But everybody needs to start somewhere and if you take on a few $5-50 jobs, you’re gaining experience and a portfolio of delighted clients. Make sure you obtain a testimonial from each client.

Armed with your portfolio of completed jobs, you’re now a much more marketable commodity. Nobody but you knows you only got paid $5-50 for each of the jobs! What people DO know is that you’re an experienced writer, who can turn their hand to a number of diverse projects and timescales and have happy client testimonials to back that up!

Once you’ve got a portfolio, you can start to make contacts with people, perhaps when networking, and the fact you’ve done some work before will start to draw people towards you. People will start to pass on your details, they’ll know you’re a writer who does freelance work, you’ll start to get calls.

See the bigger picture and use low-paying freelance jobs to produce your all-important portfolio, testimonials and evidence of good work completed!

Good luck everybody!

I hope I would be not be impolite if I ask a question through this board. My question is not within your article but somehow related to it.
(Maybe my question had been resolved elsewhere in this site but I seem not to find it).

Here goes:
What should a freelance do when a client pays half of the agreed amount ? (example, the agreed fee is $20. The writer wrote and submitted the article but the “client’ sent only $10).

Worse case_– what should a freelance writer do when the client does pay the submitted articles? ( Client ignores all communication and just ” disappears”, so to speak).

James, kindly delete my post if this is off topic in your article.

Bottom line: work is a good thing, and it’s usually a bad idea to turn down a paying client because they don’t hit an artificial per-hour fee. There’s certainly no guarantee that the next client will pay more – and you can easily end up with no clients, no clips, no nothing.

ON THE OTHER HAND – when I taught the Business of Freelance Writing class at Penn, I told my students NEVER to charge under $20 per hour. Why? Most clients assume they get what they pay for. And a writer who charges $8 per hour is almost certainly a brand-new writer who is honing his skills on the client’s nickel! (Of course, if both parties to agree to the arrangement, that’s fine – but it’s a rare situation!)

Lisa Rudy

Also, it seems that the arguments you bring forth about employer’s contribution may not apply to all situations. In the case where there is no employer/employee relationship but rather a business/sub-contractor relationship, I have trouble seeing how these costs apply. Not saying they don’t – just saying that as worded, I can’t see it right now (hence, my request that you go into a bit more detail. Help me out, hm?)

Lastly, are you referring to a U.S. only situation? Some of the contributions you mention don’t apply to other countries.

Anyways, let me know. I’m interested!

I’m glad that you also learned those important skills in university. I attended two years of university, and that training didn’t come close to teaching me what I’d learned through everyday interaction with people in high-stress jobs.

What I *did* learn in university is that one should never underestimate the value of other types of education beyond that learned in the classroom.

That said, as mentioned before, there are many excellent writers who do not have formal education.

Occasionally we will either make changes or clarify – and that’s fine.

Once we’re on the same page, I turn the memo into a short letter of agreement. If the project is more than a couple of hundred dollars, I always break the fee into at least 2 parts, and ask for a portion of the fee “upon signing” of the letter of agreement.

As soon as that letter is signed, I’m “on the clock.” (Unless I’m working for someone who I know well, and with whom I’m completely comfortable. In that case, I still have a written agreement – but I might start working before the letter is signed and sealed).

BTW – quite agree that degrees are essentially irrelevant. If you have a couple of published clips that relate to the client’s needs, you should be just fine.

Also: have never found the “I need X amount so I’ll charge Y amount per hour” formula to work especially well in real life. It’s like making a family budget: it sounds great, until the transmission blows out, or your mother gets sick and needs you to fly to Florida tomorrow. Basically, I find that I work on projects that are available, at the best price I can negotiate. If other, more lucrative projects come up at the same time, I just stay up later or get up earlier!

Lisa Rudy

I can’t even say that the fast food place taught me customer service skills as my other jobs in offices, hotels, libraries, and so on taught me those skills.

That’s just my experience though!

Or, you can integrate time into pricing. Estimate that 15% of your rate covers reading email, meeting, looking over information, etc., for example.

Like James, I worked for McD’s as a teen and it certainly takes skill. To start, they had me train with a supervisor for two hours and then I was turned loose to do it myself. From correctly getting the order, counting change, putting the order together it’s not as easy at it seems, especially during a lunch or dinner rush. Add in someone who isn’t fluent in English and you have to translate too.

I remember best having a group of contractors come in and place an order. There were ten of them. Back then it was policy that you didn’t collect the money until the order was prepared. So they ordered, then it was a made scramble to get all the drinks, food, desserts, etc. If the ice cream machine ran out, you had to drop everything to refill it with the mix. Meanwhile, you have a line building up and customers yelling at you to go faster. Supervisors throwing deadlines at you constantly. They had timers set up and you had to have an order filled within two minutes, no matter how large. Food was also set to timers. Before you could grab it, you had to make sure the food wasn’t more than 15 minutes old and sitting in the warmers. If it was, it had to be thrown out and new orders had to be called in to the kitchen staff.

I lasted a month and went back to babysitting. Babysitting was so much easier!

I do mostly print writing, and I try not to write for less than .20/word. Just a general rule. I figured that out maybe this summer, that I do not want to write for less than that. Knowing the rate you want to stay above, that cut-off point where you say to yourself “any lower than that, and I’m not interested” – that’s a good thing to keep in mind.

I have had four meetings with my first client. The first couple could be seen as me selling my product to them, but today I met with the client and a third party (marketing partner) of theirs to discuss the project in detail. Is that something I can (should) bill them for? I’ve already spent several hours on this project, though I haven’t written anything yet.

Any thoughts would be appreciated.

I don’t know many writers who can do all of that, and these types of skills are a set extremely crucial to success. No degree will give you that. Sorry.

But I do respect your view that you believe a degree has value.

@ Lisa – The combo method works really, really well – especially when you have that gut feeling that you might have a picky client on your hands!

But if a client is new to me, and I have no sense of the process (will she chat for hours? ask for 50 revisions?) I like to charge by the hour. That way, i’m paid for what I actually do.

If I’m working to get a particular type of work that’s new to me, though, I might work an hour or two for just $20 – in order to get clips, or to build a relationship.

Overall, though, I’ve found that work for hire can easily pay $50-$70 per hour. And that’s even when I work for non-profit clients. It’s the byline work that’s cheap, and that’s because the competition is FIERCE!

Lisa

It was my experience that once I got over the fear of asking for more money I made more money

@ Ann – Ahh, I was hoping you’d come comment, actually. You have good views on the topic and I appreciate your comments.

They believe $50 for 500 words sounds great, but then they forget that the level of quality may take them longer to write.

It’s easy to miss things on a computer screen these days, though. I do it all the time.

As for level of education, I’m afraid that I’m one of those that doesn’t believe a formal degree makes a difference in writing. It certainly does in the medical field, I’m sure!