A few weeks ago I wrote about writing articles in Excel. But one of the hiccups I encountered was tracking word count in Excel — which is pretty technical! Here’s an easy way to do it.

If you’re a freelance writer, you’ll probably need to do an interview or two or a dozen in your time, whether you’re writing a profile or feature on a person and their work, or simply need some experts for an article. Here’s my process for conducting an interview.

Take the anxiety out of writing — especially freelance writing, which is compounded by having to create great work for others — by simply pounding out a shitty first draft.

I’ve heard that being even a little bit professional will get you a long way as a freelancer. Huh? How could you not be professional! Here are some tips from my years of working on high-functioning teams for ways to be a bit more professional in your freelance life.

I’ve recently started using an approach to my writing that’s keeping everything much more organized, and makes the act of writing much less daunting. What is it? Writing in Excel.

Going freelance isn’t (also) just completing cool projects — it’s about managing yourself as a business. This week, I’m going to simplify invoicing for the new freelancer.

We probably all have mixed feelings about customer service, from love to hate to envying those who do it well. I spent over fifteen years in frontline customer service, and am thinking about how my lessons learned there apply to my new freelance world.

I recently heard that there are some freelancers who just set up their profile on Upwork and wait for clients to come to them, or who only send out one pitch a week. As someone who built a website based on getting my presence and my value out into the world, I’m learning how to increasing my efforts at visibility to land more clients — and you should too.

One thing freelancing does for you is this: It radically alters your understanding of what income is, especially if you’re coming off of a paid position at a company. Today I talk about how freelancing is like going out daily and hunting down your dinner.

Proofreading isn’t just a glance through before hitting publish. It’s a lot more intricate and nuanced than that, and today I share how I go about proofreading (since I’ve been actually getting paid to do it recently!). Ultimately? All those writing mechanics should disappear to create a seamless reading experience.

I’m back with a new Daily Freelancer, coming off of a busy week last week where I learned lots of things! Today, it’s all about thinking about the customer and how to connect to their identity when marketing your company — with a little help from Simon Sinek’s TED Talk.

Today I talk about intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, and how those look very different in a 9-5 than they do freelancing.

I’m finding that there are many mindset shifts you have to go through to become a successful freelancer — one of them being the shift to understanding yourself as an expert. Freelancing, ultimately, is not about an employee/boss relationship, but is more like a B2B business mixed with deep customer service.

Today, I changed one of my rates. Here’s what happened.

Today I talk about one of the best things about freelancing, something that I’ve learned in my few months of doing this so far. (Hint: It might be jeans, but it might be bigger than that.)

While SEO might be a great framework, and a way to crack the formula of Google rankings, there’s something at the core of good content that we never talk about: emotion. Today I talk about how to craft great content by focusing on writing techniques.

As a writer, ideas are our gas. Learn how to fill the tank with some of these suggestions.

Do you dread hitting publish? Are you constantly rereading your work because you’re terrified of a typo? Here are some tips on how I got over my mindset of “perfect” in order to produce content that’s “good.”

Since I sent some pitches out today, for different types of work, I talk about the myth of the perfect pitch. I do list some of the basics you need to cover to make sure you’re coming across as human.

Today I talk about the difference between writing for publications and writing for businesses, the pros and cons of each, and how the two are mutually exclusive. Build your portfolio of personal essays? Or pay rent? Hmm…