I recently got myself into an unfortunate situation with one of my previous writing gigs due to my own failure to read a freelance contract before I signed it. The end result didn’t turn out so bad but I felt foolish because I know better than to read anything without signing it. And I know better than to faily to review my freelance writing contracts; after all, I’ve been in the writing business in some form or another for almost ten years. Heck, I ran a freelance writing company for awhile that relied heavily on the proper use of multiple forms of writing contracts.
So, what happened? I’d been working for a blog network for several months under a contract (which I did read before signing). Then two things happened. First, I began to find that the time the site was taking was much longer than I’d anticipated and I was getting less and less inclined to work for the site. Second, a bunch of changes were made in the way that the network was going to be operated. As a result of those changes, all of the bloggers were asked to sign new writing contracts.
When I received the electronic version of my contract, I skimmed it. My excuse is the typical excuse that I was busy with other things. Additionally, I thought that I knew what the major change to the contract was which was that we were going to start receiving payments in a different manner and time frame than in the past. I was comfortable with that change so I went ahead and signed the contract without further review. I then promptly forgot about it.
Over the course of the next couple of months, I found that it was too much of a drain to keep my writing commitment to that site and I resigned from the position. I still have a few payments coming in from the old work. To my surprise, the most recent payment was lower than I’d expected. Long story short, the contract had changed not only the terms of payment but also the amount. Moreover, it had changed the number of posts I was required to write. Since I hadn’t read it, I’d been almost twice the amount of work that I needed to do - and of course I didn’t get paid for the extra.
The situation was bad for a number of reasons. First of all, it’s disappointing to do work and not get paid for it (through no fault of the network; I have only myself to blame there). Second, I’m a little bummed because if I knew that the requirements for the site had changed, I probably could have kep my commitment and not quit the job. And third, I just feel ridiculous about the fact that I didn’t read that contract in full before I signed it. What an amateur error!
But it’s good because it serves as a reminder that we should always read every word of a writing contract and make sure that we know what it says. Additionally, I would encourage you to consider amending three standard parts of each new freelance writing contract that you sign:
- Late payment fee. Every freelance writing contract should specify not only the amount of compensation but when it is due (for example, the contract may say that payment is due within 30 days of the date on the freelancer’s invoice). Additionally, the contract should specify what the late fee is (such as ten percent) for failure to pay within that time frame. Most freelance writing contracts will not have this written in to them but you should negotiate a change with the client before signing the contract. This is a way to protect you from non-payment by clients (a problem which happens all too frequently in the freelance world); even if you don’t end up suing, the threat of the legal problem can suffice to motivate people to pay you in full and on time.
- Length of contract. Make sure that the contract specifies something about how long it lasts and/or how to make changes to it. This is so that you can properly negotiate raises to your pay over time. For example, the contract may state that it requires renewal after one year. At that time, you are in a position to negotiate a better rate. It also puts a time limit on other terms of the contract so that you have wiggle room if you find out after a period of time that there are certain terms you agreed to that you don’t like.
- Rights. Your contract will say somewhere in it who retains the rights to anything that you write for others. You should read this part carefully and try to retain as many rights as possible to your work. In many cases, this will mean amending the contract. Most clients are open to amending the contract within reason because they realize (or can be shown) that typical contracts in the world of publishing allow the author to retain certain reprint rights or to gain rights to the work after a certain amount of time passes. Read up on this area of copyright law so that you can protect yourself.
And read those contracts. Every time. No matter what!
Question of the Day: What stories can you share about problems and successes related to signing your freelance writing contracts?
[Tags] freelance, writing, contract, rights, legal, blogging [/Tags]
I recently wrote a post here on the site called How Raising Freelance Rates Boosts Creativity. In it, I mentioned that I used to write 500-word keyword articles for $5 each. That drew a lot of emails from people who couldn’t believe that I would accept such low rates for my work. However, I didn’t really think of them as low at the time. I could easily write three or four articles per hour which meant that I was making between $15 and $20 per hour. That’s not a rate that I would work at now but this was when I was living in Tucson, Arizona and still in college; that kind of pay wasn’t even possible anywhere else in the city at the time.
Even today, when I post job links on the site here on the weekends, I try to post only those links which are going to lead to lucrative jobs. I ignore anything that looks to be lower than $5 per post but I leave it fairly open after that. I really think that how much you can make depends on a lot of factors other than just the price-per-article that you’re getting paid.
The first thing that I try to figure out when determining whether a job is worth the stated pay is what amount of research is going to be required. You can’t always tell this off the bat but there are some pretty good clues as to whether something is going to take you a long time or not. First, consider whether this is a topic that you know through and through and have some strong opinions on or a topic that you’re going to need to read a lot about. Second, consider what the point of the article is; keyword articles can typically be pretty basic articles off of the top of your head whereas a magazine article is going to need to really interest the readers of that magazine and will take more time and editing.
The next thing I think about is how much extra work is going to need to be done other than just writing the article. Am I expected to promote it through social bookmarking sites to continually gain traffic. Is it a blog post that requires me to respond to comments that are posted after I’ve written an article? Do I need to include links to anything in the article? Do I have to use a certain number of really difficult keyword phrases in the article? All of these things add up to more time. There’s a big difference in the number of 500 word articles that you can write if you’re just writing them and emailing them as a chunk as compared to when you have to write,format, link, and promote them.
Finally, I’ll look at the amount of work total that I’m going to be receiving from this client. I still have one job that is a really low-paying job if you look at it from a “per post” price. However, it requires that I write over forty articles per week which means that I’ve gotten to know the topics and format through-and-through. I know where my research is coming from; I know what my opinions are on the issues. And because of that, it doesn’t take me all that long to write the articles so the hourly rate works out to be good even though the “per post” rate isn’t. There’s a big difference in the amount of time a job takes when you first start it and learning all of the ins and outs as compared to when it’s a steady job that you’ve done for awhile. And there’s also something to be said about workflow when you have a steady job that you just know you’re going to be doing all of the time. I factor that all in because the regularity of the paycheck is worth it to me.
In the end, it boils down to an hourly rate for me. I have a basic minimum hourly rate that I won’t work below and I have a target minimum hourly rate that I aim for on each new job. Because I’ve been doing this for awhile, I’m usually able to fairly accurately assess the amount of time that a project will take and have it pay me accordingly. Of course, there are times when I’m wrong and the work takes more time than I thought. In some cases, I’ll just suck it up and cut my losses. But there have also been times when I brought it up with the client and said that I needed to either terminate the job or get a higher pay rate. I have almost always gotten the pay I needed to keep the job.
Question of the Day: How do you determine what you should be paid for a freelance writing job?
Related link: How to Steadily Increase Your Freelance Income
[Tags] writing, writer, freelance, rates [/Tags]
I’m by no means someone who is rich. But I am someone who manages to afford to live in a nice apartment in the North Beach neighborhood in San Francisco, pay my bills on time and accumulate very little debt between paychecks. For someone who works entirely doing freelance, that’s an accomplishment. Although there are many different reasons that I’ve been able to achieve this sort of steady income, one of the biggest ones is that I continually work to increase the amount of money that I am earning. The main way of doing this is through a job ranking system (described below) but there are also other tricks I implement to make sure that I’m regularly raising my income.
Here are some writing tips that you can follow to steadily increase your own freelance income:
- Aim to make the majority of your income steady income. It takes up a lot of time to hunt down new freelance writing jobs, learn the specifications of those jobs and start earning an income from them. Although one-shot jobs are great for additional freelance income, you should be actively seeking out jobs that are going to provide you with a steady stream of work and a regular paycheck. With a handful of steady jobs, you can organize your time better and get more done which means that you are going to be earning more hourly after just a short period of time has passed.
- Always keep an eye out for other opportunities. Even when you have a steady set of gigs, you should be spending a certain chunk of time each week looking for new freelance jobs. These may be steady or they may be one-shot jobs but either way, they’re out there. You don’t have to apply to everything you see. The goal is to find those jobs that are really going to add benefits to the working situation that you already have.
- Know what you make hourly. You’d be surprised by how many freelance writers who get paid by post or by article or by word don’t know what they earn hourly. You need to work out the math and find out what you earn so that you can set goals towards increasing that hourly rate. You should aim to increase that rate every six months. So, if you currently earn $10 per hour, you want to set a goal to be earning $11 or $12 per hour within six months. This is a measurable goal that will allow you to easily see whether or not you’re achieving success in increasing your freelance income.
- Rank your jobs. Once you have those steady jobs and you know what you earn hourly on each of them, you can rank those jobs. The way that I do it is through a 20 point system. The first category is a 1-10 scale of how much I enjoy doing the job. The second category is a 1-5 scale of how much I get paid hourly for the job. The third is a 1-5 scale regarding how well I can count on that income. For example, if I have a job that I really enjoy doing, I might assign it a 10 on the enjoyment scale. However, if it’s my lowest paying hourly job, it might get a 1 in the second category. And if I can not only count on the paycheck to come on time every month but am also fairly sure that the job isn’t going to be terminated unexpectedly, then I’ll assign it a5 on the third scale. So even though it’s a lower paying job, it ends up with a rank of 16. Once each job is ranked, put them in order from highest to lowest. What you’re going to start doing is eliminating one job at a time from the bottom of the list and replacing it with a job that’s likely to rank towards the top of the list.
- Raise rates on clients. You shouldn’t be earning the same hourly wage today as you were a year ago and your clients should be aware of that. If you have some jobs on the list that you like but that don’t pay enough, see if you can’t move them up the ranks by raising the rates on your clients. The worst thing that is going to happen is that they’re going to say they can’t pay you more and then you can decide if you want to do the work anyway or move on.
In the “real world”, people expect to get raises on a regular basis. They get an annual raise and something get raises even more regularly than that. If you take yourself seriously as a professional freelancer, you’ll demand the same thing for yourself. It’s a little harder when you can’t just go into a boss and ask for a raise but it’s possible to regularly raise your monthly income in order to achieve this for yourself. Sure, there are going to be times when a job unexpectedly ends or you experience a lull in the new jobs that you’re getting. But you can combat these times by actively engaging in the ongoing process of forwarding your own career.
Question of the Day: What else can you recommend for increasing your freelance income on a regular basis?
[Tags] freelance, writing, income, finance, paycheck, employment, gigs [/Tags]
