Month: March 2019

Two final steps helped me decide it was time to quit my day job and write full-time. The first was local magazines, while the second was simply called my “two month experiment.”

The only segment of writing I hadn’t tried was journalistic writing in my local community. I saw a website about a luxury lifestyle magazine in the nice town 20 minutes away from me, and I contacted the editor about potential writing opportunities. As it turned out, she was looking for a new writer!

I loved writing for that local magazine: the pay was good, I got to do interviews, which I found exciting, and it expanded my writing skills. I didn’t have to come up with my own topics – the editor planned and assigned them – which made me feel more relaxed. I could pour my creativity into her ideas rather than scrambling to come up with my own.

These kinds of magazines were getting popular, and before I knew it, I was writing for two of them, then 3. It was occasionally a scramble to fit a phone interview in on a lunch break or an in-person interview after work, but I was managing.

As summer came around, and my 10 month contract’s break months loomed, I thought to myself, “What would it be like to “pretend” to be a full-time freelancer for these two months? What if I could replace my day-job income entirely for these two months?”

So, instead of taking things easy, I tried to take on enough writing related work during the two months I was between contracts to be able to pay all my bills. As it turned out, the connections I’d made over two years’ time had paid off: I made my income goals.

I returned to my full-time job, realizing that I was mentally ready. I gave substantial notice at my work, but I did go ahead and quit within 6 months of returning to my contract. It was time, and I was ready.

This is the story of how I got from beginning to freelance in 2016 to full-time freelancing at the end of 2018. What has your journey been like?

The next major bumps in income, from a bit of money to actual, could-someday-be-a-career money, came from two organizations.

First, I was accepted by a company that managed multiple websites to write a variety of lifestyles-related articles. While they didn’t pay exceptionally well, they had a super-organized system for assigning, the articles didn’t take long to write, and I got regular, interesting assignments. This almost doubled my income as I added multiple websites to my queue.

Second, I was accepted to do contract work for a marketing agency. They create a list of all the articles they need written, and depending on the length, you command a different rate. The pay is higher than average for marketing copy “mills” because the customer can choose to reject your article, which leaves you with rights to the article but also no pay. At first, I feared this would be a bad move for me.

However, it became clear that the site’s claim that only a small fraction of my articles would be rejected was true. I lost about 10% of my articles to rejections, but I made more than double the standard pay-per-word for most content-mill copywriters. Over time, I got better and better access to higher-word-count and higher paying jobs.

What was most helpful about this site was that, during times when I was working, I could stop doing marketing articles entirely. However, during vacations or during my two months off contract, I was able to “scale up” my participation, writing many, many articles and boosting my income substantially.

Throughout this time, I still pitched articles, pitched direct clients, and wrote multiple articles a month. My work was ramping up, but I didn’t feel like it took up all of my free time.

One more step had to happen, though, before I was ready to take the leap.

One thing that many people won’t talk about in their freelance journeys is that they have been rejected or ignored 10 times for every one response they’ve received.

I do not take this personally – I don’t know how anyone could and still persist in this career path! I know I am busy and lose track of cold emails from strangers occasionally; it only makes sense that others might do this to me as well.

However, it only takes one person to say “yes” to change things. My first recurrent client was a mid-sized company (had barely graduated from start-up, honestly) in the health/fitness sector. I had used their product and reached out to see if they would be interested in paying for weekly blog posts.

And they said yes! My price was above content-mill standards but not very high, and the posts were low on research and time involvement, so I was really making a pretty decent hourly rate from them.

My rhythm was what I loved most: I’d submit one week’s post with a list of ideas for the next post; the editor would send back her edits for confirmation, and she’d assign me a post topic for the next week. I dream of such efficiency with every client!

This arrangement worked for about 10 months; the marketing team on her company eventually went in a different direction (they’ve since hired full-time copywriters!) but I have never stopped being grateful for that work.

That first private client was my taste of what it was like to have no middlemen between me and my client. It worked really well, but obviously, there are a lot of people vying for that space. You never know when you’ll email someone who just hired a full-time writer, who has a faithful copywriter already, or who simply aren’t big enough to invest in a blog.

That doesn’t mean you should stop pitching the companies you are already loyal to! You, as a dedicated customer, are a pretty great asset to them. This was my first big bump in my freelance income, from occasional article to 4-5 articles a month.

To Be Continued…

I realized the other day that a lot of people don’t know how I got to the point of quitting my day job and working as a writer full-time. I am sure a lot of people assume that it was a moment of being fed up with my work and ready to move on, and that I launched my writing life from that moment.

Nothing could be further from reality for me!

I began writing in earnest two and a half years before I quit my day job. I also didn’t dislike my day job; I just was amassing enough clients that I had to choose between cutting back on writing or becoming entirely too stressed. After a lot of soul searching, I chose to leave a job I liked in order to pursue the exciting possibilities implied in a career working for myself.

So how did I get started? Well, I’d written off-and-on for 10 years: small magazines in various cities, an article for my alumni magazine in college, that sort of thing. But after a friend of mine got published in a digital publication without a lot of fuss, I thought, why not me?

My first few months involved a lot of cold pitches: writing to the editor of a publication and asking if I could write an article for them. For the first time, however, I only agreed to produce the article if there was an established plan to pay me something.

I began during a break from my job (I was on a 10-month contract), but found that, in a few hours on the evenings or weekends, I could produce a couple of articles a month. So I kept doing it, and kept pitching.

That is how it all began!

I am still in the hustle-hustle-hustle phase of my development as a professional writer; it is easy to get caught up in daily tasks and not take any time at all to get things done.

This problem is exacerbated by the fact that, about 30 minutes after I wake up, I hit my peak thoughtfulness for the day. I get about 2 hours of golden productivity, and after that, I have to either grind out work through willpower or work on more reactive/receptive tasks like reading, answering emails, and invoicing.

However, despite the need to immediately launch myself into hard work early in the day, I’ve been trying to remind myself to enjoy the freedom that I’ve worked to gain as a work-from-home writer. One of the big steps I’ve taken is through coffee.

I love all kinds of coffee, honestly, but I can taste a noticeable difference in good coffee. I started with a trial of Bean Box a while back and just loved it; even though it ships from far away, something special happens when I invest in the coffee I’m going to drink every morning.

For one thing, my home becomes more like “the coffee shop,” in the sense that just my morning joe becomes a treat. The other thing is that a little happiness, enjoyment, and ritual around making and drinking coffee seems to be pretty good for my creativity as well.

What little, positive rituals do you go through during the day that help you to write better, work harder, or just be present in your activities? Feel free to share.

The Bean Box link is an affiliate link, but I never use links for services or products I don’t actually use and like; I recommend Bean Box even if you just google them and don’t go through the link!

I love writing retreats, and I love seeing old friends. Recently, my friend and I used an Airbnb apartment and our own desire for warmer weather to create a trip that was part vacation, part writing marathon, and all fun.

Here’s how we made it work:

• We figured out lodging, flights, and a rental car really early; I was able to snag a really good deal on the rental car specifically because it was so early. We picked a destination based on cheap flights, and the lodging, being an Airbnb apartment, was also very affordable. I also find that, even far out, you can get better Airbnb deals if you work with someone who doesn’t have a lot of established reviews yet. Clearly, not everyone will be comfortable with this option, but most early Airbnbers are looking for the chance to earn your trust and will start out with lower rates as a result. You can also pick Superhosts, for added reassurance that everything is going to go great.
• The week before the trip, we set some itineraries. For us, the priorities were: get some exercise, eat well and cheaply, write at least 4 hours a day, and see some authentic aspects of the city. This meant that nearly every day we went to a yoga class early, wrote for two or three hours at a coffee shop, went on a walk and made lunch at the apartment, wrote for another two hours, then went to see a play or go out for live music or some other activity in the evening.
• The first day we got there, we went grocery shopping! We saved a lot of money by always having snacks on hand, and we got ingredients for super-healthy salads so that we could enjoy the less-healthy options when we ate out once a day or once every other day.
• We didn’t do any crazy nights out, but we tried to spend some time at a museum or somewhere not related to our writing every day; I think it kept us from feeling like our work was getting stale.

The week went swimmingly, and we both generated a ton of work; despite doing a lot of writing for our jobs, we were able to take this “time off” in order to pursue creative projects, and even if you can only take a “one day” retreat where you leave your house and go to a coffee shop 20 minutes away, I can definitely recommend the change of scenery! My friend and I also live in very different places and see each other once every two years or so, so the extra expense of travel was also to see her and reinforce that friendship.

Airbnb link is an affiliate link, which gives you a discount and me some credit if you use it, but I recommend the site even if you don’t follow my link!

I am blessed to have a few clients I’ve now worked with for years. It’s wonderful to understand the writing style, the expectations, the turnaround time, and the little touches that will take a piece from fine to “WOW.” I love those little joys, the spark-moments when as a writer I can give my very best.

When you are new, though, it can be hard to find that groove! I’ve begun working with a few new clients lately and I have to admit, there are so many ways to do great writing. I can intuitively do some kinds of writing well, but I’ll be the first to admit that some kinds of writing take me a long time to master. I want to be successful, but sometimes that just means hours of revision and reworking to get to the place the client wants me.

The great thing is that, no matter how painstaking the process, I usually get faster, better, and more confident as I go. However, right now, I’m in the thick of the newness, and I want to encourage any of you writers out there: embrace that newness! It may give you jitters but it is impressive to be putting yourself out there. I feel empowered by my new clients who are giving me a chance to become a more diverse and versatile writer over time.

Writing, like so many other creative fields, does suffer from an overabundance of interested parties. For this reason, I’m frequently interacting with people who want “help” with writing or editing, but are then taken aback when asked what they will pay for it.

I don’t want to create conflict in any way, but the word help has a couple of different connotations: helping as in volunteerism, and helping as in willingness to be a part of a team. What are your best strategies for making it clear, from the beginning, that payment is expected for your work?