Almost every listing on every Freelance Writing job board asks for the resumé and portfolio of all those inquiring about the position. In fact, almost to the tee, we are asked for as link to those items.

If you have your own web site that is dedicated to your freelancing business, then you are ahead of the game; if you don’t, shame on you. With all of the free blogging platforms (WordPress, Blogger, and Typepad to name a few) there is no reason you shouldn’t have a site with a resumé, your portfolio, and contact information.

WordPress.com offers over 1400 templates or themes to choose from, so building a professional looking freelance gun for hire site is fairly easy.

Don’t stop at building your home site. You want to create a network of pages that will help get you noticed by a wider group of  those looking for the hired guns. There are plenty of flexible free platforms that a freelancer can create a resumé and provide links to their portfolio.

One of the newest ones is Weedle, in fact, Weedle is set up to be a site that caters to resumés and portfolios. While the platform is truly a web 2.o publishing site, the pages are straightforward and specifically guide the user in posting work skills, work history, and recommendations. The also allow uploads for work samples.

Another great site to construct a resume at is Squidoo. Squidoo is maybe the most versatile publishing platform available on the Internet as everyone from large businesses to work at home mothers publish content in an effort to market something.

Squidoo offers many different templates to work with; possibly the easiest and cleanest template  to build a resumé with  is the SquidWho template.  The SquidWho theme is streamlined and highly configurable with many more widgets available than you could ever use. Personally, I recommend sticking with the text widgets and creating a simple, yet elegant resumé.

A number of simple, but effective resumés can be created and linked together in a short amount of time. The beauty of these pages is they all can be interlinked and linked back to your home site. Many of the available platforms are dofollow and have established page rank; SEO will be made a bit easier.

Don’t forget about LinkedIn; the social network for professionals. LinkedIn is becoming the standard for employment placement utility for thousands of  potential employers and clients. Make sure your LinkedIn profile is updated with links to all of your resumés and portfolios.

Oh yeah, your email signature is another great place to place links to your resumés as well as contact information. If you are using FireFox for a Internet bowser, I suggest the add-on called Wise Stamp. With Wise stamp, a handsome signature can be easily created that will automatically be placed on all of your outgoing email.

Wise Stamp is damn cool. You can include links to all of your social networking profiles, your latest Twitter updates, and the latest RSS feed from your blog.

By increasing your web footprint with many published resumés, a smart LinkedIn profile, and a dedicated site, you can have a better shot at landing some great freelance gigs you have missed out on in the past.

What are some of the publishing platforms you use to shill your skills?

© 2010, Alex Crabtree. All rights reserved.

Everyone needs a storm shelter from time to time.  Maybe if for nothing else, just a pickle barrel to sit around with a few peers and toss out some old tales or gather fragments of sage advice.

That place now exists for writers.

Extreme Writing Now is open to all writers. Starting today, the EWN social network will be accepting registrations from any freelancer, poet, article writer, prose hound,  and check kiter who is looking for a cozy place to hang with folks who will treat them as a friend.

We have one blog that everyone can post at, groups, and an exciting activity stream. The forums are still under construction, but they will soon provide a place where we can share information and seek help.

I guess I need to mention somewhere that membership is 100% free. No hidden tiers, no you-can-join-this-level-for-this-much crap.

The center of today’s opening gal is a 55 word fiction in the activity stream contest. All members  who want to participate can post a 55 worder in the activity stream for other members to vote on via the LIKE button. The update with the most LIKES at the end of the day will win a brand new hardback edition of  William Golding: The Man Who Wrote Lord of the Flies, a biography penned by John Carey.

The rules for writing 55 word fiction are simple and can be read 55 Word Fiction ~ This Masochist Loves It.

Come in and join the fun!

© 2010, Alex Crabtree. All rights reserved.

Seriously, do you really believe you are not a writer? Come on, you know you have the will  to write, and most likely have enough life experiences to write something tearful or funny.

Some of have even thought it would be cool to sit around in our jammies all day and write for a living, only to talk ourselves out of taking that big step because we don’t believe we really can write.

Maybe if you got a chance to read what some folks are getting paid good money for, the next time you begin to dash your dreams of being an author you will have second, third, and maybe fourth thoughts about it.

Take the accounting of the Gulf clean-up efforts that was penned by a BP hired gun for PR purposes, for instance. As reported by Cliff Kuang at Fast Times, that pro turned out a laughable, at best, turd.

Kuang gives us a peek of that horrendous paid effort via snippets in his article, Can You Beat BP’s Ridiculous “Reports from the Gulf”?

Go over to that article, print it out, and tack it above your monitor as a reminder that, yes, you too can write, and even get paid for it.

That sound you hear, the deafening crescendo of clickity clacks, is the sound of millions of newly discovered writers.

© 2010, Alex Crabtree. All rights reserved.

Do you write more than the checks to pay the bills? Well, have we got good news for you!

Monday, June 28, 2010, Extreme Writing Now will officially become a free social network for writers, offering writers of all types a place to hang their hats and chill out with their equals.

From scribblers and bloggers to freelancers and poets, you’ll all find the welcome mat laid out at the end of a long red carpet. There will be groups and forums to discuss our addiction to scrawl our hearts out.

Right now, I am sure that you are asking what is in it for you. Nothing at all, if you don’t sign up. But, if you do become a member, you get the benefit of camaraderie. This community is unselfish beyond belief when it comes to promoting and supporting their peers.

Did I mention it is free?

The blog will be open to every member for posting, although there is no revenue sharing, the members are more than welcome to monetize their posts.

When the doors fly open, there is sure to be some construction going on to finish up the site, so watch your step and wear a hard hat.

Part of Monday’s gala will include a contest for a book give away. The contest will run like this:

Members who wish to compete the brand new copy of the book, William Golding: The Man Who Wrote Lord of the Flies, written by John Carey, must post a 55 word story in the activity stream. Members of EWN will be able to vote on each story by clicking the LIKE button. The story with the most LIKEs by 24:00 EST will win the book.

The winning story must adhere to the conventions of the 55 word micro-fiction format, which can be seen here.

Why not join us for the fun? At Extreme Writing Now, everyone is a writer and there is none better than you!

© 2010, Alex Crabtree. All rights reserved.

The last few weeks I’ve been horsing around with a new project which led me to write a lot of  SEO tutorials, only because SEO is a requirement to survive this tangled mess we have gotten ourselves into.

The Internet is crowded and we’re all yelling to be heard but the only ones that hear us when we yell are the ones who are close; our friends. Yet, we have something to say and we want thousands to hear it, damnit!

To be heard, we pay the concierge with keywords, back links, and link wheels to get our words to the booths that sit high above the dance floor. We hope those that sit in those lofty booths will give us a nod and a mention, because one word from those dudes and people will give us a look.

We can use every trick in the book to get thousands of visitors to our blogs, but can we deliver? Seriously, the simple truth about success on the Internet, or anywhere in life, is that we must satisfy a need. We must deliver the goods or we will lose all that we spent.

What is it we must deliver? A solution. We are all marketers trying to service a niche were people are clamoring for relief from some problem. Products, ideas, knowledge, or good old fashioned entertainment, we are all selling something. If we’re good, we get repeat customers. If not, we’ll be kicked to the curb quicker than a homeless chick after a date.

That is the measure of success in life. When we advertise and try to deliver, do people come back on their own? Do they bring a friend the next time?

Sound SEO  practice will deliver sheep, but good solid content will always feed them the sweetest of meals. It is a difficult juggling act, but if we take a good look at a lot of the SEO tools as not part of a separate task of blogging, but as agents of freedom, we can find that writing content is getting to be more like writing than advertising.

If you’re not familiar with some of the tools available to you in your blogs, look around, dig into them. But don’t look at them from the pure Internet geek angle, look at them with your writing heart in mind. If you can do this, you’ll get ears delivered to you AND get them to come back time and time again.

© 2009, Alex Crabtree. All rights reserved.

Seems that Top Ten Lists are all the rage now, and I may be late getting in the game. But, I’m going to jump right in and muck the whole thing up with a few Top Ten lists of my own, starting with my take on the Top 10 Things Freelance Writers Don’t Need.

It’s a fact that we Freelance writers are consumed by all sorts of things. The potential for a fat ass, irritability, the penchant for no sleep, and the lack of real food are just a few that come to mind. Taking all this into my tequila tainted mind, I came up with the following list:

See anything on the list you think you disagree with? What item do you think should be number 11?

© 2009, Alex Crabtree. All rights reserved.