Freelance Writing & Business Communication

Reduce, reuse, recycle your writing – rejuvenate your income

Freelance writers often like to talk about what they are working on, and how much work – interviews, research, writing and revision – it is taking to produce it. When freelance writers tell me how much work they are doing, I often ask, “How else are you going to use the material?”

Far too often I am greeted by stunned silence. Or worse, the writer might say something like, “Oh, I can’t write about that again.” It’s as if some writers actually think it’s against the law, or at least unethical or immoral, to write about the same topic more than once. Then I ask them if they have ever heard of “beats” – as in the “beats” that reporters often cover – sports, entertainment, politics, and so on. In fact, you can break those beats down into even smaller sections, such as hockey or baseball, theatre, movies, television, municipal, state (or provincial), local.

Reporters who cover beats write about similar topics, ideas and people all the time. They reduce their workload by recycling and reusing interviews, research (i.e., the knowledge they acquire).

Of course, just about every freelancer knows what a “beat” is. The question I have is this: Why do so few freelancers refuse to cultivate a beat?

Having a beat, such as technology, the environment, manufacturing, fashion and so on, does not mean you can’t write about other topics. Having a beat means you can reduce your workload by recycling and reusing ideas, topics, research and interviews. It also means you can pitch yourself as a subject matter expert to editors who respect knowledgeable writers. And yes, you can even write about similar topics (telling different stories) for a variety of publications.

Applying the 3Rs to freelance writing can help you rejuvenate your income, and even expand your income opportunities.

For instance, I have just been paid by a mid-sized business to write a report outlining the steps the company can take to improve its search engine results – its rank in a search engine like Google when people conduct searches using keywords and phrases related to the business of the company.

Flashback seven years, to when I wrote my first article on SEO (search engine optimization) for a computer trade magazine. I leveraged that article to get into a high-end SEO tradeshow where industry experts were talking about… SEO, as you might expect. I then pitch queries on SEO to a legal trade publication, a small business magazine and the business sections of several newspapers.

Based on seeing my byline associated with SEO a couple of times, a company asked me to give a seminar on SEO to manager and IT staff responsible for producing the company website. The research I did for the seminar led me to pitching SEO articles to several other publications, and then I wrote a book about SEO – Do you Know Where Your Website Ranks? How to Optimize Your Website for the Best Possible Search Engine Results, which of course led to other articles, blog entries and speaking engagements. And led to completing the SEO report for the company that was looking to improve its search engine results.

You don’t become a “beat” freelancer overnight; you never become one if you do not develop a variety of article ideas related to a particular beat. At the same time, if you want to cover a variety of topics, earning your bread and butter based on a beat often gives you the confidence, and even financial freedom, to explore other topics and ideas.

Paul Lima is a freelance writer, writing instructor and the author of several books on business writing and the business of freelance writing. You can read his SEO blog posts. here.