Lessons From Freelancing 2007

There are lessons that every freelance writer has to learn and some of us have to learn them the hard way. I did a lot of learning the hard way this last year and am really hoping that the lessons of 2008 come a little easier.

I have spent all my adult life as a professional writer, mostly in the form of a reporter for a newspaper, though also some as a freelancer. Most of the freelancing I did used to be in addition to whatever I was doing to pay the bills, but about a year and a half ago, I left the 8 to 5 rat race to stay at home and write.

It was terrifying, but it sounded easy. I was a fool!

It's not that I have any desire to go back to that world-except when it comes to end of the year bonuses, vacation time and the holiday get togethers. I miss those a little. But mostly I love writing and the freedom not to punch a time clock. But there are things I hate too-like some of the things we writers agree to do to make ends meet.

My own personal hell is known as essaywriter.net. I found this site via the forums here at Associated Content. Thanks guys, you rock! It came with warnings. Michelle Devon, an AC content producer and freelance professional who I respect more than most, weighed in with deeply critical points.

The site, though officially for use as "reference", promotes cheating. It sells homework for college and high school students. And, some little part of my soul weeps to be affiliated with such a thing, mostly because I know if I were teaching the class, I'd flunk anyone I caught using it.

Her other objection was that they pay writers crap, treat them horribly and often cancel orders with little or no warning. They are guilty of all this and more. But another AC writer hit the nail on the head when he pointed out that the site got him through the lean times when he was unemployed and he learned more doing the essays than he had at any other job in a long time. To that, I add a hearty, me too!

In actuality, the pay is no worse than what I have seen offered for some SEO writing gigs. I refuse to take assignments that pay me less than $4 a page and I only take those when I am desparate or the topic is something I already know. Since a double spaced page has about 300 words (the site guarantees 275), it's better than so called good writing gigs that pay $4 for 500 word SEO articles that I have to research as well.

A very nice woman runs a writers company that I applied for and never finished the work for (though I did send her the incomplete work and offer to let her have it for free) that pays $3.75 for a 400 word article. The topics she sent me were things like vitamins and menopause, all requiring extensive research if they were going to be well-written. I ended up spending an hour per article because I wanted it to be good. That's why I quit.

Essaywriters has left me tempted to quit, but it has also paid my bills. Now, I am primarily doing resumes for them and some of my moral quandaries are resolved, but the treatment of writers issue is not. The site makes its sales by guaranteeing results. Who can do that with a resume? We all know that it depends on the job market you are targeting and the qualifications you bring, not just the use of power words and a pretty format.

So I am once again looking for good, reliable work that pays decently and am still supplementing my income with this stuff that I don't particularly like doing. Ethically, I see the argument that producing this works for students is a problem because it promotes cheating, but as a former teacher, I know that those who want to cheat will find a way regardless of the use of these sites.

Is it dirty money? No dirtier than payment for writing a glowing review of a product you would never use or writing advertising copy for a product made with labor practices you disapprove of.

The bottom line, and one that I had a hard time learning last year, is that writing is a business and we must treat it as such if we want to make money (even just living expenses) at it. That means writing for people I don't necessarily like and writing projects I don't approve of. But more than that, it means learning the hard way to stand up for your own value as a writer and knowing when to say no.

With essaywriters, I have self-defined lines that I will not cross, mostly regarding the minimums that I will be paid, but also regarding the way I will be treated. If a client is abusing the system, as one young man did last fall, trying to get a completely new project done by calling it a rewrite of an old project, I push the issue and stand willing to lose some money over it.

But that's not the only place I have learned that I need to stand up for myself and demand to be paid what I am worth.

I bid occasionally on projects on guru.com and getafreelancer.com, but I bid based on my real expectations for the project, not to undercut other bidders. I will not work for $2 for 500 words just because some other people who are not native English speakers will do it. This was a pretty easy lesson to learn.

The harder lesson to learn was that as a freelancer, you have to be willing to negotiate the contract an editor offers and walk away if the terms aren't right. I had, short-term, the opportunity to work for a major newspaper chain. I accepted the contract they offered without revision and really without looking too deeply at it. That was a huge mistake.

The contract called for me to be paid a specific amount depending on story length and, in the case of government meetings, for the meeting coverage to be included in the story price. What it was lacking was a guarantee that they would actually run the story and it included a pay on publication clause. So, they asked me to cover several school board meetings, and a Sons of the American Revolution meeting, got their stories and never ran them.

It cost me about 14 hours of time to get absolutely nothing. They also asked me to write a larger piece on education funding in Illinois. It comprised three stories and a full day's work. They ran one story of the three and even though these were done on assignment, I had not negotiated kill fees into the contract, so I got nothing for the other two stories. Our relationship ended poorly.

Given my experiences, here are my lessons on freelancing from 2007:

1) Listen to the experts. Michy's advice is wonderful and so is her site. She's been doing this for awhile for a reason.

2) Set standards for yourself. You don't have to agree with other writers' standards, but you should know what your own are.

3) Know the value of your work and know what you are willing to settle for. Stick to those values no matter how hard it is.

4) Look for contracts that are fair to you and make sure that you get paid something for the work you do.

5) Stand up for yourself, because most likely, no one else will.