The Article Writer

When I started to write articles as a freelancer more than one year ago, I originally stuck to topics I was most familiar with, e.g. business, aviation, and personal finance. All three genres have long been part of my areas of expertise, but I knew that I could excel as a freelancer if I expanded my writings to cover other subject matters.

Last August I was approached by a representative of an auto parts company to write articles for them. I felt reasonably comfortable that I could cover some of their subjects and agreed to the work. Over the months, requests for a variety of auto topics by this company representative came in and I found myself challenged to read up on everything and anything I could about brake boosters, electrical components, exhaust systems, you name it. What I hadn’t understood previously I quickly learned and wrote about later. Talk about being stretched to cover a new field of writing! Fortunately, I have always enjoyed cars so writing about them hasn’t been a huge challenge.

Beyond automotive articles I have had plenty of requests to write about real estate issues, i.e. mortgages, refinancing, home staging, flipping homes, interest rates, you name it. This particular area has produced my most customers. A rough guess has me writing for as many as 10 different real estate industry clients since the beginning of this year. Although I am not a real estate expert I can tell you that having a hand in buying and selling my own homes has given me much insight into the industry. Even before I started to write real estate articles for clients, I wrote some personal articles that were submitted to the article directories including, 4 Dangers in Flipping Real Estate, an article that has been recopied and posted elsewhere several hundred times.

So, what’s my point? Well it is this: you can expand your client base by writing outside of your area of expertise a/k/a your comfort zone. Granted, some of my earlier automotive articles were simply so-so, but I have gotten better at it over the past year. Today, I have additional clients interested in my work, therefore my business is doing well because of my willingness to expand my niches.

Have you taken on a new niche lately? If not, consider expanding your writing genres to include other areas which could lead you to more work and additional sources of income.

Attention WordPress users: there is yet another update for you to download. Version 2.04 has been released and it contains over 50 fixes, several of which are security related.

Now I know why I use Blogger for at least some of my blogs: updating WordPress comes frequently and updates take time to complete.

Ouch!

Well, my two week experiment with working on the road is now over. I am now back in my home office and I must say that there truly is “no place like home” when it comes to work as well as to where you rest your head at night.

I was able to get plenty of work done, but not without problems. Several mornings I went to the local Panera Bread shop and worked, however the store had covered up all of its electrical receptacles therefore it was strictly battery power that kept my laptop going. This method worked out fine until the last day when all of a sudden my computer suddenly went into hibernation and shut down. I hurriedly packed up all of work, got in the car, and headed off to my family’s home where we were staying. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to retrieve the article and I had to start over again. Fortunately, I was able to successfully finish the completion of that article that day and submit it to the client who accepted it as is and well before the Tuesday morning deadline.

The local library had internet access as did several hotels where we were staying. The library’s system was slow making downloads and the retrieving of email difficult. Nevertheless, I was able to finish up all of my projects, successfully bid on others, and I start this morning off very busy and ready to take on the world.