For every article that is accepted, here is the promotion you will receive:

• All articles will be promoted on our homepage, Twitter, Facebook and other channels
• Space at the top of every article for a short author bio and a link to your website
• A full author bio page, linked from every article. This contains full bio text, a photo if you’d like, up to 3 links to your sites, and a list of any articles you’ve written on FreelancerMagazine.com. Here is an example page: http://www.freelancermagazine.com/author/jimi/

There is no limit on post length that is unacceptable, but please limit the number of links pointing to your site to 3. Links to other sites can be included, if they are relevant to the post. Keep in mind that I may edit your post for grammar, sentence structure, etc, and if you do not include an image, I will probably add one (if you do include the URL to an image, don’t worry, I will upload it to our servers so as to not use your bandwidth).

Please be original – all submitted posts must pass Copyscape, and Freelancer Magazine will not accept posts published elsewhere.

Read more about the benefits of guest blogging: Why Guest Blogging is a Powerful Way to Gain Exposure for Your Blog

cforms contact form by delicious:days

Seems like everyone is a blogger these days, publishing articles on personal or freelance business blogs, updating statuses on twitter – even commenting on previously written articles. Face it, we’re blogging. But how can we stand out in a sea of keyboard happy drones? Repent from these sins and maybe the blog Gods will forgive you.

1. Pride
You can’t do it on your own, or maybe you can; don’t get me wrong, self belief is a good thing. But when you are starting a blog, one of the fastest ways to increase traffic is to partner up with other bloggers. Link exchange, link backs, shared links, they all work; find one that’s compatible with your niche then blog happy.

2. Envy
All blogs are not created equal, there is never going to be another gossip blog like Perez Hilton’s. Many have tried, but it’s still not the same. The faster you realize that you can’t imitate other successful blogs, the sooner your blog will become successful. So go out there and do your own thing, in fact look at what everyone is doing and do the exact opposite; you’ll be surprised with the results.

3. Gluttony
You can’t have all the followers, the twitter traffic machine , spamming, following everybody with the hopes they follow you back, all these are no no’s. These aren’t genuine connections, they are really not interested in what you have to say.

4. Lust
The lust for success and money from blogging. Honestly, there is no money in blogging; you can have a successful blog but I don’t see it bringing you any riches. If there is someone out there making millions from blogging please contact me!! I know there are blogs out there bringing in more than what my condo costs in day, but they just got simply lucky. 1 out of every 10,000 blogs get lucky and the other 9,999?? Well half of them fade to obscurity, and the other half are the true bloggers; still producing great content and informing and entertaining their readers all over the world..from the bedroom to the cubicle.

5. Anger
Don’t start a blog for a sake of hate, a blog solely created to lash out at someone or a group of people will eventually die. It becomes annoying because it’s the same thing over and over again. Protesting is different.

6. Greed
Take everything a step at a time. Have you ever been to those blogs with a sidebar filled with ‘Advertise Here’. Walk before you run, get the traffic before you start putting ad space up on your site. And go easy on the google ads, you don’t want your blog looking like the classifieds.

7. Sloth
Unnecessary widgets and apps on your blog makes it look unattractive and over crowded, if you don’t want any visitors to your site leave it there or put them up.

Remember always keep it short and sweet, don’t be the drunkard at the bar that won’t stop talking.

There are a few ways that bloggers make money:

(1). The most common way for bloggers to make money is through ads. When blogging first started, Adsense and Blogads were the way to create income. But since that time loads of other ways have emerged. Some of these are Chitika’s eMinimalls, Adbrite, Adgena, AVN, and many more.

(2). Sponsorships are another way to earn money with your blog. Once a few bloggers and a few companies figured out how lucrative this could be for both sides, it was on from there. They found it was an excellent way to advertise and to sell.

(3). Another way is through affiliate programs. By signing up with affiliate programs like Amazon or Clickbank, you can advertise and sell their products on your blog for a commission. If you’re a good marketer, this can be a very lucrative way for you to go.

(4). You can sell and advertise ’services’ as well and make money. These would be things like eBooks and tele-seminars or marketing courses.

(5). You can write for other people’s blogs. Lots of people who have blogs don’t do their own writing. You can write and post for them and earn yourself some money that way. If you’re good with SEO (Search Engine Optimization), then it might pay you to look into this.

(6). Some blogs operate strictly on a ‘donation’ basis. They leave it up to their visitors to leave something if they find any value in what they read or their experience on the blog. They put on a lot of free stuff, and then depend on charity for how much they own.

(7). Then you can sell retail. Blogs have become a popular way of selling retail items. Anything from T-shirts to kitchenware can be found on a blog. A blog is just a dynamic way to advertise practically anything.

(8). Consulting is another form of revenue earning on blogs. If someone is an expert on something, then they can set up a blog and interact with people and give advice and charge a fee. Most bloggers always try to come across as an expert in their niche, so keep an eye out for the so-called ‘experts’ in any given field.

Anyway, these are just a few of the ways you can make money blogging. If you’ve never tried blogging you owe it to yourself to see if you’re any good. Who knows, after a while you may be able to quit your regular job and make a better living blogging, and have more fun as well.

I’m from Finland, a country of 5,2 million inhabitants at the northern end of Europe, right between Sweden and Russia, so when I started blogging, my decision was easy: if I wanted to reach more than a handful of people, I had to go with English. If you speak French, Spanish or Chinese, there is a bit more incentive for writing in your own language, but even then, the only way to reach the whole population of our planet is to write in English.

It’s not always easy, so that’s why today I am sharing with you the ten most useful and practical tips for writing in a foreign language that I have learnt during my blogging career.

1. Read in English

When you want to master a language, you can never read enough.

Every new book, short story or article you read teaches you new words, new ways to formulate sentences, and more natural ideas on how to use the language. They go to your subconscious and slowly start becoming more natural to you, until one day you notice that you start to think in English and know that you’re on the right track.

The easiest way to get started with reading in English rather than your own language is to pick up a non-fiction book on a familiar, interesting topic. Non-fiction tends to be easier to follow than fiction (fiction authors use tricky words to touch their readers’ feelings) and reading about a familiar topic makes it easier to guess what the author is trying to say to you when you don’t quite understand the words he’s using. Don’t use a dictionary unless you really have to – just skip the parts you don’t understand. If you make your reading feel too much like work, you’ll lose the fun in it, and the habit of reading won’t last for long.

Some great, free e-books to get you started:

1. The Medici Effect by Frans Johansson
2. Make a Name for Yourself by Scott Ginsberg
3. Why’s Poignant Guide To Ruby: This is a programming book, but also a reading experience like no other. I suggest you take a look even if you are not interested in learning to code in Ruby.

2. Listen to native speakers

Blogging is a form of public speaking, which is why one of the best tips for making your text come alive is to write as you speak.

But if you don’t speak English every day, this is a rather tricky advice to follow. So, one thing I have found useful in practicing conversational writing is to watch and listen natives speak.

The Internet comes to rescue here through podcasts and videos from speaking events. Pick your favorite speakers and listen to them deliver their message. You will learn not only about how they use the language, but also how to captivate the audience, and a bit about the topic at hand.

Check out these videos for a good start:

1. Randy Pausch on Time Management
2. Steve Jobs talks to Stanford students
3. Scott Ginsberg, “that guy with the nametag”, tells you how to be more approachable at NametagTV

3. When writing in English, think in English

This is one of the most important tips that separate a decent foreign language writer from a lousy one. The lousy writer thinks in his own language and then tries to translate his thoughts to English. But that simply doesn’t work: the idioms, grammar rules, and cultural differences make text written in this manner sound clumsy and unnatural.

Finnish is probably one of the extreme cases when it comes to grammar. In Finnish we concatenate a big part of words together (for example a railway station would be called railwaystation in Finnish) whereas English is full of small words. We have no future tense. We don’t use prepositions but suffixes… The list of examples could go on forever.

That’s why every time I set out to write in English, I push all my Finnish thoughts far to the background and don’t even look back. Then I pretend to be English speaking until the work is done and I can move back to my Finnish self.

I suggest you do the same.

4. Write

The best way to learn anything is by throwing yourself out there and practicing. With writing practice is even more important. In fact, I would give you the same advice even if you were considering writing in your native language. But of course, it’s even more important when writing in some other language.

When you are just starting out with your blogging, you should write something every day to really get your writing routine developed. After a while it’s OK to drop the pace a bit – although even then, if you want to become best at what you do, keeping up the habit of daily writing helps a lot.

Write in different styles: lists, humorous posts, serious posts, interviews, and if you have the time, even text that is completely unrelated to your blog. Just to get more practice.

5. Trust your gut

The human brain is an amazing machine.

You put in the source material by reading, listening to people talk, and speaking. Then you start writing your own blog posts and tune in the mind set of writing in English. And all of the sudden, words just start flowing from straight from your brain to the keyboard.

This can be a bit scary at first as you don’t know how you have learned the sayings and word plays you are using, and can’t be sure if they are correct or not. Uncertainty is the price you have to pay for trying to learn to use the language in a natural way. You just have to go with your gut and trust your brain when it keeps popping up words that you didn’t know you even knew.

I usually write freely on my first cycle, just trying to get the words and ideas out on paper. And then, on the second round of checking my text I drop sayings that sound too uncertain to me – or run them through a friend to see if they make sense or not. Usually they do.

6. Proofread

When you have finished writing your article and it seems nearly perfect to you, the next thing to do is to check it for typos, grammar mistakes, and just some plain weird sounding sentences.

The easiest way for checking for typos is to use a spellchecker:

1. If you have a word processor, you can use the spell checker that comes with it.
2. If you are using Firefox as your web browser, you can use the built-in spell checker support.
3. Another option for having a spellchecker in your browser is Google toolbar.
4. And finally, if you are using WordPress as your blogging platform, you can use the spellchecking feature built in to WordPress ever since version 2.1.

Checking for grammar mistakes is a lot trickier. What I do is that I usually check the grammar first in Microsoft Word or in an online tool and then go through it manually. For manually checking your grammar you can use a checklist of the most common grammar mistakes (here’s another one) or just play it by the ear, depending on how much you trust your own English language skills.

And of course, if you want to play it safe, you can always ask one of your English speaking friends to double check your article once you have done all in your own powers.

7. Have English-speaking friends who are not afraid to correct your mistakes

The best way to learn to sound like a native is to hang out with them as much as you can. By paying a close attention to how they speak, you will learn the sayings they use, the slang, and even the jokes that they throw at you. All of this is important in making your English sound more natural and conversational rather than something learned from a book.

Instant messaging, e-mailing, or even chatting with them face to face, if possible, are all good ways to learn from friends. And the best part in all of this – you can do it while having a great time getting to know new, interesting people.

When you apply tip number five, having native friends to point out your mistakes gets even more important. Even my gut goes wrong every now and then, and at times like that I rely in my friends. When they notice something weird in my posts, they let me know and guide me to the right direction.

8. Study spelling and grammar

Yeah. I admit it, this doesn’t sound like a lot of fun at all. But to achieve greatness, you have to put in some effort. And in the end, the reward of learning and becoming more confident with your writing is really worth it. Go find the books you were using on your English courses back in school, or if you can’t find them, check if there are any good course books at the local library.

If you still want to go one step further, you can enroll to a language course. Just make sure to pick one that is mostly about creative writing, because that will get you moving faster towards your goal.

But you don’t have to go that far for good results. These days you can find pretty much everything on the web – also material for studying English. Check out these links to get started:

1. Visual thesaurus: A fun way to improve your vocabulary by finding synonyms and related words. The page also contains word lists and a word of the day. For example, today I learned that Sesquipedalian is a fancy word that simply means long.
2. 40+ Tips to Improve your Grammar and Punctuation: A sesquipedalian list of tips and tricks to improve your English from the Dumb Little Man blog.
3. Dictionary.com: I use Dictionary.com mostly for checking up words that I have used when I’m not sure if they mean what I think they do. But that’s not all you can do with this brilliant web site. They have an interesting feature called reverse dictionary that looks up words when you write few words to describe their meaning, and a good list of further online resources for writers to check out.
4. The Economist Style Guide: The guide book given to all journalists who write for The Economist. Most of the advice applies really well to blogging.

With online services like these you will soon notice that learning English is indeed a fun activity that fuels your curiosity and gets you even more excited on your writing.

9. Commas and hyphenation – the tricky buggers

Commas are hard. Hyphenation nearly impossible.

The good thing here is that not even the English speaking bloggers always get these things right. But does that mean you don’t have to worry about them? No. If you want to be a great writer, you have to try to practice the hard things as well.

Let’s tackle hyphenation first: Definitive rules for how to do this right don’t even exist, so the trick I have adopted is simply to never do it. When blogging, you can always keep words in one piece and thus never make hyphenation mistakes.

Unfortunately you can’t get past commas and punctuation that easily. All you can do is to learn about using them and then always double check your text to see if your punctuation is correct.

1. Tips on Using Commas at Dumb Little Man.
2. Top 4 Guidelines for Using Commas Effectively at About.com.

10. Relax

Last comes the most important tip of all: Relax, and enjoy your writing. To be a great writer, you have to put in a lot of effort, but it’s not going to happen overnight. So, while you are practicing, don’t panic. Just write the best content you can with the skill set you have right now. Put it online on your own blog and learn more as you go.

Also, when you think about it, blogging is quite a forgiving platform: many of your readers are not from the English speaking parts of the world and won’t notice the small mistakes you make with things like prepositions or commas. Plus, people these days are busy. They don’t have time to stop and read every word you write. While that can be annoying in the sense that you can’t get their full attention, it also means that they won’t notice all of your mistakes either.

Relax, have fun, and share your thoughts with the world!

What follows are my observations on what sets these blogs apart…

The Givens

First there are the requisites for a good blog that any how-to-blog site will tell you about – that you must blog consistently, be on-topic, produce well written posts and that you need a clear focus to the blog. We will take these as givens as they are all factors in making a blog good. Certainly by themselves these are not a formula for success however, after all there are many, many blogs that do this that never make it to greatness. So clearly there are other factors that separate a good blog from a great one.

First among Equals

Rand from SEOMoz writes a very insightful article about how to choose what not to blog about. He does this by explaining that any area has space for only a given number of great blogs, a larger but still limited number of good blogs and still larger number of also-rans. When looking at the great blogs you quickly see that they each dominate one area, usually with a not quite as popular and successful #2 and #3.There is only a certain amount of mindshare available for any specific sector and this forces a blog to sit somewhere in a pyramidal structure. At the very top of the pyramid there is only space for a couple of people to sit and these are the A-list blogs.

Of course this doesn’t exactly explain what put those blogs at the top of their pyramids, but it does highlight one significant point, all things being equal those blogs have already filled those top spots and unless you can find a way to make a bit more space a new blog won’t fit up there. In that sense they are firsts in their fields. They are innovators that may not have been the absolute first blog on that topic, but are likely to have been the first really good blog on it.

Breaking News

Another characteristic of blogs that rise to the top is that they break news first. That is they tend to be sources of information you either cannot get elsewhere or would not know where to find. By providing the hottest news items the great blogs make it imperative that you subscribe or visit them first. In that sense they become indispensable.

Opinionated

Hand in hand with news is opinion – some would say the mainstay of the blogosphere. Great blogs have an opinion and aren’t afraid to share it. Moreover its an opinion that you can only get from one place. Whether its an educated opinion such as TechCrunch’s, a funny opinion such as theSuperficial’s, an innovative opinion such as 37Signals‘ or a methodical opinion such as ProBloggers‘, it is always an opinion that is highly rated.

Everyone has an opinion, but some people’s are just more worthwhile than others. Great blogs have opinions that matter.

Established since …

A great blog is like a fine wine, it takes time to reach its pinnacle. With time comes momentum and as in many areas of life success breeds further success. As great blogs hit their critical mass they acquire more readers and thus more links and standing and thus more readers and so on. An important difference here is that a great blog capitalizes effectively on its position to push itself forward.

In the Mainstream

Finally a great blog is almost always in a mainstream field – celebrity gossip, gadgets, politics, business, blogging, tech companies. Moreover they tend to reside in reasonably tech savvy fields as well. That is to say areas where a lot of people are online, know what a blog is and maybe even know what RSS is. That being said, this area is only growing and currently only a small percent of the population is online so more and more niche areas will open up into larger arenas.

So there you have it, my analysis of what sets blogs apart. Certainly its not definitive and I’d be interested to hear what other people think.

What this means for our readers:

All articles, including new ones moving forward, will be published at FreelancerMagazine.com. Over time we will be publishing back articles from NorthxEast.com on this site. No update to your RSS readers is necessary – Freelancer Magazine RSS Feed.

Not only will you continue to receive articles geared toward all freelancers, but a wider range of articles devoted to helping independent bloggers promote and manage all functions of their websites. Here is a sampling of articles you will find at the new NxE / FM:

• NxE’s Fifty Most Influential Bloggers…and…
• NxE’s Fifty Most Influential ‘Female’ Bloggers
• Good to Great: Why Some Blogs Succeed and Others Don’t
• Building a Super Blog: Part 1 and Part 2
• 19 Blog Designs that Are a Sight for Sore Eyes
• 10 Ways to Focus on the Reader and Build Long-Term Traffic

We appreciate your past and continued readership, and hope to provide some great resources for you moving forward! Feel free to comment on the new site, or add suggestions for the types of content you’d like to see.

Cheers,
John Cottone
NorthxEast.com, FreelancerMagazine.com

Going back to the title of the post, the simple answer is yes, because there are a whole plethora of benefitting blogging could bring in terms of marketing to a freelancer’s portfolio.

I’m going to go into detail on what freelancers could potentially do with a blog if they choose to start one as an attachment to their portfolio.

Social Drizzle
If you like, you could take the path of total non-related drizzle. Meaning you could talk about your daily antics in the form of a blog. I know a lot of freelancers who do this, although in my opinion it should NEVER be an attachment to your portfolio. Instead, it is a blog outside of the working realm – which is where this kind of blog belongs. I’ve seen some freelancers who look to start a blog alongside their portfolio, only to realize that posting about what they ate last night isn’t going to get them anymore clients, it actually does the opposite. So I’ll re-iterate, if you’re looking to make a more social type blog, do not associate it with your portfolio.

Tutorials/Resources/Articles
At first, including a bunch of tutorials and resources on a blog which is related to your portfolio seems like a good idea, but it all depends on who you target with that information. If you’re targeting other web designers, writers, programmers etc. then it’s hardly going to bring in any new leads as they are people much like yourself who are looking to do work for other people. If you’re going to create tutorials and distribute resources of some kind, make sure you keep in mind the demographic you want to target.

For example, if you’re looking to attract web entrepreneurs to your website because you like working on creative websites, then you would probably want to distribute certain resources such as articles on the law of web business, or managing web businesses on your blog. When following such an example though, you must also keep the issue of relevancy in mind. Will someone come to a freelance-designers blog to hear about cooking? No, so a way of fixing this issue is to create a blog seperate from the portfolio on another domain, and instead advertise your portfolio on that blog.

Freelance-Related Blog
If you really want to create a relevant blog on your portfolio, then there should be nothing stopping you – after all, any new exposure, whether targeted or not will benefit you in some way or another. Maybe it’ll help spread the word about your services via ‘word-of-mouth’? Even if it doesn’t, it’s always going to have some positive effect. That’s why it could also be a good idea to produce a freelance-related blog. You may want to blog about the issues that freelancers go through daily (much like Freelancer Magazine here) and then do a few link exchanges with other well-known people in your field for that extra authority and exposure. The great thing about creating a blog like this is that there are a whole ton of ways you can market them and really get traffic coming into your blog and therefore looking at your services too.

Think out of the box
Also, when thinking about marketing techniques for your portfolio, or for yourself for that matter, then do not stay within the realms of the norm. Try to think of new and creative ways to bring in your clients, that way you could find a solution that you could execute easily and works wonders for you. Also, carrying out the usual methods of marketing can sometimes be a drag, and very repetitve so diversify how you gain traffic and exposure.

Conclusion
You’re thinking of freelancing or you’ve become a freelancer because you want to get away from the norms of society, so why not replicate this in your marketing techniques also and come up with some new and creative forms of marketing your portfolio!

Important: Please digg/stumble/float/reddit/whatever our posts as a way of saying thank you for the post and supporting Freelancer Magazine. Thanks!

If you enjoyed this post, please subscribe to our RSS feed!