Today we’re going to go back and look at the publication rights we mentioned the other day. The publication rights you are given when you sell your work can have a huge impact on your ability to reuse your work later on in life.

If a publication gives you first serial rights you are getting the absolute best deal a writer can get. You are giving the publication the right to be the first publication to ever publish that particular article but you retain the rights to resell that work to other publications later on down the line. If you decide to build a blog later on you could include the article as content, or you could sell it to another publication. It’s up to you. It is possible to limit the meaning of first serial rights depending on your geographic location or the language the piece is to be published in as well.

One-time rights become important if and when you sell an article to a newspaper or local periodical. This means you give the publisher the rights to publish your piece one time but that they don’t care whether or not anyone else is publishing that article at the same time. The local newspaper in Orlando, Florida isn’t going to care if a local paper in San Francisco, California is publishing the same article during the same time frame. They publisher may turn around ask you not to resell the article to a paper within the same area of circulation. Therefore, you can’t sell the same article to the local Orlando paper as you would do the paper that serves the entire county.

When you market a piece that has been previously published you are attempting to sell second serial (reprint) rights. You can resell the article to as many publications as are willing to print it as long as you only gave one-time rights to the first publisher.

Selling an article with all rights means you can never sell it again. The publisher has to give you credit as the author every time it is published, but he can reprint it as many times as he likes in any form he wishes and never has to pay you anything more than the originally agreed upon price.

Work for hire is the worst situation a writer can find himself in. In short, you’ve been hired to write a specific piece, will be paid once for it, will not be given credit as the author, and may never republish the piece anywhere. You’re essentially selling the work itself as opposed to the aforementioned “right to publish” the work. The copyright for work done in this capacity will automatically transfer to the client or publisher upon delivery of the article, or upon payment, depending upon how your contract was negotiated.

You should, of course, make sure that the rights to your work are clearly outlined in the contract you sign with any publication. If you aren’t signing a formal contract you should put your agreements in the form of a letter and send it to the publisher outlining what you believe your understandings to be.

Make sure you contact a lawyer for help if you ever have any questions about your rights or contracts. He or she can help you muddle through the confusing world of legal documentation!

Usually when you sell an article to a magazine or newspaper you are not actually selling the article itself. What you are sellign is the right to publish the piece that you’ve written and that publication will almost always include a byline that indicates you are there author.

There are, however, a few different situations that describe the rights of the writer versus publisher as they pertain to how that particular piece of work can be used. These include, but aren’t necessarily limited to:

• First serial rights,
• One-time rights,
• Second serial (reprint) rights,
• All rights, and
• Work for hire

The world of freelance writing can certainly be a bit mysterious and confusing. In our next post we’ll take each of these categories and break them down, explaining exactly what you’re getting (or not getting) by selling your work under each. Until then, take a look at a few of your contracts and see what you’ve gotten yourself into in the past. Do you really understand what rights you still have as they pertain to each piece you’ve already sold?

The truth, as far as I’m concerned, is that blogging is essential to the success of any freelance writing business. If you aren’t blogging already, you should seriously consider building a blog. Your potential clients will want to see real-life examples of your work, published live on the web. Sometimes linking to work on other sites is acceptable, but others will want to read what you’ve written in your own voice.

If you have a blog, let us know about it here. If not, consider starting one soon. The sooner you get started the easier it will be to maintain!

I quickly learned that there are a few things you can do to make every job bid you write stand out from the rest. As I am in the unfortunate position of having to read job bids from time to time, I can first offer this piece of advice -

Never write a canned job bid and expect to use it for every job you want to bid on. Each bid you write needs to be personalized.

The first thing you should do is write a very brief description of yourself and your services. Be sure to include your name and a sentence or two explaining why your experiences qualify you for the job in question.

The next part of your bid should include a summary of the job itself. Address the items the employer listed in his job description and let him know what you would do to address each task included in that description. This type of summary will prove to your potential client that you actually read the entire bid and are paying attention to the details. You might also include information about how you’ll get the job done, the time frame it will take you to complete the work, and the intervals you’ll use for delivery.

If the client didn’t include any details (yes, it happens) make sure you ask questions that clarify the extend of the project before you place an actual bid.

If the subject matter of the writing wasn’t disclosed, make sure you include a paragraph that explains what type of work you are and aren ot willing to do. When I was first starting out I bid on a project without asking about the content nature of the work at hand. I ended up winning a job that would have required me to write from an awkward male vantage point about a product I deemed questionable, at best. From then on I was very careful about asking about the nature of the work at hand, and I always clarify that I am not willing to write on explicit or adult-oriented topics.

The next section of your bid should reiterate your monetary bid (don’t just rely on the bid box to explain the financial aspect). Explain whether or not you are charging a flat rate for the project, a rate per article, a rate per word, or an hourly rate. The clearer you are the easier it will be to clear up any confusion should it arise later on down the line.

Last but not least, thank your potential client for reading your bid. Let him know you’re available to answer any questions or to address any concerns. Being open to communicate and even negotiate can make a huge difference when it comes to winning a freelance writing project.

Whatever you do, avoid writing a generic bid and using it for every job you bid on, changing only a few details here or there. This type of bid is boring to read and, to be honest, your potential client can usually tell the bid is canned. The odds of you forgetting to update an important detail are relatively high as well (how embarassing).

Write a carefully planned and thought out job bid for each and every project. They take a few minutes longer (that’s all) and almost guarantee a higher rate of success!

Check out this video put together by the folks at FreelanceWriting.com. It covers the three main advantages of freelance writing and gives you some tips and tricks on what you need to get started.

Don’t forget - getting started in the field of freelance writing isn’t easy but it’s definitely worth the time and effort you’re going to put into it. Take your time, start slowly, and before you know it you’ll be on the path to success!

The next time you’re feeling stuck for an article idea try looking at some of the following.

1. 1. Go to the local park, mall, or (if you’re lucky) boardwalk and start watching the people as they mill around. Your’e bound to see at least one or two interesting events - kids acting silly, people arguing, a physical altercation. Take what you see and hear and find a way to spin it into an article.
2. 2. Talk to your friends and neighbors about events in the local or national news. Find out what their opinions are and listen carefully. You may hear an angle you’ve never thought of.
3. 3. Sit down outside and free associate. Grab a blanket, head towards the park (or your backyard) and let your mind do the talking. You might even take a pen and piece of paper for some good old-fashioned free association doodling.
4. 4. Is there something you’ve always wanted to try but never had the guts to? Parachuting, bungee jumping, overcoming your fear of heights? Why not give it a try and then write about it.
5. 5. Subscribe to newsletters that talk about things you’re interested in. You don’t have to read them all from beginning to end but if you peruse them you might find an idea for a topic you hadn’t considered. Set up a separate email account to keep your newsletters from junking up your inbox.
6. 6. Did you see a brand new product on television last week? Keep an eye out for it in stores, see if you can get your hands on it, and then write a review. I did just this with a new automatic hammer we saw on TV last week!
7. 7. Pick up a newspaper or magazine you don’t usually read - especially if you’re traveling and don’t usually have access to it. You’ll find that news interests are different from locale to locale.
8. 8. Anthologies are regularly looking for submissions. Find one that interests you and find out what the topic is. The topic may prove insightful - whether you submit the end product to the anthology or not.
9. 9. Did you keep a journal or notebook in high school? Do you still have it? Go back through your journal and see if any of the stories or thoughts you had might inspire you to write an article or essay about your experiences.
10. 10. Log onto iTunes and search for podcasts in niches that interest you. That’s right - podcasts. No one ever said the inspiration for your writing has to come from other written sources.

Good luck and, if you want, leave a comment letting us know what you came up with this week!

Sounds like a great idea for those of us who need to build a Twitter following for marketing purposes, right?

Wrong.

I implemented TwitterFollow on my personal Twitter account just to see how it would work out. In the end I managed to accumulate 700+ Twitter followers - none of whom bother to read what I “tweet.”

How do I know?

I ask questions. I have 700 followers. Makes sense that if I were to ask a question (a simple, life question), I might get an answer, right?

Nope.

No answers. Not one. Zero. Zilch.

The reason?

Everyone who used TwitterFollow is using it for the exact same reason. They want to build their network of followers but don’t really care about what their followers are doing.

Seriously. Do you really think that if you follow someone with 30,000 other followers that they’re really going to get around to looking at what you had to say?

In short, I think its safe to say this experiment failed. Using a service like TwitterFollow will not gain you quality subscribers or followers. You’ll just have to keep looking for those with similar interests - writers, marketers, etc - and build relationships with them.

The old fashioned way.

I had the opportunity to make my own first video last week and while I wasn’t able to use Windows Movie Maker, the program I used was very similar. I highly encourage all freelance writers to at least learn how to make a simple video. You never know when you’ll be asked to make one and it’ll only serve to increase your value as a writer while enhancing your skill set.

Check out this brief Windows Movie Maker Tutorial for an introduction…

You’ve heard it before and you’ll hear it again. Make sure you backup your system on a regular basis. You never know when some sort of unfortunate technical glitch will send your harddrive into computer purgatory and if you don’t have a backup you’ll lose all of your past and present work. What a drag…

In my case, fortunately, I didn’t necessarily need to use a backup to restore lost files (though I did end up making a new one to transfer files from one computer to the other). I was lucky, though.

While I knew the hard drive on my old PC would eventually die (it was about 8 years old and running pretty slow), I had not planned on my graphics/video card going bad. Believe it or not, it is incredibly difficult to see what you are doing when there are strange lines dancing across your computer monitors on a regular basis.

On Thursday morning I woke up and realized that enough was enough. I had to reboot my computer two times to get the screens to come up properly and it was then that I knew - spend $100+ on a new video card and wait for the hard drive to die or just spend the money on a new computer now and avoid the extra waste.

So off I went to Best Buy - the best place in the area I could think of considering most of our local Comp USA stores no longer exist. I knew exactly what I wanted - a computer with a graphic card that supported dual monitor functioning. The guy at Best Buy said th computer I had chosen would work. He was wrong.

On trip #2 I spoke to a second person who said I needed a new graphic card (or, a second graphic card) or, at the least, the upgraded version of the computer I had purchased earlier. I went home, got all of the other add-ons I had purchased, and went back on trip #3 to return everything and buy the upgrade.

Still, the second monitor would not work. Tech support at Best Buy is insanely expensive so I to an online support site and asked for help. The tech guy there ran me through 3 hours of tests and attempts. Still, no second monitor.

On Friday morning I went back to Best Buy (trip #4) where I spoke to yet another individual. He informed me that the VGA ports on the back of the computer were merely there to look pretty (seriously, there’s nothing attached to them) and that I could only use the DVI and HDMI ports to attach my monitors. Sound Greek? I already had one monitor hooked up to the first DVI port, so he told me I’d need to buy adapters to turn the HDMI port into a second DVI port and then hook an adapter to that to make it into a VGA port. He, of course, sells me the parts I need.

During trip #5 to Best Buy I explained to the salesman that the parts would have fit had there been enough physical space to plug in a large adapter. As it was, I needed an HDMI wire and would have hooked the adapters to that with a coupler. Another $60 in parts? I think not. I went to Walmart and found an HDMI adapter for $13 that would allow me to extend the space.

I got home, thinking things were fine, only to find that the DVI adapters didn’t fit together.

On trip #6 to Best Buy I searched for the correct match to my DVI adapter. With no luck. This time I returned ALL of the adapters (except for the Walmart one and the DVI to VGA I already owned) and went to Radio Shack. They almost solved the problem but were still missing a part.

When I got home I went online and found the HDMI to DVI adapter I need for… get this… $1.43. It came out to $4.43 after shipping.

You’ve got that right. $4.43 vs. the $90+ Best Buy wanted me to pay for extra parts.

What’s my point? My point is that while you don’t need to know everything there is to know about computers you should have enough technical skill to know when someone is attempting to pull the wool over your eyes. You should have the presence of mind to know when something is wrong and the ability to find a way to fix it on your own. You need to do your research in advance and make sure no one is taking advantage of you.

Ever.

Writing should be your #1 passion. Protecting your ability to do your job should be your second!