In case you missed it, while I was on vacation last week, I ran some of the most popular posts from WordCount’s back issues. Take a look:

Online resources for writers – Help navigating the world of Web-based resources for writers, including top Web 2.0 tools, what writers should know about SEO and how to use LinkedIn.

Blogging basics for writers – Everything you need to know to start a writing blog, including what software to use, what to write, how often to post and how to build a following.

Tips for improving your writing – How to write short articles, conduct interviews, finish stories faster and lots more.

Best blogs for writers – Some of WordCount’s most popular posts include information about blogs for writers and writers who blog.

Career development for freelancers – Information on grants, scholarships, fellowships, plus real-life tips and suggestions from freelancers on how to successfully weather the bad economy.

Today I’m guest blogging at The Urban Muse, Susan Johnston’s popular freelance writing blog. The subject is how to make life work as a writer and mom. Here’s a little taste:

I didn’t set out to be a freelance writer. It’s the compromise I made in order to do it all, be a writer and a mom. It’s made for a good life, and a good career. I’ve had to work hard to do both. How? Here are my 8 secrets for making life work as a writer and a mom:

Get organized. If there’s a golden rule of being a writer mom, it is this. Use whatever works for you. I’ve always been a list maker. I recently switched from paper lists to putting everything in Microsoft Outlook: Tasks manager is my friend. I mix work, family and personal to-dos, but I’ve mixed my work life and personal life for so long it doesn’t faze me.

You can read more at the Urban Muse here.

A month ago I had the crazy notion to blog for 31 days straight. For reasons I still don’t understand, two dozen other freelance writers hitched their wagons to the idea and joined me.

31 posts later, I’m at the finish line and here’s what I discovered:

It’s not that hard to blog every day, you have to “just do it.”

Not all blog posts are created equal. Some can be short. Some can simply point to other interesting stuff you’ve found online. Lists are crowd pleasers. Here’s some other great suggestions for types of posts from Problogger, a great source for anything related to blogging.

Regular blogging leads to more readers. Since the blogathon started, traffic to WordCount jumped close to 150 percent. If you blog, they will come. Here’s another great post from Problogger listing 23 ideas for finding new readers for your blog, including persistence.

It’s critical to tag your blogs so they show up when people do keyword searches on Google and other search engines. For a while I did what some search engine optimization experts suggested and only used a few tags per post. But I’m back to putting in about a half dozen or so, and I think it’s working.

Freelancers blog about all kinds of things. Some blog on the same subjects they write about. Jane Boursaw writes about the movies and her Reel Like with Jane Website and blog are full of entertainment industry news. Some, like me, blog about writing. Susan Johnston, The Urban Muse, is in a different place in her career and her take on freelancing is a refreshing change from mine. Other writers’ blogs are very personal, like Claudine Jalajas’ The @$#!% Extension, which chronicles her home addition, or Dawn Weingarten’s blog, where she writes about life after her husband’s organ transplant.

Blogging has been good for my writing. Compared to my other work, my blog posts are pretty chatty. That’s helped the stories I write for a consumer electronics Web site, where adopting a conversational, between-friends tone is a good way to explain tech topics that can sometimes be intimidating for the uninitiated. Here’s one example, this story on encryption I wrote recently for YourSecurityResource.com.

Some fellow blogathoners have been inspired to go after paid blogging gigs. I haven’t got there yet, but I’d consider the right offer.

So thanks to the other freelancers who braved it out. I hope you learned as much from the experience as I did.

It happened. Earlier this week, the editor of a magazine I’ve been writing for told me she can’t buy more freelance pieces until summer because of budget cuts. It’s the first time in years that economic cutbacks have directly affected my business. It’s also bad news because I’d just pitched a story I thought was perfect for the publication.

I was bummed. But I’d just finished writing here about smart things freelancers can do to weather bad times. So I had to take my own advice. Later the same day, I needed to send a separate pitch to a different editor I’ve written for a lot lately but at a rate that’s lower that what I usually make. I’d just turned in a bunch of stories that this editor really liked. So thinking about the client I’d just lost, I wrote the pitch letter and at the end asked for a raise. I heard back the next day – the publication agreed to up my rate by 20 percent. It gets better. I called the editor to say thanks, and in the course of conversation, she mentioned another publication that might be interested in using me and offered to pass along my name.

The moral of the story: Don’t get hung up on bad news. Don’t be afraid to ask. Remember to say thank you. And sometimes it pays to pick up the phone.

I recently shared a marketing expert’s advice for freelancer writers and other self-employed creative types to stay happy and solvent during shaky economic times. His suggestions boiled down to a few simple maxims: cultivate existing client relationships, specialize, learn new skills and network.

Reality check time. Do freelancers heed such advice? Or do they use other strategies for beating bad times? To find out, I posted those questions on LinkedIn, the business networking site. What I got back was very concrete and creative directions from writers and other freelance professionals about what they’re doing to cope. Here’s what they said:

Keep regular clients happy – Cultivate a core group of clients and work hard to keep them happy. The best way to do that: deliver above and beyond what’s expected. “Happy clients return no matter what,” says Flip Wiltgren, a freelance writer and game designer in Linkoping, Sweden. Marijke Vroomen-Durning, a Montreal freelancer and author of the HelpMyHurt blog, emails clients every so often with updates on her work and asks outright if they have anything they need done. “Sometimes, your email lands in their inbox at exactly the right time,” she says.

Market yourself as a virtual employee - Down times can be good times for independent contractors because clients can use them without adding to payroll, says AnnaLisa Michalski, a virtual assistant and writing support specialist in Norfolk, Virginia. Susan Emmens, a Richmond, Virginia, freelance marketing strategist, contacts companies looking for full-time employees to offer her services as a contractor. “Some have reasons that make freelancing a bad fit, but many are open to the idea that having a fresh set of eyes who isn’t mired in the company stuff might be just what the doctor ordered,” she says.

Change your thinking about where work comes from - Think outside the box, says Kathee Brewer, a Houston freelance writer. “There are quite a few ‘little’ jobs out there for talented writers who don’t let their egos get in the way,” Brewer says. “It’s hard not to appreciate the benefits provided by small, recurring assignments that, perhaps aren’t career builders, but nonetheless provide a bit of budgetary breathing room while one works on the things that really capture the imagination.”

Vroomen-Durning, the Montreal freelancer, spends time ever day combing freelance job boards, including Craigslist. “I know it has a bad rep, but if you take the time to look, you do find some real gems,” she says. “Two of my best clients have come from there. One in terms of high pay, another in terms of fun and enjoying the work.”

Measure projects by hourly not per word rates – Freelancers sometimes pass up work because the per-word rate is low. But projects should be judged on their merits and not just on per-word rates. Vroomen-Durning takes jobs based on how how well she knows the subject. An $800 project that she can do in 8 hours is a good hourly income. “If I’m offered that same amount for a shorter article but it involves a lot of research and reviewing back and forth, it may take a lot longer than 8 hours so it’s not worth my while,” she says.

Change how you think of yourself - If you want new types of work, create new ways to describe what you do, says Robert Dolezal, a Sacramento, California, publisher, content architect, and content provider. “If you’re usually a copywriter, step up into an editor’s role and re-brand yourself. It’s an excellent way to get new conversations going,” he says.

Call in favors – Use clients or contacts to ask for referrals, advice, and suggestions. “Studies show that more (job) action takes place from casual acquaintances than from those close to you, so getting the word out is important,” Dolezal says. And don’t forget to return the favor.

Go back to old clients – “You’ve already worked for them. That takes away a lot of stress and hard work,” says Terri Maurer, a past president of the American Society of Interior Designers and author of an upcoming book on the interior design business from Wiley & Sons. But don’t call just to ask for work: touch base to see how they’re doing. “The idea is to remind them you’re out there. The odds are you’ll find a few who were just thinking about calling you, or you will have called at just the right time,” she says.

Specialize – If you specialize, dig even deeper into a niche so you become an expert on the subject. Maria Marsala, President of Elevating Your Business, a Seattle consultant that helps small and mid-sized businesses, went from marketing to small business owners to marketing to financial advisers and planners. “It’s working for me,” Marsala says.

Use down time to look for new work – Sue Kristoff, owner of The Kristoff Group LLC, a Boston area engineering and technical writing firm, uses down time to troll online portals for new work. She also publicizes her business by leaving comments on blogs and online forums.

Sell one thing – You might wear a lot of hats, but trying to explain all that to prospective clients is confusing. So sell one thing. For Richard Laurence Baron, who started freelancing after a 30-year career in advertising agencies, that one thing is copyrighting. “Only a portion of my marketing/communications revenue comes from copywriting, but I still SELL that one thing. All the other stuff comes when the relationship and the trust is built,” says the Houston-based freelancer. Read more on his blog, SignalWriter.

Schmooze – Get out of your office and attend a networking breakfast or other real-world function. “Meeting people face to face or (getting) a reference through a contact has yielded me pretty much every major client I’ve got,” says Wiltgren, the Swedish freelancer. Maurer, the interior design author, adds, “Getting to know people before they needed my services allowed us to have some very open conversations about their companies, their needs and how my services might or might not be a fit for them.”

Learn new skills – This is the third big economic downturn that long-time freelancer Marty Weil has weathered. This time, he hopes to differentiate himself from other freelancers by offering search engine optimization (SEO) copywriting in addition to his other writing services. To prepare, he’s taken courses and practiced on his own blogs. Weil is also using his blogs as revenue generators. “My blogs have become successful business units in themselves, and as I’d hoped, have led to some amazing and worthwhile freelance writing opportunities,” he says.

S.W.O.T. – Grant Plowman, owner of Interactive Media Publishing, a Medford, Oregon, e-learning tools company, suggests that freelancers can pinpoint where they are and what they could do better using an assessment technique called SWOT: Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. The steps: analyze your strengths, honestly evaluate weaknesses, examine opportunities with present or potential clients, look at threats to existing client relationships and whether the services you provide represent a value that exceeds their cost.

You can read the complete text of answers freelancers gave on this topic on LinkedIn’s Answer section here.

Companies use blogs and social networks to keep customers informed and employees happy. But Web 2.0 technologies can open the door to corporate spies and hackers, which is why if a company uses them, they also need strong security policies for protection. You can read more on the subject in my new story, Keeping Web 2.0 Platforms Private and Secure on Inc. magazine’s IncTechnology.com Web site.

Want a quick way to an editor’s heart? Write your own headlines.

Make it a practice to send a headline – and a deck too if a publication uses them – with every story you submit. Whether an editor actually uses your headline is beside the point. Writing headlines is good practice. And it shows that:

• You know your story well enough to summarize it quite succinctly.
• You can write short as well as you can write long.
• You care enough about your story to apply all the finishes touches.
• You care enough about your editor to want to make their life easier by doing some of their work for them.

What’s the worst that can happen? The headline ends up on the virtual cutting room floor. What’s the best? Your editor remembers you as that thoughtful freelancer who always includes headlines with their copy – and gives you more work because of it. Or your headline ends up in print. Given the chance, wouldn’t you rather have your story called by the name you gave it than by someone else’s?

Headline writing is an art. The best are like the best kind of diet food: meaty yet lively – and sometimes downright spicy – but without a trace of fat. Cut out articles like “a” and “the.” Use active verbs. Use puns or other word play when suitable. Avoid cliches. Ditto phrases that could be read more than one way – like the headlines that end up on the back page of the Columbia Journalism Review.

Newspaper copy editors are masters of the art of headline writing. Here’s an article about how newspaper copy editors write headlines from Gannett Corp.’s weekly Newswatch column. The story’s really old but the lessons still apply. Magazine and other freelance non-fiction writers can also learn a thing or two from advertising copywriters, who specialize in snappy catchphrases. Here’s a good article called How to Write Headlines That Work in Copyblogger.

Another reason to focus on headlines: your blog. If you’re one of the legion of freelance writers with a blog, it behooves you to write good headlines so your blog posts get maximum exposure. There’s a special art to writing blog headlines. Learn more here and here.

In one episode of Sex and the City, Sarah Jessica Parker’s Carrie Bradshaw character lands a freelance assignment for some incredible amount, like $4 a word. As a real-life freelance writer, I’ve never made $4 a word, or even met anybody who does. I’m not sure rates like that exist. Even $2 a word sounds pretty good to me. But the technology and business magazines I write for don’t pay that much. So what I lack in high-paying clients I have to make up for by being super efficient in what and how I write. I shared some of this philosophy recently on the message forums at Freelance Success, a newsletter for professional freelance writers, and a great source for tips on marketing for freelancers.

One of my regular clients is a technology Web site that pays 50 cents a word for 500-word stories. That’s $250 per story – like I said, not a lot of money. However, I’ve been able to make this market work for me by:

• Sticking to my going hourly rate for the amount of time I put into the stories.
• Doing multiple stories around a single topic so I can interview one source for two stories.
• Getting the editor to assign a story and graphics – which pay an additional fee – on the same topic so I can stretch the research even further.
• Focusing on topics that fall within my already established beat, so instead of starting from scratch on every story I have a pool of sources to draw from or know where to go to find them. I’ve always been a beat reporter, so this is standard operating procedure for me.
• Spinning ideas and sources I find for these stories into pitches at other tech outlets I write for.
• Using stories as basis for posts to this blog, which I guess is a different way of stretching my research.

And since I have an ongoing relationship with the client, I get work from them every month, some of which is assigned, some of which is based on my queries, so for very little marketing on my part I have a steady income stream. Multiply this times a few clients and voila, you’ve got a business.

My style of marketing works for me, but it might not suit everyone. Another Freelance Success member who blogs about the business of writing is Eric Sherman. Check out his blog, Erik Sherman’s WriterBiz. I’d love to hear other freelancers’ marketing secrets.

I write a lot about outsourcing, the kind companies do to dispense with non-essentials and focus on what they make or sell. As an independent contractor, I know a thing or two about outsourcing from personal experience. The more things I don’t have to do in my non-work life, the more time I have for work. Working parents have done this for years, we just didn’t call it outsourcing. We called it day care – and yard service and house cleaners.

The latest thing I’ve entrusted to an outsourcer is grocery shopping. I don’t like grocery shopping. End to end it takes at least two hours to make a list, go to the store, get everything I need, check out, drive home and put everything away. With an online service, I keep a running list at the grocery store’s Web site, push a button to order, pick a delivery time and make sure I’m around to put groceries away after the truck gets here. Time spent: less than half an hour. Most of the time I buy enough to earn free delivery, so it’s not costing me anything. I use Safeway.com, but New Seasons also offers online ordering in my area.

In addition to groceries, I outsource housecleaning, yard service, car washes, window washing, roof maintenance, tree trimming, haircuts, hair coloring, pedicures, carpet cleaning and some interior design consulting. If my husband wasn’t such a good computer and cable TV guy, I’d outsource those too. There are some things I’d never outsource, like walking the dog (because I’d be big as a house if I didn’t), laundry and ironing, which I like to do.

Some freelance writers hire people to design their Web sites and transcribe their taped notes. Some use assistants for Web research and to set up interviews with sources. I do most of my work by phone and type as fast as most people talk, so I don’t need transcription services. My Web site is part of this blog and both are still pretty rudimentary, so there’s no need to pay anyone for those. Maybe one day I’ll earn enough to hire an assistant, but for now my researcher is Google.

What about you: what things do you outsource to be more productive at work? Write me and I’ll share the best ideas I receive in a future post.

Hood River, Oregon, is a special place. People visit because of the world-class windsurfing, apple and pear orchards, B&Bs and micro-brewed beer. It’s a picturesque town nestled on the banks of the Columbia River, with an old-fashioned downtown that’s home to lots of new coffee shops, restaurants and boutiques. Skiing on Mt. Hood is only a half-hour’s drive away. What outsiders might not know is that a cluster of high-tech companies has also taken root in the area, a trend started in the 1990s when a handful of windsurfing enthusiasts took the same composite materials their boards were made of and used them to design other things, most notably small unmanned military airplanes. Today, the Gorge tech cluster has helped the historically poor area lower unemployment and improve the local economy. You can read more about in my story on Hood River’s booming tech business in“The Gorge Effect,” in the January 2008 issue of Oregon Business magazine.