A couple of things happened today that inspired this post. First, someone posted on a forum for professional writers asking for tips on how to get started as a freelancer. This, of course, caused many pro writers to become PO’d. (Why expect professionals to spend hours giving you advice that you can find in countless books and websites?)

Second, someone e-mailed me today asking for a list I compiled of magazines that assign health articles, which I mentioned on a different forum (the list was part of a handout for Diana’s and my Canyon Ranch presentation). When I sent her the list, which included about 30 magazines with their snail mail addresses, URLs, phone numbers, and e-mail formats, she wrote back lamenting that the list didn’t include editor names. (Oh, I’m sorry that the free information that I provided was not up to your exacting standards.)

Most of the people who write to me asking for help and advice are professional and polite. I don’t mind answering a brief question or two, and the asker often writes back later to let me know how he fared using my advice (which is gratifying). Everybody wins! But based on these two situations today, I think some writers need a lesson in how to ask for advice.

1. Let the writer know that you respect her time.

A little groveling never hurt anyone. Some aspiring writers start their e-mails by saying, “I know you’re busy, but I was wondering if you had a minute to answer my question.” Others launch into a list of questions without acknowledging that they’re asking the writer to spend her otherwise billable time helping out a stranger. Guess which ones get answered?

2. Keep it short.

Try to distill your question down to just a few sentences. This is good practice for all kinds of writing, and is also more likely to generate a response than a rambling recounting of your life as a writer.

3. Be specific.

A question like “How do I write a query?” would take the writer hours to answer; after all, there are entire books on the subject. Keep your questions as specific as possible.

4. Don’t poach.

Many professional writers have writing books or e-books or offer writing e-courses. Don’t ask a bunch of questions that the writer answers in her book or course. For example, don’t write to Jenna Glatzer, author of The Street Smart Writer, asking “How can I avoid writing scams?” Don’t write to Kelly James-Enger, author of Six Figure Freelancing, to ask how to boost your writing income. Most writers hate to say “Buy my book” but — buy their books! (I’m using Jenna and Kelly as hypothetical examples here; they haven’t expressed any grievances to me about writers asking for advice, and this tip applies to all authors.)

5. Do your research.

If you post on a forum (or e-mail a writer) to ask “How do I get started?” you might as well wear a flashing sign that says, “Flame Me!” Read the forum archives, do a Google search, pick up some writing books at the bookstore or library, and read magazines like Writer’s Digest and The Writer. Lurk on forums until you have a good idea of what kinds of posts are and aren’t acceptable.

6. Remember that you get what you pay for.

When you’re asking for free advice or information, don’t get upset if the writer doesn’t spend hours pondering and answering your questions, or if the information isn’t everything you had hoped for. If your question is broad or the writer is swamped with work, she may reply with a quick list of resources for you to check out or books for you to read. Instead of pitching a hissy because the writer didn’t carefully answer each of your questions herself, appreciate the fact that she took the time to compile a list for you…then go and read the resources she recommended.

7. Say thanks.

Be sure to thank the writer for her advice; I can’t tell you how many times I’ve written long, thoughtful answers to writers’ questions and never received a thank-you. Professional writers also love to know how you fared with their advice, so do write back later to let her know. For example, I got an e-mail yesterday from a writer who said that she followed my advice and landed her first national assignment. That’s nice to hear!

8. Return the favor.

Many writers I help return the favor by alerting me of new magazines and sites they think I’d be interested in, recommending my e-course to others, or sharing editor names with me when they break into a new pub. Sharing with others generates good writer karma.

9. Pay it forward.

When you’re a famous, wealthy writer, remember the help you got from professional writers when you were starting out and “pay it forward” by helping others land their big break.

1. Instead of working from a business plan or a to-do list, Jennifer Lawler chooses themes, and she writes about this in Working in Themes on her Finding Your Voice blog. For example, one month may be novel month, the next month she’ll work on her screenplay. This tactic can work great for freelancers who have so many projects on the go that they can’t decide which one to work on at any given time — so they work on nothing.

2. On Carol Tice’s Make a Living Writing blog, guest poster Michelle Rafter writes An Editor Reveals 7 Secrets Every Writer Needs to Know. For example: Editors like talking to writers on the phone. (See, told ya!)

3. I love this post from Sage Cohen of the Path of Possibility blog: The Death of the Dream Could Be the Birth of Unprecedented Possibility. She writes, “What I have found to be true in every case––in my personal life and my writing life––is that the death of the dream creates the space for what is actually intended to come through: what is, in the end, a better fit than we ever could have imagined.”

4. On The Urban Muse blog, Susan Johnston tells writers about Making the Mental Shift from Employee to Freelancer. Think $30 per hour is an extravagant sum because that’s what you made at your last salaried job? Think again.

5. In Why I’ve Never Missed a Deadline — And How You Can Do the Same on the Dollars and Deadlines blog, Kelly James-Enger advises writers to estimate how long an article will take to research and write, and then build in a time cushion just to be sure they can meet their deadline.

6. Do you tend to get to 90% complete on a project — like writing a query — and then give up? In Completing Projects on the Steve Pavlina blog, Steve urges you to listen to your higher self and push yourself to finish what you start.

If you’re thinking of making the leap to full-time freelancing, first take our quiz to find out if freelancing is for you — and to improve any areas you may be weak in.

1. I’m self-motivated. Yes__ No__

When you freelance, there’s no boss looking over your shoulder to make sure you get your work done. You’re the boss. When you have an article due and the TV and laundry and phone are calling your name, what do you do?

If you’re not self-motivated (yet), don’t worry — this is something you can fake with external motivators. For example, you can partner up with a goal buddy who will hold you accountable for meeting your goals. You can also tell all your friends and family what you plan to do, so you’ll feel a responsibility to get it done. Or you can remove home distractions, for example by working at the bookstore (though that provides distractions of its own!). Here are more ideas for getting motivated.

2. I love to market. Yes__ No__

This is a sticky one. Most freelancers hate to market. It’s all about the writing, man! But in order to make it as a freelancer, you have to sell yourself to editors and clients. This means sending out letters of introduction, writing queries, making calls, sleuthing out the names and contact info for potential editors/clients, and maintaining a website. The only advice I can give is to just do it. You may hate it, but as you’re doing it, imagine all the wonderful things this marketing can bring you — the freedom to work where you want, to set your own hours, to write about things you love. If it seems that somehow you always run out of time in the day before you get any marketing done, set aside a certain day — such as Fridays — where you do nothing but market.

3. I can handle rejection. Yes__ No__

Let’s face it: As a freelancer, you will experience rejection. Even the best writers get rejected! You can get upset and lose a day of writing because you’re so angry/sad/frustrated, or you can suck it up and move on. I recommend the suck-it-up-and-move-on method. Just keep in mind that each rejection brings you closer to an acceptance, and, to be clichéd, the only way to fail is to never try. Also, remember that not all rejections are flat-out no’s…a personalized, friendly rejection from an editor is an invitation to send more ideas.

4. I have an emergency stash of money. Yes__ No__

Many experts recommend you have three to six months worth of savings stashed away before you start freelancing full-time, though of course more is even better. If you don’t have enough to get you by as you gear up your writing business, you may want to freelance on the side as you save up money from your day job. When I started out, I had a part-time office job, and I wrote queries and did assignments on my days off. If you work full-time, you can do interviews on your lunch hour, or before or after hours (thanks to sources in different time zones), and write in the evenings or early in the morning.

5. I’m fine with being alone all day. Yes__ No__

As a freelancer, you won’t be gathering with coworkers around the coffee machine chatting about last night’s Project Runway. I’m lucky that my husband is also a freelance writer, so we keep each other company. But if you’re an extrovert and don’t have the benefit of a freelancing spouse, you can call friends during breaks from work, have lunch dates with other freelancers, and work at Starbucks, the bookstore, or the library so you’ll be around other living beings.

6. I’m good at other things besides writing. Yes__ No__

As I wrote in a blog post last week, only about 15% of what I do is writing. The other 85% is marketing, invoicing, researching, interviewing, and other non-writing tasks. To succeed as a freelancer, you have to be good at all aspects of the business. Not so hot at all of your non-writing tasks? It may be worth it for you to hire a virtual assistant research assistant, accountant, or other expert who can take over what you’re not good at so you can concentrate on what you are good at.

7. I’m an extrovert. Yes__ No__

It would seem like writing in the perfect job for introverts: You sit in your office all day pounding at your keyboard, without having to deal with other people. But a lot of freelancing is about networking — with writers, with editors, with sources. I’ve made more than $30,000 in the past few years by networking with other writers on online forums, and I met several editors who were looking for writers at a conference I spoke at last year — one of whom gave me an assignment. I also go to New York City once a year or so to have lunch with my editors.

If you’re afraid to schmooze, start small. Join an online forum such as Absolute Write and respond to other writers’ posts. Send cards to editors you’ve worked with to thank them for their business. E-mail your family members and friends to let them know that you’re getting started as a freelancer; maybe they know someone who can help you. Soon, you’ll be talking to writers and editors like a pro!

Are there any questions I’m missing? Please post your tips in the Comments section! [lf]

The Query

Dear Carey,

I’m merrily going on my way, writing the Peking story, sticking my nose into the boudoirs and the war chambers of this Emperor and that Emperor. It will be ready next week.

In the meantime, I wonder if I could pitch you some time-dependent story ideas I’ve been working on over the past week for your return. The Afghanistan story was on the list of stories you showed interest in when I pitched that collection of ideas in December. I’ve been waiting for the opium harvest as the best time to do the story.

Should you choose one, I’d plan to leave at the end of the month and need to do some planning beforehand. I hope you don’t think I’m greedy. Three months will have past since I left for the cannibals. It’s terrifying how fast time goes when you’re enjoying yourself. In the tradition of Kafka, I should go work on some newspaper that publishes only shipping lists, so that the remainder of my career will seem ten times as long.

Best regards, Paul

THE WORLD’S MOST EXCITING POLO MATCH ( Taking place July 7-9)

This is an adventure story of the highest order, weaving in, briefly, the fascinating history of polo with a suspenseful and enthralling tale of the rough and tumble annual battle between two traditional rivals, tough mountain men and ponies on the roof of the world. The story would be told in such a way that the reader really cares who will win and sees it through to the nail-biting climax. It also takes readers to some of the most remote people on earth living much as their ancestors have for more than two thousand years. There is potential for many stunning pictures

The roar of ten thousand spectators mingled with the thud and screech of tribal bands greets the arrival of the polo teams from Chitral and Gilgit in Pakistan’s fabled Northwest Frontier Province as they race out onto the flat grassy field in the Shandur pass, 12,000 feet above sea level, a place locals call ‘halfway to heaven.’ Normally pasture land for yaks, the setting is as spectacular as the game itself with the pass dominated by giant Hindukush snow mountains, 40 of them soaring over 20,000 feet and with the biggest, Trichmir, at more than 24,000 feet.

Nestled amid some of the most spectacular mountain scenery in the world, the pass is an historic place, one of the landmarks of ‘The Great Game,’ where British and Russian spies in the 19th century played a risky game of realpolitik with the region’s kings and rajahs. Alexander the Great’s troops passed through here on their long journey of conquest, and many stayed to marry mountain girls and settle. Today, it is a volatile land with Afghanistan crowding it on the north, west and eastern borders and China overhead.

Polo in the West is a sport of the very rich, but in these remote valleys it is the national sport of a pony-loving people with each tiny village and town fielding their own teams which play the year round. Tillers of the field, carpenters, schoolteachers, yak herders take to the field with nobles, the aristocracy of polo determined by who is the best player.

The teams play polo closest to its original form. The tough, highly skilled mountain men and their rugged ponies play much the same way as they have for over eight hundred years, the game introduced here by Ali Sher Khan, a descendant of Ghenghis Khan. Unlike modern polo, there are hardly any rules, no referee and the six-men teams go at each other with a wild passion that often results in injury and sometimes death. They use their sticks not only to hit the ball but also to belt the arms and shoulders of their opponents. If a player breaks an arm or leg during a match, he has it quickly strapped and returns to the game.

No one plays this ancient and exciting sport better than the teams of Chitral and Gilgit, the region’s two major towns, rivals for centuries separated by 120 miles of narrow high mountain pathway with the Shandur Pass at the mid-point. The annual match is so eagerly anticipated that more than 10,000 spectators flock to the pass from the two towns and mud-hut villages in nearby and distant mountains and valleys.

Most people here still live and dress much as their ancestors have since biblical times. Settled on the slopes and rocky outcrops at the pass, a natural grandstand, the Chitral supporters are kept on one side of the field, Gilgit fans the other with a medieval-like bazaar in between. Because of their fervour for the annual match, several hundred riot police are on hand to prevent any fighting between rival supporters.

Polo began in Persia in the 6th century B.C., and as it spread across Central Asia the war-like tribesmen took to it with a passion, using it as a training game for cavalry units. With as many as 100 players on each side, it was like a miniature battle. That zest for the game has never subsided.

Getting to the match is risky enough for the players and their ponies. To reach the field at the Shandur Pass they must make a five-day journey along narrow crumbling pathways that snake across the high mountains with drops of a thousand or more feet.

Ideally, I’d hire a pony and ride along the mountain pathways to the pass with the polo players from one of the teams. Each player is allowed just the one pony for the match, and to acclimatise them as they climb higher each night they play practice games when camp has been made along the trail.

We would meet the major players and follow them through the thrilling final match, between the best players of Chitral and Gilgit. It ends with a victory dance by the thousands of supporters of the winning team who are borne off the field on eager shoulders, heroes through the valleys for the next twelve months.

My friend, Prince Siraj Ulmulk, a grandson scion of Chitral’s last king, will ensure that I have the best possible access. I’d also be able to stay at his home, a former palace, to get an idea of how the high and mighty lived in this high and mighty place.

There’s more to the story. On the Gilgit side, a couple of hours up the mountain is the legendary kingdom of Hunza where people are said to commonly live to 100 or more. The present king still lives there, and I could bring in the angle of some of the world’s hardiest people living in this area, which reflects the tough nature of their favourite sport, polo. They have a Wizard Of Hunza, the latest in a line of powerful shamans who stretch back beyond when Alexander the Great’s troops came here. He performs a prophetic ritual, going into a trance and communing with the queen of the snow fairies who gives him a prophecy. The Hunza king claims they usually come true.

On the Chitral side, the area was dominated by the Taliban during their rule across the border, the rugged mountains of Afghanistan being just a few miles away, and the influence of Islamic fundamentalism in the town is still strong. As well, in the mountains perched above Chitral are the Kalash, the original tribe on which the Kipling story and movie starring Sean Connery and Michael Caine, The Man Who Would Be King, are based. They are a colourful people, a small band of pagans living within a sea of Muslims, and are fiercely independent.

Of course, these are side plots giving give the story more colour, but at centre of the story is the mad, wild, fierce polo match on the roof of the world.

[The e-mail contained two more fleshed-out story ideas.]

The Writer: Paul Raffaele

I never went to journalism school, instead being trained as a broadcast journalist by the Australian Broadcasting Commission. After eleven years, mostly as a senior reporter and foreign correspondent, I left the ABC to pursue a career in feature writing because I preferred that to broadcast reporting. I plunged in at the deep end, but was lucky because the then editor-in-chief of Parade magazine, Jess Gorkin, gave me a number of assignments.

I spent the 90′s as a staff writer with Reader’s Digest, covering the world from my Sydney base. I did animal stories, and have covered the great white shark, Siberian tigers, bonobo apes, African wild dogs, cheetahs, hippos, mountain and lowland gorillas, and Tasmanian devils, among others. I also wrote investigative reports. Bishop Belo of East Timor stated that my exclusive article highlighting his brave battle against the Indonesian invaders of his homeland for RD’s one hundred million readers worldwide when he was a little-known cleric, helped him win the Nobel Peace Prize in 1996.

My first story for Smithsonian was about the African bush meat crisis, and an American helping to save the gorillas in Central Africa. I pitched it first to Carey Winfrey, editor-in-chief of Smithsonian, and he assigned it. I’ve worked for many superb editors with major magazines worldwide, but Carey turned out to be by far the best. I so enjoyed working with him on the bushmeat story that ever since I’ve given him first choice of my story ideas.

I’ve been writing similar articles, though with much less words than for Smithsonian, for three decades. I like to go to remote places for my stories. I’m not sure what a traditional query to an editor is, I just put down the elements of what I feel will make a compelling story for the readers.

I don’t normally send more than one pitch to an editor at a time. I like to focus on one story idea. However, the stories in this pitch were all occurring in early to mid July.

I learned about the polo match between these traditional rivals when I was in Chitral and Gilgit in Pakistan several years ago on a story for Reader’s Digest. I’d been to the Shandur Pass, 12,500 feet above sea level, where it takes place.

My main method for researching my queries is to read as many newspapers and magazines as I can lay my hands on every day, always looking for story ideas. I also watch a lot of documentaries, especially on National Geographic and Discovery channels, looking for story ideas. When I find a story that I like, and I only pitch stories that I want to do very much, then I’ll go on the Internet and to libraries looking for material to support my pitch. For the polo match idea, I went onto the Internet searching for material, went to the state library in Sydney for more research, and e-mailed friends I have in the region.

I don’t wait for assignments to fall into my lap. Every day of my life I am looking for new story ideas and, as the saying goes, I am only as good as my last story. I have never been given an assignment by an editor that I didn’t pitch because I am always knocking on the door, offering new story ideas. I think editors like this approach.

In the pitch I mention Prince Siraj Ulmulk. I met Siraj while I was in Chitral for the RD story. I don’t think my friendship with Siraj made a difference in the pitch, as such, though it will help me in my reporting of the story. The only tip I can give for other writers is to enjoy making friends such as Siraj on the road.

If you want to do the kind of writing I do, if you’re married or in a relationship, you need to have an understanding family because you might be spending much of the year out on the road. It can be lonely, but that’s the balance against the pleasure of doing these kinds of stories. You also get to spend 24 hours a day with your family when you’re home.

Don’t be disheartened if an editor knocks back your pitch. Sometimes, I have to offer several story ideas before one is accepted. If a writer has talent, courage, patience and the ability to sleep sitting in the open in the jungle all night with monsoonal rain pouring onto you, and eat spiders and locusts, and not panic when a clan of naked cannibals brandishing bows and arrows ambushes you on a remote river ( as happened on my most recent assignment, in Indonesian New Guinea), then he or she will have no trouble becoming part of my tribe, the nomadic freelance feature writer.

The Editor: Carey Winfrey, Editor-In-Chief

Paul has written for us for a couple of years now and has an absolutely spectacular sense of the magazine and where the magazine’s needs dovetail with his interests. He lives in Sydney, Australia, but a few months ago he visited us here in Washington and brought along about 25 story ideas, which we went over verbally. Of the 25, there were 20 that were great! He’s someone who really understands the magazine.

It’s amazing how many queries we get from people who are obviously sending out the same one to the Atlantic Monthly, Sports Illustrated, Cooking Light, and on and on. A query like that inevitably belies a total misunderstanding of the magazine.

Even though he’s written for us many times, Paul conveys the enthusiasm of a 19-year-old. He doesn’t think, “I’m a big star, therefore whatever I want to do I can do.” He knows he’s got to sell the idea, and his enthusiasm is contagious. Some writers who have a relationship with a magazine wait for the editors to assign stories to them, and that’s fine—but if you’re trying to get your work in as many publications as possible, you do have to pitch. You’ve got to sell the story and tell the editor what it is about the story that will work for the magazine.

We get about 4,000 queries a year. Because of that volume, an editor’s reflexive response to queries here is “no.” After all, if you respond affirmatively you have to talk to the writer, help shape the idea, negotiate how much to pay, put through documents and on and on. Giving a green light is taking on a burden of obligation. Sure, that’s part of your job as an editor, but it’s not the fun part and you don’t want to do it any more than you have to. After all, you have only so many pages to work with. So you tend to say no to writers who misspell the name of the place they want to visit or don’t seem to understand what your magazine is trying to do or, in my case, address me as Ms. Winfrey when I’m a guy. You’re looking for a reason to say, “This one is not worth my time.”

There are a number of locks, like on the Panama Canal, that the query writer has to go through. The letter has got to be perfect: no grammatical or punctuation errors. The first paragraph should indicate that the writer knows how to put words together. The second shows that the writer understands what the magazine is about. The third shows that the writer has a great idea. In the fourth, the writer explains why it’s a great idea for your particular magazine. The fifth paragraph makes the case for why it should be done now. And the sixth explains why he or she is absolutely the best possible person in the Western hemisphere to pull this story off. That’s a lot of locks to get through. People who think they can write a couple of paragraphs of boilerplate query are kidding themselves.

Paul pitched three ideas, and I assigned the polo story. Any of his three ideas would have worked; the polo story just seemed to have a lot of interesting elements and didn’t conflict with anything we had done or have in the works. With Paul, I’m always looking to say “yes.” I want to keep him busy so he doesn’t take his ideas to someone else.

It was fine for him to send along more than one idea, but I’m lazy and I don’t want to read twelve ideas at once; I’ve got a magazine to put out. I used to get queries from a good Smithsonian writer who would pitch eight or ten ideas at the same time and his letter would sit unread in my inbox because I never had the time or the energy to deal with all the ideas.(He finally gave up, I’m sorry to say.) Two or three ideas is fine if you have a relationship with the magazine. If you don’t, find one idea that really works.

On the whole you want to keep your queries short, but if you have a great idea that you’re excited about and it takes longer than a page, do it. Rules are made to be broken—if there’s a good enough reason to do so. Remember, the query is the one opportunity you get to show what you can do. You’re trying to get the editor’s attention, just like when you were a teenager and trying to catch the eye of the opposite sex (or maybe the same sex). You want somehow to say, “I’ve got something here to offer; I’m a bit special,” without being a kook or scaring the person off. Be distinctive but not crazy.

Paul doesn’t need to include credentials because he’s written for us before, but for a new writer, it’s critical for the editor to know the writer’s experience. Don’t list every single magazine you’ve published in; writing for The New Yorker is better than writing for five or six farm journals or trade magazines.

Everything a person does in a query letter is going to be judged as an indication of whether the writer is useful to pursue or not. If you start bragging in a letter, it will turn the editor off, but if you’re too modest, the editor will think you can’t pull it off. It’s a fine line. [lf]

The e-book is pretty inspiring, but when you get right down to it it’s a guide on how to start a blog on something that you’re passionate about and then make money selling information products like e-books and e-courses. The zero-hour workweek comes in because you love your job so much that it doesn’t feel like work. When you work, it feels like play — so can you really call it work?

I realized a couple of things while reading this e-book. First: I’m there! I love what I do so much that it feels like fun. Sure, there are times when I get burned out, but since I made my pact with myself last year to stop writing for markets that are a PITA, I’ve felt very energized towards my work. And while I say I cut my workweek down to two days, I’m not sure that’s accurate as what I do often doesn’t feel like “work.” I guess you could say instead that I spend two days per week teaching, and writing for clients who appreciate me and treat me (and pay me) well.

I love teaching my e-courses and doing mentoring. I love it when a student who was having problems coming up with a salable idea or crafting a query lede writes to me to say that my advice helped her, and when she writes to tell me she just landed her first assignment from a newsstand magazine. I also love when an editor thanks me for making her job easier. (Just got one of those today, in fact!) And of course, I love it when checks from magazines appear in my mailbox.

The second thing I realized is that I’ve fallen into a business area that can come across as kind of — well, scummy. I don’t know if this is new or if I’m just starting to notice it, but there are lots of people who try to make money by “creating value for others,” as the personal development-speak goes. People build blogs, call themselves experts, and promise readers riches. Coaches and e-courses abound, all promising to help you live your dreams or to make you a millionaire — usually by selling info products yourself. They kind of remind me of those envelope-stuffing scams: The scammers promise to show you how to make thousands of dollars working from home, and when you pay up, you get instructions on how to run your own envelope-stuffing ruse.

One thing I never notice is that these self-appointed gurus never mention how much they earn, but they give the impression that they make big bucks and you can, too.

(Okay, I can’t very well post that and not come clean myself. So here’s the big reveal: I make $70-80,000 per year (it varies), mainly by writing for magazines. I’ve written for more than 120 magazines over the last 13 years; you can see a list here.)

Selling information products like e-courses and coaching online is so easy that many people with dubious credentials are jumping on the bandwagon. One aspiring writer e-mailed me recently that she took an e-course in query writing from someone who claimed to be an experienced magazine writer, though she listed no credits on her website. (No, she didn’t tell me who the instructor was. I wish I knew!) The student was disappointed in the course, and decided to do a little sleuthing. She looked up my name on Infotrac, which is a database of magazine articles, and saw that I had about 240 articles in the database. (I believe it tracks only national magazines, though, as I know I’ve written more than that!) She then plugged the other writer’s name into Infotrac and came up with — get this — three articles, all for the same magazine. Yikes! Even taking into account that Infotrac doesn’t track local magazines, that’s a pretty skimpy number for someone charging money for her expertise.

I’ve also run across many self-proclaimed personal development experts who promise to help you live your dream. I have no idea if these people are credentialed, because what are the credentials for such a thing? These instructors are probably living their dreams, because their dreams are to make money coaching and selling e-books. And they can help you live your dream — if your dream is to build a blog and sell info products yourself. (And the cycle continues.)

I don’t mean to diss everyone who sells information products except yours truly. I regularly have sessions with a life coach who has helped me in many ways. I know very experienced writers who teach courses online and off. And lately I’ve been reading some really good productivity blogs written by people who also offer coaching, and I believe they have the chops. But the field seems to be exploding with — well, not scammers, but people who simply don’t have the credentials to be charging money for their coaching, e-courses, e-books, and so on.

So here I am, offering e-courses and mentoring! I’ve wondering lately if I give the same icky impression that I get from some of the coaches I’ve run across in the burgeoning personal development field, or some of the writing instructors who claim to be experts but have nothing to back it up.

But I like to think that I got in on the game early, when the Internet wasn’t crawling with coaches, and managed to set myself apart before coaching turned into a free-for-all.

So that’s my rant: I love what I do, but worry that I’m icky. I guess if there’s any take-home value to this post, it’s that you should give the third-degree to anyone you’re considering hiring as a coach or whose courses you’re considering taking — including me. Check their websites for credentials, and if they don’t list any, ask (not everyone feels the need to brag about their creds online!). Then check out their claims by doing a little sleuthing on your own, and be sure that their credentials line up with what you want to learn. (For example, I admit I can’t teach you how to break into The New Yorker because I don’t have the creds to do so!) Remember that the money you spend on information products should be a good investment in your career, so don’t be afraid to ask questions. [lf]