Trying to find some solely freelance writers...who can actually make a living...

I tried it. For two years, I was freelance only, and Da Woman is a stay-at-home mom, so freelance money was it. I, too, was getting major metro work on a regular basis (Miami Herald, Houston Chronicle, KC Star, Newsday, etc., etc.), as well as work from ESPN.com, MLB.com, NFL.com and several magazines (most of them fairly obscure).

Here's my advice: Don't do it.

The freedom was great. If I wanted to go camping with my son's scout troop or attend my daughter's soccer game, I didn't have to worry about getting time off. But eventually, financial reality set in. There's no health insurance or 401K or other benefits. Nobody is withholding taxes from your checks, and you have to pay the self-employment tax in addition to regular income taxes. The checks don't come regularly, which means there are times you're swimming in cash (though it's usually in the shallow end) and times you have to juggle bills and decide what can be put off. Near the end, I took a part-time job just so I'd have something in those dry spells. I was working all the time just to keep my head above water.

I wish it was possible to make a living as a freelancer, but my experience is that it is not. Gingerbread is correct in that a freelancer with a gainfully employed spouse might make it, but otherwise ... no.

Sorry to burst your bubble, Jones.

The good news is that now that I am back in the full-time world, I still have tons of freelance contacts, so I'm making some pretty good money on top of my salary (with management's blessing, I might add).

But Jones, if I could catch on in your universe, where mags pay $2 a word for 2,000-5,000-word stories, I might be able to give it a go. Alas, in my reality, it just wasn't possible.

 

I'm wrestling with this right now.
My work either wants me to move to the corporate HQ or become a contract writer and go off payroll. I don't know if that means I'll have to file the quarterly or not.
In theory, I could make more than I do right now. Because I could take on the better paying stories, since the stories are paid on a sliding scale. It also means that I would be free to do as much as I wanted, for anyone I wanted. Like writing for corporate newsletters and such.
But, where I live, I don't think that much freelance rolls through. Or at least available freelance. You got some people out there who are already snapping up work.
So confusing. I don't know what to do.

 

I did it, right as the Internet was exploding with writing opportunities. God, it was the best nine months of my life. I had five really steady clients, including an online trivia site that paid me a dollar per trivia question. I have never made easier money in my life than sitting down for half an hour a week and coming up with trivia questions off the top of my head. I also had a bunch of other fairly regular gigs.

Had the time of my life. Worked when I wanted to, at my own clip, and covered what I wanted. Awesome. I did pay for benefits out of pocket, but it was worth it to me b/c my girlfriend (now wife) had a very serious illness right at the beginning of my freelancing that exposed just how fucked you'd be without benefits.

And then the summer of 2000 hit, and the Internet boom went bust, and that was that. Lost my two biggest gigs within six weeks of one another. Went from clearing $50K a year to...not. I was in a tailspin for the next year and I'm still paying for the credit card debt I wracked up as I was unemployed.

I can't imagine freelancing today. All the print gigs I had back in 1999-2000 have disappeared...all their work is done in-house now. And I am having a devil of a time trying to find freelancing these days. I would not recommend anyone try it these days.

It was an awesome gig though.

 

Completely forgot the tale of a friend who did it (still does it) quite successfully. She covered the Lakers ages ago for the OCR, was GA for USAToday, the left sports alltogether and decided to give freelancing a go. She moved to Italy for a year, really had to scrounge for assignments -- some were good, like hanging with George Clooney -- but she didn't become wealthy on it. Moved to NY a year ago and now seems to have a ton of assignments from high-end (not sports) magazines. She goes on junkets all over the world - China last month, Montana this month, Nepal in the fall -- and writes articles for travel and lifestyle magazines (see: People). It's my understanding that the airfree and lodgings are free.
I also know how hard she had to work to get to a place in life where she could begin to get these assignments. And if we think we travel lots, this girl is never home!

 

There are some radio folks who only freelance. Of course, sending sound bites of the same three or four people to different radio outlets isn't exactly writing, but I'd guess the money adds up if you're in a major market and entrenched.

 

I only freelance - it's all I've done - exclusively since 1993, with a day job 1986 to 1993, and never worked in the industry beforehand. I'm not certain how much my situation will translate to anyone else, but feel free to PM me, or aske more general questions here.

 

Re: Trying to find some solely freelance writers...who can actually make a livin

With the exception of an 8-month stint last year on staff, I have been freelancing for fourteen years.

As The Jones says, there's a certain swashbuckling freedom to it, and if you're willing to sacrifice security and dental care for art, liberty and a really cool pirate hat, then by all means, come aboard.

That said, it can be a frightening thing. Be prepared.

- 50 cents a word twice monthly from your little hometown paper - even if your little hometown paper is The New York Times - won't keep you fed, much less housed. You have to line up enough work, far enough in advance, at enough places that you can see your income at least 90 days in the future. Better 180, but three months minimum. All paychecks must arrive in an overlapping cycle - just like the checks from a straight job. Easier said than done. Thus, in addition to writing, you need to be a smart enough bookkeeper to juggle your income in a way no salaried person must. You also need to be your own agent. And editor. And office manager. And travel agent. But the real work of being a freelancer is finding work. The job of the freelance writer is to generate the next job.

- Having somehow earned a paycheck, you must not spend anything. Ever. Set aside a third of each check for taxes. Set aside a quarter for savings - not just for retirement, to cover the 401K you're missing, but to provide the cushion you must have to cover lean times, missed deadlines, deadbeat publishers, toothaches, bellyaches, etc. etc., etc. So, subtract 55% of every check you earn. The remaining 45% is what you have to live on. Housing, food, car, insurance, ad inf. You're down to 22.5 cents a word before you lift a finger. Oy.

- There are plenty of newspapers and magazines, and they are insatiably hungry for copy, right ? Ask yourself this, though: Am I willing to write for an inflight magazine? Am I willing to write for a corporate newsletter? Am I willing to write for a really bad newspaper? Am I willing to write for a really bad magazine? Because the truth is, there are only so many good newspapers and magazines in the world. And if you're trying to crack the rotation at The New Yorker or the Atlantic or Sports Illustrated, you're not just up against mooks like me, you're up against Richard Ford and Russell Banks and Joyce Carol Oates. And Joan Didion will knee you in the groin before she gives up her spot in the starting line-up.

- Are you willing to live like a college kid - in your 40s? Is your wife? Are your kids?

- Are you willing to work with strangers? Editors who've never seen you and don't care about your copy? Are you willing to argue with them over an unpaid fee if you have to rely on them for another job?

- How important is the quality of your work to you?

If you can answer these questions, and about a hundred others, to your own satisfaction, then freelancing may work for you. If not, it's a hard way to go.

Feel free to PM me.

 

Can't really disagree with anything in jgmacg's post - there is a lot of hard earned wisdom there - except that I'm glad I never fully processed all the pitfalls, particularly in regard to $, before I quit the day job, or I probably never would have - I went from earning about $60 G at the day job to $9G my first year out on my own. There is a definite feast or famine aspect to it all, as my annual income fluctuates wildly (some years I make four or five times as much as others, and I try to remind myself that I'm never as rich as I feel in a good year or as poor as it looks in a bad one). And you can bet that whenever you count on being paid by a certain date, you won't be. Like the month we moved into our new house and the check I was expecting on June 15 didn't arrive until the end of July and I almost missed the first house payment. There was that hour I spent crying on the floor of the closet, screaming, that I don't care to repeat.

Two days ago my wife and I, who works as a teacher which provides the insurance, were rather openly wondering where the December mortgage would come from. I SHOULD have the money by then, based on what I have lined up and am working on, but . . . the writer is ALWAYS the last to be paid. Many, many years ago I won a "Poetry in Public Places" competition, which placed a poem of mine on a billboard. The artist who designed the billboard rec'd $250. I got . . . nothing. That taught me alot.

Fortunately, on Monday I get a phone call. Another gig, which should pay me something by then. So we're fine. I admit though, I worry less about this than my wife does. Maybe I've been incredibly lucky, but for me, when I least expect it and need it most, work always pops up.

One thing that helps - as a freelancer, it is really useful to have a couple of regular gigs of any kind. If there is the potential for a repeating assignment out there, take it, whether it's a column in a monthly magazine, an editing job, whatever, anything that promises to repeat. They keep the nerves at bay, keep your name out there and give you a nominal base to count on each year. Also, don't be afraid to take jobs that are below you, because sometimes they turn into something much much better. I took a job for a couple of thousand dollars a friend turned down because it was below him, which turned into a repeating assignment that has earned me more than a hundred times the initial amount. Similarly, I still keep a job that pays me less than $100/month, but is worth it just for pure exposure.

Get a website and promote yourself. An acquaintance set one up for me for free about five or six years ago and that thing has earned me about $10 G a year from people who are looking for someone and think I have that skill, from writing to consulting on writing projects. Absolutely critical to succeed in this environment.

In regard to quality of work, I've always thought that I can turn just about any job into a positive, that I can learn from it. This was true when I was cleaning sludge pits or pouring concrete, and it's true when I'm writing. I'm not embarrassed about anything I've written as long as it teaches me something, even if that something is that I never want to do this kind of assignment again.

You never arrive. You never get the dream assignment or contract that breaks down the door and makes it all sweetness and light moving forward. There's just another door to break down, and you have to like that aspect of the job, the fact that you always have to prove yourself. A lot of people who work the day job know they are coasting. As a freelancer, you rarely have that conversation with yourself.

But you do have conversations with yourself. Isolation can be the toughest part. You have to cultivate some people who do things similar to what you do, outside your family, just for sanity. I used to be the most social person in the world. I'm not now, which is fine and actually welcome, but it did take some getting used to. It's the best part about this site, actually. I search out and enjoy threads like this because they do provide additional contact and perspective about what I do.

I've got to say though, for me, it's all worth it. Zero regrets. If I was still employed in a straight job, I'd be out of my mind. I never wanted to get rich for the sake of getting rich anyway. I don't care about "stuff." I just wasn't meant for that world, and if I wasn't writing I'd probably be living in the woods doing physical labor.

Which is, of course, what writing is and what I am doing. More an more, I see what I do as a means to an end, to put me in the place I am. I own my day and what I do with it. I live where I want, I've watched my daughter grow up in this word mill, and I'm doing what I want to do, or at least I'm closer to it that most people I know, no matter what field they are in.

Besides, we get to wear the eye patch and fly the flag.

 

Re: Trying to find some solely freelance writers...who can actually make a livin

I_E raises an excellent point, which I neglected to address.

Every writer needs a home.

Freelancers need a recurring, repeating gig with at least one publication. As I_E says, a column; a weekly general assignment on a local sports team; a monthly rotation as a copy editor. Whatever. One semi-steady paycheck to keep the lights turned on. And in service of further inspiration, this:

Today in Freelance History:

Here a freelance writer argues a travel expense with the assistant manager of the accounts payable department at a glossy city monthly.

 

Re: Trying to find some solely freelance writers...who can actually make a livin

I know where most of the trap doors are hidden...

 

I'm doing freelance -- not necessarily by choice but necessity -- and fear the tax implications. I'm bringing in $400 to $600 a month. Thankfully, the spouse works and has health benefits. I've been using my earnings to pay bills, praying that a full-time gig will turn up. What is this about a self-employment tax?

 

Re: Trying to find some solely freelance writers...who can actually make a livin

that would be the Schedule SE you would fill out, companion to your Schedule C...that's where those with freelance income pay into Social Security