by Lyn Lomasi, Staff Writer

You spend hours on a submission perfecting every little detail when along comes an editor to mess with your masterpiece. If you're going to make it as a writer, you will have to deal with editors. A necessary part of the publishing process involves dealing with editors.

Learn to compromise. Editors can and often do change things. That's what they're there for. They catch the little mistakes we make (and we all make mistakes). They also may make changes that are better for structure, your audience, the web, and more. Though you may not always agree with their changes, you will have to deal with many of them. Depending on the publication, you may be able to form a compromise with the editor.

Let it go. That may be easier said than done in many cases. As writers, we see our writings as our little babies, if you will. We work hard on it and it means so much to us. Altering it can feel like someone is trying to change us. After all, it does have our names on it. But at some point, we have to learn to let it go. If the work never bypasses an editor, it may never get out in front of the audience. Try not to get too attached and let the work go once its complete.

What's the change? Instead of becoming to attached to the way the piece is written, focus on the message. If the edits do not take away the message, don't be so hard on the editor. It's perfectly fine to address the editor if you feel that the changes are unsatisfactory or take away from the message. But if the change is nothing that takes away the message, why waste all that energy getting upset? Write another article.

Report the editor. This is only for extreme cases. I say that because as a writer, you will need to learn to deal with the fact that your writing will be changed by editors if you want it published with major companies. If the editor really is making changes that are unreasonable (and not just changes you don't like - changes that affect the quality of the work significantly), that's when you report the editor. I advise not taking this route unless necessary because a writer and editor need to be able to work together peacefully. But obviously, if there is an injustice it should be reported.

Switch venues. If you just cannot deal with a particular editor, write somewhere else. Ultimately, you should be happy with your writing (or any) career. If that's not happening, you haven't found the right venue/s to write for yet. Realize you should not be switching venues every time you don't like what an editor does. But if there is a true problem, remember that you can move on.

Write for yourself. If you truly cannot deal with anyone at all messing with your own work, only wrote for yourself. When someone is paying you to produce work, it should be what they want, hence the editors. If you create your own venue, such as your own website or blog, you make the rules. Even if you go this route it can still be a wise move to have an editor or at least a writing buddy that is willing to be a second pair of eyes. But you'll have the most freedom when writing for yourself.

Bottom line: Editors are a part of the writing and publishing business and writers need to be able to adapt to that fact. Work with (not against) your editor, unless you have a legitimate claim against them.

by Lyn Lomasi, Staff Writer

Tired of writing about the same topic all the time? Your readers may be tired of looking at it as well. While it's great to specialize in something, you should also throw in other topics now and then too.

You can specialize in more than one topic without losing credibility with your readers. In fact, you may find they are glad to see random topics mixed in with what they are used to seeing you write.

If you want to succeed in freelance writing, variance can be a very good thing. Clients love writers who specialize. But they also like to see some versatility. This way, if they have a topic that shies away from your usual routine, they know they can at least consider you for the project. However, if you only write on one topic, how will they know if you are able to handle anything else.

Are you showing enough variance in your work?

Lyn is the founder of Write W.A.V.E. Media, parent company to LifeSuccessfully.com and several others. She enjoys publishing freelance writers and supports advocacy through journalism. She's also a freelance web journalist, Community Guide at Yahoo! Contributor Network, and a Y! Shine Parenting Guru. The homeschool ‘Momtrepreneur’ teaches with nature, books, and play. Pet and human homelessness, green living, positive parenting, and education choice (including homeschool) are her passions. She has been published all over the web with major media companies, as well as smaller businesses and organizations. Contact Lyn for guidance in the world of freelance writing.

Lyn on Twitter: @LynLomasi

by Lisa Mason, Contributing Writer

If you are looking for a way to build new article ideas, then consider writing an article series. This can be one of the best ways to write more articles and keep your readers coming back for more. However, there is a proper way that you write an article series. Once you learn this, you will get the most benefit from each article series that you write.

Here are 5 Steps to Write an Article Series

You can write an article series easy with these tips:

1. Do adequate research beforehand to help you write the full article series. This will allow you to sit and write the full series without the need to stop in between each article for more research. The overall structure of your series will be based around the research that you do first.
   
   
2. Create each article in the series where it can also stand alone. This is important when writing articles for the Internet because someone may stumble upon only one part of your article series and it should still make sense, even if they are not in order.
   
   
3. Each article should keep your reader wanting more. While each article should be capable of standing on its own with a beginning, middle and end to the structure, each article should also leave your reader wanting more so that they click to the next part of the series.
   
   
4. Create an outline for each article and for the series as a whole. This will help you to structure the entire series so that it goes in a logical order, covers all the main points and does not repeat points.
   
   
5. Don’t try to cover too many points in one article. Reserve one main point only for each article and follow it up with supportive facts. If you come across a new point you want to make, save it for the next article in the series.
   
   

Beyond the 5 Steps to Write an Article Series

Once you have these 5 steps to write an article series, you can continue to grow and build on this. You can use these steps to write more article series sets or to turn articles into an ebook or free download you can give away online.

Use list articles to create an article series. One example of this would be my “5 steps” above. I could take these 5 steps and break them down, creating one solid article reserved for each one. I can then turn this article into 5 more articles. For point number one, I might talk more about how and where you research and how to turn that research into a final product with your article.

For point four, I may describe how to outline and show examples of ways that you can outline for articles and how to turn your research into an outline. There is plenty of material here to create a total of six articles from this one. Happy writing!

Lisa Mason is a freelance writer, mother to four and youth sports coach residing in Central Texas. She has published hundreds of articles on writing and runs www.writingtipsblog.com to provide free writing tips.

Lisa's a Community Guide at Yahoo! Contributor Network and has been writing professionally since 1998 with a specialty in Internet content. Search her profile for articles on writing and writing tips.

Lisa officially began her writing career at the age of 16 after writing for school and local newspapers as well as trade and regional publications. She is the author of 3 writing books, 3 video game guides, 3 poetry anthologies and a how-to poetry book.

Online article writers serious about their writing must remember the purpose of our content is to provide someone else with the information they need. Even when the writing goes to a client that will not return any page view or click revenue, remember that their audience still needs accurate and relevant info as well. Ultimately, someone will be reading the finished content. Here are five ways online article writers can get and keep clients.

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It's time to pay the bills but your freelance writing hasn't pulled in nearly what you need. Staring at the figures in black and white may make you cringe if you're a freelance writer who hasn't quite reached your ideal goal. Maybe you haven't even touched the surface. But don't give up hope. Perhaps you just need to change your strategy. If you have all the tools and talent, but still can't quite get there, try making your goals more attainable. It's easy to set goals and expectations too high or make the possible impossible by over analyzing. If you aren't meeting your goals in freelance writing, it's time do a complete overhaul of your strategy.

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If you're new to online article writing, you may not be aware that the real work begins after you write your article. Article maintenance has many components, not the least of which is editing. You will also need to decide where to place your article and how to categorize it. All these thing will determine the success of your article. Lastly, you must promote your article and link to it from other websites. This is how your article gains popularity on the web. Why do you want your article to be popular? So it will get page views, of course. Unless you have a problem with making money. I didn't think so.

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One method of writer promotion is to maintain a facebook fan page. But in order to take full advantage of having a facebook fan page, you need to keep it updated. A freshly updated facebook fan page keeps people coming back for more. This should be done in a variety of ways to attract more people and keep them interested.

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Online article writers have two things ingrained in their minds. News stories are good for page view spikes. Evergreen content gives you steady page views. While these things are true, there is a way online article  writers can have the best of both worlds. By learning how to make news stories evergreen, we can have both the timely news spikes and the evergreen content stability. This will keep overall page views on a permanent upward climb.

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As a journalist and writing peer mentor here at Y!CN and elsewhere, I get asked often which topics are the best to write. What brings in the best upfront payments? What topics pull in page views? What topics does Yahoo! want to see before giving high paying assignments? Overall, which topics make the most money?

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Self confidence precedes success. As online article writers we must believe in our own abilities if we wish to be taken seriously. This holds true with any endeavor in life. Why should online article writing be any  different? When I think back on the times in my life when I was most successful and fulfilled, they all have one thing in common. These were the times when I had the most self confidence. I believed in my own ability to tackle the task before me. This fact allowed me to move forward in my endeavors.

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