Making Money with Small Freelance Writing Projects
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.
January 7th, 2008 at 2:24 pm
That’s a great article. Thanks for sharing knowledge. Hope it really helps people. Good luck
January 8th, 2008 at 1:09 am
You know Chris, you couldn’t be more right on this. “Small” — and that’s such a relative term — is what keeps your income steady (as far as there is such a thing in freelance writing).
And, you never know where it can lead. I wrote about this very thing last year in an article entitled, “The Value of Small Projects for Small Business Owners:
Why Looking for “The Big Score” Can Put You Out of Business.”
In part it read:
I would moan and groan when I got a $50 project, even though it only took me half an hour or so to complete.
I had dreams of handling big projects all the time – the ones that took a couple of weeks but paid $3,000 to $4,000 dollars. I had these a couple of times a year. However, most of my projects fell in the $50 to $150 range.
From Small Change to Big Reality
One day while going over my books to see where the bulk of my income was coming from – I was forced to by my accountant – I had a startling realization. Those “small” projects added up.
I was doing 5 to 10 a week, which meant my income was consistently between $700 to $1,000/week – just from the word processing. And, when I did get a placement fee or a large word processing project, it could jump to between $3,000-$5,000 week (don’t get excited, this didn’t happen that often).
Read the entire article here: http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/38302/the_value_of_small_projects_for_small.html
Once again, a timely, informative post.
Sincerely,
Yuwanda Black, Publisher
http://www.InkwellEditorial.com
http://www.InkwellEditorial.blogspot.com
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January 8th, 2008 at 12:45 pm
Editor – Thanks for the kind words; glad you enjoyed!
January 18th, 2008 at 12:33 pm
While I would love to be earning top dollar for all of my work, in reality the smaller jobs are more readily available. You can leave a lot of money on the table over the course of a month by not considering a steady stream of smaller jobs.
Great post. Thanks for sharing.