Business skills for freelance journalists - one-day course February 22, 2009

An intensive one-day course covering techniques for treating your writing as a business and marketing and planning in a professional way.

Many freelance journalists handle their activities in a haphazard manner - they pitch a bit, they write a bit and they have no idea what they are going to be doing the month after next. Just about no other business operates in this way and it makes cash flow a nightmare.

Course tutor: Guy Clapperton

Date: Monday 23 February 2009
Time: 10.00-17.00
Venue: London W2 (near Paddington station)
Number of places: 8
Cost: £320 (+£48 VAT) including lunch and free one-year listing in our online database of freelance journalists worth £50. Hurry, only three places left!

So you have decided to (or been forced into) go freelance. Great - but do you know your schedule D from your P60? Do you know when you need to register for VAT or why it might be a good idea to do so regardless?

What about marketing yourself? Are you sure you are up to this? How’s your website looking, and do you have a Facebook page? How easy are you to find and how well do you brand yourself on every piece of marketing collateral you produce?

In this intensive one-day event we will look at:

* Branding yourself as an expert freelance – is every little bit of marketing going to produce an outcome?
* Clippings and your website – how to avoid copyright nightmares.
* Pitching and knowing your target market – practical exercises as well as theory.
* Making your presence consistent over multiple media.

We will also cover business fundamentals like:

* VAT and how it can work for you.
* Your tax responsibilities.
* What to look for in an accountant – assuming you need one!
* Tax and VAT as marketing tools.
* Invoicing, credit control, dispute resolutions.

The whole course is supported with comprehensive notes and worksheets detailing specific techniques covered.

About Guy Clapperton
Guy has worked as a journalist for 20 years, starting his first full-time reporter’s job in January 1989. He has been freelance since 1993.
He appears regularly in the Sunday Telegraph, Guardian, Independent, Times, Financial Times, Esquire and on the radio on BBC Radio London.

He specialises in small to medium business stories and technology but has diversified to an extent - he co-wrote the Radio Times supplement for the reintroduction of Doctor Who in 2005 and briefly wrote for ITV's Spitting Image in the 1990s.

He has also edited and written books, including three editions of the annual "Britain's Top Employers" for Guardian Books and "Free Publicity For Your Business In A Week".

Guy has media-trained PR people and their clients since 2002. For more information about Guy Clapperton and his training services, please visit Clapperton.co.uk.

Book now
To book your place now and pay using debit/credit card, please visit: http://www.journalism.co.uk/36/45/

To book your place now and be invoiced for the amount, please visit: http://www.journalism.co.uk/36/44/

Official Website: http://www.journalism.co.uk/36/43/103/