Leaving Your Job to Become a Freelance Writer? 5 Keys to Success
I never imagined I’d one day be a full time freelance writer and journalist, able to travel the world and work anywhere.
That’s not to be glib or falsely modest; pay rates for freelance journalists plummeted when print advertising pounds became digital advertising pennies.
People wistfully talk of the ‘rivers of gold’ era when journalism was a well-paid profession; those days are, sadly, over.
But the freelance writing life is still possible – it just doesn’t look like it once did, and, in this new era, requires some extra skills and qualities.
It was a redundancy that first pushed me to try the freelance writing life full-time. The modest pay-out kickstarted my new life, which was going to be a ‘stop gap’ before I found my next 9 – 5 office role.
That stop-gap began in 2017…and is still going! I haven’t worked 9 – 5 full time since.
Some days I’ve worked many more than those 8 hours! Others I’ve just done a two or three hour stint and taken the rest of the day for some work/life balance. I am my own boss, and have been now for eight years.
Redundancy felt deflating at the time. Turns out, it was the best thing to happen to my career – the push I needed.
Since then I’ve written for everyone from the BBC and the Guardian to the New York Times and Vogue, my first book has been published in two different countries, and I’ve taken my one man storytelling show to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival!
Don’t see that as braggadocio, though. In those eight years, at least 75 per cent of my story pitches have been declined by editors (pretty standard but still, that’s a lot of ideas shot down.) Cash flow hasn’t always been easy. I’ve sometimes been asked to work ‘for free’ for the ‘exposure’ – having been writing for the Guardian since 2008! Like any role, it’s not without its frustrations.
It’s a tough gig and not like the dreamlife my opening sentences may’ve conjured.
Here are some tips if you’d also like to make it work for you.
1. A side hustle.
Freelance writing was my side-hustle to my 9-5 job for nine years before I made it my main gig. In that time I built up contacts, relationships, a portfolio of work examples, bylines, knowledge, experience and lessons from the (many!) mistakes I made.
Don’t leave your job till you have all these things in place; consider going part-time first.
Once you do leave your job and go full-time freelance, always be willing to have an additional side-hustle to subsidise the writing – the work will often ebb more than it flows. It’s competitive out there.
I was a grocery delivery bicycle courier alongside being a freelance writer at one point. Loved it. Got me away from being hunched over the laptop, and outside, where my creative juices could flow and ideas could germinate.
2. Get your finances in order.
Pay off any debts, pay yourself savings and a pension first, then take a wage from what you earn.
That rainy day will absolutely come and you need to be prepared for it. Your side hustle will help here.
Once you’ve built good relationships, you may be able to start commanding higher fees. But you need to prove yourself first. This means sucking up lower paid gigs at the beginning.
Be strategic and realistic about pay without being demanding and greedy from the off. Persuasion is more powerful than force when it comes to editors.
3. Set up a website:
Once you have several bylines and work examples, consider setting up a website by using a website hosting platform
Keep it clean, concise and up-to-date. It’ll give editors an opportunity to check out your best writing when you’re trying to convince them of taking on your next story.
4. Don’t take ‘no’ personally…
…you’ll be told this a lot! Be as resilient as an auditioning actor – you have to put yourself out there relentlessly to be considered for work, and the no is often nothing to do with the quality you’re offering. Be absolutely dogged. If one editor says no, tweak your pitch for the next seven editors. Then kill the story, forget it – and move onto the next.
5. Relationships are everything:
Not just with editors – with sources, PRs, other freelance writers, potential story subjects, experts and press officers of companies like universities, who you’ll need to keep on side.
Once you have excellent relationships with editors who trust you can deliver to deadline, to word length and copy that people want to actually read to the end, you can negotiate – more stories commissioned, more intel extracted, maybe even higher pay agreed.