However, the big question is what people are looking for. Over on the Half Hog Forums, I’ve posed the question… what’s your ideal writing site, as a writer or as a client looking for content?

Who knows, one day you might actually get your ideal site!

If you have opinions, I’d LOVE to hear them, either in the comments here or over on the forum.

Oink!

As you all know by now, Going The Half Hog: Freelance Writing Without Marketing will soon be published. Since I’ve been somewhat obsessed with getting it done and consequently talking about it a lot, I’ve run into several people who’ve asked me the same two questions:

Is it true that almost everything in the book is available on ScrawlBug for free? And if that’s true… why am I publishing a book? Aren’t I cutting my nose off despite my face (as they say)?

There are a lot of answers to those questions, so I thought I’d clear the matter up publicly instead of replying to each individual who asks.

And yes, I know there are three questions there: the third sort of runs on from the second.

Let’s start with the first question, since it has a nice, easy answer: yes, almost everything in the book is available on ScrawlBug for free. There are a few extra bits in the book but pretty much all the vitalstuff is already online.

What about the whole “nose and face” thing? By publishing everything for free here, aren’t I defeating the point of a book you have to pay to read?

For starters, let me lay out three important facts:

1. Nothing I’ve learned over the last three years of being a freelance writer has cost me any money.¹
2. At heart, I’m an information-sharing hippy who believes that education should be free for everyone.
3. I intensely dislike marketing, which is why there are no ads on this blog and why the book’s about freelance writing without marketing (duh).

That should answer why virtually all the information is available here for free. If it doesn’t, er… try reading the three points again!

Now, the big question is why I’m publishing a book with a price tag.

From a personal point of view, the Half Hog is one of two books that have been trundling around inside my head for the last two years. The other’s my NaNo attempt (which is way behind schedule).

When you’ve had an idea slowly constructing itself in your brain like some kind of time-lapsed Lego film, with pieces flying in from all over the place and slotting themselves neatly into place, it’s hard to resist the urge to catch it on paper, bind it and sit it on the shelf, to regard in times of adversity, against the flapping of the flames.

On a less personal level, when I started squeezing the Half Hog out of my synapses, one of the most annoying parts of the process was searching for and collating the content I wanted to include from ScrawlBug. Anyone who’s ever tried to do this knows two things:

1. The WordPress search sucks.
2. Categories never work the way you wish they did.

It was a massive job to go through the whole of the site, piece everything together and assign entries to the different parts of the book where they would appear. Even once I’d figured out how to export a WordPress blog as text (or PDF in my case)² it was a major undertaking.

All the information is in one place and in order, so it’s easy to read and refer to.

So there you have it. If you don’t mind hunting around the ScrawlBug site, using the WP search engine (I pity the fool who tries that) or going through everything to collate the information you want, it’s all free. If not, the book will only set you back $10-$15 (price TBD) and will save you the hassle.

Plus you can carry it around with you or use it to prop open a door. Awesome.

Have you signed up for your chance to win a free copy of Going The Half Hog?

¹ If you exclude getting scammed once and paying for a month’s membership on a bidding site to try it out, that is.

² Lordy me, have I really been working on the book since June? How time flies when you’re beating yourself senseless against the brick wall of writer’s block.

I hadn’t realised just how frightening it is having my work read by a professional editor with 15 years’ freelancing experience and who has worked on NY Times best-sellers before!

The good news is twofold: firstly that it looks like things are still on schedule to publish in a week or two (assuming I can rewrite quickly enough) and secondly, she had this to say about the book:

I have learned a lot, and I thank you for that! A lot! I now have some good understandings of things I didn’t have a clue about before – and I think they are totally worth exploring. You have something terrific here.

Awesome and very reassuring.

Don’t forget you can win a copy (once it’s published) by signing up to the updates list over here!

Going The Half Hog takes everything I’ve learned about part-time freelance writing in the last three years and throws it open.

It’s written for freelance writers – new or experienced – who want to build a successful part-time career but don’t want to spend their time on self-promotion, advertising and marketing.

There’s info on what you need to get started, on different ways to earn, on spotting good (and bad) job offers, on the terminology, the scams, the sites and a whole load of other stuff that you really can’t do without!

Why “half-hogging”? Because I don’t have the time to go the whole hog. Because I hate marketing. And because I don’t want to spend a third of my time promoting myself, like the gurus say is essential for success. I’ve got better things to do – like working for money!

The book’s headed into the big editing and art phase now – subscribe to keep up with the news, find out when it goes on sale and for the chance to win a free copy!

Should you charge $20 an hour or $200? Should you charge less as a newcomer? Is web content worth less than magazine content? How much is experience worth? How can you measure talent?

Screw all that back-and-forth discussion. You could spend hours pointlessly defending your point of view and that’s time you could have used to write.

Cut through the crap and concentrate on one simple question:

How do you set your basic rate?

There are two main schools of thought:

• charge what you need to run a full-time business or
• charge what you think your work is worth.

Some writers, particularly those in developing countries or new to the market, will often work for as little as $1 an hour, while experienced specialists in the US may want $250 an hour (or even more).

Let’s ignore several million words of debate and be blunt: freelancing pay varies wildly. When it comes down to it, you can set your rate as high or as low as you want:

There is no yardstick to measure by.²

If you have absolutely no idea how much to charge, a good way to start is to use an online tool like the one on Freelance Switch (it’s very cool, seriously). It’s designed for people who want to work full-time as a freelancer (of any kind) but it can still give you a starting point for your ideal rate, as well as reminding you of all the things you’ll need to consider if you decide to scale up your half-hog career in the future.

Alternatively, if you have no idea how much you want (or need) to earn, you can start with a general figure and work from there. What if I were to say “$20 an hour”? Does that sound about right or is your gut reaction that it’s too high or too low? The method’s vague, but it’ll give you an idea of what you think your work is worth.

You should also bear in mind that, unless you’re a well-established professional with a great deal of experience, regular work and a large amount of feedback (or a long list of testimonials), your fees will usually be negotiable. Even if you set a fixed rate, many clients want to barter.

Decide the value of your work and state it clearly when you’re applying for work or quoting to clients.

Once you’ve decided your basic rate, you’ll need to figure out how much you can produce in an hour, so that you can quote to clients. If you’re charging $20 an hour and it takes you three hours to write a 500-word article, you’re going to have to quote $60 for the work – or learn to write faster.

An average writer can put together a high-quality 500-word article in an hour, assuming they’re reasonably familiar with the subject and don’t need to do much research (if any). That number of words can easily halve for a technical subject with research or double/triple if it’s your particular specialty or you’re a fast typist.

Proofreaders and editors generally work a lot quicker, since they’re reading and adjusting, rather than creating the work. Averages run at about 3,000 words (10 book pages) an hour for basic proofing. That number changes dramatically for editing, depending on the edit depth and the quality of the original work. The word count can easily drop to 1,000 per hour (or even half that) for a complex substantive edit.

Now that you’ve worked out a base rate and a per-article or per-word rate, there’s a question sitting at the back of your head, desperate to be answered:

“Am I good enough to charge that much?”

You’re the only person who can answer that: if you have the cojones to set your rates high, go after high-paying jobs and produce the high-quality content the client wants, then you’re certainly good enough. But if your clients never come back, you need to find out why.

Finally, you need to consider economies of scale. This is the reduction in unit cost a business experiences as it expands, e.g. from large manufacturing runs of the same item. In the writing world, these economies refer more to a reduction in unit price when you take on a bigger project – i.e. bigger jobs cost relatively less.

Do they exist in writing? In many ways, yes: if you write 50 articles on 50 different subjects, you’re not going to save any time on the research; if they’re all on a similar theme you can re-use anything you learn. The latter job should be quicker and therefore can be cheaper.

You also need to consider the fact that someone’s paying you for 50 articles, which means you won’t need to find new projects for a while and can use your job-hunting time for paid work. That should be worth a small discount. The same goes for ongoing work from regular clients: slightly lower prices can encourage them to stay and keep your in-tray full.

However, don’t get caught out. Just because a client offers ongoing work doesn’t mean they should automatically get a big price reduction. You’ve worked out your base rate for a reason: make sure you’re still earning enough for your time, no matter how big or long-term the job is.

Oh, and one last thing: don’t take any crap from people who say low rates are destroying the writing market. Bunch of whiney-ass snobs.

How do you set your basic rate? I’d love to know!

¹ Yes, it has a title. No, I don’t have an editor or publisher. Yes, I edited the book text for this post. No, I don’t know when it will be finished. And yes, I’ll announce the title soon. Probably.

² Unless you’re a professional journalist, then there are accepted rates.

Mankini Attack! (from a Giffgaff.com ad campaign)

No, I’m not talking about the mankini, once seriously (well, supposedly seriously) touted as the next big thing.

I’m talking about my current project. Thanks to my main freelance client going off and having a baby (or rather his wife has), I’ve finally had time to sit down and look at one of the book ideas I had a while ago… and start writing.

It’s still in its infancy but it’s going to be a useful resource for freelancers who don’t have the time for marketing or who want to work part-time and don’t want to waste hours on all the business-building stuff.

I’ll keep you updated as things progress (or you can watch the meter on the right). And at some point, I guess I’ll need an editor and some feedback!

Creating your own eBooks is surprisingly simple if you know which tools to use: it comes down to writing something and chucking it into a converter. Yup, it’s that simple.

On the other hand, those funky 3D advertising graphics aren’t quite so easy – so I put that in the guide as well, to show you where you can find free resources to build your own pretty adverts.

You’ll find the new guide on the very colourful, updated Free Stuff page.

(Did you notice the new links for that and my subscription options on the right?)

Let me know what you think of the guide!