Yuwanda Black wrote a two-part article sharing her 19 years of experience as a freelance writer. She shares wonderful insight that I’ve discovered in the past few years. Here is her list with my comments on some items:
- Staying abreast of technology is crucial: Lucky this isn’t an issue with me.
- Writing is a skill: I hear those “Duhs!” But we all write. We learned to write stories and reports in school, so that makes us a writer by profession? Sorry. No. It took me five years to get where I am today. Practice, study, learn, practice.
- Freelancing full-time is not hard: Start doing freelance work on the side — don’t just quit your day job cold. Instead, build up your business on the side. I did that for five years before I went full-time freelancing.
- Marketing is a skill that must be developed: This is where working on the side helps. I slowly added more clients without the pressure of wondering where my next paycheck would come. I always keep my eyes open for opportunities even though I hardly have room to take on more. Things fall through. Projects end. You may want to drop a client that’s more trouble than it’s worth. I believe that freelancers who cut difficult or incompatible clients are happier and end up with more assignments though it means losing some.
- Employers don’t like to hire freelancers for full-time jobs: No thoughts here. It makes sense in some cases.
- You can’t change your rates every year: Guilty. Not of changing rates, but my inability to quote projects. Some clients don’t have all the information or details of what they need me to do. I explain to them that since we can’t see exactly the work involved that I’ll have to quote by the hour. The problem is they can’t side aside a budget for writing work since hourly is ongoing. I’m still developing my skills in this area.
- You must develop a niche: I believe this is true and spent a lot of time thinking about this. But I’m happy with my variety and lucky I have a nice amount of work though it’s not in a specific niche. Sure, I cover a lot of tech, but I also cover B2B, web design, newsletters, and online marketing, education (not from a writing perspective) and games. Maybe it’s my nature not to fall into one thing. Since it’s working, I’m not going to go crazy working my way to a niche. If it happens, it happens.
- Patience is a virtue: Definitely. Five years before I left corporate America for Meryl Co.
- Retirement is not planned for: I’m working to change this. Investing in an IRA can help with taxes, too.
- Longevity pays: “The longer you freelance, the easier it gets,” writes Black. I find this work easier than I did as little as one year ago. Practice, practice, practice.