This Horse Is Taking a Piss

"Flogging the Freelancer" is a blog post a day about freelancing in the gig economy. Browse the archives here.

Titles. They're important! Yesterday, I wrote about how I like doing series and find they're more likely to be successful because you don't have to spend so much time recruiting new readers because you have regularly returning readers, and it occurred to me that I'd titled the series you're reading right now "365 Days of Blogging," which is quite possibly the worst title ever. It tells you only about the process of the series and nothing about the content of the series, which is how to be a better freelancer.

So, I'm going to retitle my 365 Days of Blogging in 2016 project "Flogging the Freelancer." I picked this title for several reasons. It was either the first thing or one of the first things that popped into my head, and I'm a big fan of going with your first impulse, unless your first impulse is, "Drink that bottle of Clorox bleach." I also like the word "flogging," which, according to the dictionary, means "to beat or whip (someone) severely," which works well because freelancing is like beating yourself severely on your way to success, which is great if you're a sadist, a masochist, or a switch-hitter. Also: alliteration! I'm a fan.

Here are the three S's of titling:

Steal!

My epic longform investigation of how the Great Recession impacted the adult film industry, "They Shoot Porn Stars, Don't They?", is a revision of "They Shoot Horses, Don't They?", a movie based on a novel about a dance marathon during the Great Depression.

Short!

"A Girl and a .22" is a Forbes post that I wrote about learning how to shoot a gun and how it helped me overcome something horrible from my past. The title's juxtaposition of femininity (girl) and masculinity (gun) creates a curiosity-inspiring pull for potential readers.

Shock!

I wrote a very odd, surrealistic short story over a decade ago now called "Gangbang Tango." At least for awhile, the story ranked high on Google searches for my name. I'm not sure why, but I assume because people google "gangbang" and who could resist clicking on that.

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