Freelance Writing, Bottled Water And Something Every New Freelance Writer Needs To Know

By Dan Smith

I was having a midday break earlier on in the week and as usual, I had a look in my inbox, checked out a few blogs and then loaded up the BBC website to read the latest news headlines.

I’m the type of person who will skim through half a dozen stories to get an idea of what’s going on in the world and then go back later on in the day to read any particular articles in-depth.

Whilst I was skimming through the news, there was one article in particular that caught my eye. It was about the bottled water industry and how it has basically exploded in the last few decades.

The reason I’m talking about this article now is that once I’d finished reading it, I realised that the three main points I took from the piece relate directly to the freelance writing industry.

When I first started writing, I had a somewhat naïve belief that anyone could write and become a writer and it made me question myself a lot at the start of my career.

I mean, if there are 60 billion people on earth, the majority of whom can write, why would someone pay me to write for them?

After I mulled this over for what turned out to be a good few weeks, I had a number of experiences that made me realise that I was wrong and not everyone could actually be a writer.

Whilst a lot of experienced writers will no doubt be aware of what I’m about to talk about, it’s something that I know a lot of new writers don’t know — and it’s something that I believe, from personal experience, would help any new freelance writer get off to a more positive start in the industry.

Anyone can bottle water

When you get down to the cold, hard, basic facts, bottled water is just that — water in a bottle.

We all have access to water, whether it’s at home or from a river and could no doubt find a bottle to fill up, instantly giving you a bottle of water.

And it’s exactly the same as freelance writing.

Anyone can pick up a pen and paper or open up a word processing document on their computer and put words down on a page. Most people will be able to string a few sentences together as an absolute minimum and there’s no doubt that it would be readable.

But not everyone can produce usable bottled water

Although anyone might be able to fill a bottle with water, does this make it a quality product? Would it be of benefit to anyone? Would it be worth buying? How would it perform against a leading, high quality brand of bottled water?

And whilst everyone can write to some degree, it doesn’t make the entire population a writer.

Just because someone can put a few sentences together doesn’t mean they can produce great advertising copy or even copy that people would buy.

What’s more it would be extremely surprising if their pieces were picked over those from an experienced writer should they be placed alongside each other.

People are willing to pay for quality

According to the BBC article, by the turn of the last millennium, sales of bottled water for Perrier stood at 152 million bottles a year — an increase of 140 million bottles a year in less than two decades.

Furthermore, once Evian, now arguably the leading bottled water brand, realised the earning potential of bottled water in 1990, they doubled the amount of water they were selling from 50 billion litres to in excess of 100 billion litres a year.

Although there’s no doubt that marketing and advertising played a large part in the success of these bottled water companies — just like it can do with a freelance writer’s career — their success wouldn’t have been achievable if the product wasn’t of a high quality.

And it’s this last sentence is one that every new freelance writer should keep at the front of their mind at all times.

There are companies out there that need writers who can produce high quality content and they’re more than aware that there are a lot of writers available who just don’t meet the mark, irrelevant of how good their marketing campaign might be.

These companies are willing to pay good money for quality copy — more than you actually probably think — and just like people who buy bottled water, something which is readily available for free at home, they don’t mind paying for quality, as long they know that what they’re buying is going to meet their needs.

Chances are this isn’t going to be relevant to a lot of writers and I may be talking about something that even a lot of new writers are aware of.

However, I remember when I was just starting out and the amount of times that I would question myself over why someone would pay me to do something that they could do themselves for free.

It wasn’t until I fully realised that being a freelance writer is so much more than having to write for a minimal amount of money and is actually a finically viable vocation that I began to have a much more positive outlook on the industry and started to develop my career properly.

Image: Snowacinesy (commons wikimedia)