The quickest way to gain a competitive advantage is by taking common knowledge from one area and applying it to another. However, not many people do this.
There are millions of freelancers in multiple fields. From the self-employed carpenter through to the engineering consultant, almost every industry has some form of freelance workers that range from the low-paid odd-job through to the people who make so much money they’re not even considered freelancers.
Let’s talk about the major subjects of this site: freelance writing and online business.
Most freelance writers don’t know all that much about business and never think about other freelancers in other professions. But they should.
How much do freelance writers get paid? It varies, but generally the answer is “not as much as they should.”
Why?
Because when you compare the work and agreement that your average freelance writer has i.e. write words, send them over, get paid and never think about those words ever again, you realise most freelance writers are being stupid about how they approach their business and how they choose to get paid as a freelance writer.
Now, the above is obviously a massive, massive subject that I can’t do justice in a single article. What I am going to do is to take three other types of freelancers and show how their approach to getting paid as a freelancer differs from a freelance writer approach, and why it’s better.
Let’s get to it.
Freelance Musicians
I know a lot of freelance musicians, ranging from the smart at business and talented through to the don’t-even-make-ends-meet crowd of bar-strummers. Most musicians have a “portfolio” style of work, where everything they do will be some form of music, but they’ll take that skill and turn it into multiple opportunities.
(Freelance writers don’t even do this basic thing.)
Here are a few ideas that you can take from that freelance portfolio career approach:
- It’s ALL About Intellectual Property
Musicians will release their songs. Usually, they’ll have a CD, iTunes and other downloads and also repackage to YouTube. It gets a lot more complicated if you’re talking business-savvy musicians, but the general point is that musicians redistribute their IP and writers don’t.
- Teaching
Most professional musicians don’t rely on the sales of their music as their sole breadwinner. In fact, most of them teach in some capacity – whether it’s workshops, private tuition or being standard in-a-school teachers.
If you’re a writer, then you can teach. It doesn’t even need to be teaching writing per se. (and probably shouldn’t be) but you can teach in a niche. It opens up a world of possibilities.
- Live Events
Musicians do stuff face-to-face. From bars to stadiums and little ensembles through to big bands, there are plenty of face-to-face opportunities that all freelancers should take note of.
I’d write more about this, but I haven’t left my house for six years, so whatever.
There are also other things, like experience pricing (i.e. you pay more for the “experience”) and merchandising.
If you think a freelance writer can’t do those things, then you need to get thinking on a different track.
Freelance Artists
The big takeaway from freelance artists is their pricing model. You can get the run of the mill digital print that they have Merch by Amazon ship to you – which costs not a lot – along with prints on mugs, calendars and the like.
Then you get the actual prints and collections. These are the mid-ticket to high-ticket items depending on the niche.
Finally, you get the commissions and big-fish pricing for custom projects.
Smarter artists also expand into some of the things I mentioned above: experiences, merchandise, and intellectual property licensing. Teaching is another big area.
Also… some of the smarter companies are taking a page from what I’m about to mention next.
Freelance Tech, Web Development and Other Tech-Nerd Stuff
If you are a freelance writer who adopts some of the pricing structures that the tech industry takes for granted, you’ll have more monetary success.
Sure, you can get a client and he’ll pay you well and that’s great. But if you have one client who disappears, then you are in trouble. The tech industry solves this handily:
- Freemium (aka we tell you it’s free but you pay, sucker) model
Freemium is a marketing strategy that gets tons of people in the door and addicted to drugs or your really helpful bit of software.
- Recurring Revenue
This is a massive place where freelance writers totally fail. Recurring payments are secure payments and mean you can, as a freelancer, pay your bills on time regularly and start investing in other stuff.
The biggest fear with freelance work is the idea that it can dry up. It’s a reasonable fear that comes true for a lot of people.
Recurring payments are a way to mitigate the effects of this.
- Other Stuff
I realise this list is getting longer than I thought. Other stuff to think about: package pricing, business-to-business, high-ticket for commercial uses, licensing options and charging for updates and upgrades. All commonly adopted in the tech industry, all could be adopted by the freelance writing industry but aren’t.
Final Thoughts
This list took me about three minutes to plan, and the article has taken me about twenty minutes to write. I could go on for hours just with basic ideas from other freelance places, but it’d be better for you if you did it yourself.
Find some freelancers in other industries, see what models they use and think about how you could apply that to your freelance writing (or whatever it is you do.)
You’ll find that there are tons of different service options that you’re not thinking of.