Disaster Recovery for Freelance Writers: Data Issues

When it comes to disaster recovery for a small business, there are usually two types of issues that you must address: data issues and systemic or process issues. Today, we’ll look at the first of those two, and what the freelance writing business owner can do to minimize the impact of a disaster on her business.

A freelance writing business relies heavily on electronic data. Most of this data falls into one of three categories: product, communications and financial records. Each of these types of data is critical to the continuity of your business if a disaster should strike. Let’s tackle each in turn:

Product

The freelance writing business’ product is, of course, the writing. Whether it’s ebooks, magazine articles or web copy, the text you produce is the lifeblood of your business. It’s what people come to you for, and it’s what makes you money.

When a disaster – such as a crashed hard drive – occurs and you lose your saved files, it’s akin to having a tornado hit a warehouse and wipe out all of your inventory. Depending on the kind of work you do, you could be looking at days or even weeks of rewriting material. If your hard drive crashes in the final stages of a 150-page ebook, you’re going to lose valuable time and money if you don’t have a disaster recovery plan.

The good news here is that disaster recovery for your product can be relatively simple. You might have a dedicated backup hard drive, for example, that backs up your files every night. You might instead subscribe to an online backup service. If you can manage it, I recommend the online backup service, just because the local hard drive option still leaves you in the lurch if, for example, you have a house fire.

Communications

Another key element in your freelance writing business is your communications records. Freelance writers deal with things like contracts, orders and client communications on a daily basis. If you lose all of this type of data, you wind up having to go back to your clients to try to recreate it. While most clients will understand if you say, “My house flooded and I’ve lost my records, can I fax over a second copy of this contract,” how much more impressive would it be to those clients if they know your house flooded, yet you don’t miss a beat?

For the most part, your communications are probably electronic. Here again, a backup service is probably the best way to protect this type of data. If you use an email client on your PC to POP your mail, a backup service should cover you.

However, understand that if you use an email service – such as Gmail – you’re at the mercy of that email provider. If Gmail experiences a huge data loss tomorrow, you could lose valuable client communications. You need to have confidence in your email provider. Think long and hard about what email service you choose to use for your freelance writing business. (I, for the record, am completely confident in Google today. I use Gmail for the vast majority of my communications.)

Financial records

The last type of data you need to keep tabs on in a disaster is your financial records. This includes everything from your monthly bookkeeping to your receipts for expenses. Portions of your financial records can be electronic, while portions of your financial records will be paper. The electronic portion can be handled just like your electronic communications, while the paper records deserve a few extra thoughts.

You have a couple of choices when it comes to dealing with paper financial records. One option is to eliminate paper records by scanning everything into electronic format. This can be time-consuming, but it can also save you worry (and the clutter of a physical filing system).

Another way to deal with paper financial records is to invest in secure storage. This could include a fireproof and waterproof filing cabinet, or it could include an offsite storage option, such as a safe deposit box at your bank. This method isn’t as time-consuming as scanning all of your records, but it does require regular, manual use of the secure storage. In other words, you have to take your records regularly to your safe deposit box for this method to be effective. For me, the fireproof cabinet is the way to go, but I do know some small business owners who prefer offsite storage.

Next time, we’ll take a look at disaster recovery planning for your freelance writing business’ processes and systems.