5 Reasons Your Writing Career is Going Nowhere

July 17, 2007 – 6:29 am

Do you ever feel like your freelance writing career is completely stagnant and going nowhere fast? Do you try to kick it up a notch, but things never seem to improve, or at least by much? You might be making one of these common mistakes that freelance writers mistake. Here are five reasons why your writing career is going absolutely nowhere:

1. You’re not improving your craft. Like it or not, a lot of writers just can’t write. Some people write so casually that their work isn’t going to be taken seriously. Others write so formally that their language looks like a joke to the majority of readers (and therefore clients). No writer is perfect. We all have to keep working to improve. If your writing career doesn’t seem to be going anywhere, start by looking at what you’re writing. If you write low quality pieces (and you’ll need an objective opinion on that), you really can’t expect to move up the freelance writing ladder very far.

2. No one knows who you are. Being able to write doesn’t make you a writer. If you want a real career in this industry, you’re going to have to wear several hats: that of writer, entrepreneur, salesman, marketer, and more. If you can’t market your work and sell your style and your rates to potential clients, your career is going anywhere. Brush up on your marketing skills, and keep on doing that, no matter how much you think you know. Another way to get your name out there potential clients is to network with other writers and industry professionals. Never neglect professional networking, especially in the freelance world.

3. People know who you are, and they just don’t like you. How do you convey yourself publicly around your target market? Do you ever have anything useful to say, or do you only surface to practically beg for work and advertise your services like crazy? You don’t have to act all warm and fuzzy to get respect from clients and drive interest in your work. However, how you communicate and what you contribute to others (whether it be in forums, on blogs, articles, etc.) will play a role in whether or not your freelance writing career advances, and how quickly.

4. Your customers aren’t that happy with your past work. Just because a client doesn’t complain, it doesn’t mean they’re thrilled with your work. You’ll know when your clients are really happy when they start referring your services to others to the point where you don’t have to spend as much time marketing on your own time. This will also depend on the kinds of clients you work for. Clients paying peanuts for work are far less likely to go out of their way to do a writer a favor (after all, what they often care about is getting something for nothing, or close to it). Clients who are willing to pay more professional rates for higher quality work will have more invested in that quality, and tend to lead to more referrals to more higher quality clients.

5. Your rates are all wrong. A lot of freelance writers underprice their services so much early in the game that they literally cap their own earnings potential. If you do that, there’s nowhere to go with your career without changing your rate structure down the line, which can be incredibly difficult to do.

Let’s look at an example, saying you’ve calculated your costs, and you need to make $2000 per month from your writing. If you’re a writer charging $.01 per word, you would have to write 200,000 words per month (more than many, if not most, novels). If you’re a writer charging $.10 per word, you would have to write 20,000 words per month (which amounts to between 600 and 700 words per day) - much more doable, especially for higher quality writing with the most potential for industry advancement.

If a penny-per-word writer is cramming over 6000 words of writing into each day, 30 days per month, to reach their income goal, they won’t be able to take on more work without sacrificing the quality of their existing work further, which will hurt their reputation and chances of getting better clients (not to mention risking a burn out). The $.10 per word writer, on the other hand, can reach that goal with a reasonable amount of writing each day (around 1 - 2 articles), and still have time left over to not only market themselves more effectively, but work additional clients into their schedule, therefore leaving room to grow their income without having to alter their rates.

Now look at $1.00 per word writers. They only have to write 2000 words per month to earn their income goal. Will they get as many clients at that rate as the penny-per-word writer? Of course not. But they have much more time to market themselves to find the clients willing to pay their rates, they have more time to take on additional clients (even at lower rates), pursue their own writing projects like a blog or a book, and they’ll have more time to network. They also won’t likely come into a situation where they’ll need to raise their rates later to get by.

Here’s the underlying point. When you launch a freelance writing career, know what you need to make each month to cover your expenses, taxes, etc., and then increase your estimate by at least 10% (because you’ll almost certainly forget to account for something or need money for unexpected expenses that spring up from time to time). Once you know what you need to earn, think about how much you can realistically, and consistently, write each day (based on how many days per week you want to work on your writing). Don’t overestimate this, or you’ll burn out early.

Set your rates a little bit higher than what you actually think you need, so you can A) reach your goals with fewer clients, B) not risk having to raise your rates in the near future, and C) leave yourself room to grow in the future by adding more clients into the mix without overwhelming your schedule. Of course, there are some assumptions that you’ll have to make, such as that your writing is actually worth the price you come up with when setting your rates, and that you actually have the marketing ability to pull in clients at those rates. If not, see the points above about those issues.