The world loves second acts – what’s your?

Today is the day SecondAct.com Managing Editor Donna Wares invited bloggers in the 2012 WordCount Blogathon to share their reinvention stories. Donna encouraged anyone who wanted to write about how they have, are or plan to reinvent some aspect of their life. That could be changing careers, going back to school, moving to a different country, becoming a parent, going to work for a nonprofit or starting a business.

Donna and I will go through all of the stories and select a few to highlight in a post on SecondAct.com in coming days.

Meanwhile, I’m sharing my own career reinvention. It’s a story I’ve told here before, of how blogging helped me step back into a career as a journalist and freelance writer after I took time off to be a stay at home mom.

The original version of this post ran in 2012. An updated version ran in January while I was doing a guest editing stint for BlogHer, the women’s blog network.

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Sometime in June 2010, I pushed the “Publish” button on the 500th post on my blog.

Those 500 blog posts changed my life – by helping me reinvent my career. In two and a half years, I went from stay at home mom to full-time journalist and blogger making a lot more money than I ever did as a staff writer at a major daily newspaper.

It all happened because I blogged.

Since then, I’ve written more than 800 posts on WordCount, my blog for freelance writers, and contributed hundreds of other posts to the publications I now write for on a regular basis.

I don’t point this out to brag. I am proud of what I’ve accomplished, especially at a time of change in the media business when many freelance writers question their ability to continue working in a manner to which they’ve been accustomed.

The main reason I’m sharing is to reassure you that if I can do it, you can too. All it takes is commitment, confidence -– and a blog.

How Blogging Reinvented My Career

Here’s how blogging played into my career reinvention:

In late 2000, I put my work as a technology journalist on hold to have a baby. That made three kids, a husband, dog, assorted lizards and goldfish, a house and yard. It was too much to handle all of that and work without constantly feeling stressed out.

By the time the baby was a toddler, I dabbled with a little part-time work: a semester teaching journalism school here, writing a couple articles there. But no way was I prepared to take the full-time plunge.

That happened a few years later when our oldest went to college and our youngest went to first grade.

It turns out that writing was the easiest part of re-entering the freelance business.

Much harder was figuring out everything else that had changed since I’d been away. I’d quit during the dot-com bust and wasn’t up to speed on online innovations. At coffee one day, a friend casually mentioned LinkedIn and I needed her to explain it to me — me, who’d spent years keeping everyone else informed on the latest and greatest tech news.

To get myself up to speed, I started a blog. I signed up with Blogger but quickly switched to WordPress.com because, honestly, the free version of WordPress had prettier themes, and more of them.

At first, I blogged with no specific subject in mind. Most of my initial posts were marginal, though a few have held up surprisingly well.

The Transformative Power of Blogging

I got the hang of it soon enough, and the next two and a half years blogging literally transformed my writing business. Here’s how:

By teaching myself the mechanics of blogging, I nabbed assignments to write about blogging and social media for publications like Inc.com.

By teaching myself to blog, I made myself more marketable by showing perspective clients that in addition to writing news, features and columns, I was proficient in another writing form, no small matter as more publications add contributor-written blogs.

By using the blog to showcase my resume, bio and clips, I landed one of the biggest freelance gig of my career, a contract to edit a corporate finance website for American Express that launched in spring 2010. I later learned that prior to contacting me, the website’s project managers vetted me by reviewing my work experience on my blog and in my LinkedIn profile.

By showing I understood the medium and could post week in and week out, I was asked to be a paid blogger at SecondAct.com, Entrepreneur Magazine’s website people for over 40. You can read my posts on job hunting and careers on SecondAct twice a week.

By using my blog to track what’s happening in the digital media industry I’ve been invited to speak at journalism conferences and industry groups, including the American Society of Journalist and Authors’ annual writers conference.

By inviting other writers with blogs to join me in a personal challenge to blog every day for a month, I started the WordCount Blogathon, an annual event that’s created a community of writers and bloggers and become one of the highlights of my year.

By holding myself to a regular blogging schedule and strict editorial standards, I qualified to join the BlogHer Publishing Network, which pays me to run ads on my blog.

I realize not everyone reading this is a professional writer -– but you don’t have to be to make a blog part of your career transformation.

But why take my word for it?

Look through the blog roll for the 2012 Blogathon and you’ll see dozens of other freelance writers and journalist entrepreneurs who have incorporated blogging into their writing business. Some use blogs as test beds for subjects they’d like to learn more about. For others the subject matter is secondary to the writing practice. Still others use their blogs to showcase their work, or to make money from advertising or affiliate sales.

If you’re a freelancer who still hasn’t taking the plunge, what are you waiting for?

Blogathon writers who blog

Here’s a sample of the writers participating in this year’s event and what they blog about:

Arizona writer and author Jackie Dishner blogs at Bike with Jackie about “inspiration, encouragement, quirky stories, laughs and life-changing adventures.” This is Jackie’s fifth blogathon, and this year she’s graciously agreed to be a “Blogathon Ambassador” on the event’s Google Group to help out newer bloggers. She also wrote this guest post on why it pays to do a blogging challenge.

Barb Freda blogs about food at Babette’s Feast, including a recent post on food trends. When she’s not posting on her own blog, Fred writes about business, consumer technology, food, wine, and travel and works as a recipe developer.

Carrie Schmeck is a business copywriter in Redding, Calif., who blogs at BizziWriter. Carrie uses her blog to talk about her business and the business of being a copywriter. Every Friday she runs examples of bad copywriting, like this one.

Jennie Phipps is a former newspaper reporter and editor turned freelance journalist. She also owns Freelance Success, a members only website and forum for professional writers. In her spare time, Phipps blogs at Detroit on the Cheap, one of the string of frugal-living sites in the Living on the Cheap network. Leah Ingram, a freelancer and author whose Philly on the Cheap blog is also in the Living on the Cheap network, is doing the blogathon for the third time.

Sandra Hume is a Colorado freelance writer and editor and one of close to a dozen Freelance Success members – myself included – participating in this year’s blogathon. Hume’s blog, Little House Travel, is a travel guide for fans of the Little House and their families who want to travel to places that series author Laura Ingalls Wilder called home.

When Cheryl Wright isn’t writing her weekly column in the Trinidad Guardian‘s Womanwise Sunday magazine, she posts on her namesake blog about fashion, writing inspiration, how she spends her time, and just in time for Mother’s Day, her mother’s legacy of creativity.

Debbie Kaplan is a journalist specializing in family travel whose byline has appeared in publications such as Shape, Family Fun, AAA Traveler, and the Los Angeles Times. She uses her Frisco Kids blog to share kid-friendly trips and activities around the Bay Area, such as this one about summer concerts at Stern Grove.

Freelance newspaper reporter Walter L. Johnson II blogs about media and communication industry jobs at Communications Careers Corner, including this recent post on being the right fit for the job.

Elizabeth King Humphrey is a Wilmington, N.C., freelance writer, editor, proofreader and writing coach who blogs at The Write Elizabeth about reading, writing, editing and parenting. In a recent post she shared her 5 favorite books on editing.

Anne Noble, a Michigan freelancer with nearly 30 years of experience in newspapers, magazines and corporate writing, blogs about family and other subjects at Mac’s Musings.

Ronda Levine is a Northern California editorial consultant, writer, editor and graduate teaching assistant. On her blog, Not Quite Ally McBeal, she covers a variety of subjects including relationship issues, inspiration, and her recent engagement – congrats!

Why your blog needs an ‘About’ page and a picture of you

If you’re a freelance writer or use your blog to promote your business, you have to do two things: create an About page and put your picture on it. You’d be surprised how many Blogathon bloggers’ websites I looked at to compile this list who had neither of those.

Another note: There’s no way I could include all the freelancers in this year’s blogathon in this list. If you’re participating, please feel free to add your name, the name of your blog and a link to a recent post that’s a good example of what you typically write about in a comment on this post.

Portland writers, there’s a reason none of you on on this list – I’m saving you to a separate write up after our May 18 IRL gathering – look for it next Saturday.

Dan Baum

Dear Dan,

Thank you. But please reconsider your decision to take down your blog. I looked and it’s obvious you’re good. You’ve written for The New Yorker for Pete’s sake, my favorite magazine of all time. You’ve gotta be doing something right for them to run your stuff and whatever it is, I’d love to find out, so there’s reason No. 1 right there.

There are a lot of other reasons why freelance writers – or other freelancers for that matter – should blog, if only as a writing prompt to get the juices flowing for paid writing gigs.

A few:

* To build expertise in an area you want to pitch – Not that long ago I was re-establishing my freelance writing business after extended hiatus to raise three kids. I needed to get back up to speed on the tech beat I’d previously covered and the best way to do that was to plunge into the wonderful world of Web 2.0. I started the blog, signed up for LinkedIn, then Twitter and started pitching as I learned.

* To build a community – No man is an island, and that includes freelancers. We don’t get the perqs of working in an office surrounded by peers, so a blog can function as a virtual coffee break room, where we exchange suggestions and gossip with far-flung friends.

* To put your resume and clips online – If for no other reason, writers should have a blog to get their vital stats online. Plus, it’s easier than creating a Website and cheaper too.

* To keep colleagues, friends or family up to speed on what you’re doing – Easier and less spammy than sending out group emails.

* To practice a genre other than the one that pays the bills – A blog might be just the thing for writing the poetry, essays or short stories you’ve always wanted to try. If you don’t want anybody to see it, you can change the settings on the blog software you’re using to block it from public display.

* To start a book or promote one – Which is something you’re already doing for your book Death and Life in New Orleans, so I’m preaching to the choir on that one.

* To be ready for the digital revolution – As corny as that sounds, the media business as we know it is changing, and not just because of the recession, and it ain’t ever going back to the way it was. If writers don’t want to be left behind, we’ve got to put new techniques alongside the old ones in our storytelling repertoire.

That’s what I came up with in about 10 minutes. There are plenty of other equally good reasons why writers should blog. Please don’t give up on it just yet.

Michelle