Jobs, Rates, and Freelance Writing
Like a lot of other jobs, Freelance Writing comes with tiers of work ranging from low-level to critical high visibility. Likewise, there are many levels of pay that go along with those tiers. Too many writers focus on what they “should” be making, or what they “want” to be making. Instead, focus on what work you can get today.
Fill Your Schedule
I’ve been writing professionally for a long time, but it was only recently that I cut the safety cord that had snuggly tethered me to the corporate world. When that happened, a fundamental shift occurred in the way I looked at my writing. Specifically, I stopped looking at my writing, and I started looking at my writing business. That little shift makes all the difference.
Look at it this way, as a writer, you have certain things that you enjoy writing, and certain things that you don’t enjoy as much. You also have certain gigs available to you that pay a lot and certain gigs that don’t pay as much. While you are in the state of mind where you evaluate and manage your writing making the calls as to which projects you will and won’t take can be complicated. But, if you are in the state of mind where you are managing your business, things get a little easier. Instead of considering what you do and don’t want to write, and what you should and should not earn, you start looking at what your revenue and expenses looked like last month. You look at what your revenue looks like it will be for the coming month and you do some simple math. You are either making it (profit) or you are not (loss), and you need to do some things accordingly.
No business can operate at a loss indefinitely. How easy is it to make this decision? Last month, your business had enough revenue to generate a nice profit. This month, however, your projected projects only will generate enough revenue to come out with a small loss at the end of the month. Do you take the short term, lower paying writing gig that will make the coming month profitable or not?
Pretty easy right?
Be the Business
Being a business means taking your writing from being the thing you do to being the thing your business does. You are not just a freelance writer, you are also a business owner. Act like you think a business owner acts. A business owner keeps an eye on the bottom line. As the owner of a freelance writing business you have the advantage of being able to work on making both sides of the equation work out. You can cut back on expenses during a month where revenues will be light and vice versa. You can take on projects you would normally turn down in order to boost revenues so you can cover those unexpected office expenses.
Keep an eye on the profit margin of the business as a whole, and a lot of the other questions will help sort themselves out.
Search Engine Optimization and Advertising - Why SEO is Important
Why SEO is Critical to Your Ad Campaign
Search Engine Optimization is a critical linchpin in the success or failure of your advertising campaign. To understand why SEO is so important, let’s take a quick look at the advertising campaigns of two jewelers.
You’ve probably heard of both Kay Jewelers and Jared’s. You also probably know the slogan for each. That is because their multi-million dollar advertising campaigns are working. Between television commercials and radio commercials, both companies have spent lots of money to build brand awareness. That is why every Kay Jewelers commercial, whether T.V. or radio, includes the short melody along with the words, “Every kiss begins with K.” Similarly, Jared has every commercial contain the words “He went to Jared.” Why?
Brand Awareness
Brand awareness is often difficult to explain to clients, but in this case, it should be fairly obvious. Let’s say there is a man. He is a normal everyday man who works at a regular job, has a regular girlfriend, and so on. Let’s call him Sam. Sam doesn’t buy much jewelry. But, today is different because he wants to propose to his girlfriend. Whether Sam buys jewelery or not, and whether or not he pays attention when jewelry commercials come on doesn’t matter. Because he has heard, “Every kiss begins with K,” and “He went to Jared,” so many times, when he tries to think of jewelry stores, those two pop into his head. Mission accomplished, advertising worked, let’s party, right?
Ready to Buy, Now What?
Actually, the next step is the most critical. Now, that Sam is ready to buy he needs to go to the actual building. Unless Sam lives near one and already knows where it is, how will he find either Kay or Jared? The answer is, the phone book or the Internet. Assuming both jewelers target markets are educated, upper-middle class or higher (i.e. people with money) which method is he more likely to use to find the jewelry store? Hint: If you said phone book, it might be time to take some continuing education courses.
So, Sam jumps onto his computer and…what? First, he probably guesses. If he types in www.jareds.com, then yippee! But what if he assumes the “s” is just part of the grammar and not part of the name? If he types in www.jared.com, he ends up at some unrelated advertising page that may send him to a competitor. Think this isn’t an issue? Well, www.kays.com does NOT go to the jeweler like jareds.com does. Instead, in that case the “s” is part of the grammar so, the real web site is www.kay.com.
Now, you are thinking that it is no big deal. Surely, our hero, Sam, will just type in the other web site, right? Well, maybe yes, and maybe no. Sam might decide that it will be more efficient to use a search engine so he can just find the right site and stop messing around. After all, he’s at work and the last thing he wants is to accidentally hit some porno site by getting the wrong site. He knows that it could be kay.com, kayjewlery.com, kayjewlers.com, kaysjewelry.com and so on.
If Sam searches for Kay Jewelers, then no problem. But, if Sam decides instead, “Hey, I’m here, I might as well just type in ‘jewelers’ or ‘engagement rings’ just to see,” there could be a problem. If you search Google for engagement rings, Kay doesn’t show up until page 4, well after Sam has been reminded of several competitors, if he perseveres until page four at all. Not only that, but along the way several benevolent sounding web sites offer what sounds like unbiased information. If he decides to check out those, he may decide to buy over the Internet, or direct from China, or whatever.
Small Business and SEO
Keep in mind, these are two big jewelry store chains that spend millions on advertising. How do you think this would play out for a smaller local business without a million dollar ad budget? Cracking the first page for a search on engagement rings would be great, but at a minimum a local business needs to be on the first page for results of engagement ring +cityname. For example, if you are a locally owned store in Denver, your business should really be on the first page when someone searches ‘engagement rings Denver’. Are you? If not, that’s where ArcticLlama and SEO comes in.
Too many other companies throw around the phrase Search Engine Optimization and SEO without really understanding the full process of moving up in the search engine rankings. Yes, keyword loaded articles are a start, but that is the easy part. The real skill comes from determining which keywords or key phrases can be best targeted for you. You could spend years writing key word filled articles and never end up on the first page for searches on popular phrases that have large multi-national companies servicing those niches. Just as important is getting links to those pages. Without links the search engines don’t care how many keywords are there. After all, no one wants to read meaningless articles just stuffed with keywords. The way search engines know articles are relevant is when people think they are important enough to link to.
A full service SEO (Search Engine Optimization) firm like ArcticLlama not only provides the keyword filled articles you need, it also provides the buzz necessary to generate those all important links while targeting the right keywords. Whether you are an advertising or public relations firm working for an important client, or if you are a business owner looking to maximize your Internet presence, we can help. In the mean time, don’t forget that finding your business is just as important as knowing about it.
Technorati Tags: Search Engine Optimization, advertising, SEO
How to Work with a Freelance Writer
Ok, let’s start with the basics shall we?
Whether you are a small business owner, or someone working at a Fortune 500 company, working with a professional freelance writer can be a very useful way to generate content for your projects. However, it is important to know how to work with a freelancer.
The Intangibles
First, it is important to understand that although we are professionals with experience in demanding and skilled fields, we do not work for your business. We don’t know the internal politics, the corporate mission, the philosophy of your organization or department, and we especially don’t know the people we are writing for. While we don’t need to know every detail, it is important that we have a feel for these things so that we can deliver a final product that works for you. What works for one company may be terrible for another. So, sit down and get an idea of what you are looking for and where it will be going. I find it has been helpful for many clients to imagine how you would give a similar project to a spouse or significant other. For example, if your spouse were writing up a twenty page summary of a large research project and needed to speak with the engineer that wrote the research, what advice would you give them? Would you say, “Bob is a great guy, and really smart, but sometimes he can seem a little cold especially on the phone.” This same advice would help your freelancer.
In addition, the following checklist should help you determine the kind of information your freelancer will need.
- Will any interaction be necessary with other people besides yourself? If so, how should that be established? Call directly, call you first, or let you setup the dialog?
- Should any outside knowledge or research be brought into the project or should the project be done without any such additions? In other words, do you consider the information you give us complete? If so, we won’t look anything else up.
- Who will be reading the final project? What do they like and not like in such reading? Do they like formal or informal? Long or short? Detailed or just the conclusions? Are they a numbers person, or do they just get confused by lots of numbers? We can write any of those and the success of the project depends on us writing the right one.
- How does the final product need to feel? Should it be light or heavy? Serious? Dire?
- What language style should be used? Formal or informal? Like a reporter writing a story or like a friend writing a letter about something they feel strongly towards? Slang or no slang? Contractions or no contractions? Technically formal writing has no contractions, but it can sound mechanical.
- Should the final project sound like outsiders wrote it or not? Sometimes it is an added authority when something sounds like it came from outside, sometimes it just sounds like outsiders (and sometimes you don’t want other people knowing you went outside.)
Another very important aspect of working with freelancers is knowing what you want and communicating it. Asking for a summary of Shakesphere’s works could be just a list, a list with a short explaination of each title, a few paragraphs on each style (comedy, tragedy, etc.). Should there be an exhaustive list (all works listed) or a representative list (just the highlights). Make sure you put in writing as many details as possible. If you are working with successful freelancers, your project won’t be the only one they are working on. That means they’ll need to be able to start your project and then come back to it later. Reading the project specification will be how they remember all the details of what you need.
Know Who You Are Working With
Some freelancers are full-time freelance writers. Others are part-time freelancers either with another writing job, or another non-writing job. Some freelancers are English majors (still in school or not) looking to just do a few things on the side. There are even people who have no professional writing experience at all dabbling in freelance writing. None of these freelancers is necessarily better or worse, but it can be helpful for you to understand who you are working with so you know what to expect. Someone freelancing on the side might not be able to return calls as quickly. Someone who is still in school might not be able to produce the same volume or quality of work during finals.
Get an idea of how they handle their business. For example, we work with many clients, sometimes on-site, sometimes not. Like most writers we don’t do our best work when frequently interrupted, so when working on a project we turn the ringer off on the phone. It doesn’t make sense for us to pay someone just to answer the phone, so chances are high that your call will go to voicemail. However, our voicemail system pages us for every new message, so we check as soon as we can, and we return your call quickly. Others might only commit to a 24 hour call back. Others might not even commit to that. Make sure your style matches what the freelancer can provide. If you have to speak to a live person right away, we might not be the right choice for you, for example.
Rewrites, Re-work, Scope Creep
A professional freelancer may discuss with you the provisions for adjusting their work once you have a chance to read it. It is common to include a certain number of rewrites. Two rewrites is common except for longer or more technical projects. This allows you to flag things you need changed. When you do, be specific. “Make this longer,” isn’t very helpful. Do you want examples? More details? Fluff?
If you need a freelancer to do the project again because it has changed, that is not a rewrite. The easiest way to tell the difference is whether or not you have to give the freelancer any more information in order to get what you need. For example, if you have to give more sales information, then you are asking for re-work. If you ask to have the sales information you gave at the beginning included, that is a rewrite.
Scope creep is fine when you are paying an hourly rate. After all, the time is yours to use however you would like. It may be wasteful to constantly change the project, but you are paying for the changes, so that it something you have to be O.K. with. When you are paying a project rate, however, scope creep can lead to tension between you and your freelancer. The rate you are quoted is based on the project you start with. Like in the movie The Transporter anything after that is a new deal. We understand when little things come up or a small detail is accidentally left out, but we can’t allow for major changes to the project without new pricing.
Sometimes scope creep can be obvious. If you ask for four pages to be used in a newsletter, and then find out later that your newsletter actually needs to be four pages double-sided which is actually eight pages, you obviously shouldn’t expect four more pages for the same price. Sometimes, though, scope creep can be a harder to spot. If you ask for a complete update of your website content, but then decide it would be better to combine three pages into one, it may seem like the same project, but it isn’t. Refreshing or updating a page is much easier than combining two pages. The latter requires adjusting the flow of each page to match the other page, determining where and how to splice in the data, and may require a complete rewrite. Don’t be surprised if your freelancer wants extra compensation to handle the change. Remember, the deal is the deal. Anything else is a new deal. But also remember, we aren’t looking to rip you off. If a change doesn’t require any more work, we won’t charge you more.
Get It In Writing
You don’t necessarily need a full contract everytime you work with a freelance writer or freelance copy editor, although we recommend it any time you start talking about bigger amounts of money. You do need to get a written understanding between you and the freelancer as to what you expect to be delivered and what your freelancer expects to deliver. If you are expecting five pages make sure you have five pages in writing, whether a formal document, or an email or letter. Also clearly spell out the rate you will be paying, when the payment will be made, and the procedure for going over the rate. Also spell out how and when the project can be terminated by either side.
Hopefully this article gives you a foundation for working with a professional freelance writer or professional freelance copy writer. If you have other questions you would like answered, feel free to email us. Also, I would highly recommend you get our feed so that you keep up to date with all the content coming for the site.
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Looking for a professional writer or professional copy editor? Look no further than ArcticLlama, LLC. Our writers and editors not only have experience in writing and editing, they also have years of experience in some of the most demading fields in business.
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