Can You Really Make It as a Freelance Writer?

It’s 3 P.M. and you’re sitting at your desk in your cubicle staring at your computer screen. Your mind wanders but settles on one thought—wouldn’t it be great to have time all to yourself to sit and write articles for top magazines. 
                                   
It’s that narrow-minded thinking that will make sure you’re still sitting in that same chair several years from now—without having written a word.

Yes, it’s possible to become a successful freelance writer but to do that you have to first define “success.” Is it getting published, making a lot of money, achieving national fame, winning awards? The better you define what success is to you, the better your chance of achieving freelance writing success.

Can you really make a living as a freelance writer? Your chances are probably as good as any other entrepreneur. And just like any other person going into business for themselves, you need to look at the bigger picture.

Believe it or not, freelance writing is all about relationships. Relationships with editors, relationships with research librarians, relationship with the human subjects in your work.

The key to finding freelance success is developing relationships with editors at the publications you’d most like to write for on a regular basis. These relationships are invaluable, as you’re unlikely to make a living by relying solely on a constant stream of cold queries. You want editors to contact you with assignments. The best way to do that is to always deliver exactly what the editor wants by the assigned deadline. In fact, the more quickly you can turn around quality articles, the better off you’ll be.

Many publications, strapped by tight budgets, have smaller staffs these days. So the editors depend on a stable of good, reliable writers to fill most of their needs. While it may be hard to break into one of those stables, it’s a goal you must strive for if you plan on freelancing full time.

As editors move from publication to publication—and they move faster and more often than hairdressers do to other beauty salons—they often take along their most reliable writers, even if the magazine isn’t in the writer’s subject realm. Anyone can learn about a subject to write about it, but not everyone is a good writer. So editors opt for good writers and help them along with the subject matter as they go.

One thing that many new freelancers forget is that full-time freelance writing is a full-time job, just like the one they left to become a freelancer. Of course, the big difference is that you can choose the hours you work, but you’ll still have to put in as many hours—or more—to make it. You don’t get paid vacation time, and you don’t get benefits like health insurance, a 401k and playing on company teams. However, you do have the opportunity to out-earn what you would get working for a publisher and set a flexible schedule so you can take care of other things when you’re not overloaded with work.

So success as a freelancer depends on how all the parts fit together as a whole. It’s usually not about money, but though you can earn far more than you did in sitting in the cubicle of your day job, it’s the quality of life that counts.

Make a List and Check It Twice

Everyone knows that Santa Claus makes a list and checks it twice before going on his merry way to bring gifts to all good little boys and girls. Most people do the same before going Christmas shopping. But I bet you never thought of making a list of not only all the places you could sell your writing, but also the different forms of writing you can sell, produced from the same research.

Too many non-fiction writers research an article or book idea, write and publish it, then forget about it. As the old saying goes, there’s more than one way to skin a cat.

First let’s look at the many types of articles you could write based on the subject matter. If you work in education, you might consider writing one for a journal in your field. But that’s pretty much a dead end to a freelance writer and either doesn’t pay anything or very little.

If you like to travel, you have a myriad of article types to choose from. There’s always the straight travel article about the places you visit, but you could write several on the adventure or sports side of those places. And don’t forget food and historical articles about them.

If you prefer a more scientific approach, you could write about new scientific discoveries and about how they affect medicine, commerce, or industry. Writing trade articles can mean steady work.

And then there’s business and finance articles. Pieces about new business ideas, new businesses, and business advice are always in season. How to market certain types of businesses is yet another approach. Interviews with top business professionals helps those on their way up.

You could also approach a subject by its effect on people. Family relationships, genealogy, art of living, and sociological influences are just the tip of the relationship iceberg.

Your second list should be all the ways you can treat the same subject. One of the easiest articles to write is the how-to piece. Combine this with the standard advice article, and you have a winner.

If you like helping others, you may want to work your information into an inspirational article.  Tell it from your own life, and you have a personal experience piece. An article told from your own insight is one of the most powerful out there. And readers love them.

Take a look at the past and put some nostalgia into your work. Nostalgia pieces are becoming increasingly popular with the ever-growing crowd of baby boomers out there. They like to remember how things used to be, even if their memories cloud over some of the bad things and make the past seem rosy.

Reader’s Digest always said that humor is the best medicine. But not everyone can write humorous articles. Just because you think something is funny doesn’t mean your readers will. Try your humor out on your friends first.

Perhaps you want to get serious and write exposés. These take a considerable more research and time, but in the end can be worth while. If the exposé is too much for you, then perhaps you’d like to try writing controversial essays, although the market isn’t too open for them. In today’s publishing world, a blog on a controversial subject will be more likely to succeed.

And for all those books you’ve read researching an idea, perhaps you can find time to write reviews of them.

Turning One Published Piece into Many

I’m absolutely amazed at how many beginning writers get published for the first time, then turn to a completely different subject, marketing that to a different editor or publisher instead of building a relationship with the first.

Writing is not just about words, it’s about relationships. No matter what sort of writing you do, you need to build on past successes. If you begin at the top, you have no where to go but down, so it’s important to begin slowly and build relationships with your editors. This can be either by getting to know what a particular editor wants or building on new contacts, using an award you’ve recently received.

I believe the first time I had an article published in a national magazine was a fluke. While it wasn’t totally an accident–-I had sent the piece into the magazine, Popular Mechanics, after all–-it was by happenstance that it appeared between the covers of this national publication exactly one year later. The article showed readers how to build turn an ordinary compact station wagon into a “chuck wagon” for use on a cross-country camping trip. It wasn’t particularly in my field of interest, but it was something I actually did construct. I didn’t publish anything again for six years.

Oh, I tried. I sent pieces all over the place, but I failed to send another idea to the editor of Popular Mechanics. That was my mistake.

As soon as you achieve publishing success, immediately send several similar ideas to that same editor. In fact, while you’re waiting to hear back from that publication, assemble a list of salable ideas that you can send along later.

Perhaps the editor liked your writing style or perhaps your subject. What probably happened–as in my case–was that the editor liked the timeliness of my subject. At the time, gasoline prices had begun to rise dramatically, and this offered families an affordable way to go on an extended vacation and eat well at the same time. But even though you may have just gotten lucky doesn’t mean that you couldn’t sell something to that same editor.

It’s important to build a rapport with your editors. The longest I worked for the same one was 14 years. That’s because she remained in her position, and I gave her consistently good material she could use. The second longest was seven years.

Editors flit from publication to publication about as fast as hairdressers do from salon to salon. If you have a good relationship with an editor, he or she will often take you with them to their new publication. It’s usually an upgrade to a better position for them, resulting in a marketing upgrade for you, which can mean higher pay and more prestige.

The same holds true for getting awards, but I’ll tell you more about that next week.