When to Refuse Work

A freelance writing business rises and falls on your willingness and ability to do work for clients. Turning down work is like turning down a paycheck. In the early days of your business, you’re likely to take just about any freelance writing job that comes your way. Yet, knowing which gigs to take and which gigs to let go is an important part of maturing as a freelance writer.

So, how do you know which jobs to turn down and which ones to work? There are, in my estimation, three good reasons to turn down a freelance writing job:

1. The Job Violates Your Ethical Code

Maybe it’s writing a sales page for a weight loss product that hasn’t been scientifically tested. Maybe it’s writing a political blog for the opposite party. Maybe it’s as simple as being asked to provide content that is so search-engine optimized that it’s not actually useful to the reader. Whatever it is, some gigs just go against our core beliefs. Drop those like a bad habit, and let someone else walk down that road.

2. The Job Doesn’t Pay Enough

It can be tempting, especially when you’re first starting out, to take any freelance writing job that comes along. Especially if you’re relying on your writing to provide for you and your family from day one. You might also feel like you should take any job that comes your way, even if the pay is low, rather than sitting around doing nothing.

The thing is this: in the long run, you’re better off taking that free time and spending it honing your craft or trying to break into new markets than you are working a low-paying job. Writing a $5 article today gives you $5. Spending an hour wooing some new clients will bring that amount back tenfold or more.

3. The Terms Aren’t Acceptable

I’ve been lucky enough to only have been ripped off by a client once, and it was for all of $40. That’s because I have always required either the full amount of a gig in escrow, or a 50% deposit. Some clients will want to pay you all at the end, or some will offer to pay you based on whether or not the copy you write gets them results. While this kind of work is fun to play around with, it won’t make you any reliable money or keep you in business in the long run. Make sure the client is willing to meet your terms. If not, you need to get out of the job, plain and simple.

I could add some other things – like refusing to do illegal work – but I think these three cover the big reasons to refuse work. Do you have any to add? When do you tell a client “no?”

Do You Have Clients or Bosses?

We talked last time about your business self-image. We talked about whether you see yourself as a business or as an employee, and why being a business is both preferable and more realistic. Today, I want to look at one part of that issue: how your business self-image affects the way you deal with customers.

When folks first get started freelance writing, they’re often just looking for a job. Look at the success of the Freelance Writing Jobs blog network in the search engines if you don’t believe me.

Now, I don’t object to the idea of freelance writing jobs. But, it’s important how we think about that last word: jobs. According to dictionary.com, there are several definitions of the word “job.” I’d like to focus on two of them:

1. a post of employment; full-time or part-time position.

2. a piece of work, esp. a specific task done as part of the routine of one’s occupation or for an agreed price.

Under the first definition, when someone pays you to write for them, you become an employee. They become a boss. Under the second definition, you’re still the boss. The person that pays you to write for them becomes a client.

So, why does it matter? Well, let’s think about it for a minute. When I worked in cubicle land, the boss was someone to be feared and loathed. He was the guy that would take the credit for your work in order to promote his own agenda, and the guy that would come down hard on you if he didn’t think your work was up to snuff. If you don’t get along with your boss, your job is going to be miserable.

The boss is also the guy that can put an end to your entire livelihood with a single call to the HR department.
In contrast, a client is someone who likes you. They appreciate your work so much that they want to pay you for it. They have high hopes for what your work will do for their business.

Sure, clients can be demanding, just like bosses. But if you don’t like a client, or if you don’t seem to mix well, you can go get another client. In addition, a client is one of many. Just because one client has it in for you doesn’t mean your entire livelihood has to be at stake.

The way you think about clients is different than the way you think about a boss, too. You appreciate a client’s willingness to pay you. You work hard to make sure the client is pleased so that they’ll keep hiring you. If you work hard to please a boss, it’s often because you’re just afraid of her.

So, get out of the mindset that says customers are your bosses. They’re not. They’re clients, and that’s a good thing. If you see them as your boss, you may be hurting yourself in the long run.

What is Your Freelance Writing Business Self-Image?

The vast majority of freelance writers are self-employed and the sole employee of their business. Many of those freelance writing businesses don’t really even see themselves so much as a business, but as a writer who works for someone else. There are some folks, for example, who write exclusively for Demand Studios and think of themselves as more of an employee.

This isn’t too different from how many contractors see themselves. After all, when I worked in Information Technology as a network admin, I didn’t really think of myself as a sole proprietorship. After all, I had a single client who provided my entire paycheck. They even took out taxes for me. Nope, I was an employee, even though my tax forms might have said different.

Freelance writing, though, is different. Demand Studios (or anyone else) isn’t paying you a full-time wage on a contractual basis. You are a business from whom they are purchasing a service.

You might argue that I’m just talking semantics here. You might suggest that it doesn’t matter whether you think of yourself as an employee or a business. You might even believe that thinking of yourself as an employee adds a certain degree of security you might not otherwise have.

I’d suggest that the security you’re looking for can’t be found where you’re looking for it. At no point is any client under an obligation to continue giving you work. It’s a whole different world than when you’re employed by someone else.
No, your security has to come from somewhere else. Diversifying your client base will help in that regard, because you’ll know that even if Client #1 goes out of business, Client #2-5 will still be there. But the real security has to come from recognizing that you have a valuable skill – the ability to write well – that clients need.

Next time, I’ll take a look at the difference between seeing your customers as clients or as bosses.

Create A Freelance Writing Discount Structure

The freelance writing business is, by its very nature, a different beast. Many freelance writers, at least in the beginning, think about what they do more as a freelance writing job rather than a small business. If you don’t believe me, just think about the success of this website. Note that it’s the Freelance Writing Jobs network, not the Freelance Writing Business network.

This difference is important in a number of ways. Small businesses have expenses; employees don’t. Small businesses have to do marketing; people who have jobs don’t.

Small businesses often have sales or offer discounts – employees don’t. When’s the last time someone walked into a job and said, “hey, can I get paid less this week, please?”

One of the best ways to keep clients coming back and ordering more and more work is to offer a discount structure. There are a few components to setting up your discount structure, however. Skip one, and the whole thing just sort of falls apart:

Step 1: Setting your Regular Rates

There’s been plenty written at Freelance Writing Jobs and other places about how to set your rates, so I won’t go into all of that here. The long and short of it is that you need to decide on some standard pricing. Know what you’ll charge for articles, what you’ll charge for blog posts, what you’ll charge for website copy.

Step 2: Defining your Discount Tiers

Next, you want to decide what kind of discount levels you can offer. Your discount levels should reflect your overall business strategy. If you want to do more website copy, for example, you might offer a discount on website copy for clients that order blog posts.

Volume is a great way to tier your discounts, as well. You can set these up by production – say, a 10 percent discount on more than 5 blog posts per week – or you can set them up by cost – say, a 10 percent discount on orders over $1,000 in a month.

Step 3: Adjust your Standard Rates and Calculate the Discount Structure

Now, you need to make sure that you can offer a discount and still make money. To do that, it’s worth it to bump your standard rates up slightly, if possible. Just raising your standard rate by two to three percent will probably be enough to cover your discount structure.

You may not feel terribly comfortable with this. You might compare it to a department store than never actually charges full price, and that their products are always “on sale.”

This analogy breaks down, however. Your discounts are a marketing strategy. As such, they are a cost center – an expense. To cover your expenses, you have to adjust prices, in the same way that a retailer in a strip mall would have to adjust prices to compensate for increased rent.

In my experience, this kind of discount structure has been a tremendous boon to my overall business, and helped push my business in the direction I want it to go.

Word of Mouth Still Works and Other Lessons

This time of year, I’m pretty prone to looking back and taking stock in what’s happened in my freelance writing business over the past twelve months. I try to identify some of the good, some of the bad, and start working on some ideas about how to improve business in the coming year. The process isn’t particularly formal, but it’s useful nevertheless.

Today, I made a mental list of my big clients. I’ve got about three clients that give me repeat business and that make up about 40 percent of my overall receipts. Those are my bread-and-butter clients, the ones that every freelance writing business has to have if it’s going to succeed in the long run.

I thought about how I landed those clients. Here’s a brief overview:

Client #1: Tiny Elance job from March that became a big ongoing project in September. Lesson: Kick major butt on the small gigs and they might turn into big gigs.

Client #2: Referral from a one-time small client from last year to his business school buddy led to ongoing work in June. Lesson: Word of mouth still works.

Client #3: Larger Elance job became a repeat job immediately once the client saw returns from my work. Lesson: If your writing makes money for your customer, they’ll come back for more.

So, what about you? Where do your big, long-term clients come from?

Disaster Recovery for Freelance Writers: Getting Prepared

So, I’ve talked for the past few weeks about some of the challenges facing freelance writers when it comes to disaster recover. I broke down the various dangers facing a freelance writing business into three distinct categories:

• Data Issues
• Communications
• Production

I’ve also talked about some of the things you can do to prepare for a disaster, from creating a data backup system to more effective management of your contacts and projects. If you follow the advice in those posts, you’ll give your business a good chance of surviving all but the most horrific disasters.

Today, I want to leave you with a few overriding principles to keep in mind while you’re making those preparations:

1. You can’t prepare for every disaster

There are situations you can’t anticipate. Disaster recovery is about looking at possibilities. You want to cover yourself for those situations that are most likely to occur and for those that do the most damage. You could spend years trying to identify every problem area and a solution. Don’t. You have more important things to do.

2. Learn risk assessment

In the business world, there’s an idea known as “risk assessment” that can help you when it comes to disaster recovery for your freelance business. Risk assessment is a process whereby you examine the likelihood of an event (such as a disaster), the impact of that event, and what it would take to prevent or recover from that event.

Unlikely events that don’t have a huge impact and wouldn’t take much to recover from should be identified, but not necessarily addressed. An event that is likely to happen that could completely destroy your business and can be prepared for with relative ease – that should be addressed.

Risk assessment is as much an art as it is a science, and you can’t be expected to master it right away. Still, you need to be aware of the formula and put it into practice.

3. Ignore disaster recovery at your own peril

Disaster recovery isn’t a flashy topic, I know that. But being able to pick up the pieces in rapid fashion after a disaster will do more for the long-term success of your freelance writing business than saving a few bucks at tax time. Don’t assume your business is safe just because nothing bad has happened yet, and don’t put all of your eggs into any one basket, whether it’s an Internet Service Provider, your laptop computer or a single client.

Be diligent, take the time to address the possibility of disaster, make some basic preparations and you’ll save yourself plenty of trouble in the long run.

Disaster Recovery for Freelance Writers: Communications

In many ways, making sure your freelance writing business data is safe in the event of a disaster is the easiest part of disaster recovery. Really, it’s just a matter of determining a workable solution (such as an online backup subscription) and turning it on.

Today I want to look at something a little more difficult and nebulous. I want to talk about disaster recovery for your business processes and systems. By “processes and systems” I simply mean the basic day-to-day things you do to keep your business going. These activities fall into two categories: communications and production. We’ll take a look at each one individually.

Communications

Perhaps the most important aspect of disaster recovery is communication. You can always recreate data, in a worst case scenario. But if you can’t communicate with your clients after a disaster, your business is going to take a severe hit.

Simply put, your business needs a way to get information to your clients when an emergency strikes. If you’re in a car wreck and unconscious in the hospital, your client needs to know that you won’t be delivering that eBook on Thursday. If the client doesn’t know what’s going on, they may take their business elsewhere. Even if the client likes you and is understanding, once the business is gone you run the risk it will stay gone.

In this case, it’s a matter of having someone who’s familiar enough with your business to be able to identify where a given project stands and communicate with your clients when you can’t. An administrative assistant can do this, if you have one. Many freelance writers don’t, however. Hiring a Virtual Assistant (VA) can be a way to address this issue, as well as handle some of your other business tasks.

For other freelance writers, a spouse or other family member may be able to step in. Regardless of who is going to be handling communication in your absence, it’s worth it to take a few minutes ahead of time and brief them on your record keeping system. Provide them with access to your business email account, your contacts database and your editorial calendar. If possible, send them a weekly update to your editorial calendar so they know where exactly everything stands.

Next time, we’ll look at the production aspect of your freelance writing business and how to keep the words flowing in the event of a disaster.

Disaster Recovery for Freelance Writers: Data Issues

When it comes to disaster recovery for a small business, there are usually two types of issues that you must address: data issues and systemic or process issues. Today, we’ll look at the first of those two, and what the freelance writing business owner can do to minimize the impact of a disaster on her business.

A freelance writing business relies heavily on electronic data. Most of this data falls into one of three categories: product, communications and financial records. Each of these types of data is critical to the continuity of your business if a disaster should strike. Let’s tackle each in turn:

Product

The freelance writing business’ product is, of course, the writing. Whether it’s ebooks, magazine articles or web copy, the text you produce is the lifeblood of your business. It’s what people come to you for, and it’s what makes you money.

When a disaster – such as a crashed hard drive – occurs and you lose your saved files, it’s akin to having a tornado hit a warehouse and wipe out all of your inventory. Depending on the kind of work you do, you could be looking at days or even weeks of rewriting material. If your hard drive crashes in the final stages of a 150-page ebook, you’re going to lose valuable time and money if you don’t have a disaster recovery plan.

The good news here is that disaster recovery for your product can be relatively simple. You might have a dedicated backup hard drive, for example, that backs up your files every night. You might instead subscribe to an online backup service. If you can manage it, I recommend the online backup service, just because the local hard drive option still leaves you in the lurch if, for example, you have a house fire.

Communications

Another key element in your freelance writing business is your communications records. Freelance writers deal with things like contracts, orders and client communications on a daily basis. If you lose all of this type of data, you wind up having to go back to your clients to try to recreate it. While most clients will understand if you say, “My house flooded and I’ve lost my records, can I fax over a second copy of this contract,” how much more impressive would it be to those clients if they know your house flooded, yet you don’t miss a beat?

For the most part, your communications are probably electronic. Here again, a backup service is probably the best way to protect this type of data. If you use an email client on your PC to POP your mail, a backup service should cover you.

However, understand that if you use an email service – such as Gmail – you’re at the mercy of that email provider. If Gmail experiences a huge data loss tomorrow, you could lose valuable client communications. You need to have confidence in your email provider. Think long and hard about what email service you choose to use for your freelance writing business. (I, for the record, am completely confident in Google today. I use Gmail for the vast majority of my communications.)

Financial records

The last type of data you need to keep tabs on in a disaster is your financial records. This includes everything from your monthly bookkeeping to your receipts for expenses. Portions of your financial records can be electronic, while portions of your financial records will be paper. The electronic portion can be handled just like your electronic communications, while the paper records deserve a few extra thoughts.

You have a couple of choices when it comes to dealing with paper financial records. One option is to eliminate paper records by scanning everything into electronic format. This can be time-consuming, but it can also save you worry (and the clutter of a physical filing system).

Another way to deal with paper financial records is to invest in secure storage. This could include a fireproof and waterproof filing cabinet, or it could include an offsite storage option, such as a safe deposit box at your bank. This method isn’t as time-consuming as scanning all of your records, but it does require regular, manual use of the secure storage. In other words, you have to take your records regularly to your safe deposit box for this method to be effective. For me, the fireproof cabinet is the way to go, but I do know some small business owners who prefer offsite storage.

Next time, we’ll take a look at disaster recovery planning for your freelance writing business’ processes and systems.

Why Your Freelance Writing Business Needs a Disaster Recovery Plan

When you read about disaster recovery, you probably think less about your small freelance writing business and more about bigger companies. Indeed, most of the advice you’ll find on disaster recovery has to do with things like redundant data centers, off-site storage facilities and cross-training. There’s big money in disaster recovery planning, and the a small freelance writing business isn’t usually the target of marketing efforts.

Still, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be ready for when disaster strikes. Just ask the folks at Equipment Express.

Equipment express was a small startup founded by an Indiana man named Jeffery Ake in his garage. Ake designed some specialized way to bottle water, and he traveled the world promoting his product. Equipment Express was a small business with just a few employees.

April 2005 was the last time anyone saw Jeffery Ake. He appeared on Al Jazeera TV with two radical Islamists pointing rifles at his head. He’d been kidnapped while doing business in Iraq. He was never seen again.

After the kidnapping and disappearance, Ake’s business struggled. Without him at the helm, sales dried up. Within a year and a half, Equipment Express was more than a million bucks int he hole and the company was liquidated.

Equipment Express had no plans in place to allow their company to recover in the event that something happened to its founder and primary salesperson.

Even if your freelance writing business is just you, the story still illustrates how vulnerable your business is. One big client goes under, and you could be struggling for months. And, while you can’t plan for every kind of disaster that your business might face, there are some you can plan for.

Over the next few posts, I’ll talk a little bit about the risks facing your freelance writing business and what you can do now to help protect yourself and your family if something bad should happen.

The story of Equipment Express has a somewhat bittersweet ending. In 2007 one of the employees purchased the business’ assets and opened a new company called Liquid Packaging Solutions. They hired most of the old Equipment Express employees and opened up a new plant in Laporte, Indiana. Today, the company has around $5 million in sales annually.

The One Way to Keep Your Freelance Clients Coming Back for More

I’ve already told you how to lose your freelance writing clients. There are plenty of things you can do to tick clients off and send them packing. Unfortunately, when you do, they take their business elsewhere. There are plenty of other freelance writers waiting in the wings.

Still, not all clients that don’t come back stay away because they’re unhappy. Sometimes, you’ll work for a client with big ideas and dreams. They really like your work, and want to hire you to do a bunch of it. They’ll laud you with praise after you give it to them. After a little while, though, they stop coming back.

What happened? Sure, it could be you screwed up and don’t know it. Some clients speak with their feet instead of their lips. But, especially if the client seemed satisfied with the work, there’s probably another reason.

In many cases, they just ran out of money.

Now, you might not think there’s anything you can do about that. After all, you need the client to give you money. If they don’t have any, there’s nothing you can do for them. But, that’s only true to an extent.

Those of us who write primarily for the web usually create content that generates revenue. It may not be sales content; it might be brand-building, perhaps, or traffic generating. If that content doesn’t do its job and generate revenue, your client can’t afford to keep coming back.

Let me say that again, this time in big, bold letters so that the people skimming this article don’t miss it:

If your writing doesn’t generate revenue, your clients can’t afford to keep coming back.

Now, I’m not just talking about sales writing. If your SEO articles don’t attract search engines, if your blog posts don’t engage the reader and establish your client as an authority in their niche, or if your ebooks don’t provide real value to those that buy them, your clients won’t make money.

Yes, you need to do all of the other customer retention stuff. Meet deadlines, communicate effectively, and everything else. But at the end of the day, if your work doesn’t produce the desired results, it doesn’t do you a lot of good. Your client might feel plenty of warm fuzzies about you and give you a glowing recommendation, but they won’t give you any more cash.

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