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Earlier this month James Chartrand asked “Are you scared of spending money?” over at FWJ. I’ve been meaning to share some thoughts on the subject of what is, and isn’t, necessary to spend money on as a freelance writer. I’d also like to touch on the business element of freelancing. Does being a freelancer mean you should operate under the same mindset as other types of entrepreneurs?

Freelancing vs Running a Business

To super-summarize, James’ point is that freelancers should be willing to spend more money outsourcing projects if it will increase their billable hours. On the surface it makes a lot of sense–very basic business sense at that. What do I mean by that?

Let’s assume you’re a writer in need of a new website. You have reasonable Web design and coding skills. You could do it yourself. The question James asks is whether or not you actually should. On the most basic level, here’s the thought process behind outsourcing your new design:

If you design your new website yourself, you’re not being paid for that time that could otherwise be spent on additional client work (billable hours).

It makes sense, right? You want to maximize your billable hours so you can earn more, and more, and more. This is what basic business tells you (although I’m not saying James specifically mentioned all of these things)–you should outsource that design work. You should outsource your bookkeeping and accounting. You should outsource as much of your marketing and SEO as possible. You should outsource your customer service and order processing (get a virtual assistant). You may as well outsource your own writing while you’re at it (like a sales page for your new product). For that matter, you could even outsource your client work, allowing you to hire cheaper writers to do the work while you keep the difference for bringing in the clients and handling final edits.

In other words, outsource as much as you can, so you have as many directly billable hours as possible to take on paying (or higher-paying) work.

Why I Disagree with Outsourcing all Non-paying Tasks

First let me be clear. James says that freelancing is a business. I think he’s correct to a certain degree. Freelancers should plan their business and marketing strategies. They should market themselves constantly like any business. They have to ultimately make money in order to be sustainable. I’ve worked in a variety of situations – as an employee with large organizations, as a small business owner (my PR firm), and as a freelancer. And while I’m one to constantly tell you here that you have to treat your freelance career as a business, there are limits to that. Why? Because there’s one important distinction:

Freelancing is not only a business. It’s first and foremost a lifestyle. Many folks get into freelancing because they want to work independently. They have no interest or desire to start playing the role of project manager, dealing with other contractors constantly (and I’ll tell you from experience that getting someone else to do something right can take just as long, if not longer than, just doing it yourself).

Freelancers aren’t looking to run formal businesses for the most part. Those who are will usually go ahead and register those businesses. I know several who wanted to play the role of boss rather than solopreneur, and they went on to start content firms where they outsource all of the actual writing to others while they just edit and deal with clients.

On top of that, where does it really end then? By that same logic of saying you should always strive for more billable hours, you could also say that you should work twice as many overall hours. Why? Just because they’re there, and you’re not monetizing them yet (but could). But getting out of the grind is often a goal of freelancers, and again–it’s about a lifestyle and not just making more money.

Now am I saying that you should never outsource? Absolutely not. But my feelings are that you should always choose what’s best for you, as long as you’re able to reach your ultimate income goals. Those freelancers who want to keep earning more and more usually do so by formalizing their business and / or creating ancillary products. But those who simply want to enjoy working from home don’t need that. They may not need to shoot for $250k or $100k or even $50k per year. All they may truly want is to earn enough to fully suppport themselves, or enough to complement any other household income (such as one spouse working to bring in extra income while still being able to stay home with the kids). There is absolutely nothing wrong with that, again though, as long as they’re able to reach their income goals.

When Should You Outsource?

I’ll agree with James on a fundamental level: if you’re looking to increase your income, and you find you’re spending a huge amount of time on non-income-generating activities, then outsourcing is probably a good bet.

Another thing to consider is your current financial situation. Many freelancers simply don’t have cash on-hand to outsource, even if they wanted to. If you have extra funds and you’d like to pass some of the burden on to someone else, by all means, go for it.

If there’s a task you hate doing, go ahead and outsource it. I’ll give you an example. I ran a Web directory that archived deep links of articles all around the Web. It was a fun project then, but adding links was absolutely mind-numbing. So I hired two people to do it for me. I’d give them article topics, and they would find quality content and add the links with custom descriptions. It worked out for everyone. The directory ate up less of my time and didn’t bore me to tears, and they were paid to do work they found exceptionally easy (and for some reason enjoyed!)

If you don’t have the skills to do something, that’s another good time to look at outsourcing. Let’s go back to our original scenerio, but assume you have no idea how to code a website. It could take a rather long time to learn, and that much of a time investment probably isn’t worthwhile unless you plan to be doing a lot of design work in the future (I won’t say never to learn something new – doing so is actually the best way to know if your contractors in the future are doing things well to begin with). I’ll give you another personal example. I’ve designed and coded several sites in the past. I’m also exceptionally fussy about design work, and the only designer I’d consider had a long waiting list the last time I checked. I’m planning to redesign and re-launch one of my blogs soon, and it couldn’t wait. I opted to do the new design myself. It only took a few hours (during this past weekend, and since I never schedule work on my weekends for clients, it didn’t touch my billable hours). However, while I can code a static site fairly quickly, I’ve never coded a Wordpress theme specifically. Learning to do that has been on my to-do list for ages, but now just wasn’t the time since I have a large client load, an e-book and book in the works, and a content strategy to plan for the blog re-launch. My plate is full (and I’m not nearly as fussy about the code–I can always clean it up quickly if I need to ), so that part of the new design I’ll be outsourcing. My skills aren’t at a level where I could churn the blog theme out quickly enough to make it worth my while.

When Not to Outsource

There are several situations where, while outsourcing sounds like a good idea on the surface, you probably shouldn’t do it. Here are a few examples.

If there’s something you’re incredibly fussy about, and you know up front you probably won’t be happy until you do it yourself, then just do it yourself. As long as you have the skills to get the job done fairly quickly, you’ll probably save more time going that route than having to deal with educating your contractor about your market and mission and then evaluating their work and getting them to tweak things until they’re just right.

If you don’t want to take on that project manager role, outsourcing might also be a bad idea. Let’s say you’ve recently raised your rates, but you still have a few older regular clients on your old rate system. You know they won’t pay your new rates, but you also don’t want to give up the steady work. You can do one of three things:

1. Bite the bullet, raise their rates, and be prepared to lose them if needs be (what I suggest) so you can focus on the new market you’re targeting.
2. Keep doing that lower-paying work yourself just to keep them on board, but sacrifice higher-paying work in the process.
3. Pursue higher-paying work yourself, but keep those clients on your roster. Outsource their work to a cheaper writer, and try to keep everyone happy.

Again, #3 sounds good in theory, and may very well work for some. However it also carries potential problems. For example, you will likely have to train those writers to take over in your style (which your clients are accustomed to, and why they keep coming back to you). You will have to deal with the administrative side of paying those writers (records you never had to keep before). You will have to take time to proofread and edit their work more than likely. You will have to deliver it to the client. You also may still have unhappy clients on your hands to deal with if your sub-contractors just aren’t meeting their expectations. In other words, there are real headaches involved, and things take time to deal with. In fact, they may take enough time that you would have earned more overall by just writing them yourself (what you were trying to avoid).

You always need to consider your ROI (return on investment), but it shouldn’t necessarily be your be all and end all–remembering that we’re talking about more than a business but a full lifestlyle in freelancing. What that means is that you need to compare your options. Will you get better overall end results by investing money through outsourcing, or by investing time to do it yourself.

I’ll give you another example: I would never outsource my overall marketing and PR strategic planning to a firm. Why? Because to find someone with credentials that match my own, it would cost too much to make it worth my while. I already intimately know my market and various audiences, as well as the tactics and tools of the trade. I know how to get the best return for my time in those areas, and it’s in my best interest to use those skills for myself (as opposed to using them for someone else – which is why I gave up the firm to focus on writing full-time to begin with). By using those skills for myself instead, I’ve attracted more work than ever, including income increases. If, however, I didn’t have my background in those areas, I would probably waste a heck of a lot of time playing around with marketing tactics that just don’t deliver in the grand scheme of things (wasting time and losing money). If that were the case, I would say outsourcing would be a good bet for me (if not my full marketing campaigns, at least outsourcing to a trainer to help strategize and teach me what I’d need to know to implement those campaigns without them). The same would apply to just about any skill.

At nearly 2000 words, I’ll leave it at that for now. While I understand James’ perspective as a small business owner myself, I also view things somewhat differently. And that’s okay–reasonable people often disagree. What I’d really like to know are your thoughts!

Do you think you should outsource whenever possible to increase billable hours? Do you take a completely DIY route? Why?

I’ll pick up this topic again next week to talk about how my rate-setting strategy and schedule planning is already designed to maximize earnings–basically an alternative approach to earning more as a freelance writer without having to take on contractors when you don’t want to. I’ll also be taking a look at how combining those two strategies may give us the best of both worlds. I’ll even give you a basic checklist of my own expenses as a writer–where I spend money as an example of my approach of being able to build a thriving freelance writing career, even if you start from next to nothing. Check back in early next week for that!

Related posts:

1. Damn! Why Didn’t I Write That? – Book Review
2. Reader Question: Specializing in Article Writing – Where do I Begin?
3. Odd Question for You
4. Have a Writing-Related Question?
5. Should You Outsource Your Client Writing?

About the Author: Jennifer Mattern

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Jenn is a professional blogger and freelance business writer. She has worked as a freelance writer since 1999, and has been an active business and niche blogger since 2004. She owns All Freelance Writing as well as several other sites and blogs covering PR, small business, and related topic areas. She is also currently writing a nonfiction book for freelance writers called The Query-Free Freelancer, and is the author of the Web Writer's Guide e-book series.

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TAGS: business, Freelancing, make money