I’ve been lurking in these forums for a few months and have posted a couple of one-liners, but I feel like Digital Point and its members have taught me so much that I owe this community something more substantial than trite comments and zingers. I’ve noticed that a lot of people ask questions about where they can get jobs and what they should charge. I haven’t been freelancing long so I’m not an expert, but I have built an income of around $1,000 per month working part-time and it only took me a few months to do it. If nothing else, I hope this post will help people who are just starting out. Here are a couple of tips that helped me get started. Hopefully some of you will find it useful. Join Elance I expect a couple of hate posts for this suggestion. I’ve read multiple posts that bash this site for charging a monthly fee and a percentage of earnings. However, I found that this site gives better quality jobs than other freelance sites and I can make 10 times my monthly fee easily. You can open a free account if you don’t want to spend the $10/month in the beginning, but you only get three connects which are basically three chances to bid on a job. I find that my bid is chosen for around 20% of the projects I bid on. I can influence this percentage somewhat by altering my bidding price for jobs- bringing me to my next point. Alter Your Pay Rate I got this idea when I read about a program that changes the price of event tickets based on demand. If there are a lot of people buying the tickets, the program automatically raises the price. When people stop buying, the price falls until the buying picks up again. I thought that formula would apply well to freelance writing. Since my profile doesn’t have a lot of completed jobs, I tend to bid very competitively. Once I start getting work, I up my bids. The busier I get, the higher I bid. This system seems to work well because it allows you to raise your rates naturally until you find equilibrium. The system works because as you get busier you’re bidding higher and taking on higher paying clients. When those clients become regulars, your minimum bid goes up because you’re backed up with higher paying work. The unfortunate end is that you may have to drop some of your lower paying clients. However, you might be surprised at how many won’t mind paying you a higher rate. Conventional wisdom says to charge what you’re worth and stick with it. However, newbies like us don’t have the luxury of turning away work. By raising your rates to match your workload, you can work on getting higher paying clients without going through long stretches without work (and money). Run It Like A Business The people who use you consistently are people who need professionals who deliver high-quality content on time. In my mind, the only reason to miss a deadline is if the client is not ready to take delivery. You can find good writers and good business people, but it’s much more difficult to find people who are both. If you write well and conduct yourself professionally, you shouldn’t have any problems finding work.
Nice post. Re elance - I'll say this, it can be hard winning projects, especially in the beginning (20% is pretty impressive), however if you're any good at selling yourself, that monthly fee will quickly become negligible like the OP said. Plus Elance's average rates beats sites like GAF and RAC, no doubt about it. I also like Guru.
Newbies have the luxury of turning away work if they did proper market research and business planning before getting into it - the real problem isn't that they need to lower their rates early on (and I'm not saying they should be charging the same as someone with 5-10 years of experience, or much stronger credentials, either); it's that they need to learn how to effectively market themselves from the beginning (and marketing solely on price is never a good thing in a service-oriented business, which a few of us have explained in more detail several times here already). I will agree that freelancers need to treat it like a business - but a part of that is figuring out what you need to earn, and coming up with a solid strategy to always do that from the beginning before you start taking on any client projects. If you're going any lower than that just to get anything coming along, you'd be following a recipe that contributes to the fact that most freelancers will fail.
Interesting. Would you say that any freelancer can start out like this or only freelancers with previous writing experience? For example, I have a degree in psychology and a work history of sales and management positions. With no writing experience, I didn’t think it would be possible to get jobs that paid $0.20/word without writing on spec. That’s why I chose the Elance route. Of course, that may also be why I write part-time and you’re a professional writer. My thought is that my free time is better spent writing at $11/hr rather than doing nothing. Hopefully I’ll be able to earn a decent wage with more experience.
I find the Elance community more "professional" (I write this one in quotes since the term may mean different things for different people) compared to that of GetAFreelancer, RentACoder, GetACoder etc. The monthly fee, IMO, is nothing compared to the good deals that you can get there plus there's a greater chance you'll meet with reputable companies that may hire you for a long-time. Truth be told, as soon as you establish that relationship with your client, you can eventually veer away from Elance or any other freelance site and just do your transactions/payments directly.
This is a great post! I've only tried elance sporadically to get jobs, but the advice you post here makes me want to give it another go.
Here's something you have to understand - people don't pay the big bucks to just "writers" in most cases here (keeping in mind we're not talking about the literary crowd or something; we're talking about freelancing). They pay more for "experts" who just happen to be able to write. That's why specialists are often paid significantly more than generalists when it comes to writing, and why a lot of mediocre writers are far more successful than excellent writers who have no specific credentials or marketing abilities. So no, you don't need to have writing experience to charge what you're worth, as long as you have the credentials and basic writing ability to appeal to your target market. I'm actually planning a post on one of my blogs this week on building a portfolio to show prospective clients when you don't have any experience. Those would both be generally high-paying niches, so again, if you have even somewhat decent writing abilities, you should be able to get decent-paying gigs. The key for you will be deciding which you'd rather focus on (at least in the beginning, as you'll need to do a good bit of networking for both). Then start building a name for yourself - network where potential clients in the niche hang out (business and copywriting forums for example). You could also start a blog in the niche to showcase your writing on the subject matter. I get a heck of a lot of clients through my blogs - if you have the time and inclination to launch one, they can be excellent marketing tools. They also show you can handle writing for the Web. I'm not a huge article marketing fan, but if you want to, you could use that as well to get some early exposure. I'd suggest submitting only to reputable sites directly in your niche though. If you go with sales and management, you might try www.work.com. Another good tactic is to submit guest posts to blogs in the niche with a nice-sized audience. I don't see any reason, given the background you mentioned, why you shouldn't be able to find gigs at $.20 / word or more. I don't know what you're charging, but I'd say if it's anything less than $.10 / word, you're probably nuts. The problem with that logic (and why it's a factor in so many failing) is that a lot of freelancers see "$11/hr" and assume an hourly rate freelancing is the same thing as an hourly rate being employed elsewhere. That's not the case - they're not equivalent. You have to account for working hours vs billable hours, extra taxes and expenses freelancers have, etc. Let's get hypothetical: If you had a job at $50k per year, and you wanted to be in an identical financial situation as a freelancer, you may have to earn $70k per year. Why? Because to be totally equal your freelance salary has to match the cost of the employee to their employer; not just their salary. Remember, the employer foots others costs that you have to deal with alone as a freelancer to keep all other things equal. You have to earn the employee salary, the employer's portion of any health benefits, bonuses, necessary expenses for the employee's day-to-day work, the employer's portion of Medicare and social security taxes (if you're in the US), etc. So $11/hr for writing freelance can ultimately leave someone in a situation worse than if they took a minimum wage job at Walmart, depending on where you live obviously - it might be more the equivalent of a $6-7/hr job as a traditional employee. I hope I didn't confuse it more - it's complicated to explain, especially this late.
In fact, I'm doing that now. It took me a while to see if the blog would be worth it. It doesn't look like I'll make much from adsense revenue, but the affiliate programs related to the niche are phenomenal! It also gives me the opportunity to showcase my copywriting skills in the form of landing pages, squeeze pages, and follow-up emails. I'm curious - Do people send you unsolicited emails asking you to write for them or do you advertise your services on your blogs?
Most of it's unsolicited. Occasionally I'll talk about something related to my work, so people know what I actually do, but I don't advertise sales, push services to clients, etc. that way on my blogs (I run several of them though). Usually it's them liking what I have to say or how I said it, so they contact me privately to see if I'm interested in a gig. The less I "advertise" the more work I seem to get coming in lately.
Absolutely! I've gotten gigs through two of my blogs. People just like what they saw and contacted me to see if I had further interest. I keep telling people that sometimes it's not about what you say it's how you say it that matters more. I have a simple script on one of my blogs letting people know what I do and how to contact me. That's all it takes sometimes.
Ohh - must make sure I read that. I'm going to guess that you have a link to that blog in your profile?
Not to the blog where it will be posted - it's going to go up on WebWritersGuide.com - probably Thursday or Friday.
I always build a resume of all my work. That way people can see that I know what I am doing without question. It brings more confidence to the buyer and will earn more money.
You won't. It's written, but set to go live sometime tomorrow morning. Check tomorrow, and it should be up before lunch time (based on US eastern time at least - I don't know the hour I have it set for).
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