One question I get from folks just starting out is where to find paying clients. This winter and early spring, I’m going a series on different kinds of paid writing work available for those of us who can turn a phrase.

Legal SEO Writing

Some law firms — usually personal injury, medical malpractice and similar genres of lawyers — use SEO-rich articles to attract customers who have been injured or otherwise harmed. Somebody has to write these articles, and it might as well be you.

The job involves writing 400 to 700 words about a narrow topic related to potential or ongoing lawsuits. You’ll keep the language as “just the facts” as possible, and stuff each paragraph with a handful of keywords the firm’s computer spat out after analyzing current trends in web traffic.

http://www.personalinjuryattorney.org is a solid example of this kind of writing. Browse through the site to see the kinds of articles you would turn out doing this kind of work. Right now, these gigs pay between $15 and $25 per article.

Pros: Large body of available work. Many potential clients.  Great opportunity for entry-level work.

Cons: It’s kind of boring, and repetitive. Low pay as compared to other opportunities.

We have a new regular feature!

Alert readers already know about fellow author Ian Scofield, whose work I reviewed some time ago on this very blog. Ian has agreed to provide a weekly writing prompt for our readers to get their creative juices flowing. Without further ado, heeeeere’s Ian!

“Welcome to Writing Wednesday Prompt! Each Wednesday we will provide you with a new creative prompt, in turn you will write a response. Every week’s prompt will be a little bit different so pay attention to the instructions. When you are done writing your response post a link to it in the comments section bellow. Good luck, have fun, and most of all keep writing.

This week respond to the following prompt with at least 500 words.

Your main character is trying something that they have never done before, something new. Show us how they feel, bring us into the experience.

The point of this prompt is to work on showing and not telling. It also fits because this is the start of something new. Have fun with it.”

Tell me what you think, I decided to keep what I was going to use as my first prompt for the second week so that we could have something to do with being new as the first prompt.

Zack Palm is a black belt of mine, a fine young high school senior with a bit of a writing habit of his own. His Drake Williams novel is an urban fantasy piece with vampires, werewolves and a solid supply of general awesomeness.

It’s not available yet — the finished novel is part of his senior graduation project. In the mean time, Zack has started a blog of his protagonist’s journals. It’s material associated with, but not a direct part of, the overall story.

It’s an interesting way of promoting a book, and of adding value to the experience of reading fiction.

Check it out here. 

My family spent the holidays in New Zealand. I recommend the experience for any of you who like travel, camping and/or sheep. You can read one of several articles inspired by that trip here.  But that’s not the point of this post.

I’ve had a tradition for decades about buying a book whenever I travel. What kind of book varies widely. In Alaska last year, I bought something on Alaskan folklore. In Korea last decade, I bought a J.R.R. Tolkien translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight because it was the only book I could find in English.

In New Zealand, I bought a cookbook. I’d enjoyed several dishes I’d not had in the U.S. and figured that would be a good choice. The recipes I’ve tried all succeeded. It’s a great cookbook.

But.

The damn thing is in metric. The recipes call for 200 g of beef, and preheating the oven for 180 degrees. I have a converter on my iPhone now, and write the equivalents in the margins. It’s a very minor pain in my butt, but it’s definitely a pain.

Certainly not the fault of the writer or publisher — the book was written for New Zealanders, by New Zealanders. But it illustrates how easily small details can affect your reader’s experience.

Something to think about.

Thanks for listening.

For today’s Friday Fun, I wanted to combine interesting content with some useful information. These are a few of the websites that carry my work — and thus the kinds of sites you could find work with in your own search for gigs.

Amour Creole

A Caribbean focused beauty and style magazine. They picked up some small business blog posts, and a review of the New Orleans-based Dave Robicheaux detective series.

SohoOS

These guys serve small businesses and entrepreneurs. They ran a series of advice articles I based on my own successes and failures running a full-time karate school.

FlipKey

A company that facilitates vacation rentals — both for the renters and the rentees. They run a bunch of vacation advice blog posts, including my series on family travel and travel safety.

DietsInReview

Exactly what it sounds like. They bought a few articles on the exercise side of losing weight.

The Content Strategist

Advice on blogging, social media and similar online content for business. Since this is about 60 percent of what I do, they ran several articles on specific social media platforms.

Folsom’s 93

My writing pal April Moore runs this site as part of her book project. Since it’s about prisons, she’s run some guest posts about stupid criminals, personal safety and self defense. Did I mention she has a book deal now? All because of the compelling content she has on the site.

What kinds of places are carrying your work? How do you find new clients? Please post your experiences in comments.