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Last week we talked about situations where it may be to your benefit to consider outsourcing, those where it may not be, and the fact that a significant amount of outsourcing is not necessary to earning a significant income as a freelance writer. In fact, freelance writers benefit from a low overhead overall compared to many more traditional startups.

What I’m not going to do is further address some of James’ assumptions in his response on FWJ however. Frankly, this topic is far from being worth getting into a pissing match over. To summarize, he and I disagree on whether or not freelancing should be treated as a more traditional business, or if freelancing is more of a comprehensive lifestyle (with similarities and a heavy business component, but with a different emphasis on earning). He has been successful on his end. I’ve been successful on mine, both in a tradtional business and in freelancing. I have no doubt that his strategy will work for many, as will mine. Both are essentially about the same thing – maximizing your earnings while preserving your free time. Read FWJ to hear more from James. If you’re a regular reader here, you already know how much I push you to properly plan, maximize the rates you charge, and take more control by writing for yourself over simply working for others (which is another break from traditional freelancing at that). You’re all mature enough to explore various opinions and outlooks, plan your own income goals and careers, and take whatever path best suits you while giving you the life you want and the income you’re working to achieve.

Today I’m going to try to combine the other info I mentioned wanting to cover in a single post. First let’s take a look at some common expenses freelance writers have, and I’ll give you some examples of where I personally spend.

Common Expenses

• Domain(s) & Hosting – you’ll likely have these expenses if you choose to host your own professional website or blog(s).
• Basic utilities / office expenses – everyone needs basic office supplies, phone service, Internet access, and more if you opt to lease an office or an office share rather than working from home.
• Office Equipment / software – most writers these days probably work on a computer, and unless you go the open source route you’ll likely purchase word processing software at a bare minimum (graphics, desktop publishing, and other software possibly, depending on the type of writing you do).
• Outsourcing – if there are things you can’t do yourself, or don’t want to do yourself, you may opt to hire someone.
• Transportation – if you don’t work entirely virtually, you may have to travel to meet with local clients.
• Bank / Payment Processor Fees – if you use a service like Paypal, you’ll pay fees out of every payment received. If you accept bank transfers, you’ll either pay those bank fees or have to pass them on to clients in your rates. You will also have basic expenses of your business bank account, which will vary greatly depending on your bank.
• Books & Other Educational Materials – I can’t imagine being a writer without regularly buying books. Maybe you buy a lot of magazines if you’re a freelance magazine writer. Or perhaps you’ll decide to pay for courses, e-books, or even a degree in your specialty area.

Not all writers will incur all of those expenses, and some will have more.

Because I focus heavily on Web publishing and writing for myself, moving away from client work regularly, my most common expenses may very well not look like yours. For example, I own and manage quite a few websites and blogs, so my domain name and Web hosting expenses are quite a bit higher than those of a writer managing only their professional website. It would also be impossible to run all of those sites entirely on my own, so I periodically do outsource work that I either can’t do or don’t want to do, as I mentioned in my previous post. For example, I despise writing CD reviews, but I still run a webzine in the music industry as a holdover from my former work in music PR. I hire someone to write those reviews for me weekly so the site stays updated, and my own time is free to work on my “big three” (the primary earners). My other really significant expense is educational material–books, magazines, professional organizations, reports, etc. What you spend on those things will obviously depend quite a bit on your industry and the type of writing you do.

Spending Alternatives

Whether you’re just starting out and have little or no money to invest or you simply prefer time expenditures over financial ones, that’s fine. While it may make it easier on you, you don’t need to invest a lot to be a successful freelancer. Regardless of how much or little you spend, there are things you can do right now to start maximizing your earnings.

The first is to settle on a target market–how you do that varies from writer to writer. For me, I choose the type of people or companies I most enjoy working with, as that’s a major perk that drew me to the freelance lifestyle and my former PR firm–the ability to choose who I wanted to work with.

To over-simplify (as we’ve already covered market planning and such in more detail here previously), you’ll then need to set your freelance writing fees with your needs, goals, credentials, and target market in mind.

By building a strong network and solid writer platform, you can easily avoid one common business expense–advertising. There’s little better than having an abundance of work coming to you rather than you constantly having to troll job boards, submit queries, etc. But you knew that already.

One of the best things about working as a freelancer is the independence it affords you, including the luxury of deciding how you spend your time. By keeping this in mind when setting your rates, you can reach (and exceed) your income goals without having to constantly think about finding more billable hours. For example, let’s say you want to work a typical 40 hour week, but you only want to spend 20 hours on actual client work (the rest on marketing, networking, building your own products for other income streams, etc.). If you know that up front, you simply take it into consideration when choosing that market and setting your rates. If you’ve been reading AFW for a while, you know that I’m transitioning from full-time writing for clients to full-time writing for myself. Right now I only have to spend 10-20 hours each week on client work to continually and significantly grow my earnings, all because I accounted for those plans in choosing my market and rate structures. I spend the rest of my time working on projects I completely enjoy, which are far less stressful, and which offer a hefty return of their own (which has also consistently grown over the last two years).

While here you learn a lot about creating those alternative income streams to help you diversify and grow your own income, even with relatively residual models, you don’t have to follow a similar path if you don’t feel that’s right for you. In the end, all that really matters is that you’re happy in your work and you’re earning the income you set out to earn. Is there anything wrong with wanting to turn that into more? Of course not. But it’s up to you to find your own right balance between earning a real living with your writing and maintaining the other aspects of the lifestyle that attracted you to freelancing in the first place.

Related posts:

1. 3 Money-Making Tips I Learned from My Children
2. Stop Making Excuses, Start Making Changes
3. Making It as a Freelance Mom
4. How to Make Money with Articles
5. 10 Costly Money Mistakes Freelancers Should Avoid

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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