I wrote a post a couple of weeks back about the skills you need to freelance, and honing those will certainly help you to succeed when you start a freelance career. Writing that post got me thinking about some other things that either helped me when I was starting out, or that I learned along the way and wish I’d known from the beginning.

Just for some context, I started freelancing mid-way through 2015. I’ve been doing it full-time ever since and it’s currently my only gig (though that hasn’t been the case the entire time). In those 7-ish years I’ve definitely made my share of mistakes and taken on some clients who were walking red flags in hindsight. Some of those missteps I think are an unavoidable part of venturing out as linguistic mercenary into the wild world of words for pay, but hopefully these tips can help other new freelancers make the transition a bit more smoothly.

1: Know what you’re worth.

I cannot stress enough the importance of learning the going rates for your type of writing. You cannot rely on clients to know this. For one thing, most online freelancer marketplaces are international, and what’s considered “professional pay” varies from one country to the next.

Freelancers and independent contractors are also not covered by minimum wage laws, so even companies in your geographic area have no legal responsibility to pay what you’re worth. Some will take advantage of this and try to exploit freelancers knowingly. Others simply don’t understand the time and effort required for their project, and since there are no consequences for underpaying, they have little motivation to learn. 

Writers also need to watch out for the Passion Pay effect, particularly for fiction assignments, though you’ll see it across the freelance world. Similar to other creative gigs like music and art, writing is something many people do for fun. Some jobs are posted with a pittance pay on the assumption you’ll be happy to earn anything for something you’d be doing free anyway. Others try to justify an absurdly low pay by saying you’ll get “exposure.” The thing is, any publication large enough to make exposure valuable also has the financial resources to pay its writers a professional rate, and liking your job doesn’t mean you deserve less pay for doing it.

Just what is a professional rate?

The Editorial Freelance Association has a very detailed chart showing the median pay for their members, which can help you get an idea of what an experienced freelancer makes. Now, just like any career, you likely won’t be able to charge that from the start. Someone who’s paying $50/hour wants to know they’re getting a skilled professional (and will have no trouble attracting one at that rate). That doesn’t mean you need to start out in the basement, though. At the very least, you should not set yourself up to earn less than minimum wage no matter what stage of your career you’re in. 

How do you make sure of that?

One way is to take jobs that pay by the hour. This is more common for editing, though there are also content writing gigs that pay hourly. Someone starting from scratch can aim for $15-$20/hour then grow from there, replacing lower-paing clients with better ones as you build your resume and reputation.

Many writing jobs pay by the word, instead, and this is where a lot of new freelancers run into trouble. You need to do the math before you accept a per-word rate. How many words can you reasonably write per hour? Not the “look I’m impressive” high-end estimate—the real average you’ll end up at if you’re writing full-time. Many projects will also require research, formatting, and proofreading as part of the assignment, and you need to factor that time into the equation, too. 

You’ll get a feel for how long different types of assignments take as you go, and set your own mental minimums and ideal pay. If you’re looking for a benchmark figure, I’d advise charging at least .02/word if you’re starting completely from scratch (e.g., you’ve never been paid to write before and hold no relevant degrees), and somewhere in the .03-.05/word range if you have been paid to write or teach writing, or if you have a Bachelor’s or higher degree in English, writing, or a similar field.

 

2: Take advantage of all your skills and interests.

As a writer, you’re obviously an expert in writing. That’s true of everyone in the field, though (at least theoretically), and there aren’t a ton of assignments out there paying people to write about writing—they exist, but not in a quantity you’re likely to make a full-time living from them.

The more topics you’re willing and able to write about, the more potential work you’ll have available. That means you’ll build to a sustainable full-time income more quickly, and have more options to increase your pay rate as you gain experience. In the business world, this would be called diversifying your revenue streams, but it’s really just common sense that you’ll have more options if you’re willing to say yes to more things. 

How do you know what you can write about?

When I first started out freelancing, I had just quit a job managing a café, where I’d earned a barista certification (yes, coffee school is, in fact, a thing). My college progression was also a bit twisty, starting with a Bachelor’s in music followed by MFA in fiction writing with a certificate in travel writing. In my free time I was an avid hockey fan and always had pets, usually small pets of the scaly or fluffy variety.

Why the sudden divergence into my bio? Because I made money writing about all of these things in my first two years as a freelancer. I wrote coffee gear reviews, exotic pet care guides, travel site copy, training documents for small businesses, and blogs about hockey. One of my longest-running (and highest-paying) early clients was an affiliate blog about music gear. I didn’t land that client by talking up my MFA and lit mag publications—I focused on my knowledge of the music world, and it was my unique combination of industry experience and writing expertise that landed me the gig. 

The assignments where you can make a unique value proposition are gold for a new freelancer because they can help you get over the experience catch-22. Before you start looking for assigments, make a list of all the subject areas you would feel comfortable researching and writing about. Don’t limit yourself to things you’ve done professionally. What can you geek out about? What topics could you read about for hours without getting bored? When you are bored, what do you fill your time with? Just about any niche, hobby, or interest has an accompanying ecosystem of blogs, businesses, and online communities, many of which need content. You could be the person writing it if you think to look for it.

Along with leveraging your interests, take advantage of your full skills. If you’re a fast typer and good listener, transcription work could be an easy way to boost your income. If you’re fluently bilingual (or multi-lingual), check out what translation work could be in your wheelhouse. Other adjacent skills like book design and layout, web design, fact checking, proofreading, or artistic skills like graphic design and photography can also be combined with writing to open up more opportunities and increase your value to potential clients.

 

3: Build a base of recurring clients as early as you can.

The time you spend actively working on projects for clients isn’t the only work involved in freelancing. You also need to schedule time for things like searching for new work, sending proposals and interviewing, communicating with clients, tracking your finances, and other administrative tasks.

Once you add in the time spent on this unpaid work, your true pay per hour is always lower than the rate you charge clients. There is no avoiding this entirely unless you pay someone to do that work for you, which is a whole other level of the game that I personally have no plans to venture into. That said, while some of this work is unavoidable, you should aim to keep your true hourly rate as close to your client rate as possible. 

Recurring clients help you do this. For one thing, they minimize the time you have to spend seeking out new work. Get enough recurring work and you can cut that out of your schedule entirely if you want to. You also know what an ongoing client expects with each task. That means less time spent going over the project at the start and less back-and-forth later on since you’ll understand their style and preferences and will be less likely to need to make edits.

Building a recurring client base also gives you a bit more financial stability and lets you make long-term financial plans. If all your projects are short-term, you can’t count on getting that same volume and quality of clients month-to-month, and you’ll need to be in a near-constant state of hustle to maintain your momentum. This raises the risk you’ll burn out, both from that constant hustle and because it’s harder to regulate and plan your workflow, making it more likely you’ll destroy your own work-life balance through unplanned overtime. Recurring clients have a consistent workload and earnings that you can count on and plan around, helpful for budgeting both your time and your finances.

Landing a recurring client early on, even if it’s a small one, gives you something stable you can build from. Blog writing can be great for this, but there are also opportunities for serial writing in fiction, especially for those with a taste for romance.  

This doesn’t mean you have to avoid all one-off projects, just to take long-term potential into account when you’re considering assignments. Ongoing work paying $200 a month will earn you more in 6 months than a single $1,000 project, and often for the same or less time invested—the time and earnings are just spread out over a longer span. 

Bear in mind, too, that taking on recurring clients doesn’t need to mean hitting an earnings plateau. Many clients will start their freelancers off small until they see what they can do. You might start off writing one article a week at .03/word, then get bumped up to more articles for higher pay once the client sees you’re able to deliver consistently high-quality work. This has been the case with every single client I’ve worked with for a year or more—by the end of that first year, I was doing more for them, and being paid more for it, than I’d initially been hired for.

You don’t have to choose one or the other, either. For me, a mix of recurring and one-off projects works best. I have a base of recurring work that I can count on to pay my living expenses every month, supplemented by short-term projects to get me up to a rough 40-ish hour weekly average. This way, I can still enjoy the flexibility and variety I love about freelancing, without the anxiety of wondering if I’ll be able to pay my mortgage next month.

Bonus Tip and Final Word: Be Kind to Yourself

Like I said in the beginning, I definitely didn’t do everything right when I started freelancing. And I still don’t. But I do things a lot better now than I did when I was starting out, mostly thanks to those early fuck-ups teaching me what not to do. You’re not going to do everything right the first time, because nobody does, and some of those mistakes are going to suck to deal with. It hurts to get yelled at or stiffed or fired, and it’s stressful to work 6-day weeks and 12-hour days when you take on too many clients or a project ends up being more work than you realized.

In these moments, freelancing can feel very lonely. You don’t have coworkers to commiserate or an HR department to complain to. It’s just you, and you need to be your own boss in all senses, including being the person who looks after your own well-being. Being aware of your frustration, stress, and other negative emotions, and having a plan in place to deal with them, is absolutely crucial for freelancers (and remote workers in general, honestly).

A support network of other writers or freelancers can be a big help. People who work traditional jobs often can’t relate to the unique stresses and issues freelancers deal with, but you can bond with other creatives and gig workers about those shared frustrations.

The bottom line is, when you mess up, try not to take it too hard. Everyone does it and it’s part of the process. When it happens, take your self-care seriously, work through your feelings, get back to equilibrium, then figure out what went wrong and how to do it better next time.

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