Freelance Writing

We like to talk about pitching around these parts – from pitching templates to pitching etiquette, we’ve been covering a lot of ground. But even our enthusiasm sometimes wanes in the face of how time consuming it is to actually find people to pitch.

Enter professional writer extraordinaire, Nick Darlington (whom Gina met when she was a guest on his podcast). 

Nick graciously offered to explain his LinkedIn pitch strategy – that is, the process that he uses to build a prospect list on LinkedIn. 

Take it away, Nick!

If you use cold pitching to find clients, you know that building a prospect list can be a nightmare. Not only do you have to find companies to pitch, but you need to find the right contact as well as their email.

Sometimes finding this information is a breeze, but more often than not it isn’t. Invariably, it involves Google searches, browsing company websites, and using social media.

I get it; I struggle too.

In fact, prospecting had become such a headache that I decided to outsource it to someone on Fiverr. I wanted to get someone to do the work I didn’t want to do so that I could free up time for things that mattered.

In theory, it was a great idea, but in practice, it was anything but. I received generic email addresses such as info@companyname.com, the incorrect contact person, and emails that were duds. It was downright frustrating.

What made it even more frustrating was that I received all this information, after I did everything to make sure the person understood what I wanted. I specified the niche, the type of contact (e.g., content manager) and even mentioned what I didn’t want (i.e., generic contact information).

Despite the effort, I was back to where I started: doing it myself.

I then realized that if I couldn’t find a reliable list builder, I would have to make darn sure that I became a pro at doing it myself.

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I made it one of my 2018 resolutions to seek out other local writers and meet them for coffee to talk shop. I’ve been working solely by myself for a few years now, so lately I’ve been feeling the need for some in-person chats with people who already understand what I do for a living. It turns out, I’m not the only writer who’s thinking about creating connections, whether we’re talking business relationships or friendships.

Vanessa is here to share the five most important business relationships that she’s nurturing as a freelance writer.

Here’s Vanessa!

As a freelance writer, it can sometimes feel like you’re on a deserted island.

You may work from home and be isolated from In Real Life (IRL) human contact. It doesn’t have to be that way, and if you want to build your business, I recommend developing intentional relationships with the people you interact with online.

The most important relationships – the ones that make up the foundation of my freelance writing business – are the editors, other writers, public relations (PR) companies, interviewees and readers I come in contact with almost every day.

I didn’t start my business with the realization that I needed to spend time building relationships with these folks; it happened by chance.

Now, it’s part of my business model.

Here’s what it looks like for me:

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Have you ever been asked to complete a writing test for a freelance position? Vanessa Infanzon has, several times, and she’s here to share the experience and her tips on how to make the best out of this stressful situation.

Thanks for joining us, Vanessa!

I have been freelance writing for a few years and typically my resume, portfolio and links to two or three of my stories are enough to get my pitch accepted for a paid assignment.

When I was asked this summer to complete a writing test for a permanent, yet still freelance, writing position, I didn’t know what to expect. A Google search produced a few third-party grammar tests, but nothing else of substance.

With little to no information, I went into my first writing test blindly.

On the appointed day, I received an email at exactly 2 p.m.:

Vanessa, 

Please come up with three Charlotte commercial real estate story ideas on any subject with a hard business angle that you could write today and then write one of them — while still giving us pitches on the other two.

Please write for a general audience, with extra credit for engaging writing, creativity and original reporting. Please send your materials back to me by 3:30 ET. 

When I read this, I was shocked by the amount of work in the short timeframe.

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We’ve talked about self-publishing before on Horkey HandBook, but we’ve never talked about writing romance.

If you read Yuwanda Black’s story, you’ll see that this genre can be quite lucrative, if you know the rules of the game. Yuwanda reached the $2,000/month mark in just six months, and she’s here to share how pivoting from non-fiction to romance made all the difference for her freelance writing career.

Take it away, Yuwanda!

I worked in publishing in New York City for a decade and have been a freelance writer since 1993. In 2002, I started self-publishing my own line of ebooks. Self-publishing wasn’t “a thing” back then. All of the books I published then were non-fiction, how-to ebooks – mostly about some aspect of freelance writing or starting an online business.

In 2013, I wrote my first romance novel; it was really a novella of about 30,000 words.

You’d think that with my extensive background in writing, publishing and self-publishing I’d be fully prepared to write fiction, right?

Wrong!

Nothing could have prepared me for the roller coaster ride that is writing and self-publishing romance.

But you know what? I’ve never had so much fun as a writer! The money – and you can make very good money writing romance – is almost a secondary benefit. Almost.

And it’s something anyone can learn to do, even if they’ve never written a word in their life. Here’s how I did it.

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Why isn’t your super-polished pitch getting any replies? Why does it take that editor three weeks to give you even basic feedback?

And for crying out loud, what do they have against the Oxford comma? As freelance writers, we’ve all been there. But we have to remember that editors are people, too. (Someone put that on a T-shirt!) and they have to keep their client’s best interest front and center. 

In this week’s post, Nikita Ross, a writer turned editor, shares a few lessons about what writers should know about editors … and vice versa.

If there is one thing I’ve learned during my career as a writer, it’s that cultivating a relationship with an editor can be challenging. There’s the initial fear of pitching to someone who will judge your work, interacting with different personalities, and managing expectations. At one point, I thought working with different editors was going to be the biggest challenge of my career.

Then I became one.

Rather than being a solo ghostwriter working with a few different editors, I became an editor judging other people’s work, working with even more different personalities, and managing more expectations.

The plus side? Being the editor for two publications has given me a glimpse behind the curtain and improved my writing. It also gave me an interesting perspective on how many talented writers don’t have the business savvy they need to get ahead in the freelance industry.

Without further ado, here’s what I learned about writing from becoming an editor:

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We received a lot of good feedback on Laura’s previous post on Horkey HandBook – the one where she revealed what makes a good pitch from the perspective of a hiring manager.

So we asked Laura to write a follow up about the dos and don’ts of freelancer-client relationships. What makes a client keep working with the same freelancer long term? And what makes them say “no, thanks” and start looking for new collaborators.

Here are the rules of how keep your freelancing clients coming back for more.

So you finally landed that lucrative freelance writing project you have been pitching yourself for. This is an exciting opportunity and certainly one worthy of celebration, but you also shouldn’t stop there.

As a freelance writer myself, my average client retention rate for retainers is 14 months. Two of my clients have been working with me for three years. The reality is that landing and keep a client are two different skills. Both of them are equally important skills to cultivate if you’re a freelancer.

In addition to working as a writer, I’ve also worked extensively as a digital project manager. In the course of doing that, I’ve worked with hundreds of freelancers.

Because of that background, I have some important advice that can help you to not only land that client, but keep the client, too.

I have seen far too many freelance writers drop off because they neglect to follow through on all the promises they made in their original pitch. I have shared in a previous post that I worked with just over a dozen freelance writers on a project in which each writer was responsible for turning in one article per week.

From that experience, a number of writers who submitted through the test phase of the project were paid for their work, but ultimately removed from the project.

Here are the things that you should and should not do as you start a working relationship with a new client:

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