One thing few freelancers realize is that the second they start writing on the Internet, they become a brand – a business that will eventually draw customers based solely on the name and history of that brand. Every time you gain a new client, you create a potential long term relationship – someone who might come back to you time and again for work. Familiarity in business is a powerful tool and if you can leverage it properly, you can be extremely successful.

But, with popularity come a few issues. You’ll need to setup a business structure, organize your work processes, build a website, and finally start outsourcing extra work you don’t have time to do. This is a big step. It’s the moment you realize that your online venture has grown beyond you, that you need to hire other people to help your vision continue to grow.

It’s a fantastic feeling. But, for a lot of writers, it’s hard to pinpoint exactly when you should make the leap. Too soon and you handcuff your income, but too late and you end up working 60 hours a week and the quality drops off.

So, here are some tips on when to start outsourcing and how to go about it.

Create a Business Plan

Don’t run out and buy resources on business planning. Traditional business plans are long and filled with tons of financial data that you don’t need (yet). You’re not going to the bank for a loan. However, having a simple, personal business plan can help you immensely in understanding what your business needs to survive.

1. Outline Your Personal Financial Needs - How much money do you need to survive, and how much money will you make from an outsourced project? These details are important. You could easily end up getting more work and making less money if you outsource too much.
2. Set Goals for Income on Outsourced Content – Set specific goals for how much money you would like to make from each project. If you want to make at least 25% to cover communication, editing, and research, make that a bottom line. This will help when you start posting projects.
3. Generate Realistic Timelines for Involvement in Projects – Know exactly how much time you want to spend on each project. A lot of the time, freelancers try to save money by hiring lower paid contractors, but end up spending more time on the project with edits and revision cycles. Know how much time you’re willing to spend for your cut of the project and you can better balance what you’re willing to pay.
4. Create Processes for Acquiring, Outsourcing and Editing Work - Have a specific process in mind. Know which sites you want to use (Elance, Odesk, Craigslist, etc) and how you will select winning bidders. Aim early on for long term writers you can use repeatedly.
5. Decide How You Will Communicate Your New Model to Clients – It’s important to provide a layout for all existing clients of the changes you’ll be making. Not only tell them that you’ll be outsourcing, but explain any rate changes, timeline shifts, or new paperwork you’ll require.

These five things should happen before you ever start outsourcing – lest you end up with all these writers you don’t know what to do with.

Your Rates

Nine times out of ten, outsourcing will essentially force you to raise your rates. This is a good thing. If you were making so little that you cannot afford to pay part of that fee to someone else and still maintain quality, it was never enough. Raising your rates will do three things.

1. Ensure You Can Afford Quality Contractors
2. Give You Time to Edit and Polish All Work
3. Provide Security in the Projects You Acquire

One thing to keep in mind here is that you won’t and shouldn’t expect to continue making the same amount of money per project as you were before. You’re not doing the work, after all. But, with the right rates, you should make enough to cover the expenses of finding the contractor, editing their work, and communicating with the client.

Maintaining Communication

The last thing to mention is the lines of communication – not just with your new contractors, but with the clients who hire you. Most clients do not care if you outsource work to contractors, as long as they get the same quality for their money. This is doubly true if you decide to start raising rates. Additionally, it is both professional courtesy and in some cases legally necessary to inform your client that their work may be outsourced. If they are unwilling to agree to these terms, you should be ready to complete the project yourself.

The last thing you want is a client getting upset with you for failing to communicate something simple that they may not otherwise have minded.

Outsourcing is a fantastic tool and essentially the only way you’ll ever be able to effectively grow your business. At a certain point you just won’t be able to do any more work on your own. But, before turning to outside writers, make sure you have a carefully laid out plan in place. It will save you myriad headaches down the line.

For a freelance web writer, there are millions of projects available every year. There’s just one problem. They are generally about topics you have no interest in, no knowledge about, or very little desire to write about. It’s a pretty common problem, and unfortunately, there’s nothing you can do other than suck it up and write about less than glamorous topics, or eat a lot less and hope you get lucky. Eventually, you’ll grow beyond the necessity of doing “whatever comes your way”, but early on, few of us get that luxury.

So, what do you do when a fantastic job opportunity comes along in a niche you’ve never written about? How do you prep yourself to take on a topic with an authoritative voice when you’ve never written about it before?

First, Some Ethics

I should toss out a disclaimer here. If you really, honestly have no idea what you’re writing about and the project needs an expert in the field, don’t lie to get the work. It’s not only dishonest, it will rarely result in good feedback or more work. If a niche is new to you, tell the client up front. If they know that you’re starting from scratch, they can make the determination of whether they should look elsewhere. Of course, you’re permitted to speak highly of your research and learning capabilities, but never lie about knowledge you don’t have.

Learning the Niche

Okay, so you told the truth and the client is okay with it. They have seen your quality of writing, are impressed with your talents, and want you on the job anyways. What’s next? It’s time to start researching. Without research, you put yourself at risk in a number of ways. First, you will be tempted to cheat – either rewriting other content or making up bits and pieces. One is copyright infringement and the other is simply unprofessional.

So, you should spend some time getting familiar with your topic. Buy at least three or four top books in the niche and start reading. Additionally, read some related content online, to get an idea of the common phrasing used and watch videos to absorb audio/visual cues (it’s always easier to write about what you’ve actually seen). I also like to visit blogs and forums where industry insiders will chat about topics in the niche. Familiarize yourself with the wording and the way the content is structured. This will help you create a more detailed persona in which to write your articles.

Writing the Content

When it comes time to write your content, only start when you feel comfortable in your knowledge. Also, put your research materials on hold. You shouldn’t be reading a book while you write about the same thing. The risk of offhanded plagiarism is too high – you may not even realize you’re doing it. Instead, take notes from all of the resources you have been gathering and use them to build your content.

Finally, when you’re done writing, run your content by someone who knows their stuff. You can ask someone on the forums or send it back to your client for review. The goal is pretty simple – you want it to pass as a comprehensive, generally informative piece of content. If you cannot do that, this isn’t a niche in which you should be writing.

Be Truthful

One last note. If you get to the end of a piece and realize that you just cannot write in the niche – maybe it’s too general, maybe it’s just plain awkward – let your client know. Most clients will be happy that you’re not only honest with them, but that you say something quickly instead of dragging out the project and wasting their time and money. Trust me, it’s better for your career to focus on things you know you can write well and not to send in subpar work to clients than to aim for profits and profits alone.

Don't Rinse or Repeat

A lot of newcomers to freelance writing have asked me whether the article spinning projects are a good idea. They are easy to get and they generally represent ongoing work – or at least that’s the argument.

And to be honest, I completely understand the attraction. When you’ve been writing for a few weeks and cannot get enough work to feed your family, let alone pay the bills, anything starts to look attractive. But, before you honestly consider taking on “rewrites” or “spinning” projects, consider a few things.

1. Your Time Investment – The argument most clients use here is that rewriting takes less time than original content. This is sometimes true, especially if it’s a research heavy topic. But, a good rewrite still takes a lot of effort. You cannot simply rewrite every line and call it new. It won’t flow, nor will it provide anything useful to the reader.
2. Who Owns that Article – Then there is the legal issue of who actually owns that article. If the article is not owned by your client, rewriting it is copyright infringement – a serious legal issue. Never rewrite content unless your client owns the original copy and you’re confident you can create an original piece of work.
3. Can You Really Live Off that Much? – This is the big one. Sure, it’s steady work, but can you live off $2 an article. Most people can’t. I don’t care if your cost of living is a quarter of someone who lives in the big city, you need to make at least minimum wage doing what you do, and $2 isn’t going to get the job done.

Of course, I know the realities of this business. When you first get started, it takes samples and practice to get anyone who will pay for original content interested in your work. I’ve talked about how Micropay can help, and I’ve also talked about how to start raising your rates when you get underway, but those first few weeks are brutal.

But, for your own sake and for the sake of the content quality on the Internet, avoid rewrites as much as possible. They are generally used for spamming or keyword stuffing, may present a copyright issue, and don’t pay very well. Plus, having them in your portfolio rarely looks good.

Do what you need to get started (within reason), but once you’re started, seek out work you can be proud of. It may make things tougher for a short while, but the pride you feel in what you write will counteract that nicely.

Every now and then, someone asks me what kind of equipment I use. They see the iPhone and assume I’m a Mac guy or sometimes they just think “writer=Mac”. But, in truth I’ve been a PC guy for my entire career and don’t plan on changing any time soon. It would be too much of a chore – I’d need to overhaul how I do a lot of things, plus repurchase hundreds of dollars worth of software.

But, one thing I do change a lot is the kind of PC I’m using. As a freelance writer, being mobile is absolutely necessary. If I want to visit family, I need to have the option to login and check a project’s status. If I feel like working out of the house, I want to have as much power in the coffee shop as I do at home. So, I’ve experimented quite a bit with different machines and setups.

It works out pretty well as I tend to burn through a laptop in a year and a half or so. Apparently typing 150,000 words a month on a laptop puts a lot of strain on it. Who knew? But, lately, I’ve hit upon a nice balance between three very different devices…and yes, one of them is made by Apple.

Laptop

Toshiba Satellite A505

First up, there’s the laptop. For a lot of years, I only had one of these – in fact, I’ve had three of them since I started working online (one of which was a few years old when I got started). Today, I run on a Toshiba Satellite A505 because it’s got a full sized keyboard and 7 hours of battery life – the perfect combo for travel and multi-tasking. Yes, it’s a bit heavy, but with a good backpack to lug it around in and regular stretches, I do pretty well with it.

Netbook

I never owned a netbook, but my wife did and when I upgraded my laptop in January, she got the older Gateway that I no longer would be using. So, we had a netbook lying around. I’ll be honest – I’m not a huge fan of netbooks. They’re too small for what I do. Yes, they’re great for email, but so too is my phone. And my hands are really big.

Handy Dandy MSI Netbook

But, when I got my office space, I wanted to put something in place that minimize how often I had to lug my Toshiba to work but wasn’t too valuable to leave sitting around. So, I took the netbook, bought a keyboard, mouse and monitor and setup a makeshift workstation on my desk. I lock the netbook up at night and can go to and from work without any bags. It’s a great setup except when I need processing power for web design or video editing – in which case, I bring the laptop to work with me. Plus, if I need to go into the city for any reason, the netbook weighs less than a bottle of water and fits nicely in a hand-held pouch.

The Tablet

Admittedly, I didn’t need a tablet for work. I won’t be writing it off as an expense because it’s 85% entertainment, but the iPad I picked up in the spring has actually been fairly useful. It’s small and lightweight like the netbook, but far more versatile for travel. Basically the only thing I will not do on it is write articles because I type far too fast on a keyboard to be satisfied with the clunky setup of the touchscreen.

But, I can do email, login to check projects, and when I’m not checking work stuff, watch a movie or read a book. This device is awesome and it’s far more comfortable to hold than a laptop.

The Bottom Line

The Way too Fun iPad

Yes, I have three computing devices, but they all serve their purposes nicely, fitting a specific niche of my life and making it as easy as possible to get between work and home and everywhere in between. Combined with Dropbox (the freelancer’s best friend), and Thunderbird, I can write an article in my office, send it from home, and check its status on the train – all using different devices. Ironically, I do not own a desktop and have not owned one in nearly four years. Maybe it’s just me, but without mobility, I don’t see the point in spending that much on a PC.

If you’re trying to figure out which device is best, I say start with a laptop – one with enough power to open 20 tabs in Google Chrome and run 15 or so windows in Microsoft Word. With the basics covered, everything else is icing on the cake.

The Censor Fail-Whale

I think the title says it all…and the answer is nothing. This is an issue that goes way beyond freelancing, as millions are finding themselves in the dog house for saying the wrong thing about their boss, their family, or their friends on Twitter (or Facebook). Here’s the thing. Twitter is incredibly easy to follow, and if you’re lucky, your clients will gladly sign up for your feed as soon as they realize you have one.

So, what then would be the goal of putting your personal thoughts, or worse yet complaints, on Twitter where those very clients can see them? In this day and age of hyper-connectivity, it becomes your job to censor what you say and where you say it. Once upon a time, you could vent openly about how hard your day was to anyone, even online. People didn’t have access to your inner thoughts, usually stored in email or a personal site where very few people had access.

Unfortunately, people seem to lose that sense of privacy when they sign up for Facebook or Twitter. They feel like they’re simply sharing with a few friends – getting their ideas out there or shooting the breeze like they would at a bar after work. The problem with that is your mom, your clients, and your colleagues can all see what you’re writing.

It’s why I offer social media cleanup services, to help individuals coming out of college or trying to get a new job to clean out all the 20-something shenanigans that litter their accounts. Describing drunken debauchery or saying borderline offensive things on your page can cost you a job or your friends if you’re not careful. So, what do you think happens when you get online and start rambling on about how your latest client “really gets under your skin”?

There really isn’t much else to say. If you’re striving to be a freelancer and build a brand for yourself online, it’s time you start cutting out the cursing, the open commentary, and pretty much anything about your current clients. You can still personalize your feeds and Pages – clients love to see it – but at the same time, make sure you keep it as professional as possible. This is your livelihood we’re talking about.

Before I write anything, let me toss a big fat disclaimer at the top here. Don’t quit your job unless you’re ready. This post is for writers who have reached the point where it’s necessary to take a risk and go for that next step. If you’re not at that point, check out one of my other posts about prepping for a career change. Using micropay sites is a good one, as is starting your own blog.

For the rest of you, read on, because I’m sick of seeing fantastic writers torture themselves by working a cruddy day job while their true passion languishes on. Just remember, quitting your job is a big decision. Don’t follow my advice alone – talk to your family first.

1. When You’re Making a Profit

The second you start making a real profit with your writing is the second you need to consider quitting your job. You might be writing 100 articles a week or just 10, but if you’re making enough money to supplement your income, you can likely scale it up to cover your living expenses.

A few things can temper your decision, however. First, if you have a high paying day job and you’re making $5 per article, it might be hard to replace that original income. A rate boost is going to be necessary. Second, if you’re writing 25 hours a week already in your spare time, it might be hard to double that when you quit (writing can be mentally exhausting). Finally, you need to create a steady source of work. Generate an Elance profile and start building your portfolio so you can bid on new projects.

2. Your Job Isn’t Fulfilling

If you’re at a job that eats away at your soul, it may be time for a change. Even if you’re writing is only covering 10% of your income, evaluate the benefits of boosting your writing time and cutting your job. When I switched I cut my day job hours down to 16 a week and started writing 4 days a week. I quickly learned that I could survive on that and so I pushed on. Do some math and see where you stand.

3. You’ve Reached a Wall

If you’ve been enjoying your segue into writing for money but have hit a wall where you cannot do anything more, it may be time for a change. When I quit my job, I was writing short articles for piddling pay. The result was that I didn’t have enough time to focus on larger projects and more serious deadlines. I still had a day job that took priority. So, when I hit that wall, I considered my options and promptly took the leap.

4. You Have Savings on Hand

Quitting a job in this economy is a big move, and one that can quickly backfire if you’re not ready for it. Even if you feel confident that you can make a good living writing, make sure you have money set aside before you make the move. I spent five months prior to quitting setting aside as much cash as I could. It allowed me to underperform for 3 months into my writing career before things finally took hold and I made a real profit.

5. You’re Ready for a Risk

Let’s face it – you’re taking a risk no matter how well prepared you are. You’re shutting the door on traditional work and jumping into the wild west of freelancing – where the work is never steady and the opportunities can be slim. Don’t wait for it to work out perfectly because I can guarantee you it will never happen. No matter how much planning or preparation you do, you’ll eventually need to just go for it.

Writing for a living is a passionate career – one you must have a number of traits to succeed at. You need self motivation, a willingness to change, flexibility in thought, and a big vocabulary. You also need the guts to jump ship and move away from the traditional grind and into the online frontier. Do that and you may just be the next big success story.

Facebook is an interesting thing for me. I was never one of those people who decided early on “never” to be a part of social networking. I had a Facebook account from the start – when it was available to college students across the US. But, I’ll be honest in that I almost never used the site. Sure, I would approve requests, reply to messages, and occasionally say “happy birthday”, but I would almost never actually use Facebook for anything.

That is until now. These days, it’s different. As a 26 year old guy with friends scattered across the country, Facebook lets me keep tabs on people, which I sometimes do. But, as an entrepreneur with a new business, it lets me do so much more – accessing prospective clients and other business owners across the globe.

And that’s why I actually use it, and why you should be on there too.

Facebook is entirely too powerful to ignore if you have a brand on the Internet. It might be a blog, your business, a short story you wrote – whatever it is, Facebook is the way to stay in touch with people who like you and like what you do. If you’re not using it, you’re wasting a tremendous opportunity.

To top things off, Facebook is super easy to use. You can hook it up to your Twitter account or your blog and have automated posts uploaded every day. You can then have comments and wall posts forwarded to your phone for quick, on the go replies. I might spend a grand total of 15 minutes a day (at the most) on Facebook, and that’s on a busy day.

I think my answer to the title question is pretty obvious. Should you be on Facebook? Absolutely. Should you spend hours of your time on Facebook? That’s a whole different question – one that usually ends with a no.

One of the biggest problems I see in my fellow freelancers is that they are unwilling to bump up their rates when they know they are worth the money. Well, not all of them. Some people will gladly bump their rates up too early and then inundate your inbox when you post a project on craigslist (ahem…). But, for the well-meaning majority, the issue of rates and getting paid what you are actually worth is a HUGE deal.

If you sift through the archives here on the site, you’ll see that I once worked for micropay sites like AssociatedContent and Helium, making between $3-$5 for 1,000 word articles. It was horribly low paying, but at the time I was exhilarated to get paid for anything and to see my name next to a block of text. I even used to sit and track page views to see how many people had read my articles.

That jubilation passes when you realize you do in fact need to make enough to pay your bills if you want to quit your job.

So, I migrated to Elance, quit my job and promptly struggled by for the next 15 months. No matter how fast you type – and I’m a fairly speedy typist – $5 an article makes it very hard to get ahead. So, I slowly started creeping my rates up.

I was terrified it wouldn’t work, that my regular clients would abandon me and I would go broke. A funny thing happened though.

1. I didn’t go broke
2. Many of my regulars did abandon me, but a lot stayed on and paid the higher rates.

This told me that I had not been charging enough all along. People were gladly willing to pay more than they already were rather than go out and find another cheap writer. Stop and think about that – it’s a really incredible feeling. It means you’re not replaceable and that you’re a valuable commodity.

Pricing the Commodity

Once I realized that I was not working with men and women I needed to be buddies with, things go much easier. We’re talking about marketers, business owners and entrepreneurs who all think in terms of $$$. I make them money so they see me as a valuable asset. They might be nice to me, and me to them, but at the end of the day, it’s all business and if it makes good business sense to pay me twice what my old rate was, they’re going to do it – not because they have no choice, but because my work is worth the extra fee.

So, stop thinking of yourself as a starving artist who needs to take whatever people are willing to pay you. If you are a good writer with years of experience and a solid portfolio of happy clients, you have earned the right to be paid more for your time.

But, here’s fair warning. You WILL lose clients. It’s going to happen. Some people don’t care about quality. They don’t need to. They’re uploading articles to dead end blogs or posting on article directories. They just need quantity and if they can pay someone from Romania $3 an article and get the same results, they’ll do it.

Your task is to STOP competing for that low paying work and start putting yourself  in line for the high paying, rewarding work that real business owners and marketers offer on a daily basis.

When you’re just getting started as a freelancer, which I know a lot of you are doing, there don’t seem to be many options. You can either work for $0.50 an article on Elance or roll the dice on Craigslist and hope someone accepts your email out of hundreds they’ll get for that single post. It’s a tough road.

I, on the other hand, kind of stumbled into it by working on so-called “micropay” sites like Associated Content and Helium where I generated my own topics, wrote at my own pace and got paid only if the content I wrote was useful to the site. Of course, that was also in 2007 when Associated Content’s stringent guidelines were not quite so hard to get around and you could get the occasional $20 offer for an article.

And to round out the story of my flirt with Micropay, it only lasted the better part of 6 weeks. I got up to about 20 articles a week with Associated Content and promptly realized that Elance was a far better place to test my talents – quickly obtaining a far greater supply of work per month than I would have been physically capable of writing on the Micropays.

So, Does it Work?

I will say yes. It might not be the most exciting thing in the world, but over the course of the first few weeks as a freelancer, you need something to do. You might spend 2+ hours a day carving out a name for yourself on forums, on your blog, or at Elance with bid after bid, but if you don’t actually sit down and write an article or two, you’ll never gain the experience you need to succeed.

It’s hard to be good at this job. You must not only be a good writer, you must be a fast writer – capable of adapting to numerous styles and tones instantly while shifting between dozens of topics. Only practice will give you the skillset needed to succeed.

So, where does that leave us? If you need a jump start to your career and some practice writing content that will help you hone your skills, get on the micropay sites. Until you actually get a real paying job on Elance or Odesk, it’s your best bet for getting some experience, feedback and much needed pay.

Don’t Forget Blogging

Regardless of your decision on micropay, though, don’t forget the value of a good blog. If you haven’t done so yet, get a blog started on Blogger.com or WordPress.com. You may not get a single reader, but the chance to sit down and write something that is dear to you and send it to the world is as good a way to build confidence as any. Just take a look at how many posts on this blog are from 2007 when I first got started. Whether you’re getting paid or not, you have to be writing, so stop reading and start writing.

I took a big leap back in February and set myself up with an office space in a neighborhood a few miles north of our apartment. It’s in a fantastic location, close to the city but still in Brooklyn and right on the water. And while everyone I know is excited for me to have my own space, the people I meet wonder why I would bother spending that money each month when I get to work at home and make my own hours.

The good ol' desk

The truth is that working at home isn’t quite as amazing of an experience as you would think. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not complaining. It’s pretty amazing to get up each day and get to decide in the moments after a shower whether I will trudge to work or sit on the couch and watch soccer between articles. But, there’s something draining about being home all the time, almost like there’s no gap between work and home.

The Gap is Important

If you’re new to this business or are still working your day job, you still have your gap. You leave the house at least 3-5 days a week and whole heartedly enjoy the time you get to spend at home relaxing. And there’s nothing wrong with that. I was exactly the same when I first left my job and started writing. I would brag almost daily when my roommate got home from his job.

But, after getting married and moving to New York, I found that sitting in the house all day is rough, especially when my wife gets home and wants nothing more than to relax on the couch and all I want to do is get up and go out.

It’s also very hard to draw a line and say “I’m done working”. Most people, when they’re done working, go home. I’m already home, so instead I have to physically remove myself from my computer and draw the line. It’s tougher than you might think.

A Space of My Own

Basically, the office is an excuse to leave the house when I want to. I can get work done in a quiet, personal space out of my wife’s hair  where I can meet other people and enjoy the city between projects. Yeah, it’s a big add-on expense, but it’s totally worth it.