Every so often I receive an email about how my freelance writing rates are lower than the industry norm. While this may be true in some cases, I always find it hard to believe that others get so caught up in what their competition is charging. The way I see it, you should set your freelance writing rates based on your experience, feelings, and career goals.
Making money through small freelance writing projects is more than possible. This is how I started my career, and it has helped my freelance writing income to increase big time since my first day on the job. This is not to say that you only want to take on small jobs, but they can add up over the course of a month.
Take this scenario for example. You could spend the entire month chasing two feature article opportunities that pay you a total of $500. This would be a great accomplishment, but since these jobs can be hard to land as a beginner, you may be wasting a lot of time.
On the other side of things, you could attempt to write 50 articles at $10 each. These types of articles are commonly purchased by webmasters who need content for their site or blog. Sure, you will have to put in more work because you are writing 50 articles instead of two, but in the end you will have the same amount of money. Then if the feature article projects come through, you are now sitting at $1,000/month.
The above scenario is similar to what I faced as a new freelance writer. Everybody wants the fun, high paying jobs. But they are not the only ones out there. Remember, small paying freelance writing jobs usually take up less time than high paying ones; it is all relative.
Instead of spending day after day chasing jobs that may not come about, you should also take some time to look for smaller, more attainable projects that could put a little bit of money in your pocket. I don’t take on these jobs nearly as much as I once did, but they definitely helped me to get to where I am today.
Being an excellent writer will not do you any good if you have no clue on where to find work. You need to decide what markets you are most interested in. When it comes to finding freelance writing markets, there are several market options that you will want to consider.
1. Get in touch directly with corporations both large and small. There are tens of thousands of companies in the United States that are in need of writers. Sure, some of them have people on staff that can help, but this is not always the case. Believe it or not, many Fortune 500 companies use freelance writers from time to time. And this definitely holds true for smaller operations that cannot afford to hire a full-time writer.Â
2. Advertising agencies can supply you with a lot of work. To get started within this market, contact agencies in your local area; this will give you a leg up on the competition from the start. Tell the person in charge that you are a freelance writer, and that you would be more than happy to work with them on any projects that they have coming up. It can be difficult to get your foot in the door, but once you do, make sure that you do a good job. From there, you will be sure to get the first call anytime a new project comes into play. I have only worked with a couple of advertising agencies, but anytime they get a new client I usually get a phone call.
3. Online freelance writing is very popular. Webmasters are always looking for writers to provide them with fresh content. After all, search engines love new, unique content. You may not get paid the best rates working online, but the money can add up. Of course, bigger companies also look for web writers as well.
These are three common freelance writing markets to tap into. There are others including but not limited to public relations agencies, government organizations, and non-profits. You may want to look into some of these markets as well. Once you begin to call on the above markets, you will get a better feel for what niche you want to concentrate on.
If you are like most freelance writers, almost every project is different from the next. This holds true with the project itself, as well as the income that you will earn. After looking over my stats from last year, I noticed that I completed a wide variety of jobs. They ranged from short descriptions that paid no more than $5 for 50 words to longer feature articles that paid in excess of $1,000, as well as many others. While it would be nice to only dabble in the larger freelance writing projects, we all know that this is not always possible.
There are two ways that you can categorize your “biggest†freelance writing projects. First off, you can do so by the actual size. For instance, a project that requires you to write 1,000 SEO articles would obviously be bigger than one feature of 500 words. On the other side of things, you can categorize projects by how much you will get paid by the client. For me, it is important to keep both the size and payment in mind. This allows me to make sure that I am getting paid enough money for the size of the project that I am taking on. You may think that $1,000 is a nice sized payment, but it is quite small if you have to write 500 articles to get the money.
So you are probably wondering what my biggest project of 2007 looked like, right? For me, it was work that I did for a large insurance company. It consisted of writing several press releases, a few SEO articles, and some miscellaneous content here and there. Not only was this my biggest job of the year in terms of income, but it was also one of the most enjoyable. This was the case because I enjoy writing about insurance, and the client was a treat to work with. In the end, this one project earned me a little more than $3,000 via PayPal. As you can imagine, the PayPal fee on this project was huge!
What was your biggest freelance writing project of 2007? You don’t have to give exact figures or data, but any information is sure to be useful to all of us.
