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9 Ways Freelance Writers Are Leaving Money on the Table

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Freelance writers, how much money are you leaving on the table?

9 Ways Freelance Writers Are Leaving Money on the Table

When completing writing projects, you tend to charge for writing, editing and revising only. You don’t fully consider all aspects of completing a project. Unfortunately, you are leaving a lot of money on table – literally and figuratively.

Also, when you are hired for writing services, you are not just writers. You uncover and collect information through research and interviews to provide a comprehensive story.

You are artists who bring thoughts and ideas to life. You are geniuses who connect concepts to make them relatable. You are also editors who organize information to ensure that the final draft is easy to read and easy to understand.

You are consultants, business partners and experts that should be charging for your time, knowledge and expertise.

If you are not charging for all of the services you provide in a project, you are leaving money on the table. How much you’re losing is unknown, but you’ll have an idea after reading about the nine services you should be charging for.

Ways Freelance Writers Leave Money on the Table

1. Brainstorming & Conceptualizing

Brainstorming is the process of generating ideas, selecting different angles for your articles, and developing outlines. You should allocate at least an hour to this activity, even if the project seems relatively simple.

You just never know where your creativity will take you.

2. Background reading

When starting new assignments, you have to read previously published information for two reasons:

1) to learn more about the company you’re serving and 2) to determine if the data is relevant to the current project. Annual reports, website content, newsletters and other company reports are just a few documents you can read to gather information you need.

The reading time will vary depending on your reading speed; the simplicity or complexity of the documents you’re reading; and the number of pages included in the documents.

3. Research

You will almost always conduct research in your projects, even if you’re just confirming dates, times and places. It is a time-consuming, but necessary aspect of writing.

In addition to charging for the actual time you use to conduct research, you should also charge for reading, organizing, and summarizing your findings.

One task writers tend to overlook and not charge for is searching for free photos, videos, and other multimedia to accompany articles. Expect to spend at least 15 minutes doing this.

4. Interviews

Like research, conducting interviews is very time consuming. First, you have to schedule the interview which could take time due to busy schedules.

You also have to compose relevant questions to ensure that you’re capturing the essence of the message.

Then, you have to conduct the actual interview and transcribe the notes from the interview. Lastly, you have to creatively weave content from the interview into the story.

5. Additional Revisions & Edits

I have seen writers include up to two revisions in their contracts for no extra charge. However, that should cover only minor changes.

If the clients want to make major changes after the approved completion of the project or if they want to change directions mid-project, you need to charge accordingly and revise the contract to reflect the changes.

6. Related Expenses

Related expenses include charges for e-mail and internet services, paper and ink, and all other charges incurred during the completion of the project.

Internet and e-mail services are used to communicate with clients. Paper and ink are used to print the project. You may even have to use envelopes and postage.

7. Additional Meetings & Consultations

You will have one meeting with the client to determine the direction and expectations of the project. However, if multiple meetings are required, you can bill clients for your time only or for time and travel.

Be sure to document this in the contract. Lastly, conversations exceeding 10 minutes are consultations, so be sure to charge for them.

8. Aggravation

 One writer charges extra for aggravation “just because”. He doesn’t wait for something to happen; he charges automatically based on previous experiences.

The aggravation could be caused by the client or unexpected glitches that occur during the course of the project.

9. Promotion

Many times, clients may ask you to promote blogs posts, press releases and newsletters. Yes, you will do it…for an additional fee. Writing and promotion are two different services and you should charge the client for the value of each one.

For example, you may charge $300 to write press releases and $1,000 to send it to media outlets. Or, you can charge $250 for a blog post and another $150 to promote it.

Are you charging for writing, editing, and revisions only when quoting rates for your writing services? If so, you are leaving money on the table. Now is a good time to review your rates for services, sweep that money off the table, and take it to the bank.

Your Turn

Which of the above services are you not charging for now but can boost your boost your line? Let us know in the comment section below.

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Marcie Hill

Marcie Hill, M.S., is a freelance writer, serial blogger, self-published author of 7 books and speaker who enjoys enlightening others about unknown and little known facts. Follow her on Twitter and LinkedIn.

Comments

  2. What a great list of things to remember to charge for and not just give as a handout. I especially like the exact examples in #9 of what you could charge for blog posts and press releases. I think there is a fine line between giving a lot of value and giving away your services. Great article!

    Reply

  3. Awesome post! Really informative for freelancers out there. I recently hired a group of freelance blog writers and they are doing a quite satisfying job for my blog. Will share this post with them for knowledge. Keep posting!

    Reply

  4. Hello Marcie,

    Awesome post, I’ve been a freelancer for 5 years and these tips are gold. I guess I’m just gonna bookmark this post.

    i realy apply this techniques in my blogging site thanks once again

    Reply

  5. Nice to read this article thanks for your kind information that you have given to us about why freelance leave money on the table. The things that you have mentioned in your article are very important in the point of view of creativity.

    Reply

  9. I just stepped in freelance writing as a content writer and now i have a brief idea about how can i add few extra bucks . I did a few projects . They asked me promote but i denied as it wasn’t my job . Now i regret i missed some easy money . Silly me . Thanks for the heads up .

    Reply

  14. Awesome !! All the points of your article are useful but these days people believe that without research they can write the article by copying posts and using a spinner. Real SEO articles need proper research and hard work.

    Thanks for the great information.

    Reply

  15. Revisions is always a toughie.

    For huge contracts, like novels, we take it one chapter at a time. There are often lots of revisions in the first chapter, until we get tone and style down pat, then minor revisions along the way. We factor that into our price.

    For smaller projects, such as a best man speech or a blog article, I usually tell them reasonable tweaks are covered, so make sure to get your instructions right from the start. Yeah, no coddling passive aggressive clients who say, “I don’t like it. Do it again differently” – I’ve seen a few of those.

    For research, again it depends of the nature of a project. Confirming dates pr how to spell niche words (let’s say when writing on cardiology or on horticulture) is a given, and factored into the price. But for any complex research, we charge extra and by the hour.

    If an individual client (not a big company) has a lot of research to do, we generally recommend doing it themselves or hiring a student. It can get expensive to hire a pro at pro rates to do 100 hours of research that a student could do just as well.

    Reply

  17. This is an interesting read. The writers have a lot of opportunities to earn money apart from writing the content. I am a blogger and these suggestions can add up good value to my career. Article writing involves a lot of intense work and these tips can be certainly helpful.

    Reply

  26. Hello Marcie,

    Firstly I would love to appreciate your article/blog.

    From an SEO perspective, I would love to say content should be unique and clear. If content would be unique and clear user will get attracted more to a website and will grow business in a more better way.

    Marcie, please share me some more information in regards how to get more traffic more on a website?

    Reply

  30. As someone who has spent over $1M hiring freelance writers, I can honestly say there are even more ways they are leaving money on the table than this. They only see themselves as people who write rather than someone who can solve an ongoing problem. Its a shame really.
    Sam would love you to read ..How To Become A Life CoachMy Profile

    Reply

  33. Great Information, all the points are useful for real article writer but these days people believe that without research they can write the article by copy paste and spinner. Real seo article needs proper research and hard work.

    Reply

  34. very important and worth article you wrote for all freelancer users. I also share this post to my freelancer friends who always does same when they have time to earn unlimited money through his / her skills. Thanks for sharing good post.

    Reply

  36. Hi Marcie,

    Good post! Your post is very informative and you have done well to explain things. These 9 ways are worth thinking about because at the end of the day if freelance writers are paid well, then their quality of work is bound to raise. This in return helps both the client and the freelancer.

    Thank you for this lovely post. have a good day. 🙂
    Tarique Amir would love you to read ..Computers in our daily lifeMy Profile

    Reply

  40. Great information, All the points are useful for real article writer but these days people believe that without research they can write the article by copy pest and spinner. Real SEO article needs proper research and hard work. Thanks for the great information.

    Reply

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