the craft. navigating freelancing

wooden table with with pen holder cup and computer — Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

Freelancing as a writer helped keep my long-term goals of being a full-time reporter alive. In the last year, I’ve had the opportunity to write for publications I read for years and never thought would pursue my contributions. It took a lot of patience and perseverance.

One of the first challenges of life as a freelancer is managing your expectations. Initially, I didn’t have clear expectations of what freelancing meant for me. After graduating from Temple University as a nontraditional student, I worked in a media-adjacent day job that I wasn’t crazy about and made about $150 per story freelancing for a Philly news publication. When I still had my day job and freelanced, I assumed that making enough money to live off of freelancing was a matter of simply writing more.

I had a lot to learn.

Freelancing only as a writer for various publications can work. But as a freelancer you have to think about your work as a business and that may include writing in other capacities than a journalist. I quickly learned that copywriting and technical writing for companies in various industries can pay well and sometimes balance out the inconsistency that comes with writing for publications.

As a freelance writer, consider all opportunities that align with your skill set as a writer that can translate to getting paid. That can mean throwing your pride out the window and writing web copy for travel sites. Once I accepted that, I found another way to support my long-term goals as a writer.

The second thing I had to learn was understanding how to generate leads and build relationships with editors and publications. Reaching out to editors who tweet calls for pitches can work and Twitter accounts like Writers of Color have helped me get paid. However, media is a business where relationships are essential to your growth and success.

I have networked fairly well but one thing networking can’t make up for is having high quality material. Editors and publications couldn’t care less if you graduated with honors from a university. They need to see proof that you are capable of doing the work and that you are consistent. I quickly learned that having clips to show people can make for a good conversation, but having clips from well respected outlets or publications can make editors remember who you are.

With that, it’s better to be doing work for smaller publications (especially ones that pay you a decent rate) than to be sitting around waiting for your dream publication to reach out to you. Being selective is key and at the same time, other writers are busy while you’re going back and forth about an opportunity.

As you get bigger opportunities, you will notice that you have more clips to hang your hat on and that matters when it comes to reaching out to editors. Suddenly, your pitches might be better received or at the least, generate an email response from an editor. Here are some brief notes on pitching--I know from personal experience that throwing your ideas into the abyss can be a stressful experience:

Research the publication you are pitching. Would this story fit what they cover? Has anyone written about this for them before? If so, how is this pitch different
Do you have a relationship with this editor / publication? If not, that's okay. Just like knowing people when networking in real life, knowing people when pitching can help.
Is my pitch concise enough? Try to boil your story down to at the absolute most two paragraphs. You want to indicate the who / what / when / where / why. Who is this story about? What is it about? When did it or is it happening? Where did it happen? Why is it newsworthy and worth sharing?

Understanding the more human elements of pitching can help. Sometimes your pitch may go to an editor who is extremely busy and can’t get to it in time, maybe the editor’s freelance budget is up for the month or the pitch may not be an ideal fit. It’s alright--there are other opportunities and places to place your story.

I wanted to talk about rates last because everyone’s life situation is different. If you write 10 pieces at $200 each, you’d have $2000 a month before taxes. Balance doing a certain number of pieces or assignments that pay well with ones you’re crazy about but may not pay as much. You’ll quickly see that many big name publications don’t pay as much as you’d think based on their profile, and that many smaller ones can pay you a solid wage. Whatever you think you need to earn a month to have a stable life--whether it’s $2,000 or $4,000--decide that early on and work with that in mind. Whatever that number is, you will need to take out about 15% of that for taxes.

Freelancing can work for you. Just be as strategic with your work as you are with your written words.