Freelancing: It’s a Jungle out There!

Freelancing as a writer and a journalist is not a walk in the park: it’s a test to your patience and adaptability. Proving yourself to a potential client can sometimes be a complicated task, and finding the projects that speak more to you is like looking for a needle in a haystack. As a freelancer who has been on this road for about two months now, I felt that it was time I put to words some of the impressions I have gathered so far about this craft. I hope this article may help fellow writers and journalists, and it is my desire that I can be another voice being heard about how some things must change for the better.

The Hot Topics
Most clients wanting to hire freelance writers are looking for people who can write up to 700-word texts on interesting topics, such as real estate, business, finance, mortgages, dating, becoming rich on the Internet, or divorce. Some topics may be eluding me right now, but the core idea is this. These texts are supposed to be Search Engine Optimized (SEO), which means that one or more keywords must be used throughout the text, so that search engines can pick the client’s webpage as high as possible on a search list.

Making a living out of freelance writing
If you are into the topics above, and you’re not itchy about repeating words till exhaustion, then you can perhaps have a shot at this freelancing thing. But of course, this is just the tip of the iceberg: the fees most of these clients are willing to pay won’t buy you candy, not to mention give you a living wage.
Do you value your writing? If you do, then the road will get bumpier, as clients usually ask for a maximum of $2 per 500-word article. This means that if you spend one hour alone writing in your computer, you would have to spend 200 hours to make $400. In an eight-hour day job, you work 160 hours a month, and you can be paid at least the double.
This is the reality a freelance writer stumbles upon when entering the market.

A Global Market
Thinking global is great: you can be in Spain, as I am, and work for clients in the United States or Argentina, if you can write in English and Spanish. That means that you can expand your client network beyond your borders, and meet interesting people. However, thinking global also implies that the competition is beyond your borders, and fierce. You have to take into consideration that the value of the currency you are being paid in is different if you’re a freelancer in, let’s say, India. A European or American writer will charge higher fees than a writer in Africa or Asia, due to the differences in the cost of life. Clients consider those and act as any other capitalistic-minded businessperson: they will choose the worker who charges less and, in their minds, is more eager to please.

Freelance Freebies
This is something that happens more than you may imagine. It is not an open invitation, since websites such as Elance punish these practices. A buyer will scarcely approach you, asking you to perform the project for free. What usually happens is that, in the process of negotiating the project assignment, the client asks you to do an article or more as a trial. A good, committed professional will be eager to please, and he or she will do it in a heartbeat.
The result tends to be the same, all the time: the client disappears, and the freelancer has no option to ask for payment. As a conclusion, you discover you have wasted your precious time – time is money – And you find your nice text sample posted on someone else’s website. It’s one of those moments when you feel like stuffing the Dumb hat in your head, right?


Surviving in the jungle
Use the freelance marketplace websites as means to gain experience, and to create a good portfolio. When you feel that it’s enough, use what you’ve learned and what you’ve written to query magazines and newspapers you want to freelance for.

Do not ever give away freebies. It speaks badly of you, and it’s a waste of time. If your portfolio is already available for clients to see, then they should be able to assess if you’re a good and professional writer. If that’s not good enough for the client, then the client surely is not good enough for you.

Some people’s writing is worth $0.01.
Ask yourself honestly: is your writing worth that?

Read the client’s project proposal carefully. If your sixth sense tells you it’s not for you, then it is not for you.

If you are not into the hot writing topics, write about what you know and love, and publish it in Constant Content, for example. Not everybody is interested in business, real estate, dating and such.

Don’t quit your day job, but make time to launch yourself as a freelancer. That way, you always have something to fall back to if one of the two things goes wrong.

Freelancing as a writer is not a career from which you start ripping benefits in the first month. As with any other business, it takes time to get a place in the market, and sell.
For that, be patient and work.

Last, but not the least – keep you chin up and do not lose your self-respect. If you are good, consistent and hard-working, you will make through the difficulties.