Five Figure Writer

The freelance writer, refined.

Is Your Brain Ready to Transition Into Full-Time Freelancing?

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Five Ways to Prep Your Brain for the Transition Into Full-time Freelance Writing - Sarah Greesonbach - Five Figure Writer

When you guys pitched in to fill out my survey last month, I was super excited to respond to 30+ individual and interesting questions. One thing that really jumped out was the fact that much of the Five Figure Writer audience wants to transition into full-time freelancing, but hasn’t made the leap yet. In fact, about 75% of you guys are patiently biding your time, filling up your savings accounts, and picking up clients on the side.

(If you want to take the survey, sign up for the mailing list here and you’ll get a link to it).

There’s no shame in that! In fact, it’s the smartest way to do it. Plenty of people start freelancing as an emergency (that was my story) but it’s far, far better to have that runway time to save money, find clients, and generally not be frantic about your business.

So, for all you cube-dwellers building up your writing business on the side, here are five things you can do now to ease that transition:

Get your budget together & save a bunch of money

Let’s get the boring advice out of the way first: budgets and savings accounts are a freelancer’s best friend. I can’t say it clearly enough: cash flow kills 25 percent of small businesses early on. If you don’t get a grip on your spending or build up a bit of a cushion in the bank, freelancing will make you absolutely miserable and you’ll probably end up back in a cubicle.

If you don’t get a grip on your spending or build up a bit of a cushion in the bank, freelancing will make you absolutely miserable.

There are many ways to start tinkering with your finances before you transition into full-time freelance. I prefer the Dave Ramsey Financial Peace Plan and EveryDollar app, which helped my husband and I figure out a bare bones budget, organize and minimize our outgoing expenses, and save up $6K for a safety net (note: technically this is out of order of the FPU plan, but it was a necessary departure for the health of my business). You might enjoy a different finance guru or program, but it’s vital that you actually find one and use it to guide your decisions before you’re broke and waiting on a client’s check.

Financial stability (not necessarily security, which is a long-term concept) is about more than freaking out over late checks. It’s also about your attitude and your sense of desperation when you pitch new clients. If you have three or four month’s of expenses in the bank (and low expenses, at that) you can take your time with clients and make sure it’s a good fit and a good rate instead of jumping on low-paying work because your rent is due.

Embrace a farmer’s schedule (AKA 100% 24/7 is a myth)

One thing non-freelancers seem to assume about quitting their day job is that the transition into full-time freelancing means you’ll suddenly wake up filled with caffeine energy every day, ready to give your best to every client, crank out words, send newsletters, be on Twitter, and all that jazz.

In reality — and I wish someone had passed this along sooner — everything about freelancing goes in cycles. Much like a farmer, there are times of reaping and there are times of sowing. There are low income months and high income months, low referral times and high referral times, and, yes, there are low energy months and high energy months.

Everything about freelancing goes in cycles — there are times of reaping and there are times of sowing.

When you are tired and burnt out during your hustle, take it as a sign to take a break, not crank it out, so that you can get a feel for what it’s like to have cycles of high productivity and low productivity.

Start living by the phrase, “A man has as much luck as he has seeds in the field,” and practicing the art of reaping and sowing: write emails to people just to make connections, not to ask for any favors. Follow people on Twitter just for fun, not for business. And write things (and work with people) to spark creativity, not to build up your client list or land gigs.

Understand that confidence is a result, not a cause

Hands down the most popular topic, question, or concern in the survey was about confidence: How do I charge someone? How do I get my first gig when I’m not sure what I’m doing? Who’s going to hire me just because I want to write?

Listen, I had the exact same darn questions when I first got started. I was unprepared but dreadfully curious about how people got into this freelancing thing. And then I got laid off, and you know what? I wasn’t curious any more, I was desperate, so I just made it happen.

This is so, so important to understand: confidence is a result of doing good work and having good customer interactions. It is not a cause of those things. If you wait until you feel confident to pitch that client, send that email, send that proposal, or send that invoice, you will never. get. anything. done.

Confidence is a result of doing good work and having good customer interactions. It is not a cause of those things.

Is it scary and weird to start charging people money for something you love to do? Yes, at first. But once you do it for a while you start to build up that confidence that takes you to the next level, and the next, and the next. But if you don’t step up without confidence (and with fear and butterflies and maybe even some grasshoppers in your stomach), you’ll never reach the point of having actual confidence.

Five Ways to Prep Your Brain for the Transition Into Full-time Freelance Writing - Sarah Greesonbach - Five Figure Writer

Find something bigger than money

There’s no denying that money is a big motivator for freelancers. Like I said in the budget section, cash flow can make or break your business, so income will always be a sign of the viability of what you’re doing. But despite your dreams of rolling in the dough and taking on a housekeeper or private chef, money only takes you so far in the freelance game.

I started this wanting to prove I was worth more than a $50K salary, and I did that. But pretty quickly after achieving that income goal (as well as earning five figures in a month), I lost my gusto again. I learned pretty quickly that beyond a certain ego factor, money isn’t enough to get me out of bed every morning.

Money isn’t enough to get you out of bed in the morning, and it’s not a compelling reason for people to work with you.

Money also isn’t a compelling reason for people to work with you. Think of hiring a lawyer or doctor for a huge moment in your life. Who would be more attractive, the one who got into it for the money, or the one who got into because they realized law/medicine was their ultimate calling and they find themselves renewed with every client or patient they help? Money doesn’t inspire others to join your cause or support your mission; you need a bigger “why” to make your business attractive to you and your clients year after year.

Accept “what you like” as a calling, not a fluke

As you try out different forms of writing as a part-time freelancer, keep your eyes peeled for what you actually like to do. Don’t punish yourself and assume that whatever you hate most is what will make you the most money — that’s a false value you’re bringing with you from the traditional working world, where the crappiest jobs often get the highest paycheck. It will also completely drain the life out of you.

For example, I spent more time than I want to admit thinking I had to write high-volume SEO blog posts and deliver social media strategy instead of white papers. Three years in, I’m finally unashamedly making white papers my specialty, and I won’t touch social media with a 10-foot pole (except for myself, of course). It took time to understand that some writers love social media and I hate it, and some writers don’t like writing white papers, and I happen to love it. These aren’t flukes — they’re signs that propel us toward our best work.

When something comes easily to you and you love it, don’t dismiss it.

When something comes easily to you, don’t dismiss it. If you love something, it’s not necessarily because the thing is awesome, it’s because you love it and you’re meant to do it. We all have unique talents and interest. You owe it to the freelance community to think about what you really, really love and focus on it.

What freaks you out about the transition into full-time freelancing?

These are just five of the lessons I’ve learned in almost three years of exclusive freelancing that would have been very helpful to learn early on. What other questions do you have for me about making the transition?

How to Write for a Business

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How To Write For A Business - Sarah Greesonbach - Five Figure WriterIf you’ve clicked around much, you’ve heard me squawking about how to write for a business for a few weeks now. First touting the lucrative benefits on The Write Life, then a free webinar with Andrea Emerson on how to get started, and then today on the Horkey Handbook.

Now, all this talk about making a great income doing great writing is well and good, but most writers don’t have experience writing for a B2B audience. You can make your own experience, but there are some basics you need to get a grip on so that the spec work you develop is as compelling as possible.

Today, I’m going to dig a bit deeper into the nuts and bolts of B2B writing to help you get your head on straight and write for a business. So, please let me introduce three important business concepts for writing for businesses:

Write for a Business Concept One: Understand the Hierarchy of Business Needs

The mindset of writing for a consumer is very different from writing for a business. While consumers have certain needs — to get a deal, to solve a problem, to avoid a danger — businesses have others. Fortunately, Seth Godin put this into an easy-to-remember hierarchy of business needs:

  • Avoiding risk
  • Avoiding hassle
  • Gaining praise
  • Gaining power
  • Having fun
  • Making a profit

Every business is motivated by different variations on these six goals, and this helps you write for a business in two ways:

First, you’ll use this list to inform how you approach writing when you write on behalf of a business. You address the business’s customers need to avoid risk and hassle and have fun and make a profit, etc.

Second, you’ll use this list to inform how you approach a business to write for them. You show them they are avoiding risk by working with you to market their company effectively and having fun and making a profit because you’re such a great writer, etc.

Write for a Business Concept Two: Don’t Be Afraid to Come Back to the Bottom Line

Last week I had a phone call in which the client explicitly told me that they’re investing in their content to help them grow their revenue. And here’s the thing: even if your client doesn’t say this out loud, this is what they’re thinking.

So while “making a profit” was already mentioned in the business hierarchy above, it’s worth it’s own bullet point to encourage you to think about your writing from this perspective.

Even if your client doesn’t say it out loud, they’re thinking about the ROI of hiring you.

It’s very American of us, but business writing always comes back to the bottom line: What the business does for its customer and how you can communicate that in the most compelling format, tone, and style possible.

As you write a white paper, article, or case study, you must keep this mindset at the top of your mind and every word you write must refer back to the bottom line.

How To Write For A Business - Sarah Greesonbach - Five Figure Writer

Write for a Business Concept Three: Understand How Businesses Are Structured

If you’re like most people, you’ve been an employee all your life. You know that HR is in charge of benefits and if you have any question about your salary you should check with payroll. But other than that, we don’t really think about what a business wants and what it does beyond how our job plays into it.

Every department within a business has its own identity

In reality, every department within a business has its own identity. If you want to be hired by one section, you need to understand its values and its place within the company. Here’s a very, very simple and basic breakdown of the different departments and stakeholders within a typical corporation that you can use as a jumping board for researching potential clients and B2B writing markets:

How to Write for a Business - Sarah Greesonbach - Five Figure Writer

What you write and who you target will depend on the type of writing you do and the client you prefer to work with. Understanding that target client’s motivations and place within the company will give you deeper insights into that client’s specific business needs.

For example, since HR is often seen as a necessary expense within a company, the department is likely more concerned with gaining praise and avoiding risk than it is with making a profit, while sales is definitely concerned with making a profit over all the other factors on the hierarchy of business needs. How those departments interact with others will determine how you can talk about them, to them, and to their stakeholders.

Again, this insight helps you in two ways:

First, you’ll want to identify which groups you prefer to work with within this organization chart. You may be more comfortable with HR or accounting, or you prefer to work with leadership directly.

Second, when you’ve identified the person within the company you prefer to work with, you need to understand their motivations and challenges based on how they interact with other departments within the company. In general, this means understanding how that department reflects its value to the C-Suite and how it works interdepartmentally to accomplish its goals.

Not Quite B2B-Ready?

These three concepts can go a long way toward getting your feet wet in the B2B content world. However, if you’re going from newbie to B2B, this post alone won’t help you feel confident about writing for businesses. The best way to do it is to do it (AKA create homework for yourself and practice, practice, practice) and continue to research and try new things. Check out these awesome B2B writing resources:

Ask Away… and Check Out the B2B Writing Institute

You’ve got questions, I’ve got answers. Let me know in the comments below if this post leaves something to be desired and I’ll add it!

And of course, I’d be silly not to mention The B2B Writing Institute, which explores the art and science of B2B writing with a forever free foundations course.

How Normal People Make $150 an Hour Writing

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When you first start freelancing, you’re grateful just to get out of “working at Whole Foods” territory of about $15-25 an hour.

After all, when you do your salaried employment math, it comes out to about that much after taxes, right? And who ever heard of a writer making $150 an hour writing?

Pish posh. (Yes, pish posh.)

Freelancers should never charge less than $50 an hour for their services. And I’m going to take it a step further and say that $50 an hour is the minimum you should ever charge. Like, even for your best friend or your best friend’s boss’s nephew.

How Normal People Make $150 an Hour Writing - Five Figure Writer - Sarah Greesonbach

I say $50 minimum (and up to $150 and above) not as a fancy, 40-years expertise, award-winning freelance writer. I say this as a former English teacher (with the matching sad salary) who learned how to write about different topics in different formats using the Internet and a few library books.

Success as a freelance writer is possible with hard work, persistence, and writing talent — and today I’d like to share the four fundamentals I’ve picked up over the last two years that help me make $150 an hour writing (or more).

Because at the end of the day, what’s awesome is not my hourly income rate. What’s awesome is that my hourly income rate allows me to work 10-15 hour weeks, take doctor’s appointments when I need to, take days off when I need to, and generally write my own script for what I do in the day.

Isn’t that why you started freelancing? Isn’t that why we all work a job in the first place (“working for the weekend” comes to mind)?

Well, freedom isn’t free. It comes from upping your hourly income so you can spend as many (or as few) hours working as you want or need to in a given week.

Let me put this out there: this post is mostly a soft-shoe for the Make $150 an Hour Writing mastercourse coming out in May. However, a discerning eye could totally read this post, do some extra research, and DIY the crud out of this topic without needing video, instructables, webinars, and candor from me.

So, here goes. The four pillars of making $150 an hour writing that lets you work the way you want to work:

Positioning Your Attitude & Pricing Like a Professional

First, to the dismay of all the literal learners in the group, you need to accept that high-income earners don’t charge by the hour. Like, at all. We charge by value or we charge by project. We exchange expertise for money, not time for money.

We charge by value or we charge by project. We exchange expertise for money, not time for money.

The name of the course still stands, though, because we’re focusing on what you’re earning, not charging. I earn $150+ for my hours of writing, but I never bill $150+ per hour (and frankly I don’t know any clients who would pay that).

I have a few retainer clients for whom I bill a low hourly rate for meetings and very time-focused things when I’m stuck in that corporate box, but otherwise I charge exclusively by project rates. It’s better for my clients and it’s better for me.

Making this transition can be difficult. The world runs hourly, even though they’re all stressed out because of it. But when you really buy into the value of project or value based pricing, you simply can’t go back. Start with this free eBook from FreshBooks and go from there.

PS The course covers way more (like actually transitioning clients into a project rate), but it’s too much to get into for a simple blog post.

Writing Quickly (Not Badly)

This principle actually proves the first principle. When you charge based on value or the project, when you work faster, you make more money.

Read that again.

You’re rewarded for being fast and efficient. It’s the American Dream.

When you charge based on value or the project — working faster means making more money. You’re rewarded for being fast and efficient. It’s the American Dream.

Compare that to the corporate world where finishing early means getting more work assigned to you (for no more money), or in the freelance hourly billing world where working quickly nets you less income because you can’t bill as much.

The trick here, of course, is that you’ve got to be a fast and efficient writer. However, the fact that you are already freelancing means you know how to hustle and work your hardest whenever possible. How can you write faster? By taking care of a few productivity basics that I’ll dig into in the course:

  • Writing based on templates and outlines (such as the classic 5-paragraph essay from high school)
  • Understanding and applying your unique flow state factors so you’re “in the mood to write” more frequently
  • Using technology to help you move through your work faster (like FreshBooks, Google Drive, and Calendly)
  • Eating better to enhance concentration and mood (no, seriously)

How Normal People Make $150 an Hour Writing - Five Figure Writer - Sarah Greesonbach

Getting Clips & Crafting a Designer Portfolio

For established writers, getting clips and crafting a designer portfolio is more nuanced. You’ve written for clients and they don’t want you to link to their site because it’s ghostwritten, or you have tons of clips and you don’t know how to organize them in the most professional way possible.

In this part of the course we’ll talk about brainstorming spec work, creative strategies for getting published in this contributor-happy world, and designing a portfolio that helps you land clients you want instead of the clients that you’re getting now.

The goal is to remove barriers between pitching clients and them saying “Heck, yes, this is a writer we want to work with.”

All in all, the goal is to get your portfolio up and running and as professional as possible so that you remove barriers between pitching clients and them saying “Heck, yes, this is a writer we want to work with.” Here’s a great collection of resources on getting your writing portfolio up to speed:

Finding Clients & Treating Them Right

All the preparation and project pricing in the world can’t help you make your goal income if you don’t actually find clients and keep them. That’s the focus of the final week of the course where we’ll outline all the different ways to find clients (from content mills to elite networking) and highlight which are most worth your time.

I can’t stress enough how important this part of the process is. If you attract clients who want to call you at all hours of the day, they could never pay you enough to make up for the disruption in your lifestyle. Finding and keeping the right ones is a huge skill to master.

I’ve already covered where to find these mythical high-paying clients. In the course we’ll expand on that concept and put more juice in the “Oh, I never thought of finding a client that way!” engine with specific examples for specific niches.

Most importantly, we’ll also look at how to maintain relationships with your clients to give them the experience that goes along with a higher writer price tag. Like, how to make better conversation in those awkward first 5-minutes of a call and how to get comfortable being yourself (and reaping the rewards of being yourself) in your business.

Make 150 an Hour Writing - Mastercourse by Sarah Greesonbach

Take the Next Step

If this resonates with you, I want to invite you to download the course summary and consider signing up for the real-time course.

It starts May 16th (enrollment closes May 15th) and runs four weeks through June 10th, 2016. It’s all by email, video, and PDF download, so you can complete the work on your own time and then catch up with the class for live Friday webinars. The lessons take your talented, normal self through the rigamarole of strategic freelance writing and into a place where you can maximize your hourly income and work on your terms.

Until then, tell me: What are you charging right now? How much do you think you should be charging?