Alli Manning

I see the same mistakes time and again. Sadly, they can lead to break-ups that never really needed to happen. A freelancer may provide great content, but because of their communication habits or some other mistake, the client doesn’t want to work with them. Luckily, these kind of things are usually easy to fix. Here are five ways to ensure your clients ask for you first.

Contently's Director of Creative Network and Editorial Services Alli Manning presented a long list of improvements to the content agency's freelancer profiles at a webinar today. After the webinar, she discussed them with FLX.

"The ability to mark specific projects as private for Contently's eyes only is the neatest and most important new feature," she said.

That's because it will make it easier for Contently to recognize writers who specialize in things like ghostwriting or who are otherwise unwilling to make some of their portfolio public. "We have passed up on writers who only have cover

I decided to take a closer look at how much time marketers and editors are committing to their freelancers. Here’s a comparison of many hours it takes you to finish a story with a freelancer on your own versus how long it takes using Contently.

"I think Trump's presidency will not have an effect on freelancers one way or another," suggests Alli Manning, the senior manager of Contently’s creative network, which includes over 100,000 freelance professionals. "There's so little regulation now that I actually don't see it changing in any significant way for the individual freelancer themselves."

In today’s user-driven world it doesn’t matter what business you’re in, you need to establish your brand. This is true whether you’re a tech-savvy Silicon Valley startup or a shoe store in Milwaukee.

The breadth and quality of our freelance talent network, combined with our proprietary technology, allows our customers to access the right humans, in the right places, with the right expertise. In other words, to help them do what humans do best—share stories.

I was invited to speak on the Freelance Writers Den's members only podcast about how writers can pitch infographics to their clients.