7 Things You Really Need To Stop Doing If You Want To Succeed As A Freelance Writer

By Dan Smith

Have a look around the internet and it’s easy to find guides and resources that will talk you through the process of becoming a freelance writer.

Some tell you what you have to be doing online, others will explain what you should do in terms of networking and there are plenty that will help you work out what type of writing you should focus on and the market you should aim for.

The following seven points look at the opposite end of the scale to these guides, however and explain what you shouldn’t be doing if you want to succeed as a freelance writer (and no matter if you’ve been writing 10 days or 10 years, I’m sure every writer’s guilty of doing one at least of them!).

1. Checking your e-mail every 10 minutes

Something that I’ve fallen back into the habit of doing this week while I’ve had man flu, checking your e-mail more than half a dozen times a day is completely unnecessary and I know several writers who only check their e-mail once a day.

It might be comforting and even exciting as you sit and hope that a new e-mail has arrived, but if you’re checking your e-mail once every 30 minutes, should each ‘check’ lastsfive minutes on average, that’s almost one full hour every day spent checking your e-mail.

2. Revolving your life around one query

Something I’ve seen quite a lot lately is new writers researching an idea for a piece, pitching it to one editor and waiting to see if they hear back from them.

Yes, the idea of researching a piece and pitching it to an editor is perfect, but you need to be doing it at least three or four times at once.

Wait on the response from just one single query and not only will it take you a lot of time to get a gig — unless you’re particularly lucky — but you’re also likely to be demotivated and want to throw the towel in with the whole process.

Quality is the lead here, but quantity does play a very important supporting role.

3. Reading blog posts, reading forums, reading news articles, reading …

Simply put, you need to not only read blogs, forums and news articles on a regular basis, but you need to be involved in them all, too.

I mentioned in my second post here at Get Paid To Write Online that I honestly believe I would be further along in my writing career than I am now if I hadn’t simply spent my time reading through blog after blog and instead became involved in them all much sooner than I did.

4. Not backing up your work

OK, so I don’t do this in the best way possible (I save everything on my hard drive and have a copy on a USB stick. If it’s an important document, I also e-mail it to myself), but how many of you can actually say that you make regular backups of your work?

Some of you may not think it’s important, as once the work is done and sent to the client, it’s finished with, right?

Well, yes — but what if you need a quick example of your writing? What if you used a quote or referenced a source in a past article and could really do with it now?

And the one thing that prompts most to start backing up regularly — what happens if you’re half way through a several thousand word piece and your computer crashes?

There are various backup options available, ranging in price somewhat considerably. Whichever option you choose, pick one quickly and use it regularly.

5. Not developing your own brand

As a freelance writer, you spend hours helping to develop a client’s business, creating press releases and rewriting their website content, for which they pay you a set amount of money per word or per hour, irrelevant of how popular their brand is or becomes and how much money you’re helping them make.

What about your brand, though? What about the amount of money you’re making outside of your regular client work?

Working for regular clients is the bread and butter income for most freelance writers, but it’s important that it’s not your only income.

You need to spend time on your own presence, increasing your popularity and developing your own projects, as without this, you risk being stuck with the same clients on the same rate until you finally realise you need to do something about it.

6. Saying yes

Understanding that it’s OK to say no to a client is something that I try to drill in to every new writer I meet, as by saying yes all of the time, you can end up in a world of trouble.

When I first started writing, I was so eager to succeed and earn money that I said yes to everything, irrelevant of how much it was paying.

Someone was willing to pay me to write — ME! — so there was no way I was turning it down.

After a few months of never saying no, it started to dawn on me that my schedule was quickly filling up, yet I didn’t have a great deal of income to show for it.

Even recently, I found I was getting into the habit of not being able to say no once again, particularly to existing clients.

For the most part, I think this is due to a certain degree of fear — if you say no to a new client, they’re going to storm away and never consider working with you again and if you say no to an existing client, they’re going to take away any work they currently offer you and tarnish your reputation, right?

No; generally speaking, this just isn’t the case.

Learn to say no early on in your career and you’ll skip a whole chunk of the road to becoming a freelance writer that you could really do without going down.

7. Keeping your rates the same

One of the things that can have a particularly detrimental effect on your progression as a freelance writer is never increasing your rates.

However, it’s also one of the things that’s most difficult to change.

Almost every writer starts out working for next to nothing, taking on projects primarily for the experience and they find that they increase their rate quite quickly from, for example, $0.02 per word to $0.10.

The problem that many writers have, however, is that when they get to a level that they feel comfortable at — which is in fact unlikely to be the going rate on a per word basis — it can be extremely difficult to increase your rates, as you don’t want to risk alienating your existing clients.

I was in this exact same position in January of this year.

I knew I had to increase my rates if I wanted to move up the freelance writing ladder, but I’d been working with a selection of clients for a while, some for a few months and others for over a year. I didn’t want to up my rates in case all of my existing clients came back to me, said they couldn’t afford the increase and took their work away, leaving me worse off than I was originally.

After kicking the idea round for a few weeks and receiving some extremely encouraging words of wisdom from several knowledgeable and respected freelance writers , I approached my regular clients and explained that as my rates hadn’t increased in almost two years, it was necessary for me to increase them.

When I opened the first reply e-mail back, I was expecting to see an angry and annoyed response, one that would mean I’d have to apologise and keep my rates the same to be able to secure any future work.

The truth is most of the clients had no problem with the increase and some said they were surprised I hadn’t increased my rates earlier!

Yes, there was one or two who couldn’t afford my new rates, but we didn’t part on bad terms, as they understood they were getting their writing work carried out at a price that they could afford but which was well under the real market value.

It’s imperative when you’re looking to become a freelance writer that you carry out as much research as possible into what you need to be doing to succeed. However, it’s also important that you look at what you shouldn’t be doing — something which is also recommended for established writers to ensure that they are staying focused and on track at all times.

Image: Squonk11 (Flickr)

Have you checked out my recent post ‘It’s Time To Give Something Back To The Freelance Writing Community’? I’m answering your questions on freelance writing and business development — for free!