Some of you (well, those of you who still read my sometimes coherent ramblings!) that I’ve made a few changes to this blog recently. I think it’s for the best and I want to promote a more professional feel as I seek to improve my web presence as a freelance content writer.

I no longer want to rely solely on Upwork for work. I don’t by the way; I have three very good clients away from the platform, but this new 20% fee is just too much with the 20% charge for EU VAT. With any new contracts, I will lose 24% of my earnings, and that is too much for a starving freelance content writer like me. I don’t want to rely on it quite so much any more although I acknowledge without the site, I may not be where I am today.

The Changes I’ve Made

Over the last couple of weekends, I’ve made some changes. Only some of which will be visible to you. Firstly, I deleted some 300 old posts. Yes, 300! I’m not sure anybody will be interested in reading posts with such titles as “Merry Christmas 2013!” and “Speculating on who will play The Doctor after Matt Smith leaves.” Yes, a lot of these were obsolete and had unsurprisingly received very few hits once that time had passed.

Secondly, I deleted the Useful Sites for Writers page. I hadn’t updated it in over a year. It was a feature from around 2012-2013 when I featured a Site of the Week. I checked each post and deleted half of them. In some cases, the pages were no longer up or had morphed into something else. Many of my posts directed to dead links and so they were deleted too. Now I am working as a freelance content writer, I want to scale back some of the things I do surrounding this blog – it’s no longer just a hobby blog and hasn’t been for some time.

So yes, 300 posts deleted or thereabouts. I may delete more in future. It is known that Google penalises sites with dead links, so I need to keep the site fresh, relevant and in full working order.

The other main change is a new landing page advertising my writing services. For the last year, it had been Dead Heat but this is now under “published work”. It also has a permanent widget in the side bar. Look ——>

You’ve probably also noticed more freelancing style “how to” and “five hacks” type articles on this blog. Things like The Five Fears of Freelancing. I intend to write more content like this. Followers of my Facebook Page will also notice I am sharing more business content related to web writing, professional blogging, basic SEO and content marketing. This will now be an ongoing feature as I look to expand outside of my hobby blog scope.

The Changes To Come

As I look to push my content writing brand, I will be writing more content on freelancing and work from home. There is a whole untapped area to explore, I feel. That is not to say you won’t get samples of fiction work or that I won’t post nerdy articles on Doctor Who or Video Games, or some of my travels. I fully intend to continue bringing you my thoughts on these areas too, so never fear. They will feature but perhaps not as much as this becomes my major outlet for professional promotion. When I do, I hope to present something that others are not doing. Things like Great Story Telling in Video Games.

The second change is that, sometime in the next few weeks, I expect to add a CV / Resume page to highlight my experience and career as a freelance content writer. It will have my contact details, my background and some clickable samples so potential clients can see my style of work. I’m researching what I should put and how to format it.

Thanks to my readers past and present, you’ve all made this journey worthwhile