Freelance Writing: Ways To Work

At the moment, there’s another wave of debate over freelancing salaries, which inevitably leads to a conversation about the different ways people earn money from their writing. I thought I’d stay one step ahead of the game and post some thoughts and basic info for new freelancers who might not be aware of the different possibilities.

Although there are thousands of ways to earn – everything from data entry to publishing your own books – income basically comes in three types, and that income is earned in three major ways.

Revenue, Re-Usable, Residual

Anything that’s written for money comes in these flavours. Your words can be sold directly for revenue, you can sell their usage or you can earn royalties on them.

Direct revenue is the simplest form: this involves either writing to order on a freelancing gig or selling your pre-written articles. In either case, you’re producing content for magazines, web sites, blogs and other publications – real or virtual. The income is one-off: once the content is sold, that’s it. No more money. Consequently, the rates for writing are generally higher.

Example resources: FWJ Network, GreenGigs, Anne’s Blog, Freelancing sites

Re-usable content is work that you produce and for which you retain the copyright. Instead of selling all rights to the content, you sell the right to publish it – meaning you can re-sell it to other interested parties. This kind of work is less popular among publishers and pays less.

Example resources: Constant Content

Residual income (or royalties) comes from existing work which stays published – usually on the Internet, unless you’re a published book author. There may be some up-front pay involved, but most of the income comes from page views, advertising clicks and other such popularity-based calculations. Pay is significantly lower than any other form of writing, but is perpetual – the content continues to earn for months and years.

Example resources: Article Directories, Paid blogging sites (e.g. Orble, Today, Worldblogosphere), Google AdSense

Local, Online, Third Party

When it comes to where your writing is published, there are also three options. You can sell your work locally, sell it online or publish through a third party.

Local gigs are exactly that: they’re real-world jobs for clients who are based around where you live. A lot of freelancers who seek work online forget that their town is probably home to a large number of businesses who could put a talent with words to good use.

It’s easily overlooked, but worth remembering: not only are you in direct contact with the buyer (be they a shop owner, leaflet publisher or newspaper), but if you can establish a presence there’s often a better chance of long-term work.

Working online opens much wider possibilities, but generally means a significant increase in competition: everyone and anyone can apply for the same job. This means you’re up against talent from many countries, of many ages and of varied experience. It’s a tough market.

Online exposure can mean virtual celebrity. On the other hand, it can also mean that your writing sits in obscurity for ever: there are millions of sites on the Internet, so to stand out among them you really do have to have something special (or be lucky).

Third-party publishing is a safer way to write online, but generally has smaller rewards. Instead of footing the bill for server hosting, bandwidth and admin of your site, you can publish via a large, established company. All the revenue-share blogging sites and article directories work like this, acting as host to your words and pocketing some of the income as payment for their service.

Many of those same sites also syndicate content to other web sites or real-world magazines. While the quality demanded for that to happen is generally much higher, it can be a way to break into the writing market: virtually all of them retain your byline when syndicating.

So Which Is Best?

You’re going to hate me for saying this, but I honestly believe that none of the different ways is better than another. It is entirely possible for anyone to earn a decent living using any of them – but rest assured, they’ll all be hard work!

Some writers have a particular favourite – usually the one that worked for them – or a particular dislike. As you’ll see if you read the linked blog entries above, virtually every type of earning has proponents and detractors. This is just the way of things.

Some people will say that direct sales is the only way to go: you’re earning the best rates, you get paid for what you write and you know how much you’re worth. It’s also much more like a ‘real’ job, because you’re in contact with the employer directly, there are deadlines and topics are frequently dictated.

Others will opt for the residual income model: there’s generally more freedom in what you write about, it’s mostly free of deadlines and – although the income is pitifully small compared to selling direct – the earnings come in regularly for years and add up as you produce more work.

The Message

When looking at freelance writing, ask yourself these questions:

(a) Which way suits me?

(b) Will one of these options work better for my situation?

(c) Should I change the way I work, now that I know there are options?

There should always be a lesson to learn from the things we read, no matter how simple it is. So here’s the message from this summary of different working styles:

Never let anyone tell you that the way you are working is wrong. Look at the alternatives and decide which model best suits your freelancing life.

Have you asked yourself those question? Did they give you unexpected answers? I’d love to know.