My Guides To Finding Clients and Pricing Freelance Writing Work
To continue with the process of indexing I initiated yesterday, here’s a quick summary (and roadmap) of some pieces of information I have conveyed to date about how to make the freelance writing racket for you (sorry to fall back on that lame joke but I couldn’t resist).
Disclosure: I don’t pretend to have all the answers about freelancing — or even anything remotely close to that — but the follow posts (from Medium and a couple of third-party websites) should reflect a good run-through of the information I have gleaned to date about how to make this line of business work. I’m still learning a lot of the detail about making freelancing work (and there’s a lot of hard work in the detail). But these are the foundations that I feel confident enough in to be able to pass on.
I present it here for my own possible reference — or for yours.
How To Set Your Prices
Setting a viable rate for your work is arguably the hardest part of the job — particularly given that many writers’ way with words is not matched by comparable powers in numeracy. I know that figuring out the nuts and bolts of how to make freelance writing work from a business perspective has been far more of a struggle for me than even the most challenging writing project.
In ‘Freelance Writing Pricing: Per Word, Per Hour, or Per Project? And How Much Of Each?’ I gave the best overview that I possibly could of the pros and cons of pricing per hour, per job, and per project.
It’s all explained there. And wrapped up in this infographic.
To cut to the chase of that post (although I still recommend reading it in full if you’d like to think about the various options you could play around with): I recommend building quotes around an estimated time expenditure and at your hourly rate. To clarify, that means offering people flat / project rates. But they are built, on your side, based on your hourly (to understand why I think this is advantageous, read the post!).
Figuring out what hourly you need to charge in order to make those numbers work is another inexact science. But ‘How To Set An Hourly Freelance Rate’ is my guide to doing just that.
How To Prospect For Work (Outbound Marketing and Sales)
A mixture of inbound and outbound methods is optimal in order to achieve as much success as possible when freelancing. Frankly, although mostly for lack of time, my inbound game has sucked more or less since I started doing this — although I do have good experience with using outbound methodologies, such as cold emailing, to lure in new accounts.
However: if I could turn back the clock and recapture time wasted on executing my outbound marketing poorly then I would spend a lot more time qualifying leads and a lot less time simply entering every company I was excited about into a sales funnel (and if you’re keen on the idea of automating that, then I’ve had good experience using Klenty). That means quite a lot of digging around the internet (due diligence sounds fancier) and being realistic about whether your prospect is mature enough to be able to afford you. It means taking a much more nuanced approach to email and casting a smaller — but much more engaged — net in your search.
If you’re looking for some ideas to help guide that process, I recently put together a set of questions I think you should ask yourself before initiating any major outbound campaign for Micro Biz Mag, a UK-based publication for small businesses. It’s here:
If, on the other hand, you want a more cut and dried step-by-step investigative process for those prospects that you’re really serious about, then check out my piece about Basic Due Diligence for Freelancers. It goes through everything from trying to estimate the company’s human resource turnover on LinkedIn to paying for their financial reports (in the unlikely even that you are sufficiently motivated).
Part of prospecting — a big part I would argue — is knowing how to spot bad leads and put them into your ‘disqualified’ bucket. I was a little bit reluctant to write this particular post mostly because I didn’t want to come across as an aggressive client-shamer.
However, my experience in this game teaches me that unless you know how to spot those looking to push you into bad deals … you are going to be walked all over more than a doormat on a rainy day. This guide offers five red flags — and very much my slant on them — that I think that any potential freelancer should become well-acquainted with.
If you’re looking to grow your business and work with medium to large companies, then don’t forget to ask your point of contact if anybody else in the company might wish to avail themselves of your services. I call this playing the internal referral game and describe how to do that here.
Ergonomics
Finally, don’t forget to pay attention to ergonomics.
As a freelancer, you will be spending a scary amount of time at a desk typing furiously into a keyboard. People forget to do things like buy decent office chairs (or work from an ergonomic computer.) And because of the aforementioned long hours that freelancing often entails, the negative effects can accumulate quickly.
Here’s my guide to making your home office a productivity haven for Hi5:
Being a huge fan of backups and ensuring business continuity (yes, I’m also something of a prepper) I also advocate putting a couple of steps in place to make sure that your home office can stay operational during adverse weather conditions. Backups (or UPSs — like small reserve power supplies for desktops) are something that I can only imagine not too many freelancers take seriously. However, they add a certain level of robustness to your business. For many freelancers, loosing a laptop full of files (assuming they are not synced to the cloud) could be nothing short of catastrophic. Thankfully, there’s no need to ever risk that. Figure out a backup strategy that works for you, use it, and — to be extra diligent — do a test restore periodically to make sure that it actually works.
Technology
Finally, you’ll want to make sure that you have some good technology at your disposal with which to conquer the world of clients waiting to hear from you.
You know, stuff like a CRM to make keeping in touch with your prospects delightfully easy and an accounting platform to make it easier to try to get paid.
Recently, I wrote a book (yes, a book!) on this subject.
#It’s called The Confused Freelancer’s Guide to Technology. And it’s available on Amazon.com in e-book and paperback format.
Questions?
If you’re a freelance writing rookie and have a question about how to get started in the game, then I’d be happy to try to help. I can be reached at the email below.
