“What do you do for a living?”
“I’m a writer.”
“Oh! You write books?”
“No, I write articles. Like blogs.”
“Cool, what do you write about?”
“Anything, really. It depends what the client wants.”
This is a conversation I have pretty much every time I meet a new person. And despite my best explanations, I can still see a thin layer of confusion in their eyes, trying to figure out exactly what the heck a freelance writer does. I’ve tried playing around with my job title – calling myself a journalist, for example, but this leads to them asking which newspaper/magazine I work for.
Hack Writing – No, It’s Not Writing About Computer Hacking (Unless the Client Asks)
A long time ago, I came across the definition of ‘hack writer’ – which even has its own Wikipedia entry. To quote, “A hack writer is a pejorative term for a writer who is paid to write low-quality, rushed articles or books “to order”, often with a short deadline.”
Which sounds really inglorious, until you read further down the page; “Many authors who would later become famous worked as low-paid hack writers early in their careers, or during a downturn in their fortunes. As a young man, Anton Chekhov had to support his family by writing short newspaper articles; Arthur Koestler penned a dubious Dictionary of Sexuality for the popular press; Samuel Beckett translated for the French Reader’s Digest, and William Faulkner churned out Hollywood scripts.”
Now, I don’t entirely agree with the strict definition of ‘hack writer’ – although there are many clients out there who want to pay pennies for a thousand words of utter crap. A quick scan of writing gigs on Upwork.com will show clients offering rates as low as $0.50 per 100 words – sometimes, ironically, with the job description demanding “Flawless grasp of the English language and writing skills” – oh, how we want our cake and to eat it too.
Where have all the good clients gone?
$0.50 per 100 words roughly equates to $5 per hour if it takes you an hour to write 1,000 words. Of course, you also need to factor in time spent playing games, whilst waiting for a burst of creativity to hit you (writing creativity is not, unfortunately, “on demand” like a water faucet). Basically, the majority of freelance platforms are full of clients paying bottom rates for bottom-quality writing. There is no shortage of clients who are eager to pay pennies for typo-laden, keyword-ridden fluff articles – and no shortage of writers with an Elementary grasp of the English language to fill those jobs.
So how do you meet the premium clients who appreciate high-quality work? How do you get paid the good rates for a freelance writer (average $0.03 – $0.05 per word, or $50 / 1000 words)? And if your heart is intent on freelance writing as your sole source of income, how the heck do you survive if you’re earning maybe $800 – $1,500 USD monthly?
Well, first you need to ask yourself if you meet the following qualities –
- Can you research your butt off, and trawl the deepest corners of the web for interesting facts and statistics to sprinkle into your articles? Researching what you write is half the game.
- Can you adopt multiple writing styles depending on the job? Can you switch between business-formal, informative-formal, informative-casual, and casual style writing? (Note: this article probably falls under “informative-casual”)
- Can you paraphrase what you read into your own unique words? Can you rewrite other people’s words into a different perspective with the same meaning? (See what I did there? I paraphrased myself)
- Have you ever scored a 10-letter word on Scrabble? (befuddling as it may sound, this one is very important)
If you answered ‘Yes’ to all of the above, there are two things you need to immediately do –
Write a handful of interesting articles, in the 500 – 800 word count range. Do this for your portfolio. Basically, write up some example articles you can shop around for clients. Would you show up to a job interview without a resume? Your writing examples are your resume. So write at least 5 articles about interesting topics, with catchy headlines, like “Top 10 DIY Cellphone Mods”. Pour your heart and energy into these example articles and proofread them a hundred times.
Now, armed with your portfolio of examples, start pitching yourself to clients. You can start on Upwork or other freelancing platforms, yes – but be prepared to work from the bottom up, accepting really crappy gigs until you’ve built a profile reputation. At the same time, you should be pitching your topics to the premium-paying clients who might actually read and hire you based on your example articles, instead of skipping over your empty, jobless profile. Sell yourself.
I’ve seen a few writers meet some success by establishing a personal website, like JohnDoeWriting.com and pitching this around to clients – it’s good in theory, and could help you land a gig with an actual magazine or something, if your writing examples really grab them by the cajones and your website looks professional enough.
Now, there’s a couple ways for your job proposals to get noticed. They are:
- Sound sincere and interested in the job, and explain how you’re some kind of expert in the topics they’re looking for. If the client wants articles about DIY home repairs, for example, put in your proposal something like, “This job is right up my alley, because my wife is always nagging me to fix the kitchen sink, which she clogs most every other day – thus, I’m the perfect candidate for writing about DIY home repairs”.
- Ask for more information about the job – articles they’ve read in the past related to the subject that they enjoyed. For one, this will give you an idea of the writing style the client enjoys. Two, if the client actually responds to this request, it means they may be interested, and at the very least you’ve gotten them into a chatroom. From there it’s just confidence and negotiating the rate.
I’m rolling in freelance dough! What now?
So let’s fast forward about 6 to 8 months into your writing career, where you’ve probably been juggling your 9 am to 5 pm job as a bartender or FedEx box-handler (people with a natural flair for writing always somehow end up in tedious menial labor jobs) while article writing in your free time. And you begin the dawning realization that you could probably earn a livable income on your writing skills alone if you could figure out how to survive on a freelance writer’s pay.
Here you have two options –
- Option A – If you’re married, have children, or other responsibilities that tie you to your present home, your only option is to try and write more, earn more, and maybe try to become a self-published novelist on Amazon ebooks for a side income. I hear short smut stories sell pretty well, if you can churn out a substantial amount of 250-page sex novels on a weekly basis. This is actually true, and highly lucrative. I am not joking whatsoever, and I cannot convey the depth of my seriousness through written text. Just remember smut sells, and never tell friends and family.
- Option B – If you’re single and have a flair for adventure, you could carry your laptop around the world, staying in countries where $1,000 a month is akin to living like royalty (or upper-middle class, at the very least).
If you went with Option A, congratulations! Welcome to the world of self-publishing smut erotica – I have nothing further to say, except good luck, and may your sense of self-shame never interfere with your income.
If you went with Option B, congratulations! Welcome to the world of traveling as a freelancer, eating in local restaurants to save a few bucks, and uploading articles on spotty Mobile Data connections.
(Note: I just want to point out that writing smut as a traveling freelancer is also an option.)
Where can a freelance writer survive on a freelance writer’s income?
If you’re taking your show on the road, I highly, highly recommend Southeast Asia – particularly the Philippines, where $1 USD exchanges to about 50 PHP. For $1,000 per month, you can literally rent a 2-bedroom apartment in a nice neighborhood, get a 20MBps DSL line installed, eat at restaurants twice a day, and have enough left over to get really, really drunk on the weekends.
There was a time in my freelance writing career (which will probably happen again, as freelancing is an unpredictable profession) where I was earning maybe $600 USD per month. Pitiful, right? I’d be on welfare in the United States. Homeless, probably. And yet in the Philippines, I had fairly nice studio apartment, ate 3 big meals per day, and had enough left over to go dating on the weekends. If you want to become a traveling freelancer and stretch your income to the max while enjoying yourself, you’re really not going to beat Southeast Asia.
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The other really cool thing about the Philippines is that, if you’re from one of the countries on this fairly large list, you get an automatic 30-day visa upon entry. You pretty much fly into the country, they stamp your passport and say “enjoy your 30 days!”. When the 30 days are up, you just walk into the Bureau of Immigration office, hand over about $200 USD, and say “You know, I’ve decided to stay another 6 months”, and they stamp your passport with a 6-month extension. And you can do this pretty much ad infinitum.
The catch is, after a year of stay, you have to leave the country – for 24 hours – before you can repeat the process. Hey, you know what countries are only a $50 plane ticket away from the Philippines? Pretty much all of Asia. So go tour Hong Kong, Singapore, or Thailand for a couple days, and go back to the Philippines.
