around the workload I receive rather than the workload I should be doing. That leads to stagnation which is death for the self-employed.

So I'm trying to get back to sticking to a schedule. Yes I know I'm not suppose to say I'm "trying" I'm supposed to say I am. However, although I respect the psychological power of those kinds of semantic distinctions, I'm far too much of a smart ass to take them seriously and I mock them mercilessly. But I digress.

That's why I'm posting today. Posting here is work time. As I remind myself, the reason I found this subcontract opportunity was through this blog and it's one of many marketing tools I should be using more. I've done some articles this morning and I should pop out 1-2 more to meet my goal but I just don't feel like it, so instead if I spend some time doing other work-related things I meet my goal, expand my marketing efforts and break out of my rut.

I Can't Write in the Cracks

2008-08-08T10:05:00.004-07:00

It's really too bad I haven't been able to keep up with blogging. Many things have happened lately that would be good object lessons to fellow struggling writers. Rather than try to remember them right now, I'll just jot down a thought I've been chewing on.

Several months ago a WAHM writer posted an essay entitled something like "Writing In the Cracks". I haven't been able to find it again or I would link to it.

Her point was that being a successful writer while taking care of your family meant seizing opportunities, an hour here and there, to write. Getting up early and working before the rest of the house is up, getting some things done while Junior is napping, and so on. You aren't ever going to have "writing days" so you need to aggressively find slices of time.

Her essay was well received by the WAHM community as a lot of writers agreed. Often it's the difference between succeeding and failing as a writer.

As a WAHU (Work At Home Uncle) who takes care of my special needs niece two or more days per week, I can sympathize. Even as we speak, my niece is napping and I should take this opportunity to get something done. However after many months of trying, I've come to the conclusion that it just doesn't work for me.

I'm a momentum writer. It takes me a while to get going but then I can keep plugging away for hours. When I have a clear day I get a lot done, but I just can't write in erratic spurts.

I also find it hard to write outside of my comfort zone. A while back I moved my desk out of my office because of noise from the neighbors but I couldn't get anything done working from the living room. So I moved back and learned to just filter out the noise.

Of course the problem is that I don't often have clear days. I'm still not sure how I can balance this need with my current erratic life. I do the best I can to pile errands on one day so I can have dedicated writing days. However often one distraction can destroy the whole day.

I need to hold myself to more rigid schedules to give myself the luxury of writing days. Each week I struggle, barely meeting deadlines, and each week I swear that next week I'll do better.

Today I got up at 4 am to bang out two quick articles to meet my Friday morning deadline. Next week I'll do better :)

How's This for Motivation?

2008-06-01T13:23:00.000-07:00

My business plan all along has involved slow growth. I wanted to give myself time to get used to the unique needs of working from home as well as adjusting a fluid work schedule to an insane personal schedule. I had a schedule of steadily increasing goals to get me to profitability and, though I'm a couple of months behind where I expected to be due to the economy, I'm still happy with my progress.

This plan hinged on my second mortgage line of credit supplying income until my business was profitable. Unfortunately, the company holding my line of credit is struggling and they have recently closed about 90% of their lines - including mine.

This makes things a little...awkward. It means I don't actually have enough money to pay my bills any more.

So, between bouts of blind panic and paralyzing depression, I've been figuring out what to do. I called my mortgage broker and found he doesn't work at the same company any more! I tracked him down and he's going to see if we can squeeze any more money out of this house. Unfortunately, my house has lost a lot of value so I'm not sure we can get much if anything.

The next step will be to try for a business loan, which requires writing a business plan. I bought a book on business plans a couple of months ago and after reading it I decided not to bother. I have a plan, it's just not a formal document. It's a spreadsheet, scribbled notes, an erratic writer's journal, and lots of stuff in my head. But it's a plan with goals and financial analyses and contingencies and all that. Now that I need one I think I can put one together in a day or two.

In the spirit of lemons->lemonade, once I've written mine then I have experience writing business plans and that's another income stream I can add.

Of course I'm a bit worried about a business loan. I've written articles recently on how all loan products are tighter because of the mortgage disaster. Currently I'm carrying a fair amount of debt, which as I understand it will both hurt and help. High debt is a concern to a lender but it also shows personal commitment to my business, which they like. It shows I'm sharing the risk and am serious about success.

If that falls through, then I start looking for other sources. I might be able to convince my credit card to bump me a couple of thousand and then I start hitting up friends and family, always a fun endeavor. I've been reading articles on entrepreneur.com on how to approach personal relations for business loans.

If all else fails, I can plunder my retirement. I hate to do it, but I should have enough there to carry me to profitability. The problem is it uses up all my resources so if I have a couple of bad months, the whole thing comes crashing down.

This incident has caused me to increase my rate of growth a bit. I don't want to set it too high because impossible goals don't inspire hard work - they inspire surrender. I'm also a bit more serious about actually getting my marketing plan going, although I'm wasting so much time hunting for money it is interfering with my hunt for clients.

Dependability vs. Skill

2008-04-07T15:09:00.001-07:00

I am constantly trying to turn my experiences as a consumer into lessons as a business owner.

Early in my writing career I decided to hire someone to take care of my yard, freeing me to focus on work. Phoenix has four million people and approximately three million of them offer yard services. How was I going to narrow the field?

The first thing I decided is that I wouldn't consider someone who didn't have a web site. Huh? I hear you saying. A web site just for someone to mow your lawn? Yup. Any idiot with hedge clippers and a truck offers yard work and too many of them are appallingly unprofessional about it. It is a field that attracts far too many people who play at working without treating it like a business, something that is also true of freelance writing. Web sites are cheap and easy and there is just no excuse for any business not to have one. Even a one-page website with an email address under your own domain creates a professional image.

Despite this, I certainly still had my share of unreliable people. Phone messages to dozens of providers went unreturned. One guy showed up for the initial cleanup and did really nice work but was spotty on the follow-up work until he just stopped coming.

The one I finally used was very business-like. His wife stayed home to answer the phone and do the books. I got invoices every month rather than the pay-as-you-go most of them do. He showed up promptly every two weeks like clockwork.

It's a pity his work was lousy.

I stuck with him for about a year. I cut him loose recently because I really can't afford the luxury at this point. I went back and forth over that decision because it's smart business to outsource things like that. I would have kept him if the work had been better but I couldn't justify the cost for him to do work no better than I can do myself.

His professional demeanor got him the contract and certainly put him ahead of the competition. However without the skill to back it up, the monthly cost wore thin.

I'll still need someone to come back about once a year for cleanup. So who am I going to call: the unreliable one who does a great job or the dependable guy who does mediocre work? I'm going to go for dependability and I think most customers feel the same way. I'd rather have second-rate work done than great work not done.

Anxiety

2008-04-03T14:07:00.001-07:00

I've had a recurring nightmare lately. I'm trying to make my way through an airport. Sometimes I'm going home, sometimes I'm trying to get to a plane, sometimes I'm in the parking lot but usually I'm in the terminal. And I'm lost. Everything keeps twisting and I end up in odd places. Stairs lead up to the 2nd and 4th floors, but not the 3rd where I need to go. There are lots of people around who all know where they are going. The more I wander, the more annoyed I get, occasionally getting so angry I wake myself up.

OK, I'm no dream expert but this one doesn't seem hard to interpret. Fear of change. Or at least fear that change is getting you nowhere.

Not surprisingly, these dreams started as I changed my business plans.

As I think I mentioned before (I blog so seldom that I forget what I've said and what I've just mumbled to myself about) I'm at the point where my goals exceed my actual work. I use these unrealized goals to pay myself for non-writing work tasks such as sending queries, reading about business plans, and doing my taxes. This has forced me to make decisions about what the next step in my career is.

Until now I've been depending on a single client who gives me keyword articles to do. It's not the most fun I've ever had, but it pays a good hourly rate and is steady. She does the marketing and subcontracts to me so it's easy for me to get complacent. However I need to diversify.

My original plan had been to start offering services to non-profit organizations. I decided recently that with the economy in its current sorry state, this would be a bad time for that. Nonprofits are tightening their belts and probably not interested in hiring services.

My goal now is to send letters of introduction to a number of trade magazines. Before I do that I have a few other tasks I want to get done such as getting some clips together. I also need to rewrite my website. I've never been happy with the text there and it's not a good sign when a writer's website is badly written. I was trying too hard and I need to go back and write it in my own voice.

But as I move out of my comfort zone, I experience anxiety. I was reading a book on business plans today and my stomach was in knots. Once I put the book down, they went away. I've always been pretty transparent.

The cure for anxiety is desensitization. The more you do something, the less nervous you get. I need to keep to my goals, get some of those letters out, and get moving.

Once I do that, maybe I'll find my way through the airport.