Do you sometimes feel like your rates are too low? Are you afraid to increase them? When you earn a living as a freelance writer, you get to set your rates. You decide how much you’ll earn. But sometimes writers lack confidence. They worry that clients won’t think they’re worth what they want to charge. Not true (unless you’re insane and you think you’re going to start earning a 7 figure income right off the bat).

It’s time to forget about those insecurities, those cheap writing ads you see everywhere, and that crazy notion that earning more money freelance writing is just too hard. Today I challenge you to make a change and start making more money!

The Challenge

Today I want you to step outside of your element, put your foot down, and say “I’m worth more than this!” I want you to take your normal rate, and I want you to increase it. If you’re charging $.10 per word or less, I want you to double it! If you’re charging significantly more (let’s say $.50 per word), then increase it by a smaller increment but one that’s still a significant change.

I don’t want you to start emailing all of your existing clients to tell them you’re raising your rates. I don’t want you to update your rates on your website. That’s not the point of this challenge. This challenge is about getting you to take a chance.

Start by looking for a new market, job ad, or even a site or company you’d like to write for that isn’t advertising. Normally I don’t advocate pitching if you can avoid it, but today is special. I want you to find a new prospective client to pitch a project idea to. Pitch them with your increased rate (and obviously don’t bring your older / existing rates to their attention – if this works out for you, you should continue doing it until all of your work is coming in at the higher rate).

You might be surprised to get a “yes” for a project you otherwise may have felt unqualified for. It happened for me and several colleagues of mine. When I was ready to pitch my first independent Web writing client for a specific article, I knew what they were paying my colleagues. I raised it $.10 per word (to $.35 per word), because that’s what my time was worth to me then (and it was a relatively simple piece that took little more than an hour or so). I pitched my rate. They accepted. They didn’t question it. They didn’t try to talk me down. They said “yes,” I wrote the article, and they paid me. Now that my time is constantly in demand, I have even more flexibility in what I charge. You can get there too. But you have to take that first step in deciding what you’re worth and asking for it.

So go ahead. Get out of your comfort zone for once, and you may find you quite like it there.

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!

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Since opening my freelance writing course to the “public” I have had the pleasure of working with many aspiring writers. The idea of starting my own course came from the daily emails I receive from individuals who want to break into the industry. Although I still love answering emails, it is exciting to get to know each and every member on a more personal level.

Here are three reasons why I decided to start my freelance writing course, and what it has done for me in terms of benefits:

1. Teach others. This was my number one concern from the get-go. As noted above, I receive regular emails from aspiring freelance writers. By offering a course showing others how to break into the industry, I have had the chance to work one-on-one with quite a few individuals. Even though everybody gets something different out of the course, it is my goal to ensure that every member is in a better place upon completion.
2. As you know, multiple streams of income are essential to achieving big time success online. Even though I earn a good living through freelance writing, my course allows me to pick up additional income each month. And of course, gaining new members is easy because of my freelance writing blog and successful career. In other words, all of my income streams tie together in some way, shape, or form.
3. Working at home as a freelance writer means that I don’t have the chance to communicate with many people. Fortunately, my course allows me to talk with other like minded professionals via email, instant messenger, and phone on a regular basis. Since I love talking about freelance writing and related subjects it is fun for me to communicate with members of my course.

“I want to start my own course!” This is something that a lot of people have said to me in the past, and I am sure to hear it again soon enough. If you want to start your own course, follow these tips:

1. Find something you are passionate about. I chose the freelance writing niche because I love writing, can talk about it for hours on end, and am established within the industry. No matter what, make sure you get involved with a subject you are passionate about. This will help to ensure long term success.
2. Leverage your current situation. One of the main reasons my freelance writing course has become so popular is that I have a “built in audience” via my blog, ChrisBlogging.com. By using my blog as a platform I have been able to bring in new members month in and month out. Do you have a popular blog or website that you can leverage?
3. Don’t do it for the money, but make sure you price it right! Sure, I enjoy making money from my freelance writing course but it is not the main reason for offering it. I have received countless emails from friends in the industry telling me that $100/month for all that I offer is entirely too low. I agree that charging more would be more than possible, but I prefer to keep the course affordable for everybody. Make sure you don’t set your price too high. If you do, it will be difficult to gain traction.

I hope this information shows why I decided to start my freelance writing course, as well as how you can do the same thing with your topic of choice.

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This post was written by Chris Bibey of ChrisBlogging.com.

I also previously mentioned that I wasn’t going to post the domains up front, but I changed my mind. You can find the sites through the links below. As of now here’s what I’ve done:

• I registered 11 .info domains that were keyword-rich and based on keyword phrases with decent search volume and advertiser competition.
• I manually installed the latest WordPress version on each domain.
• I got rid of the default first WP post and put a quick intro on each site – those intros will either be expanded or deleted before I actually sell the sites.

I haven’t yet chosen themes / designs for them, so they’re all using the default. I’ll be working on that over the holidays. I’m also planning to get the content ready for at least two sites over the holidays, so they’ll be ready to flip first thing in the new year.

The sites I’m flipping don’t fall within the primary area I write in for clients. Instead, this time around I chose to focus on niches that would be particularly interesting to readers early in the year (such as things based on new year’s resolutions).

The niches cover dieting, walking for weight loss, home fitness equipment, green living, free online courses, online master’s degree programs, how to get organized, tips on saving money, recipes, making money online, and various things people might want to learn.

Week 2 Summary

What was planned / completed:

• I posted two new articles to the blog, including 100+ Blog Posts and Resources for Writers.
• I upgraded my WordPress installation there.
• I updated the main meta tags.
• I added some Indeed job ads to the site to add another revenue stream.
• I added two new articles to ezinearticles with links back to the blog, and they’re waiting for approval (the two from the previous week were approved and are now live).
• I setup a simple writing jobs Squidoo lens for the blog.
• I contributed more than 5 comments with links to the blog on related blogs (no spammy garbage either – only participating in the actual discussions).

In addition to those things, which were already planned, I also:

• Added a resume section to the job board.

And here’s the plan for this week:

On-Site

• I’d like to get two more new unique articles added.
• I want to put up the job board TOS / instructions for posting.
• I plan to get the feed setup with feedburner and add an email subscription option.

Marketing

• I’d like to get another two articles posted to ezinearticles for the sake of getting some relevant traffic.
• I plan to add a few links to related blog posts on other blogs near the end of each post on the blog (beneficial to the readers, but also adds trackback links that can drive more related traffic to the blog).
• I’m going to offer a special deal / freebie for the first few people to post their resume / portfolio there after I post the instructions (so don’t post yours yet if you want to be eligible).
• I’ll comment on 5 – 10 more niche-related blog posts with links back to the site (with useful comments of course).

That’s it for this week. Check back same time next week to see if I reached these goals or not, and to find out what my next steps are in getting this blog ready for sale.

I’m not going to go into the “how to” of writing e-books in this post. If you decide that e-books or reports are a good residual income stream option for you, be sure to check out the more comprehensive collection of posts from our previous 14 Day E-book Writing Challenge.

There are two main ways e-books and reports can fit into a freelance writing career, leading either directly or indirectly to more income for you as the writer:

Selling E-books

This is a no-brainer. You write an e-book or report, and you sell it. In most cases (and what I recommend), you’ll sell your e-book or report directly to end readers (as opposed to selling it once at a higher price for someone else to put their name on and earn an even bigger profit from).

You can write something as short as a 5-page report to a several hundred page survey / study in your specialty area. That’s a key to making decent money with this income stream though – specialization. While I won’t say that no generalist writers can make it work for them, e-book writing works best for specialists who can sell copies on their own authority status (and preferably existing niche audience).

Giving Away Free E-books

Free e-books can bring in income? You betcha!

While it may sound strange on the surface, free e-books and reports can actually bring in a lot of indirect income – they can attract prospective clients, give them a good feel for your work and style, and convince them to buy from you over your competitors.

There are two main things to keep in mind if you go this route:

1. The e-book has to be something that would interest your target clients, and
2. The e-book should include a clear call to action (to let them know you can fulfill a need of theirs, and to tell them how to hire you).

Your call to action can be a simple line in your footer (I do this in my press release writing e-book), or you can have a separate page at the end. It all depends on how much detail you need to go into, and the type of action you’re trying to provoke (visit your site to learn more? call you? email you?).

If you’re a freelance writer looking to add new revenue sources to diversify your income a bit, consider testing one of these methods with a short report or e-book to see if it’s right for you.

My Background in Blogging

I’m not at the point where I would call myself a “professional blogger” just yet (although I hope to be in the foreseeable future — EDIT: as of early 2009 I do blog “professionally,” earning a full-time income blogging both for myself and for clients). Even so, I’ve done fairly well with my blogs, bringing my “big three” to decent income levels at various times ranging from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars per month. I’m working to bring them all back to those levels (including some newer ones – around a dozen blogs in all). The key (and where I sometimes struggle) is consistency.What I’ve found personally is that your consistency in your blogging can have more of an impact on your earnings than your SEO or even monetization streams (although I’ll readily admit this can vary depending on the type of blog you’re running – mine were all launched with the intention of creating so-called “authority sites,” so repeat traffic is my most valuable asset).

Revenue Streams for Bloggers

Speaking of revenue streams (how you can actually monetize your blog), here are some common examples that can be used or combined into an overall monetization strategy:

1. Network ads (Google Adsense, Chitika, etc.)
2. Private ads (selling text links, banners, etc. on your blog)
3. Sponsored posts (sold privately or through pay-per-post programs)
4. Affiliate ads (Amazon, Clickbank, Commission Junction, etc.)
5. Donations (through Paypal or similar services)
6. RSS feed ads (through Feedburner or other services)
7. Digital Products (e-books, reports, software related to your blog niche, etc.)
8. Teaching / Services (paid webinars, offering services related to your blog niche, etc.)

The Reality of High Income Blogging

Plenty of people make far more money than I do blogging. Plenty of people also make far less (and almost nothing). Pro blogger Darren Rowse did an interesting casual study in 2007 on what real bloggers are earning (many simply aren’t). (Read his findings.) Should you be discouraged by the fact that a lot of people make next to no money from their blogs? I don’t think so. Here’s why:

1. Not all bloggers are really “in it for the money.” Earning may just be an added benefit, so many bloggers may simply not be optimizing their revenue streams (because they simply don’t care).
2. A lot of bloggers are new, and still learning the ropes of monetizing their blogs. Like in any kind of business model, it can take time (one of my blogs became my highest earner in just three months, while another wasn’t earning significantly for over a year, as an example).
3. Frankly, not all bloggers know how to effectively market their sites. If they can’t market the blog, or offer something people really want to read, they’re not likely going to make money.

Ingredients of a High Income Blog

On that note, there are a few key elements that, while they won’t guarantee you’ll earn real money, will make earning a blogging income easier (assuming you’re looking for a long-term strategy, and not a “post crap content, load it up with ads, SEO the hell out of it, and earn until Google penalizes you” strategy):

1. Niche – Your blog’s niche is the topic it covers. You’ll have an easier time earning money from a blog niche that lends itself to ads, products that you can sell as an affiliate, or products and services you can offer to that audience. You’ll also have an easier time if you go with a niche that not only has a decent-sized audience (preferably one that you don’t expect to disappear in the near future), but that also isn’t already over-saturated with other blogs that would make it difficult for you to reach your target readers.
2. Expertise – Do you have to be an expert in your niche? No, but it certainly helps. That’s because when you know the niche topic well, and you have credentials, it’s easy to build trust with an audience. When your blog audience trusts you, they’ll take more kindly to certain types of monetization (such as affiliate links to products that you’re reviewing, because they’ll trust your reviews more).
3. Quality Content – It’s not usually too difficult to tell the difference between a blog written by a true expert giving quality advice and information and a blog where the “blogger” simply hired a bunch of cheap ghostwriters to put together keyword-rich posts for ad revenue. While the not-so-”elite” content can serve a purpose (and even make money for a while), quality content carries far more long-term income-generating potential. Why? Again, people will learn to trust it. When people trust your content, they not only keep coming back, but they start to spread the word about your site (including by giving you unsolicited backlinks). High quality content offers other benefits as well. For example, you may be able to get media exposure if you become recognized as an expert in the niche. When others spread the word for you, your blog’s (and income’s) fate doesn’t rely solely on traffic from search engines (so you don’t have to panic if you get penalized for some reason). Quality content makes that easier.
4. Marketing Ability – You have to promote your blog in some way to get traffic. Without traffic, you have no visitors (no one to monetize through ads, sales, etc.). Many bloggers don’t excel at marketing… they just follow the same “been there, done that” tactics that everyone else uses, instead of really paying attention to their market and how they would best be reached. Marketing encompasses everything from your search engine optimization (SEO) to get higher search rankings to advertising to networking with others in your niche (such as by commenting on their own blogs).
5. Consistency – It’s important that your readers have at least a vague idea of when you’ll be updating if you want to keep those regular readers exposed to your income streams. Depending on you and your niche, that may mean posting once per month, once per week, daily, or any other schedule for that matter. (This is what I mentioned previously as being one of my own biggest struggles in blogging.) In my own experience at least, when I blog consistently, income climbs quickly; when I stop for a while or get too irregular in posting, income drops respectively.

Making money from your blog might not be an easy task, but it can really be done. If you treat your blog like a business, and don’t make the mistake of thinking you’ll instantly make a lot of money, you’ll improve your chance and rise above the ever-growing blogger crowd. Take your blog seriously. Take yourself seriously. And most importantly, never give up. Anyone can start a blog, but you need to be persistent to really make it work as a business.

Do you have additional monetization tips to share? Would you like to share your own successes or struggles with making money blogging? If so, leave a comment.

I’d like to get a list going, after which I’ll write more specific posts on each income stream for freelance writers (or ask guests to write posts if they suggested something I’m not personally experienced with).

The point is to get folks thinking now about things they should add to their freelance writing business plan (you can find my free one page business plan template for writers here if you’d like to use it).

Let’s face it – the end of the year is sneaking up on us, and now’s the time to start thinking about ways to improve or grow our careers!

Here are some of my favorites (feel free to add your own suggestions to the comments):

• Blogging
• E-books
• Flipping content sites
• PLR article sets

What are some other ways you can earn income as a freelance writer that don’t necessarily involve taking on client projects directly?