Collecting is a topic that always concerns a significant portion of the writers and editors who frequent the Freelance Success forums.

Shaking money out of publishers hasn’t gotten any easier as the media space has shifted over the last few years with many traditional outlets struggling and disappearing.

If you’re writing for money and you haven’t gotten paid in the time frame you were promised, here are 9 suggestions for getting a client to cough up the cash.

1. Invoice. This may seem too obvious to mention, but not everybody is johnny-on-the-spot about invoicing. Send the invoice when you finish the assignment — unless you’ve agreed in writing to something else.
2. Watch the calendar. Your original agreement should specify the payment schedule. (If it doesn’t, shame on you. Get it in writing the next time.) Once the due date has past, send a reminder. The electric company does and so should you.
3. The squeaky wheel gets the grease. Get to know the person who is responsible for sending out the checks. Usually, that’s the accounts payable associate in the accounting department. Get that person’s name and phone number — email is too passive — and check on the status of your check at least once a week once its overdue — until it arrives.
4. Stop working. If you hire somebody to paint your kitchen, and you don’t pay him, he won’t come back and paint your living room in the hope that the extra work will encourage you to pay up. Instead, he’ll stand on your door step and demand cash. Most writers these days don’t work for people whose offices are close enough to visit in person, but you can certainly stop providing your services. Don’t do any more work for someone who owes you money.
5. Be friendly. Seek sympathy from the people who can pay your invoice.  “Mary, I really need your help. I’m a freelancer; it’s just me. I rely on this money. When I don’t get paid, I can’t pay my bills – I can’t even buy groceries. When can I expect the check from you?” – is much more effective than accusations.
6. Go up the chain. If 60 days rolls around and the accounts payable person hasn’t delivered, move on to a supervisor, the controller, the vice president for finance or in the case of a small business, the owner. Again, don’t be nasty. Just explain that you’re having a problem and you need help getting paid. The guy in charge may not even realize that his employees are stiffing you.
7. 90-Day Warning. If it gets to 90 days with no attempt to pay you, send a notice of your intent to turn this debt over to a collections agency. Send copies personally addressed to your editor, the accounts payable person with whom you’ve been dealing, and the company executives with whom you’ve spoken.
8. 120-day blast-off. By this point, it’s probably clear you’re not going to work for this publisher again. But be businesslike: burn your bridges cautiously. Find your contract and make a copy. If your story has been published, attach a copy of it to the copy of the contract and turn the whole mess over to a collections agency. Collections agencies work on contingency, so it won’t cost you anything if they can’t collect. If they do collect, they’ll keep 25 to 30 percent of the payment. Be sure to nail that that percentage down before they start working for you. And ask the agency for small business references. Collections agencies have to be licensed in most states, but bad apples muck up every barrel. If you need help finding a reliable collections agency, try ACA International, an association of credit and collections professionals.
9. Tell your writer friends. They need to know.

Getting that first assignment or two is a hurdle beginning freelancers have to get over. Sitting at your desk, staring at the computer screen won’t ramp up the business.

How do you pick a potential market when you don’t have a track record? There are many answers to this question, but here are a half dozen that seem to have worked for a lot of Freelance Success subscribers.

1. Introduce yourself to the local daily newspaper city editor or the managing editor of the weekly newspaper. Be willing to start by covering some routine assignments. While you’re doing these jobs, look for ideas that lend themselves to meatier assignments that you can sell to the newspaper or some other publication for a higher rate of pay
2. Send a query with a good idea to the editor of the local or even a national parenting magazine. If you’re a mom or a dad, these publications will be happy to hear from you. The pay rate probably won’t thrill you, but remember that parenting is universal and you can probably resell the piece — or at least the idea and some of the research — several times over if you are persistent.
3. Consider writing for a religious or inspirational publication. For instance, Guideposts magazine is almost completely written by readers and the pay is at least 50 cents per word. Send your inspirational idea to submissions@guidepostsmag.com.
4. Write for a hobby magazine. Whatever your hobby is, someone publishes a magazine about it. A good place to start is F&W Media, which publishes magazines on topics ranging from gun collecting, to antiques and collectibles, horticulture, coin and car collecting.  If you are an enthusiastic who can offer a good idea, they’ll work with you to help you write it the way they want it written. If you turn out to be the kind of writer they like to work with, chances are you’ll get a steady stream of assignments.  If you look on each of the magazine’s websites, you’ll find writers’ guidelines that will get you started. The pay here varies, but averages about 30 cents per word.
5. Submit an idea to your alumni magazine. Practically every college and university has at least one alumni publication and if you went to a large school like Ohio State, there are literally dozens of alumni publications. All of them love to run good stories written by alumni. In many cases, these magazines pay at least $1 per word.

This isn’t exactly about writing for a living, but I think it’s relevant because so many of us freelance word wranglers spend so much time online because that’s where the business is.

There’s no Emily Post of online etiquette, but maybe there should be. One Freelance Success subscriber asked other people what kind of online behavior annoyed them the most.

The floodgates opened. Here are some of the things that roused the ire of these Internet veterans:

• Calling people stupid because they disagree or sheep for agreeing with someone else.
• Stating something as fact with no substantiation
• Turning a post into a monologue
• Bashing everything and everybody
• Reposting without permission, links or attribution.
• The hundreds of “vote for my blog or my website” requests.
• Canned Twitter greetings with exhortations to follow or “like” them online.
• Emoticons – if you think someone might take it the wrong way without the smiley face, don’t write it at all.

I have my own list of online writer related nits. At the top are people take offense at small slights. It’s hard to convey tone and sometime really innocuous posts irritate readers who seem to make a habit of leaping to the most negative interpretation.

Do you remember Emily Litella? I always think of her when somebody goes off half cocked without reading and understanding the post they’re complaining about. It happens on my Bankrate.com retirement blog frequently.

It’s all I can do not to counter-post “NEVERMIND.”

Conferences take on special importance when you work from your home office and don’t get much opportunity to interact with colleagues. All freelance organizations organize conferences and woo their members to three or four days of opportunities to learn and have fun with colleagues.

Next week, I’m speaking at the Specialized Information Publishers Association, an organization whose members include conventional newsletter and periodical publications as well as an increasing number of online publishers with no print component. I’m talking about managing freelancers and other contract employees.

One of the keynote speakers for the event will be Rafi Mohammed, author of “The 1% Windfall: How Successful Companies Use Price to Profit and Grow.” In advance of the conference, Mohammed offered some advice on pricing, something that most freelancers find challenging. Here are a few of his tips:

• Set prices that capture value. When it looks like rain, Manhattan street vendors raise their umbrella prices. They know that the right way to set prices is to reflect the value that customers place on a product by “thinking like a customer.”
• Implement differential pricing. For any product, some customers are willing to pay more than others. Differential pricing involves identifying and offering discounts to price-sensitive customers.
• Offer different product versions. One of the easiest ways to enhance profits and better serve customers is to offer more than one version. These options allow customers to choose how much to pay for a product.

Setting prices also requires sticking to your guns. In this market, some customers are looking for the lowest price — no matter what. If you can’t figure out how to make a profit from what a potential customer is willing to pay, don’t be afraid to walk away. There are always other jobs.

It’s Memorial Day weekend, the beginning of what can be the busiest season of the year for freelancers. While staffers take vacation, we non-staffers do the work.

Over the last few years, I’ve landed a variety of assignments from dozens of clients during the summer season. Some of this short-term work has turned into long-time relationships. If you’re interested in doing the same, here are a few ways to find seasonal assignments.

• Call the city editor of your local newspaper newspaper. Staffs are shrinking, but the demand for copy to fill the space hasn’t disappeared. If you can be available to cover events or you can fill in for vacationing staffers, your call may be welcome.
• Introduce yourself to the communications office of your local college or university. It’s probably quiet on campus, but it’s the calm before the storm and it’s likely the communications office is busy preparing materials for incoming students. Your services may be needed desperately.
• Let temporary agencies know you’re available. Writing and editing jobs aren’t the kind that most temp agencies are often asked to fill, but you ever know.
• Give some business cards to the local print and copy shops. Sometimes their clients need the talents you have.
• Cold call local ad and public relations agencies. Find out who in these shops hires writers, then send a resume and samples.
• Cold call the marketing departments of local businesses. With social media commanding an ever more important role in marketing, there are lots of ghosting jobs available that will never be advertised.

In every case, be prepared to quote a competitive rate and don’t shortchange yourself. You can always drop your rate, but once you’ve thrown out a number, it’s almost impossible to raise it.

The subscribers to Freelance Success, who are mostly full-time professional writers and editors, do an array of work to make a living.

I think this is particularly interesting considering the increasing number of online discussions about freelance opportunities being affected by Google’s changing algorithms, which have reduced the visibility of websites owned by Demand Media and other low-rent content providers.

In truth, most people who make a living in the freelance content-wrangling business don’t do it by writing the kind of things that Demand Media sells because even under the best of circumstances it doesn’t pay well enough. Demand pays somewhere in the neighborhood of $5 to $15 for a 500-word story, while most subscribers to Freelance Success are unwilling to make anything less than 50 cents/word or its equivalent – $50 per hour. And they don’t have any trouble finding assignments at those rates.

Periodically — just for fun — someone calls for a listing on the discussion list of who is working on what. Here’s a few items from this week’s list. It demonstrates the variety of ways that someone who freelances can pay the bills:

• Writing a textbook
• Materials for a brochure for those affected by an unusual disease
• A print and online story about a parenting topic
• An aftermarket automotive marketing story
• A story for veterinarians about dog and cat diseases
• Class materials for a communications class
• Fashion story for an association magazine aimed at readers with a physical disability
• Two essays assigned by editors of the Chicken Soup series
• A martial arts guide
• Monthly newsletter for a statewide association
• Personal bio for an expert

The greatest thing about freelancing is that the opportunities are endless and available everywhere.

Are you a loser without a smart phone? Increasing numbers of Freelance Success subscribers and many other people in the word wrangling business are smart phone users who conduct a significant amount of their businesses from these phones.

I’m not one of them. I like having a comfortable office, a big monitor and a wired phone with a clear sound. But increasingly, I think that puts me in a minority. More and more people are able to do most of their work from their QWERTY keyboardS.

If you don’t have a smart phone, there are a few tools that will reduce the possibility that you’ll stand out from the IN crowd.

• Sign up for Skype. It’s free most of the time; cheap all the time. With Skype you can talk to everyone for practically nothing.
• Use a Drop Box account. Drop Box, including the free version, lets you save your working files online so that wherever you are, you can pull up a key file get the job done.
• Netbook computers are worth it. A cheap netbook computer will do almost everything your laptop does and twice as much as anybody’s cell mobile phone at a really minor cost — definitely less than $300.
• Use Google Voice. Google Voice will aggregate your various phone numbers and keep track of your messages, delivering them to you in whatever way you find most convenient. It’s worth the price, which for calls within the U.S. and Canada is zero.

I’m an enthusiastic member of the Specialized Information Publishers Association. This group used to be called the newsletter publishers association, but times have changed and most of its members have moved from print newsletters to other ways of distributing information.

Today, the group offered its members an online seminar about the need for media perils insurance. Many freelancers don’t bother with business insurance because most policies are really intended for people who have clients come to the office. The policies cover things like slip-and-falls in bad weather. They also offer errors and omissions protection, but even that flavor of insurance is rarely relevant to freelance writers.

What most freelancers really need is a media perils policy, which covers lawsuits that accuse a writer of libel, slander, defamation, violation of right of privacy, piracy, unfair competition or infringement of copyright, title or slogan. Ask your friendly local insurance agent about this flavor of policy and it’s highly likely that he or she won’t know what you’re talking about. These coverages are almost never offered in standard business perils policies. In fact, there are often specific exclusions stating that these risks are definitely not covered.

Media perils insurance can be pricey. There are a couple of insurers that cater to people like authors and freelancers who need individual policies.  Axis Insurance offers the most comprehensive and reasonably priced policies that are widely available. Be sure to spell out exactly what you do because coverage prices vary from as little as $350 for high-deductible, modest coverage to $2,000 or more for a policy that covers someone who has written a book that Axis considers potentially controversial.

You may not think you need insurance because you don’t do anything that is likely to get you sued, but as today’s SIPA online seminar pointed out clearly, the online world is increasingly litigious. If you operate an online writing and editing business that includes the use of social media, it is highly likely that you’ll encounter situations that put you at risk. Better to be safe than sorry.

Digging up new customers is a constant challenge for most freelancers. Almost none of us really enjoy the process, especially when it involves cold calling people we don’t know. So when FLXer Sarah Maurer declared a goal in May of cold calling 1,000 potential customers and launched a blog to report on her progress, many of us were in awe.

If you would like to do something similar, here are five tips from Maurer to get yourself going:

1. Have strict “cold calling” hours. Starting at “9 a.m.,” you’re calling until you reach your goal for the day. No whining.

2. Reward yourself. Make an agreement with yourself that if you get through your cold calls by a reasonable hour, you can have a little treat – a shorter workday, a break with a favorite TV show, a cheeseburger. Seriously, whatever it takes.

3. Remember why you’re doing this. Get a nicer apartment or take a great vacation. Look at your list when your enthusiasm wanes.

4. Repeat: The first is the worst. Once that first call is done, the others will be easy. Do what you have to to break the ice.

5. Keep your momentum up by calling every day. Twenty-five calls should take one to two hours, which leaves plenty of time for other projects.

And one last insight from Maurer: Before you try this, consider your phone service. If you don’t have the all-you-can-call variety, you might consider switching because this could cost you big time.

I‘m participating in the WordCount Blogathon, sponsored by online journalist Michelle Rafter and her WordCount blog. Thursday is book day – all 200 or so participants are writing about the books that add insight to what they do.

There are probably more books on writing and journalism than any other single topic. When a writer has something to say about her craft what does she do but write a book.

As the technology behind the word business has focused increasingly on electronic delivery, books printed on paper have grown increasingly irrelevant. Why rely on a book on the shelf when you can click on a favorite and find the answer to your question almost immediately? So I’ve packed up most of my books on paper and donated them to the public library. But not everything. Some of my writing resources are still on the shelf next to my desk — within easy reach.

Here are my 10 favorites:

1. The Associated Press Stylebook and Libel Manual. You can subscribe to this as an online service, but I’m still content with the same-old, same-old.
2. Mass Media Law by Don R. Pember. I’ve had many books that explain the intricacies of libel law, but none of them are as clearly written or easy to use as this one.
3. Corporate Annual Reports, A User’s Guide, by Brian Stanko and Thomas Zeller. I write a lot about business topics and this book explains things I’d never figure out without help.
4. The Elements of Style, by William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White. I was given a bound 50th anniversary edition of this classic a few years ago and I treasure it.
5. What to Charge, Pricing Strategies for Freelancers and Consultants by Laurie Lewis. Setting the right price is a constant challenge even for an experienced freelancer.
6. The Little Brown Book of Anecdotes, Clifton Fadiman, Editor. Anyone who writes speeches or gives them should have one of these volumes on the shelf.
7. Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary. I routinely use an online dictionary — except when I can’t find what I want. Then I turn to this dependable resource.
8. Crazy Salad by Nora Ephron. When I have trouble structuring a paragraph or getting the rhythm of a story right, I read a little from this classic and the right approach almost always occurs to me.
9. Death and Taxes by Dorothy Parker. Another great resource when I’m looking for inspiration.
10. Latin Quips at Your Fingertips, collected by Rose Williams. Age-old wit that can be quoted whenever a good quote is needed.