Business Realities for Freelance Writers

When you first get started freelancing, it can be a world of flowers and unicorns. Someone’s actually paying you to sit at your kitchen table and do something you love! You feel like the cat that ate the canary. For some folks who’ve come into a freelance writing career after being laid off from their first career, it seems like a true Godsend.

Still, there are some stark realities you’re going to have to face, and fast. Here are some that tend to hit the hardest, and that you need to be ready to face:

If you don’t work, you don’t earn

That basic principle of sowing and reaping applies to your freelance writing business. If you don’t write, you don’t make any money. Some people start out with a client like Demand Studios or a blog network, and they do the math. They think they can make $40,000 or $50,000 a year. While that’s technically true, there still has to be enough work to do and you have to actually do it.

You don’t have a work-at-home job, you have a home business

A lot of folks start out in the freelance writing business with the “work-at-home” attitude. You need to disassociate yourself with that mindset. You don’t have an employer, you have clients. You don’t work at home, you have a home business. These distinctions are important on several levels, and I won’t get into all of that here. Suffice it to say that you’ll never grow your business if you don’t see it as a business in the first place.

Businesses have expenses

Every small business has expenses, including yours. You’re going to need to shell out some cash here and there. You’ll need a good computer, an Internet connection and some office supplies. You need to spend some money on marketing, or else you’ll never grow your client base. The old adage about spending money to make money is true. Even if you don’t have a lot of working capital to start with, as soon as gigs start coming in you need to be reinvesting some of your money.