Making a solid income as a freelance writer is more than possible. I must admit, when I first started out I was scared that reaching a reasonable income level would never happen. But within a few months things started to break my way, and the rest is history. This is not to say that making a living as a freelance writer is easy, but it is a career path that you can follow if you put your mind to it.
Here are three keys that are essential if you are interested in working as a freelance writer, and of course, making enough money to support yourself.
1. During the early stages of your career do not be afraid to take lower paying jobs. This does two things for you. First off, low paying jobs will give you confidence in your writing skills. Even though you are not getting paid a lot, you are getting to practice your craft. Additionally, these lower paying jobs can add up over the course of a month. If you do not have any other jobs on the table, why would you pass these up? Any work is better than no work.
2. If possible, make yourself available to write on a variety of different topics; at least when you are getting started. This will give you the ability to service a wide range of clients, and also get a better feel for what topics you like and don’t like.
3. It is essential to turn one project into another. In other words, you need to garner repeat business. This is the lifeblood of a freelance writer. Once you find several clients who hire you time after time, you will notice that your freelance writing income is building.
These three tips should help you when chasing your dream of making a solid freelance writing income.
Freelance writers have the ability to control their own income in more ways than one. First off, the time that you put in will be directly related to how much money you earn. I have found this out time and time again. In addition to the actual money you make, you may also have the ability to control when you receive it from clients. The question is: should you cash in now or hold off until the new month begins?
There are two ways of looking at this scenario. There is a side of me that likes to hold money over from one month to the next so that I can get off to a “good start.” For example, I have three invoices from the month of September that total more than $1,500. Even though I am confident that I could send them and get the money within a day or so, I have decided to hold off until after the first of the month. This way I can add the money to my October total, which will make things much less stressful during the early days of the month.
The downside of holding off on sending invoices is that clients can and will disappear. One situation in particular stands out in my mind. I was working with a client who I thought I could trust. For this reason, I decided to push their $750 invoice from one month to the next. The result was the client disappearing for weeks, and upon coming back into the picture, paying me in small chunks of the entire voice. Of course, this still may have happened if I would have sent the invoice right away, but something is telling me that as I was waiting they spent my money on other things.
The only time I will hold money over is when I know the client is good for it. In other words, never wait if you are working with a client for the first time. You might as well invoice them right away in order to give yourself the best chance for payment. Not to mention the fact that they will probably appreciate this as well.
What income level do I have to reach in order to start thinking about holding money over? For me, this usually comes around the $4,500 to $5,000 mark. With my current workload this is the minimum amount of money that I want to earn each month. So if I hit this mark and there are only a few days left in the month, I will usually wait until the next month to send invoices. But if I reach this income plateau earlier, say the middle of the month, I obviously push on.
This is one aspect of a freelance writing business that has nothing to do with producing content. But as you can imagine, it is very important. After all, you are working to collect money!
Being a self-employed freelance writer means that I am responsible for every aspect of my taxes. There is no company to tax my paycheck each month, so in turn I have to pay my own quarterly taxes. At the end of the year I sit down with my tax professional in order to complete my final return, and of course, find out if I am going to owe more money or get a rebate! As you can imagine, I do whatever I can (within the law) to make sure that I get money back from the IRS.
There are many common tax deductions that freelance writers forget about time after time. This is why I have a professional help me out with my final return every year. After all, I do not want to leave any money on the table.
Here are a few of the most commonly overlooked tax deductions for freelance writers.
1. Hosting fees and domain registry fees. If you are a freelance writer you probably have your own website. You might as well deduct the cost of hosting it, and keeping your domain name up to date.
2. Even though not as common in today’s day and age, postage fees are tax deductible. As you can imagine, before email was all the rage this was a huge deduction for many. But even now, you may buy a roll of stamps every month or so.
3. All office supplies are tax deductible. This includes everything from that new business computer to paper clips to post-it notes. Do not forget any of these items when tax season rolls around.
The list of possible tax deductions for freelance writers is quite large. This is why it is a good idea to have a professional assist you. And remember, you need to keep receipts for all these deductions. This way, if you are audited by the IRS you will be covered.
Showing my monthly income totals has brought many questions from readers. After all, there are many people out there who hope to succeed in the world of freelance writing; and I don’t blame them. This is a great way to make a solid income from the comfort of your own home.
Of course, a lot of the emails I receive are alike. In other words, readers seem to want to know the same things about my freelance writing career.
Here are three of the most common questions that I am asked on a regular basis.
1. How did you decide to get started with a career in freelance writing?
This is a tough question to say the least. I had been working in sales and marketing for a couple of years, and pretty much got tired of making money for the company. After saving up a few months worth of living expenses, I finally decided to take the plunge. Remember, it is going to be scary moving from a steady paycheck to an unsure situation. But the reward that follows the risk can be huge!
2. What are some of the biggest mistakes you made early in your career?
For me, there are two things that come to mind. First off, I burnt myself out trying to work too many hours a day. Yes, you need to work hard in order to get your freelance writing career up and running, but you have to draw the line somewhere. I was working 14 hour days without any breaks most of the time. In time, this led to complete and total burn out.
The second mistake that comes to mind was not following up with clients after the first project. I was of the thinking that if a client needed more work they would ask. While this was true in some cases, I am sure that I missed out on some jobs because I did not follow up in a timely manner.
3. How long did it take you to start making big money?
I earned $52 my first month as a full-time freelance writer. As you can imagine, this was a bit scary. But from there, things started to pick up. The next month I made over $800, and by month three I had eclipsed $2,000. Shortly thereafter I was earning a consistent $3,000 income, which was more than enough to cover my bills at the time. From there, I worked hard to increase my income until it reached at least $4,500 per month. For me, this is a solid income, and one that allows me to live comfortably. Of course, there are those big months when I take home close to $10,000; those are the months that I live for!
If you have any other questions, feel free to leave a comment or send an email.
Even though it is nice to have repeat visitors, gaining search engine traffic is really the only way to increase overall performance. Not only can search engines help to increase traffic, but when this happens, you will also begin to see an increase in earnings. The question is: how do you increase search engine traffic?
For me, this is not an easy question to answer. I do not know much about search engine optimization, or what the engines are looking for. But by reading other blogs and forums, I have picked up some basic knowledge here and there.
Finally, this month I am starting to see an increase in the amount of traffic that is being sent to this blog from the different search engines. Just as I was getting frustrated with finding a way to increase my visitors, the search engines decided to do much of the work for me.
Unfortunately, I have no idea how I did this? I assume I am starting to get more organic traffic because this blog is growing, inbound links are increasing, and the quality of the content is above average. Outside of that, I have not made any changes that would positively affect the traffic that I receive from search engines.
I am at the point where writing good content is my main concern. In my opinion, if I keep this up, I am sure to see an increase in readership as the months go by. For now, I am glad to see my organic traffic on the rise. I can only hope that this trend will continue as I add more and more content.
Running a one man show of any type means that you have to wear more than one hat. As a freelance writer, my main job is to write pretty much whatever my clients want; and I really love this part of the job. But of course, another hat that I have to wear is that of a collection agency. After all, there is no point in doing work if I am not going to get paid for it. Sure, I love writing, but I need to pay the bills as well.
Collecting freelance writing payments is sometimes easy and sometimes difficult. For instance, the majority of my clients are great about either paying me at the same time each month, or whenever I send them an invoice. But for all the good freelance writing clients, there are those that slack off in this area. I will send them an invoice, and two weeks later the money is still waiting to be collected.
Here are three tips that I follow when collecting payments from clients who like to slack off.
1. Always send an invoice when you send the completed work. This will not only show that the job is done, but hopefully, it will also remind the client that they need to send your money. Your invoice does not have to be complex. I include my contact information and the clients, as well as details on the job and how much money is due. Once you have a sample invoice to use, it will only take you a few minutes to fill in the appropriate fields with the updated information.
2. I usually give a client five business days before I remind them about paying the invoice. Of course, this is based largely on my past experiences with the client. If it is a business client, many of them only cut checks at the first of the month. In a situation like this I simply wait seven to ten days into the month before checking in.
3. Unfortunately, there are going to be clients who never want to pay. The first client that I ever had still owes me $500! Once I began to make more money I told them that I was moving on, but would be glad to complete the current project. Of course, I sent the final work and that was the last I heard from them. The moral of this story is that you should not let one bad seed spoil all your clients. There are some people who are into scamming others. Sure, it is nice to avoid them, but this is not always possible. If you get scammed, figure out what you could have done differently, and then use this information as you move on.
Collecting freelance writing payments can be a pain in the neck. But when the money starts to roll in, it is always nice to watch it add up!
If you are self-employed, the ability to work when and where you want is a huge benefit; at least for me. But at the same time, this flexibility can also cause quite a few problems. For instance, there is no boss telling you to get your work done. Generally speaking, the only motivation you have is that to make money and retain clients.
So how long is your workday? For me, this seems to fluctuate day in and day out. And at the same time, defining the length of my workday is never easy to do.
Take today for example. I started work on my first project of the day, a feature article, at 705 am. Four hours later, I have finished that project as well as many others. And guess what? This blog post is the last planned item that I have to complete today. This leaves me the option of doing several things until 5 o’clock rolls around.
First off, I could get started on my work for tomorrow. While I never like to do this, I will probably take an hour or so to get a head start. Another option, and the one that I have been taking advantage of, is to work on new business opportunities. As I have discussed, I am starting several new blogs that are taking up a lot of my time. But as long as I have several hours to work on them each afternoon, I should be able to keep up without any problems.
Of course, do not let these short workdays confuse you. Even though I have finished all my work today in four hours, there are other days when I work 10 hours or more; it all depends on my work load, as well as what I have going on in my life at any given time.
All in all, it is a great feeling to work half a day from time to time. But of course, being self-employed is not all fun and games. For as many half days that I work, there are just as many nighttime and weekend hours!
One of the biggest problems that I have when it comes to business is jumping ahead of myself. In other words, I want instant gratification. But as you well know, this is not the way that things work in the business world; at least not most of the time.
In the cases that I have been patient my businesses have flourished. The number one example of this is the resounding success of my freelance writing career. If I would have given up after the first month (when I made $52), who knows what type of job I would have at this time. The same thing holds true for this blog. Even though I am not getting loads of traffic, it is increasing steadily. And along with this my income is doing the same. I am hoping that in another few months things will be even better in both the areas of traffic and earnings.
It can be difficult to stick with a business opportunity when it is not working the way you had hoped. After all, who wants to waste time on something that may not end up a success? It is important to believe in your idea, and give it enough time to work out. Quitting takes all your problems and gets rid of them. But at the same time, quitting also gets rid of any chance you have of success. And if you are not set up for success you will have no chance of achieving it in the future.
How much time are you willing to devote to growing your business or blog? Make sure that you take enough time to give every opportunity your all. If you work on a business for a year and you do not see any results, it may be time to move on. But all in all, until you give each opportunity a fair shake, you will have no idea what could have come.
Since starting this blog, I have become well aware that StumbleUpon is a great service. After all, there are certain days when a post of mine gets Stumbled, which results in my traffic doubling at the very least. The question I have is: how do I know who is stumbling my content?
From checking out my stats it is easy to see what post has been stumbled, and how much traffic it has sent me. But more importantly, is there anyway for me to determine who did the stumbling? The reason I ask is that I would really like to return the favor if at all possible. I would hate to think that somebody has thought enough to recommend my posts time after time, but I do not even take the time to read their blog.
So, I ask: is there anyway for me to determine who is stumbling my posts? If there is no way of doing this, leave a comment or send an email letting me know who you are!
There used to be a time when calling a client was pretty much the only option that you had. But in today’s day and age, email has pretty much taken over. With that being said, you do not want to become overly obsessed with using email as opposed to good old phone conversations.
Believe it or not, I have worked with some clients for a couple of years without ever talking to them on the phone. I initially touched base with them via email, or vice versa. From there, everything has been emails back and forth. And to tell you the truth, this seems to work out fine in most cases; especially if your client is based in another country.
I have also discovered that making a call to a client is not a bad idea; even if you have never spoken to them in the past. When you call a client you are doing two things. First off, you are giving them a voice to put with all of the emails that you send. This is a great way to personalize your email correspondence. Additionally, when you call a client it really shows them that you care. This is not to say that you need to carry on a long conversation, but calling to check in or say hello is a good idea.
As a freelance writer, my primary mode of communication is email; there is no denying this. Personally, I love communicating via email because it is quick, and sending work back and forth is a cinch. But in order to make your working relationship even more valuable, you will want to consider calling your clients sooner or later. They will definitely appreciate you taking the time to do so. And in many cases, this will help you to garner more work from the client in the long run!
