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.

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?

I’m not the biggest fan of kill fees, mostly because they tend to mean that I completed a project to the best of my abilities but my client decided not to pay me the full price for my time. If I’m working on a piece that gets killed, I won’t turn down a kill fee, but I also won’t abandon the piece.

I’ve actually been seeing fewer kill fees of late: while magazines, newspapers and some other publications will offer them to writers when a story is killed, many online publications and other websites do no such thing. That fact makes it even more important to explore alternatives to simply jettisoning a project.

Selling a Killed Story

When one of your articles is killed, all rights should immediately revert to you, which means you can publish the article anywhere you’d like. That offers you a lot of options.

• Pitching it to a competing publication: Just because your article wasn’t right for one editor doesn’t mean that you can’t submit it to another who publishes similar material. Personally, since I almost never submit work on spec, I tend to use articles that haven’t gotten published for one reason or another as a way to break into markets that want to see the first article on spec. Since it’s written already, there’s nothing to lose.
• Submit it to a content site: I have several articles that somehow never managed to get printed up on Constant Content.* I get a solid trickle of money for the articles I have up there, without having to run around finding new publications to submit to. It’s certainly not my largest income source, but it’s useful to me. It’s worth noting that Constant Content is not a content mill — you set the price for people to use your article. You don’t have to worry about page views or anything like that to make money. Evergreen content is the most likely to make you money on Constant Content.
• Use it in your own projects: Hopefully, you have a couple of money-making projects of your own in the works, like a blog or an ebook. If your killed article fits in with the topics of your personal projects, you can use it to move that project along. It’s not the sort of upfront money you’ll make by selling the article, but you may be making money off of it for years to come. You can even use it as a guest post to market your work.

The only thing you shouldn’t do with a killed story is let it sit around gathering dust. If it’s a timely article, you need to get it in another editor’s lap or posted somewhere else before it becomes irrelevant. It can take a little work you weren’t planning to do, but the alternative is receiving no payment for your work, except some fraction of what you expected when you agreed to write the article.

*That’s a referral link. If you sell articles through Constant Content after clicking my link, I get a cut of their commission.

Earlier this month, Freelancers Union pointed to posts talking about NBC Universal and Time’s practice of asking freelancers to pay a portion of their invoices in order to get paid in a timely fashion.

So, rather than waiting the typical 60 days to get paid by Time Inc., for example, you could let them take 4% of what they owe you and get paid within 3 days. Instead of waiting 75 days to receive your owed wages by NBC Universal, pay them 2.5% of your wages, and you’ll get paid in a mere 15 days.

There are two ways to think about this issue. The first is from the point of view of big companies with thousands of contractors: it’s not unheard of for big companies to get a break on pricing if they agree to turn around payments quickly — and for many big companies, turning around an invoice in under sixty days is a minor miracle worthy of applause. For most large companies, getting a rush payment of an invoice takes extra resources so why shouldn’t they get a discount on the price in order to do so?

Then there’s the point of view of the freelancer. If a freelancer submits an invoice, it should be paid in a reasonable amount of time — and ‘reasonable’ should take into consideration the fact that freelancers don’t have the steadiest of incomes. And even the thought of getting less the amount actually on the bottom line of that invoice is painful.

I’ve spent the better part of a week trying to decide why I just don’t feel as angry as most of the commentors on Freelancers Union’s post seem to be. Maybe I’ve worked in industries where net-60 (payment 60 days after receipt of an invoice) is considered normal. Maybe it’s because I’ve been known to offer my clients a discount myself if they can pay immediately after receiving my invoice. Maybe it’s because I’m used to getting paid through PayPal and I’ve raised my rates so that unexpected fees aren’t a problem. Maybe it’s because I won’t even start on a project if I don’t have the timeline for payments spelled out in writing.

I don’t have a problem waiting 60 days for a payment — as long as I know from the beginning of the project when to expect my payment. I actually get a lot more irritated at the idea of freelancers willingly giving up a chunk of payment just to get their money early.

If you’re faced with a client that requires you to jump through hoops in order to get paid, you don’t have to sweat it. Instead, a better approach is to raise the rate you charge so that you can absorb extra fees, offer a discount if appropriate and be adequately rewarded for that extra wait for your paycheck. It doesn’t have to be a big change, either. In many cases, five percent would more than cover it.

These days, getting a book published isn’t just a matter of getting an editor to take a look at your work. It takes a lot of ingenuity and a willingness to pursue a project on your own. J.C. Hutchins did just that. His book, 7th Son: Descent, was rejected by publishers. J.C. bought a microphone, recorded an audiobook and shared it as a free serialized podcast. His podcast attracted tens of thousands of listeners, which, in turn, attracted the attention of St. Martin’s Press.

St. Martin’s Press released 7th Son: Descent on October 27th. The novel was recently option by Warner Bros. On its release day, it hit 188 overall at Amazon.com. To put it mildly, it’s a success.

In order to get behind the scenes on how J.C. was able to turn publishers’ rejections into success, he agreed to answer a couple of questions for us.

How did your first attempt to get published go? Did you get any responses? How many queries did you send out?

It was a disaster — and I have only myself to blame. I wanted to tell an epic story about high-tech conspiracies, human cloning and a villain so cruel he’d make Cobra Commander wet the bed . . . and I did just that. I spent three years writing and editing 7th Son, and when I came up for air in 2005, I was the proud papa of a 1,200-page manuscript. Most thrillers never clock past the 400-page mark. I hadn’t written a book. I’d written a phone book.

I’d doomed my story. I pitched around 60 agents, and was universally rejected. During ‘05, I was listening to podcasts, and discovered novelists who were releasing their unpublished manuscripts as self-produced, free serialized audiobooks. I smelled an emerging trend, and reckoned that since I couldn’t sell 7th Son, I’d share it.

I rebranded my epic story as a trilogy, and chopped my monstrous manuscript into thirds — act one became 7th Son: Descent, act two became “book two,” etc. I began recording and releasing the first novel in early 2006.

What was the learning curve like as you started offering your book as a podcast? How did you learn how to record your audiobook and promote it online?

I studied the space before I ever recorded a word. I did online research on recommended equipment (microphones and mixers, mostly), listened closely to other podcast novels to spot best practices (and things to avoid), and watched how others promoted their work.

My greatest learning curve came in the recording process. I discovered that I was — and remain — a terrible narrator. My performances are great in the final product, but I constantly flub lines. My audio requires lots of meticulous editing.

I’m not a born promoter; it’s a learned skill. I was timid to promote at first … but once I realized the success of the podcast hinged solely on my personal commitment to evangelize it, I got learning, fast. It’s been a blast, experimenting with promotions over the past four years.

How did you attract listeners? How did your audience lead to a deal with St. Martin’s Press and eventually a movie option?

Back in 2006, I quickly saw the flaws in most podcast promotion of the time (popularity content-style voting on a few websites, shilling for reviews in iTunes, etc.), and realized the fastest way for me as a “new kid” to score credibility was to cross-promote with influential podcasters. I’d invite them on my show for a quick two-minute cameo in which they read a “previously on 7th Son” segment and could promote whatever they wished. These folks then mentioned their 7th Son appearances on their shows, which drove listeners to my site.

My most successful promotional campaigns have been variants on this cross-promotion model. No one spends a dime, and everyone comes away a winner.

Most of the folks who came to the 7th Son podcast enjoyed it, appreciated the entertainment value (and the fact that I was giving it away), and wanted to help spread the word. I created an online street team called “The 7th Son Ministry of Propaganda,” and crafted evangelistic missions for my listeners. I also solicited fan-created artwork, music, poetry — whatever fans wanted to create, they could, and I’d post it on my site (and thank them in my podcasts). I didn’t know it at the time, but I was building a vocal, emotionally-invested audience.

The success of the podcast eventually helped get me a literary agent in 2007 — I pitched more than 200 that time around. It also put me on the radar of St. Martin’s Press. An editor there approached me for a “for hire” supernatural thriller project, a gig I happily accepted. Once my foot was in the door, I pitched them on 7th Son, and they went for it.

With a book contract signed, my film agent then pitched studios. The film rights for the trilogy were optioned to Warner Bros. late last year.

What sort of marketing did you do for the launch of the actual book? How did you sell so many copies in your first week?

I took everything I learned from my four years of promotion, and used the very best ideas. I wanted to dazzle longtime fans and newcomers with killer content, so I wrote and podcasted original fiction — a prequel short story anthology set two weeks before the events seen in 7th Son: Descent. I enlisted the help of a musician friend, who — with my help — created songs “written and performed” by a folk musician in the book. This became a crowd-pleaser. I also recorded a brand-new version of the “print edition” of 7th Son: Descent, featuring the new scenes and plot twists seen in the print novel.

With content covered, I approached several influential websites and asked if they’d be interested in re-distributing this, and other, content. In exchange for access to their audiences, I’d promote their work with in-content advertising. Sites such as BoingBoing.net agreed, putting my work before audiences that had never before heard of 7th Son. This content began rolling out a few weeks before the novel’s bookstore debut.

On the day of publication, 20 websites — including those of BoingBoing, Chris Brogan, Grammar Girl, C.C. Chapman, Tor.com and others — released a 10-chapter PDF excerpt of the book. These sites also received in-PDF adverts for their participation. That PDF has been online for about a month, and has been downloaded more than 30,000 times. Again: no money was spent by anyone, yet everyone benefited from the multi-site distribution and cross-promotion.

Finally, I’m also doing gobs of dirt-under-the-fingernails outreach — pitching blogs, podcasters and mainstream media. In the past month, I’ve done more than 60 online interviews/guest posts … and if I have anything to say about it, this is just the beginning.

Why are you continuing to offer free fiction on your website? What’s your next step?

Free content serves several purposes:

1. it keeps my current fans fat and happy, which is a priority
2. the low barrier of entry ensures new fans can experience my work risk-free, see if it’s right for them, and support the work by purchasing a copy of the novel
3. the fiction can be freely redistributed by fans, which increases the size of my community
4. it’s fun.

What’s next? More free audio fiction in early 2010. By the summer, I aim to be writing two new novels, and sending some movie treatments to my film agent. I still gotta put food on my table.

What advice can you offer to writers trying to find a home for their manuscripts? Any resources you can point writers to?

While I’ve found success with the Free loss leader model, I always suggest that writers submit their manuscripts to agents the traditional way first. If you snag representation, you’ll save yourself a great amount of energy and effort creating — for instance — a podcast audiobook. (Every 30 minutes of final audio often represents around 6-8 hours of behind-the-scenes effort.) If the gatekeepers turn up their noses, screw ‘em. Embrace the DIY route. Create your own success. Don’t let anyone tell you your work doesn’t have value. With the Free model, the market (aka listeners) decide.

The best one-stop resource I’ve found is AgentQuery.com. It has a robust listing of agents representing all genres. It’s also free to use.

What do you see as the future of how books will come to market? Will publishing houses still pick and choose from slush piles? Can we expect more writers to succeed by building online platforms?

I don’t think we’ll see much change in the process during the next five years or so. Major publishers are very slow to change, and — while writers can grouse about it — the current system of finding an agent to pitch your work to publishers works well. It offers some quality control. Despite 7th Son’s podcast success, it took me acquiring an agent to get business done.

I don’t suggest writers submit unagented, unsolicited manuscripts to publishers’ slush piles. Few publishers accept them, and those who do can literally take years reviewing them. While that manuscript is in that single publisher’s hands, it cannot be presented to any other publisher. You essentially forfeit any leverage or influence you have. Get an agent, cut a deal with a small independent publisher, or self-publish.

I absolutely believe we’ll see more online success stories like 7th Son’s in the years ahead. Creators who embrace this DIY approach are in for some seriously hard work, especially if they want to create the best-possible product, and promote it effectively. But those who do can build a thriving fan base, and their works’ successes can build a strong business case for publishers.

You can learn more about J.C. Hutchins at his website, where you can also read his work!

Are you participating in National Novel Writing Month right now? Are you keeping up with writing 1,000 words a day?

I hope so. I’m a big believer that NaNoWriMo can be an incredibly useful exercise for a writer, whether or not you’re currently freelancing. Even if you haven’t started yet, the exercise of writing 1,000 words a day can be worth trying.

I’m not about to suggest that writing a novel will necessarily make any a better writer — heck, even assuming a writer gets a complete novel out of NaNoWriMo, there’s no guarantee that it will be worth publishing. However, the simple act of forcing yourself to sit down at the computer and meet a goal is a skill that every freelance writer must have. Even if you don’t have a client project to work on, having that constant practice can make you a better freelancer.

• You’ll be able to write faster. While you may not be able to pound that 1,000 words in an hour, practice will improve the time it takes you to complete most written projects, especially those that focus more on copy or nonfiction.
• You’ll know that you can finish a 30,000 word manuscript in 30 days if you need to. That knowledge can give you confidence for bigger client projects, as well as for personal projects like other books or ebooks.
• You’ll build an excellent writing habit. Think about what you can accomplish, just by writing at least 1,000 words every day. Heck, if you get comfortable with that number and can up your word count, you can complete a very significant amount of writing.

It’s never to late to commit yourself to writing a novel (or another big project) in thirty days. Just because NaNoWriMo is already a week in doesn’t mean that you can’t start today.

I’m always interested in the revenue streams different writers put together, so Nalo Hopkinson’s decision to offer mentoring to aspiring writers definitely caught my eye.

A little background: Nalo Hopkinson is an accomplished science fiction and fantasy novelist. Her teaching credentials include the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writing Workshops. At the end of September, Hopkinson offered one-on-one mentorships, offering to work with writers on a novel or other fiction project between October 15th and January 15th. Interested writers had to submit an application. The cost of the mentorship is $2,000.

I’ve spent the past couple of weeks thinking about this approach to mentorship and what it means for other writers considering new options for bringing in income. I think that it could be an incredible opportunity for writers — fiction or not — who have been writing for a long time and enjoy teaching. When I say a long time, I do mean years and years of experience. It wouldn’t be unreasonable for someone in search of a mentor to look for writers who have been in the game for at least ten years. Without extensive experience, it isn’t so clear that the time required for mentoring a new writer would be worthwhile, either.

New writers may be more interested in this sort of mentorship for fiction projects, as opposed to learning about magazine writing or copy writing. Think about the kinds of writing classes that are popular in college: the poetry and fiction classes all seemed to fill up first. Interestingly, that’s the sort of student Hopkinson seems to be aiming towards: it’s almost as if she was a writer in residence at a school where she could work with a handful of students. She’s even had a few people offer scholarship funds with that approach in mind.

If you’ve got the experience to make a mentorship worthwhile for an aspiring writer, it’s worth considering mentorships or other teaching opportunities, if only to diversify the income you’re bringing in. It’s not the only option, of course, but there are a couple of factors that may make it worthwhile: The number of freelance writers is rising, especially as many people are turning to freelance work while job hunting (and quickly realizing that they need additional skills and training to be able to handle it). There are also more jobs that require effective written communication and the ability to use blogging and social media tools — which can provide an opportunity far beyond fiction writing.

In your first year of writing or so, would you have been willing to pay for a mentor to work through the process with you?

The number of clients that turn to bid sites to find freelance writers is huge — and it continues to grow. Freelance writers have to know how to handle bid sites, even if they don’t depend such websites for the majority of their work. The sites aren’t difficult to understand. You just put in a bid on those projects that interest you. However, putting in a bid and winning a project can be two very different situations. That’s what lead Juliet du Preez to write The Winning Proposal. This ebook offers a guided tour to creating a winning bid.

Juliet explores each aspect of submitting a bid or proposal through the various job sites. From the details of setting up a professional profile that conveys your abilities to actually writing a proposal to building a solid reputation, Juliet goes through everything you’ll need to know. Particularly valuable, in my opinion, are the many examples she provides. In addition to full templates that you can model your bids on, the ebook has examples for practically every section. I’m one of those writers who simply telling how to do something isn’t enough, so actually being able to see these suggestions in action is incredibly helpful. There are even some examples of what not to do, making it easier to avoid problems in the long run.

Overall, this ebook is a good resource. With information on every aspect of the proposal process, down to determining whether you actually want to win a particular job, it’s a solid starting point for anyone interested in finding work through bidding sites but not entirely sure how to actually win projects.

The Winning Proposal is available for purchase through Juliet’s site, FreelanceWise. It’s priced at $12.

Personally, I have to say that I’m not a big fan of bid sites. I try to focus my work on finding clients that want to work with one freelancer for the long term, while most bid sites seem to focus on short-term projects. However, I know plenty of writers who earn good income primarily through work they’ve found through such sites. Bid sites do make finding work significantly easier: rather than having to search out job listings on a variety of sites or pitch potential clients, you can look through a list of new opportunities every day. Newer freelancers can also often build up clips through bid sites faster than they might otherwise. If you’re not sure what you think you bid sites, go ahead and try them out. There’s no requirement that you keep using bid sites if you decide you aren’t comfortable.

Note: Juliet du Preez provided me with a review copy of her ebook. Thanks, Juliet!

Freelance writers bring in the majority of their income by working with clients, earning money for the hours we spend on specific projects. But clients aren’t the only way to make money — and I don’t think we should rely entirely on them.

Writing as a Product

The client-based business model relies on the fact that freelance writers provide a service. We sit down at our computers and bang out a thousand words with a specific client in mind — we get money when that client pays us for our time. It’s a decent set up, generally speaking, but there is one small problem with it: eventually you hit a ceiling in how much you can earn. Yes, great writers can ask for (and receive) rates that add up to a very nice income, but there are only so many hours in day. Even the best of us can’t work 25 hours a day just to increase our income.

That’s where products come in. Writers can create a long list of products, like ebooks, blogs, and articles that can earn money long after we’ve finished writing them. Think about an ebook: it may be necessary to invest hours into getting an ebook written and ready to sell, but you can keep selling copy after copy of your ebook long after you’ve covered the cost of the time that went into it. It’s important to market these products, but the amount of work necessary to do so is far less than writing a new article. It’s not passive income, but it comes close.

The benefit of having a stream of income beyond a client is that while many of these projects will only bring in a small amount of money regularly, they’ll continue bringing in money even if your client ends the contract or doesn’t offer you a new project down the road.

Clients Are Still Important

I don’t want you to get the idea that I don’t appreciate my clients. I do, and the majority of my income still comes from them. I think that marketing and finding new clients is crucial to a freelancer’s business. It just happens that I think that adding a few other streams of revenue to the mix is worthwhile.

I think that a few good products can actually help you in the long run with your clients, as well. Especially if you focus on creating products for your niche, rather than just written products in general, you can reinforce your expertise in your area as well as pick up income from the type of people who may not be in a position to hire you as a freelancer but are happy to read a blog or an ebook.

There are freelance writers with a whole string of letters after their names and there are freelance writers who haven’t gone to college. The variety in academic credentials held by writers can lead someone to go a little crazy in trying to decide just how much education a writer really needs.

As Much As It Takes

This may not seem like a helpful response, but you need as much education as it takes — for some people, even a Ph.D. in Creative Writing isn’t going to help them write in a way that audiences want to read or editors want to publish. For others, writing can come much more easily and just a class or two to put some polish on those writing skills is more than enough.

Most of us are somewhere in the middle. We’ve got a good grounding as far as our writing skills go, but a little continuing education will help us stretch ourselves as writers, learn new things and continue to improve. Where we get that education could be in the course of pursuing a degree, or by taking part in a writer’s group, or taking a class online. It just depends.

Beyond Writing

I am slowly, but surely, working my way towards a Master’s degree. Personally, I’ve looked at my business and decided that I need a little more knowledge in order to keep growing in the directions that I want to go. It’s worth noting, I think, that I’m not picking up a degree in writing. Instead, I’m going for a degree in Publication Design, which covers everything from managing a publication to editing to graphic design. I’m learning from instructors who have worked for and even ran newspapers, magazines and websites.

Your education may not have anything to do with writing, as long as you have the necessary skills to put together a readable passage. For some of us, our continuing education focuses on business topics or a field related to our niche. It’s just a matter of figuring out what information you need to keep moving forward.

I don’t think that a Master’s degree is the only way for me to get the information I need, but it’s definitely one of the easier ways to do so. It doesn’t hurt that if I’m interested in taking on certain corporate clients, my academic credentials will help me. But I’m also taking care to avoid going into debt to get my degree, even though that means taking just once class per semester. I firmly believe that if you have to go into debt in order to pick up an advance degree, that extra time in school isn’t really worthwhile.

Everyone needs different information in order to continue to grow as a freelance writer. Whether you’re getting that information in the classroom doesn’t matter so much as the fact that you’re continuing to learn.