Freelance Blockchain Writing: Rules of Survival
As we’ve discussed previously here on Intellicore Press, blockchain technology is a pretty exciting and potentially profitable emerging niche for freelance writers.
However, the blockchain and cryptocurrency worlds are full of individuals and companies looking for a free lunch. This is no different in blockchain writing than in ICO scams and attacks on crypto wallets — even though the latter are featured much more frequently and prominently in the media.
We at Intellicore Press have paid our dues in terms of clients and projects from hell — maybe we’ll even share some of them with you here on the blog, another day. But we’ve had lots of lovely clients as well — otherwise, we wouldn’t want to stay in the business and even tempt others to try it. All in all, we’ve learned (the hard way) to differentiate good from bad clients and projects.
Let’s take a look at some of the things we’ve learned.
1. No free samples.
You may be new to the niche and not have a large portfolio yet — but even then, don’t agree to write “just one sample” for free.
If a client
1. doesn’t have the budget to pay for all of your articles or
2. doesn’t appreciate (i.e., wants to compensate) the amount of research and writing effort that goes into even just one good article,
… you don’t want to work for them.
Chances are, they will be even more trouble in the future.
But what if you don’t have any blockchain-related samples in your article portfolio at all? Well, if you were going to write one for free for a prospective client, you may just as well write one for your portfolio instead. The advantage: You will be able to use this sample for all of your prospective clients. And, unless you’ve signed a non-disclosure agreement (NDA), nothing keeps you from borrowing the freeloader’s article idea for your own article.
2. Don’t work for equity.
Much of the available work on the blockchain writing market is offered by startups — and sometimes, they will ask you to work for whatever token they are going to launch in their ICO instead for hard currency. The supposed rationale behind this: The more you are contributing to the project’s success with your writing, the more you shares in the startup will be worth. However, as an article or a whitepaper writer, you are not in charge of the project (even though, as the latter, you may indeed have significant influence). Hence, you are powerless if the founding team’s strategy is faulty, if the developers deliver a buggy project (or don’t deliver at all), or if anything else comes in the way of the original fundraising goal.
Also, consider this line of argument from the client’s side for a moment: If they expect their shares to significantly appreciate in value, they would certainly want to pay you in cash because that’s cheaper than giving away their precious shares, right?
If you are offered tokens on top of your regular fees, as a bonus — that’s another thing. You have our official permission to take them. :)
3. Don’t work for cryptocurrency — or convert right away.
If you shouldn’t accept a project’s tokens, does that mean that getting paid in Bitcoin, Ether or another established cryptocurrency is out of the picture, too?
Not necessarily. The basic rule should be to get paid in the currency in which you pay your living expenses (except if you’re financially independent already and just doing this to fill those long, empty hours at the beach…). But what if the client insists that paying in crypto is more convenient for them, or that alternative payment modes (especially cross-border), such as PayPal, are too expensive?
The answer is: You can accept crypto payments in the most common cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin, Ether, Litecoin and a couple of others. But until their volatility (the steep increases and decreases in price) has subsided — and it may still be a couple of years until that happens — you should watch your crypto wallet and convert them to fiat currency (Dollar, Euro, Ruble, whatever your local currency is) as soon as you have received them. Otherwise, the $1800 you earned last week may only be worth $1500 by the time you want to spend them.
Of course, the price of the cryptocurrency you’ve been paid in can go up as well as down. But if you’re waiting for that, then you’re engaging in cryptocurrency speculation — and giving advice on that is not the subject of this blog post.
4. Re-think your services.
What kind of writing services, exactly, are you offering your clients? Are they the best use of your talents?
As a general rule of thumb, you can assume that:
The more your writing helps your client to make money, the more you can charge for it.
In other words: If you are writing merely to boost traffic to your client’s website — something that usually doesn’t pay off directly — you can’t charge rates as high as for a direct contribution to their fundraising efforts — say, a whitepaper or a press release explicitly inviting people to participate in their ICO.
If you’re new to the niche, it doesn’t hurt to write solid, hype-free and well-researched articles for a while because they make for excellent samples when applying for better-paying gigs. But once you feel comfortable with this line of work, consider moving to whitepaper writing or investor communications.
And now: Good luck! :)
This story is published in The Startup, Medium’s largest entrepreneurship publication followed by 328,729+ people.
Subscribe to receive our top stories here.
