If you’ve had a festive break from your bid or proposal writing, you’ll know how tough it is to get back in to the swing of things as the New Year settles in. the thought of going back to work when you freelance as a bid writer can be difficult, as you take the decorations down and look around your sparse home and office. However, Christmas and the New Year can both take their toll on freelance writers financially, and it is now, more than ever, that you need to take a deep breath and hit the decks to do some serious writing for your clients. Read more
Being a parent and proposal writing may seem like two incompatible subjects, but in truth more and more people are turning to freelance bid writing as a way of generating a positive income stream while they raise their kids. Because of the flexible nature of bid writing, it is possible to undertake the work from home, and there is no real requirement for a freelance bid writer to work within a company environment unless specifically requested to by the client. Read more
You know the feeling as well as you know cups of coffee and cold pizza – that terrible procrastination which sneaks in to your mind when you should be focussing upon a particularly challenging bid. This inertia, laziness and dread of work always seems to come upon us when we are desperately fighting against a tight deadline, and can actually count the moments left to us, to submit a compliant document to our client. Read more
Writing at the best of times is a pastime that requires a quiet space to do it. Virginia Woolf famously stated that all a writer needed to succeed was a room of one’s own, and enough money to be able to write without worrying about paying the mortgage and bills. Alright, so the majority of us obviously write for that very reason – to pay our bills, and Woolf probably wasn’t discussing bid, tender and proposal writing when she was famously quoted, but many of her ideas on the production of good writing stand firm even today. Read more
Freelance proposal writing is a great job. We get to choose who we work with, when we work, and how we work, right? What better role is there than a job where we can operate from a home office, working predominantly online through new media communications mechanisms such as Skype, watching Jeremy Kyle while producing our bid responses? Read more
How long have you been working as a proposal or bid writer? When you count the number of bids you have produced, even in the past year, what number do you come up with? All of those words, thousands of characters, relating to similar subjects – winning propositions, providing sustainable solutions, achieving compelling arguments and presenting concise information relating to specific sectors. The amount of copy which your average bid writer produces over the course of their career is staggering. The big question is, what happens to all of these words once the bid is submitted? Read more
How much do you utilise Social Networking and media in your everyday life? The likelihood is, if you’re regularly on your computer during the day or evening getting your proposals and bids in, you also pop in to the major social networking sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and others. Most people who work online for the majority of their job tend to become au fait with the key aspects of social networking, but have you considered how each of these sites can support you to advertise your freelance proposal writing skills, and secure new contacts and leads for jobs? Read more
As a freelance bid or proposal writer, you tend to generate a network of contacts and select a few companies for whom you do the majority of your writing work through. These are the organisations which provide a great fit between the projects they generate, and your own skills. You will probably have an outstanding relationship with one or two bid managers in the firm, and know exactly what is required when they contact you and offer you a piece of work to produce. This is an ideal situation for any freelance bid writer, as it means you have the opportunity of drawing upon the camaraderie and support of a team that knows you well, and the comfort and safety of understanding that you will be the first port of call when a new bid writing project comes in. Read more
Think back to when you first started working in the bid writing profession, and how many people you have met along the way. The chances are, you have spent a great deal of time networking, attending conferences, meeting people, possibly selling your series, and joining up with various online forums and discussion groups. If you could put a number on the amount of people whom you have come into contact with, what would it be? Probably a lot more than you would first imagine. Read more
No matter whether you are the sort of person who takes stress as an added incentive to work harder, or you would rather run away than stay working on a bid which has near-impossible deadlines, there’s no doubt that the world of bid writing can be fraught sometimes with pressure. Love it or hate it, it’s a fact of the job, leaving us working until the early hours while our partners or children are tucked up safely in bed dreaming of a time when the whole family can enjoy a regular timetable. Read more
