Specialty: Article Writing, Academic Writing

Rates: 50 per 500 words

In freelance field for 6 + years. Have experience in various writing forms. Good at general article writing to academic writing.

1. Promote the one you enjoy doing the most.
2. Promote the one that pays the most per project.
3. Promote them both equally.

They understood they would be working with two different target markets (and that’s a great start — a lot of new writers don’t get that in the beginning). In cases like that, promoting them both equally from Day 1 might not be the best option. It could lead to the writer spreading themselves too thin. After all, at that point you need to start building a reputation around the service(s) you’re offering, and it’s easier to do that when you narrow your focus.

Here’s what I suggested:

1. Forget about what you like most. It doesn’t mean there’s a big enough market for it. That’s not to say you won’t focus on that service, but that liking it shouldn’t be your primary reason for picking it. If you don’t like one of the options at all, then why are you doing it in the first place? It’s reasonable to assume that as a freelancer you like all of the options well enough that you won’t start to hate your job by focusing on any one of them in particular.
2. Forget about per-project rates at this point too. Instead think about your overall income potential with each service. That includes not only your rate, but the average time it takes you to complete each type of project and the size of the market for that project.
3. Give added emphasis to the type of writing you’re more qualified to do. If you don’t have any education, experience, or other credentials that would demonstrate value to clients, then what’s your selling point going to be? (Remember, price is not a smart selling point for services!)

Let me use myself as an example. The bulk of my income right now comes from press release writing and blogging. Professional blogging is something I fell into as clients found me through my own blogs. Press release writing, however, is what I initially chose to focus on. I had good reasons: I knew what I was doing, there was a huge growing demand for online press release writing and not many people specializing in it when I started, I had a degree in PR and ran an online PR firm at the time, I had training in “white hat” SEO principles, and I had plenty of experience. Even if I wanted to focus on blogging then, it wouldn’t have made sense. My selling points fell more in line with press release writing.

Two of my favorite types of projects are actually white paper writing and ghosting feature articles for clients to pitch to trade publications. Yet I don’t even mention those services on my business site. Why? First, those projects have longer lead times where you really need to get to know your client’s business in depth — therefore I choose to only pitch them to existing clients I’ve worked with (it improves my bottom line significantly when I already know the company, products, and services well). Another reason is that even though I may charge more for those projects, they take much longer to complete than something like a press release or a blog post. Therefore I can actually earn more blogging at $100-200 per article in a month than I could earn with a $2000+ white paper, while putting in fewer billable hours (white papers can certainly take more than 10-20 hours).

Please note: That is not to say you should use that excuse to justify taking on low paying jobs (saying “but I can write four of them per hour”). That’s another topic entirely, where you need to consider your reputation, the burnout factor, and other issues.

There really is a lot to consider. First and foremost remember that you’re in business. You need to make money. But you should also enjoy what you do (otherwise, why not just work a 9-5 job for someone else?). You need to strike a balance.

So tell me… what service do you promote most heavily, and why did you choose it?

I’m going to over-simplify for the sake of clarity here, but there can occasionally be pieces that cross the lines. However, in most cases here is what content is / does, and the same for copy:

Content – Content is designed to inform, educate, or entertain in most cases. For example, a how-to article is content.

Copy – Copy, on the other hand, is generally designed to persuade or entice the reader to action. This can be blatant such as marketing copy telling people to buy your product or sign up for your newsletter or click on some link. It can also be much more subtle. For example, the homepage copy on a business website is copy rather than content, as would be the text on something like an “About Us” page. Why? Because that copy is designed to give a certain image of the company – you’re persuading them to trust you by giving background information that helps them make a decision put before them by your more overt copy. The overt sales-oriented copy might be referred to as direct response marketing copy, but not being direct response copy doesn’t make the rest any less copywriting.

To be a great content writer in a niche, your best assets are your knowledge of the subject matter, your credentials that make you a trusted source, and your research ability. On the other hand, to be a great copywriter, you not only have to be able to write, but you have to be able to persuade – you should have a solid grasp of basic marketing and consumer psychology.