An anonymous writer asks,

I was recommended for this blogging gig for a brand-new site (it launched about 2 weeks ago). I finally talked to the company president last week to discuss content, focus, all of those things. I asked him about pay. He said they’re still working on the best way to go about paying their bloggers. He said something about paying the bloggers based on the traffic they/I generate, and something about paying us with a percentage of the ad revenue? Have you ever heard of this? Is this common, and how worthwhile is it? I’m excited about my focus (green weddings and events), but I don’t want to put in a ton of work for something I may not be making much money from. Of course, since the site is so new, they may work out a better pay structure later, but I just wanted to do some initial checking.

To be honest, I don’t think the gig will really pay off for you. There are a lot of blogs and websites offering to pay writers a percentage of ad revenues these days — but unless the website already has something like 100k visitors a month, the payment works out to perhaps a few dollars per month. Another problem is that many sites using this payment model do very little promotion. They expect the blogger to do the hard parts in terms of social media and other promotions. One of the blogging networks I used to work for used this structure. A few bloggers were making a couple thousand per month through them, but most of the bloggers made about $25 per month for writing three posts a week.

Given that the site is so new, the odds of seeing much payment are fairly minimal. If you feel like the blog would be a good opportunity in terms of exposure, building a presence in the space, etc. you may still choose to pursue it. In that case, I’d recommend asking what sort of traffic they’re seeing so far, as well as what kind of traffic their other blogging projects bring in (if they have any). If the company has a proven track record for building great traffic fast, it’s up to you whether you’d be willing to take a couple of months of low payments in hopes of more money later on. You also would want to see what the company’s plans are as far as promoting the site.

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Got a question about the business side of freelancing? Leave it in the comments and I’ll answer it on next week’s Ask Me Anything!

Mike Dougherty asks,

How does one get started?

Meredith Eaton asks,

How do you get established as a freelancer? Do you start by contacting publications or writing articles?

I’m answering Meredith and Mike’s questions together — I hope you two don’t mind!

The first thing you should do if you’re considering becoming a freelance writer is to determine what kind of writing projects you want to take on. Until you know the type of writing services you want to offer, it’s tough to market yourself, making it the most important first step. Furthermore, you need to know what kind of writing projects you want in order to decide what sorts of samples to include in your portfolio. Do you want to write articles? Blog for companies? Write marketing copy?

It’s worth noting that while marketing yourself as a freelance writer taking on a specific type of projects can help you land clients, it doesn’t mean that other sorts of projects won’t come your way. It just happens to simplify the marketing process. And, yes, some freelance writers recommend that you diversify your services and try to offer your clients as much as possible. I disagree. It’s very hard to build an excellent reputation among high-paying clients of any kind if you’re constantly taking on projects that have nothing to do with the type of work they want to recommend you for.

Once you have that idea, the next step is to put yourself in a position to land clients. That means setting up a website, putting together your portfolio and starting to tell people that you’re available for work. That’s the point when you would start querying publications or cold calling prospective clients. I’d recommend not writing articles or other projects until you actually have a publication or client lined up — the exception is if your portfolio is a little bare and you need to fill it out.

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Christiana Aretta says,

Would love to read some stuff about copyright, especially alternative models that aren’t Creative Commons.

As far as copyright goes, most freelance writers in the past would never have considered anything other than traditional copyright. That’s because selling reprints were a crucial part of a writer’s income. But I’m going to let you in on the secret to why so many older freelancers hate the web — it’s almost destroyed the market for reprints. Most of the clients you’ll work with online want content that does not appear anywhere else online, because Google penalizes duplicate content. You can still sell reprints to magazines that are primarily print products, but there are fewer publications that don’t also publish their content online every day. With reprints off the table, traditional copyright becomes a lot less important.

Creative Commons has become a popular alternative, especially for online-only publishers, who may ask writers to allow their work to be distributed under a Creative Commons license. There are both benefits and drawbacks to the Creative Commons system.

Personally, I like the idea of Founder’s Copyright. Personally, I think that copyright law has become bloated — it protects big corporations, but doesn’t encourage writers sufficiently. When the Constitution was written, the framers believed that creators should have a monopoly over their works for 14 years, after which, those works would pass into the public domain. I’m of the opinion that if you don’t keep making use of a particular piece of work (writing sequels, adding on to it and so forth) in 14 years, it’s okay to let it go.

There are a lot of arguments about copyright these days. No matter what side you’re on, it’s hard to argue that we aren’t due for some reforms of the copyright law.

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Got a question about the business side of freelance writing? Send it my way and I’ll answer it on next week’s ‘Ask Me Anything.’

Kristina Viera asks,

How do you know what to charge?

Deciding how to price your work is one of the hardest part of freelancing. There are so many different factors that can affect your price — your own experience, your location, what type of clients you’re interested in working with — that it’s impossible to say that you should be charging X dollars per hour.

That said, here’s how I came up with my price. First of all, I calculated how much I needed to make per month to cover all of my bills (and I was very pessimistic about that number, assuming big bills). I then padded that number so that I would have something put in savings, as well as enough to cover unexpected emergencies. Then I doubled it — yep, doubled it — for taxes. I’m not in a tax bracket where I’m paying 50 percent of what I make to the IRS and neither are most freelance writers, but when you add in state taxes and any county or municipal taxes you may have, it can come close.

From there, I assumed that I could work 30 billable hours a week (based on having administrative tasks that would eat up about two hours a day) or 120 hours per month. I divided the amount of money I needed to make per month by that number. It was an odd number, with plenty of decimals, so I rounded it up.

Even if you aren’t freelancing full-time, I’d recommend basing your rate on the same calculations. That way, if you find yourself freelancing full-time, you won’t have to immediately raise your rates (and therefore run the risk of losing existing clients).

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Leslie Joy asks,

How do you turn networking contacts into clients?

I take networking pretty seriously. I come home from events with stacks of business cards, often with scribbled notes on who I talked to and what I talked to them about. I sit down after meeting someone new and add their email information into Gist. Because I try to end every introduction with some sort of offer to email my new contact (“I’ll give you the name of the tool I use,” “Let me send you a blog post I found on that topic,” etc.), I can immediately follow up with something deeper than “It was nice to meet you yesterday.” It’s important to be helpful and talk more about the contact than yourself. Unless a contact specifically asks me to send my rates and information about my business, I tend not to. I’ve found that building a relationship where I’m not immediately asking for something pays off better in the long run.

Usually, I’ll get a response back. From there, I continue the conversation. If an opportunity to talk about any of my projects comes up, I do so. The goal is to get contacts to think of you as a good connection overall, as well as a great freelancer. That way, they’re more likely to come to you when they have a project.

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Have a question about the business side of freelance writing? Send it my way and I’ll answer it here next week!

Today, we have a guest post from Laura Cross, the author behind The Complete Guide to Hiring a Literary Agent.

Agents review thousands of queries each year searching for talented writers and material to present to publishers. Yet agents say they reject 99% of the pitches they receive because the writers fail to:

• Show the agent that they are capable of quality writing
• Create excitement for their topics or stories
• Be succinct – providing the information in as few as words as possible
• Convey that they are professional authors who understand what an agent wants

To help you achieve the 1% status, I have compiled a list of query letter ‘do’s and don’ts’ gathered from my interviews with professional literary agents:

• Get to the point. Agents are busy people. They only have a limited amount of time to consider your project. If you ramble on about non-consequential things and cannot write a tight, pertinent pitch, an agent will believe you are incapable of writing a succinct and engaging book.
• Follow the correct format and keep the letter to only one page. The format of your letter demonstrates you are a professional author who understands what is required.
• Resist comparing yourself and your writing to other authors. Positioning your book alongside other published works in style, subject, or readership is acceptable but do not compare the quality of your writing to established authors.
• Finish writing your manuscript or book proposal before submitting the query letter. An agent cannot evaluate a project if the manuscript or proposal is not complete and available to review. An agent wants to be able to shop the manuscript or book idea to a publisher immediately.
• The query should fit the agent’s requirements for genre, word count, or format. Do not waste your time, or the agent’s, attempting to convince her to represent your 115,000-word fantasy novel if she does not represent that genre simply because you think it is a great book. It may be, but agents specialize in specific titles and have cultivated resources and expertise in selling those particular titles.
• Do not pitch multiple submissions to an agent. Simultaneous submissions, querying more than one agent at the same time, are acceptable, but multiple submissions, pitching more than one project to the same agent at the same time, is considered unprofessional.

Your turn: Do you have any additional ‘do’s and don’ts’ about submitting query letters?

Laura Cross is an author, screenwriter, ghostwriter, freelance book editor, and writing coach specializing in nonfiction books and script adaptation (book-to-film projects). She writes two popular blogs, www.NonfictionInk.com and www.AboutAScreenplay.com, and teaches online writing workshops www.ScenarioWritingStudio.com/workshops. Her latest book is The Complete Guide To Hiring A Literary Agent: Everything You Need To Know To Become Successfully Published. You can download a free chapter, view the book trailer, read the full table of contents, and purchase the eBook at www.GetALiteraryAgent.com.

Laura is also providing us with a giveaway! The winner will be able to take one of Laura’s online writing workshops — your choice of which one from those listed on her site — for free. Just leave a comment with a ‘do or don’t’. I’ll randomly select a winner on Friday, February 19.

Isao asks,

To build our writing portfolio, is it more important to write in places other than our own blog (and write many) or to pick a place with reputation (and keep the standard high)?

Writing somewhere other than your own blog is critical to building a portfolio that will interest clients and editors: they all want to see that someone else has hired you first and was pleased with your work to the point of using it. No matter how good your writing skills are, no one wants to be your first client.

That said, it’s reasonable to focus on just two or three places to write when you’re first building up your portfolio. It’s best to have clips or samples from at least two different projects in your portfolio, but you don’t have to have work from a dozen different places. You may not need more than a handful of samples in your portfolio, especially if you focus on one type of writing. However, it’s best if not all your samples are from the same projector publication.

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Gina Blitstein asks,

How do you get a client to be more forthcoming about articles? She knows what she wants but can’t articulate.

Clients who have trouble describing exactly what they want are a fact of freelancing life. Sometimes you get the client who has an exact word count, research materials and everything else ready for you from the start. Sometimes you get the client who wants something to market her business, but has no idea of what that something should look like.

It’s important to be prepared to ask that second type of client plenty of questions in order to work out what she wants. Sometimes, asking what the end goal she’s hoping for is a good starting point: from there, you can work backward to lay out the project’s parameters.

There is one tactic that seems to work well with some clients: I’ll ask if there are any similar articles or other projects that they’ve seen from other companies that are like what they want. While I won’t copy a project exactly, having an example can provide the starting point I need to talk to my clients.

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If you have any questions about the business of freelance writing, send them my way and I’ll answer them next weekend!

When you walk into a car dealership to buy a new car, you’re thinking in terms of a set price. But the salesman is thinking in terms of what he can add on to that base rate: heated seats, an extended warranty and all those other add-ons that you’re offered before you actually get around to buying the car. There’s a reason they think that way: it can make a single sale more lucrative.

Thinking in terms of add-ons can also work for freelance writers. For most of us, projects are a matter of quoting a base rate and then finishing it. I’m not suggesting some sort of back-and-forth with your clients, but offering a few additional options on top of a basic estimate can make both your bank account and your client happier.

• A ghost blogger can offer to find and resize photos for posts.
• An article writer can offer to put together a sidebar.
• A copy writer can offer to format text for the web with HTML.

To make this approach particularly useful, sit down with the lists of the services you already offer as a matter of course. Think about all the extra touches that would make it easier for your clients to make use of your work. If you need to diagram it out, do so: for each service, you can probably think of at least two or three additional steps. It’s best to set prices for these services on the stop, pegging them to your existing rates.

From there, you can make a habit of mentioning such options as you send out estimates. If you use templates to handle some of the routine parts of communicating with a client, work up a couple of paragraphs to add to your estimate templates.

This sort of thing doesn’t need to be a hard sell. Instead, it’s a matter of suggesting solutions to problems a client may not have even thought of yet. While not following the example of that car salesman willing to play hard ball may not bring in quite as much money, you may be pleasantly surprised by clients making use of the add-ons you offer.

I think in terms of how much I make per article or per word most of the time, rather than about how much I make per hour. That can prove to be a problem, though. Since most articles aren’t automatically a matter of working a certain number of hours to complete, it’s very easy to wind up with no idea of how much I’ve really earned per hour. After all, five hundred words can be a matter of sitting down at the keyboard for an hour — or it can be a matter of conducting two interviews and spending an hour checking facts before I even start writing. But since I track my time, I can do a little math and make sure that I really am earning enough money. There are many reasons that adequately tracking your time is crucial.

1. Check if you need a raise. Just because a project was once worth the amount you were getting paid doesn’t mean that you’re still getting enough. Maybe the scope of the project has grown or maybe your bills are a little higher. If you can double check what your hourly rate really is, you can make sure that you’re getting paid appropriately.
2. Add in your own projects. If you’re working on fiction or other projects, you may need to be earning a certain amount per hour in order to free up time elsewhere to work on your own projects.
3. Decide if you can grow. If you want to take on new clients, you have to have an idea of the time you’re spending on your current clients.
4. Give better estimates. If you keep records of how long different projects take, you can make sure that your estimates for different types of articles or other writing are really in line with the amount of time the project will take.
5. Keep your work and life in balance. Working around the clock is generally not the best idea. With an idea of how much time you really need to be spending on your work, you’ll know when you can afford to cut back and do something fun.

There are a lot of options on how to keep track of your time. A simple stop watch and a spread sheet may be more than enough. However, there are also some technological options. A couple of good starting points are Klok, SlimTimer, and RescueTime. Personally, I fall into the spread sheet crowd on this one, but all three software options are good alternatives, as well.

We have two very important questions this week.

Scott Cheatham asks,

What would you say is the best first step for someone wanting to enter the world of freelance writing?

There are a lot of first steps that I could suggest for getting started as a freelancer: picking a niche, setting up your bookkeeping… Plenty of things go into being successful. But the most important first step you can take is to pull together your clips. You can land some writing gigs without samples of past work, but they’re not going to be the kind of work that’s worth your while long-term. Instead, to land the type of clients who can actually help you pay your bills, you need a good portfolio.

If you’re lucky, you’ve already got a few published pieces that you can use as samples. It doesn’t matter if you were a full-time employee when you wrote them, as long as they’re solid examples of how well you write. If you don’t have so many pieces that you’re comfortable using, it’s time to start writing some. There are many different ways to build samples — no matter what type of writing you want to do. However, keep in mind, you want to write for someone else to get those portfolio pieces. Most clients aren’t going to be as impressed with a personal blog as with proof that someone else liked your work enough to use it.

Writing a press release for a non-profit or submitting a guest post to another blog can be good ways to start. You may not get paid for those first few clips and, as much as I dislike freelancers writing for free, it’s a fact of life.

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Kathleen O’Connor asks,

What should you consider when drafting a contract? Is there a good template to use?

It’s been my experience that most freelance advice sites recommend that you never ever take on a project without a formal contract. In my opinion, that’s idealistic: most freelance writers aren’t comfortable drawing up their own contracts, but also aren’t in a financial position to have a legal professional draw up a contract either. Using a template can help make the situation manageable.

However, I think it’s important to note that letters of agreement or any other written agreement laying out the terms of your deal with your client (what the work is, when it’s due and so forth) are considered legal contracts, at least under U.S. law. I typically use a letter of agreement with my clients rather than a more formal contract.

That said, I do keep a contract template on hand for use with certain clients. It’s a Word .doc, which I’m making available for you to download. Please note the following disclaimer: I am not a lawyer. This contract was not reviewed by a lawyer. I cannot recommend you use this contract as every business agreement is different and it may or may not apply to your project. I’m only providing it as a sample and you should check with a lawyer before using it for your own freelancing.

There are a couple of points that I specifically think are important for a freelance writer to think about when writing or signing a contract:

• Intellectual property: As a writer, you’re creating intellectual property. Make sure your contracts clearly outline who has rights to the project at the end of the day. I’m not telling you to keep all rights — there are definitely financial benefits to choosing to do otherwise — but make sure your contracts say who has what rights.
• Sub-contracting: It’s not absolutely necessary that your contract spells out whether you can sub-contract part of a project. Many clients will want you to remove that clause. If for any reason, however, you may need to sub-contract any part of the contract, make sure that is listed in the contract.
• Indemnification and Waivers: Many clients will try to get you to indemnify them against any damages or loss, as well as waive your right to injunctive relief. You may try to do so in reverse (I throw in that clause with many big corporations, expecting it to be removed before the contract is signed). If you can get your client’s to leave it off, you should — in most cases, it’s not important, but if something goes wrong (like you get sued as a result of your work), those clauses mean that you can’t sue your client.

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If you’ve got a question about the business side of freelance writing, send it my way. We’ll get an answer up next week!

Writing is a creative process. Every client gets a different end result and pays you accordingly for your time. At least, that’s what we like to think. But the truth of the matter is that some certain types of writing can look very similar from client to client. You could even create a template for such pieces and at least start with filling in the blanks.

A good example is a press release. When a client comes to me, asking me to write a press release, I’ve got a form that I ask him to fill out. A lot of it is basic organizational information and standard details I need to know in order to create the press release. But each line on that form corresponds to a line in my press release template. When I get the information back from my client, I just plug it in to the template.

Of course, that doesn’t make for a great press release and I would never send a client a fill-in-the-blank press release. But it gives me a starting point that lets me get my work done a lot faster than starting from scratch each time. It’s like a very detailed outline — you know that you’re going to have to move stuff around, but you know everything you want to get across and you have a general line of thought you want to follow.

There are plenty of opportunities to use this sort of template as a starting point:

• Resumes
• Marketing letters
• Some blog posts (like big lists)

I can even think of a way to turn a template into a marketing tool: release it to your customers, free of charge and then let them see why just filling in the blanks doesn’t result in a solid piece of writing. They’ll see that they need you to take their project to the next level. Of course, you’d need to refine the strategy a bit for specific customer bases, bust as templated marketing method, it’s not too bad.

Are there any other ways that you may use templates to speed up your writing? Or have you used templates in other ways to build your business?

In general, there’s very little I will refuse to write. There are certainly types of projects that I prefer to take on. I also know that there are certain kinds of writing that I’m just not particularly good at, so I tend to avoid them. But there aren’t a lot of projects that I simply refuse to take as an entire category. There are only a few things that I won’t even consider.

Essay Mills

Of the writing projects that I’ve been offered over the years, the only one that really hands down made me angry was an offer to write essays for an essay mill that would sell work to students who would then turn it in as their own. It’s not only an unethical practice in my book — it’s downright stupid. At the college level, a student is paying for an education, so why would he want to do anything that would diminish the value of the money he’s spending. There’s also an element of ‘I worked my butt off in school, so you should, too!’ in my refusal.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m happy to help students improve their writing: I worked as a tutor in college and still take on the occasional student as long as I know the person. But I’m not about to do any student’s work for them, no matter the price.

Pure SEO Writing

I’m talking about the stuff where you have to hit specific word densities and even include misspelled words on occasion. It’s bad writing, hands down, and I never want to get used to writing that way. I’m pretty sure it will ruin me for just about everything else.

I like writing content for the web in general, and I have no problem working with keywords. But, ultimately, I write for human readers rather than bots. I have no beef with anyone that would rather have machines read their work, though.

Adult Content

There’s nothing wrong in my book with writing content for adult sites. I realize that some writers are against such projects on a moral basis, but if it isn’t a problem for you, there’s decent money to be made. You may want to use a pseudonym in case Grandma is surfing the web, but beyond that, use your own judgment.

Personally, though, I just flat out can’t do it. I can’t take that kind of project seriously and often wind up giggling like a grade schooler just on the basis of project descriptions.

What About You?

Is there any type of writing project that you just won’t do? Something bothers you on an ethical level or something you just can’t wrap your head around?