Stragetic planning and writing
Hi Wen Write. Thought I'd jump in here with some comments.
I do strategic planning and business analysis among other things. These nebulous tasks (that many don't take time to do) are the biggest reasons why 9 out of 10 small businesses and entreprenuerships fail first year out of the gate.
There are three things going on with what you propose.
1) Your objective, what do you want to do?
2) Writing things to sell.
3) Selling them.
At first glance you may say "duh" but believe it or not, those three simple items require many many weeks worth of strategic planning and brainstorming.
Lets start with what your objective is? Do you have short, mid, and long term objectives? Do you want to start writing part time, then transition onto full time. Do you want to write items that provide continuous streams of income (like a book) or do you want to write individual "one offs".
Do you want to write for large organizations, small ones, sole propriertorships, magazines, newspapers, websites, etc.
The reasons each of those questions are important because each may require a completely different means to infiltrate and begin.
For instance, one might lend itself best to cold calling while another may require you to have an existing publication to establish legitimacy. One may require "free samples" while another one may require face to face meetings.
Once you figure out your objectives, then you should start focusing on what you want to write. This may seem backwards, but it is not. If your objective is to make a million dollars inside of a year, then you will not do it writing newspaper columns. If your writing doesn't match your objective, then you will have to rethink your objectives.
In the case of "what to write to sell", you should make a matrix of all your writing abilities and forms of writing vs worth and effort. For example,
.......................Value per project..................Legitmacy value.......... Hours
Newspaper............$100 - $500......................Low/Medium...............10-20
Website Article.......$200 - $300.........................Low........................30
Journal Article...........neg $500..........................High........................100
Training Manual..........$4000............................Medium.....................250
Contests....................$500...............................Low....................... 50
Magazine..................$500 - $1000................... Low/Med..................... 75
It is important to put up visually what your talents are, what areas you are thinking of pursuing, then how much revenue you could expect from each area. This will help focus you towards the best use of your time. (A reverse way to do this is to decide how much you want to make an hour ($40/hr for EX) then back track how much that will cost per word or per piece you submit. )
Now, once you know what you're objective is and what to write to sell, now it comes down to the best means of selling them.
Selling is an artform that many people simple undervalue or are not good at. Ironically, sales is the most important aspect to any business venture. Many people erroneously believe that if they build a better mousetrap the world beats a path to their door. But in real life, the best product is SELDOM the market leader. Microsoft is a testiment to that, their OS is inferior to others, but guess what everybody uses
One basic tenant of sales is "You are not only selling a product, you are selling yourself". Learn how to sell! Read sales books!!! Practice on your friends. Don't make the mistake of thinking just because you have a superior product that sales will be easy. Sales is a viscious field.
Another tenant is "Contacts". Go to where your target market is. (we can do an entire book on IDing your target market). Professional conferences are a GREAT place to make contacts. Another is when your target market has a big event (or social event). The name of this game is keeping your ear to the ground.
I have no idea if any of this rambling helps. Sorry to make this so long.
Mel
Aka
Dgiharris
