Freelance Writing – ArcticLlama

Somewhere along the line I started reading the website Coding Horror, which is kind of ironic considering that I am a basic level programmer at best.

Sure, I understand the structure of a For-Next Loop and I can work through an If-Then-Else statement, but I’m typically much better at sorting through someone else’s code than I am at writing my own programs. It is sort of the programming equivalent of being able to read a foreign language, but not speak it.

Recently, Coding Horror weighed in on the subject of what value netbooks have. Netbooks, in case you aren’t much of a techie, are small, lightweight laptops that are typically both low-end power and low-end pricing. In other words, you end up with a very portable computer that is not designed for power computing tasks, all for a very low price.

For example, I got my Acer Netbook for just over $200 including shipping and tax. It weighs close to 2 lbs and can fit inside of my 6 inch x 9 inch notebook that I use. (It’s a little thick though.) The trade-off is that it uses a slower than the typical desktop Intel processor called Atom, and it only has 1 GB of RAM. Incidentally, these lower level limits are the result of Microsoft’s tight fisted control of the Windows XP license that can actually run on a netbook versus the recently demised bloatware known as Windows Vista.

Why Netbooks Suck For Techie Blogger Types

The author of Coding Horror is a regular reader of another blog called Global Nerdy, where a recent article suggested that Netbooks occupy the arena between Smartphones and Laptops. While Coding Horror comes to the defense of netbooks, their reasons are different from my reasons.

The original article author apparently looked around at his needs and found no need for a netbook. His contention is that Netbooks are too big to fit into your pocket and thus inferior to Smartphones as a portable device, and less powerful than laptops, and thus inferior to laptops as a computing device. This is not untrue.

The mind boggling part of the recent backlash against netbooks is that the, overwhelmingly techie, authors of these articles assume that people purchasing a netbook are actually trying to replace either a Smartphone or a Laptop at all. If that were the case, then these writers would have a point. However, that is almost always NOT the case, and the myopic vision of those who are power computing users, are just missing the point.

Netbooks are NOT a replacement for laptops or smartphones. Indeed, they are something else entirely. I cannot speak for why other people purchase a Netbook, but one need look no further than the freelance writer to understand how great a Netbook can be for the right user.

Why SmartPhones and Laptops Suck

As a professional freelance writer, I have many needs. This is not unlike most other professions. A carpenter needs a hammer, or a nail gun. I do not. But, I don’t go around saying that nail guns are worthless and that no one ever would need anything other than a hammer.

For a freelance writing business, there is no tool more necessary than a Netbook. In fact, for most of my particular uses, it is the SmartPhones and Laptops that suck, not the netbook.

The best iPhone or top of the line Android SmartPhone, and every other phone out there from Blackberry, to Palm to Windows Mobile all suffer from one fatal flaw; they cannot be touch-typed on. I write 500 words in my sleep. I often write 2500 words, 5000 words, or even complete 300 page books or manuals. Not being able to touchtype is like cutting my salary by 75%. For typing on the go, a Smartphone is worthless, no matter what kind of keyboard it has.

Which brings us to laptops. While certain techie types might consider carrying around a five or six pound laptop with a 17″ widescreen to be perfectly acceptable, there are, I would wager, quite a few more of us who find the idea of carting around a laptop and accompanying laptop bag less than appealing.

Sure, if I’m headed to the local Starbucks for a little java and writing, then I wouldn’t mind at all. On the other hand, if I’m headed out to meet up with friends, or to drop my daughter off at dance class and I just need to have something along with me so I can use some of my down time to write, I really don’t want to be lugging around a big old laptop computer and then wondering when I’m done if it is O.K. to leave it in the trunk of my car. (Is it too cold? Too hot? Will it get stolen?)

A netbook on the other hand serves this function beautifully. It is small and very portable. Instead of being the dad with the huge shoulder bag, I’m the dad with a small backpack or even just a portfolio case. I can whip out the netbook virtually anywhere and write an article, jot out some notes, or do a little research on the Internet when I find a Wi-Fi hotspot. When I’m done, it really isn’t all that big, so I can pretty much take it with me anywhere. If not, it fits in the glove box, under the seat, in a locker. Heck, it even fits in a friend’s purse!

In the end, people who bag on netbooks are completely missing the point. Netbooks are not for replacing phones or for replacing laptops. Netbooks are made to replace and improve upon that centuries old tool, the notebook; not the computer kind, the paper kind. A netbook eliminates carrying around paper and pen along with a file folder with all of your reading or research printed off. Use a netbook for what it is made fore, and you will find that netbooks are not worthless, they are priceless.

One of the things about being a freelancer that many people don’t really appreciate, is that it can be very hard to take time off.

While everyone understands that a freelance writer, or any other contractor, only makes money when the work (and bill hours for projects), most people have a little bit of difficulty understanding that the making money freelancing is only part of the trick.

Someone with a regular corporate job with an office and a cubicle and multiple coworkers wants to take time off, they just put in a request with management. A good manager will ensure that there is adequate coverage for all of the duties required of his employees and then, typically, will approve the vacation request as long as it isn’t during a critical time or otherwise not feasible. If a project comes up the day before the employee is scheduled to leave, it just gets assigned to someone else, or a coworker covers for the employee by doing just enough to keep the project afloat.

A freelance writing business works a bit differently. Most freelancers who are professional writers have a solo operation. There are exceptions (like Arctic Llama) to the rule, and some freelancers are lucky enough to have another professional freelancer that they can count on to cover for them a little bit. But, when it comes to business writing, the client usually wants a specific person (you) to write it. That is why they called you in the first place. So, subbing it out isn’t typically a very good option.

Additionally, while most clients with flexible timetables are more than understanding about a trusted pro taking some time off, clients with hard deadlines don’t have a choice. So, when a very good, long-term client calls on Friday with an important project that they have to have by next Tuesday, the last thing they are interested in is letting someone else you know do it, or waiting for another week.

The phone call with the professional freelance writer usually sounds a little something like this:

Client: “Hi, Brian. I have a really important project that I need on a really tight deadline. Do you think you can handle it?”

Freelancer: “Actually, I’m just heading to the airport. My family is going on vacation. I’ll be out of the office all next week.”

Client: Silence…

For those of you new to the freelance writing world, that silence translates into: Please tell me that you will do my project anyway while you are on vacation, because I don’t like my other options. As most professional freelancers will tell you, depending on who the client is, how important the project is to them, and how forgiving your family is, in a lot of cases, a freelance pro will offer to do just that.

The exception to this state of affairs occurs every year during those glorious four to six weeks between Thanksgiving and New Years. During this time, no one is surprised to hear you will be out of the office on vacation. Not only that, most projects that come up during this short time of year are not attached to make-or-break deadlines, since whoever initiated the project in the first place is also very aware that plenty of key people will be out on holidays at that time of year.

That is why experienced freelancers build up a solid January pipeline at year end and then work extra hours in November to earn extra money and pad the bank accounts so that come Thanksgiving, they can take as much time off as possible to make up all of those other hours that didn’t end up quite as “free” as they had hoped.

So, that is why on January 6th, 2010, I am here to wish you all a Happy New Year.

There are a lot of exciting things coming this year for Arctic Llama and our clients. Stick around. Things are going to be very interesting.

We started the freelance writing blog here at ArcticLlama with the goal of making it easier for freelancers to understand how to succeed as freelance writers and for businesses and clients to have better success working with freelance writers. While we always strive to improve, I think we have done a pretty good job. However, we have also branched out, driven by both comments and emails from readers, and website statistics about the visitors who come here to read about the freelance writing business.

One of the top drivers of readers to this writing website is search engine traffic. This is not surprising since Arctic Llama isn’t exactly a household name and we don’t spend much time advertising, marketing, Twittering, or otherwise promoting this blog. (This is something we look to improve upon in 2010.) However, some of the search terms that drive users here are a bit more unexpected.

We’ve written before about how much freelance writers make per hour, or how much a freelance writer should make. These articles bring in search engine traffic from all manner of keywords, but the one that pops up repeatedly is how much do freelance writers make? I doubt there is much interest in this topic from a purely research perspective, so the assumption must be that people are wondering how much a freelance writer makes because they are potentially interested in doing some freelance writing.

What makes this unexpected is that we don’t really optimize our site around these keyphrases, and there are a lot of much bigger and better known websites that have written on this topic repeatedly. In other words, we aren’t the number one search result for some huge search keyword, and yet, here is this traffic. It boils down to either, a) people are not getting the information they wanted so they keep looking, or b) people are getting a lot of different information and they keep looking for some definitive answer about what freelance writers get paid. We can see this in how many of the searches on the topic also include a word like "average," "usually," or "typical."

How Much A Freelance Writer Earns

In an effort to serve all of our readers to the best of our ability let me provide an answer to the question about how much an average freelance writer earns. First, the short answer (which you won’t like), then the longer answer, which if you are willing to read should help give the answer people are hoping to find.

So, how much money does a freelance writer earn on average?

It depends. (See, I told you, you wouldn’t like it.)

Like the computer Deep Thought suggests in Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the problem is that the wrong question is being asked.

There are two main issues with framing the freelance writers earnings question in this manner. The first is that freelance writing income varies widely. There are some exceptions (which we’ll cover in the long answer), but for the most part, unless you are writing consistently for just one or two clients (which is really more of a contractor than a freelancer), the income will vary depending upon the projects and the clients.

To "solve" this problem, some resort to asking how much a freelancer makes per hour on average. This too is problematic in that, even that number varies depending upon circumstances. Furthermore, there is the issue about how to characterize "per hour."

For example, are we talking about the amount billed per hour or the amount made per hour as the result of dividing income over the amount of time worked? Anyone who thinks that the amount of hours a freelance writer works and the amount of hours a writer works are equal is sorely mistaken. (Again, pseudo-contractors being the exception.)

Changing the length of the time interval only helps a little. Freelancing income varies week to week, month to month, and even year to year. A big contract that once provided 80% of writers income comes to an end and there can be an enormous swing in earnings. This is part of what makes having a business plan for freelance writing so important. It is this concept, that finally provides us with a way to answer the question about how much a freelance writer makes. Instead of creating an arbitrary chart or table of freelance writer earnings or agonizing over how accurate the average, whatever that means, is, examining a freelance writing business plan, would provide the insight that people are looking for when they search for information on freelance writing rates.

So, that is what we will be doing here in the next month. The start of the year is a perfect time to review any business plan or strategic objectives. We’ll walk through how a freelance writing business works, where the income comes from, and how cash flow, expenses, contracts, clients, and so on all drive a bottom line that is not easily summed up in a search engine optimized post of 500 words. Along the way, if you are wondering how much a freelance writer earns per year or per month, you’ll get the real answer you are looking for.