Everything You Need To Smash The Business Side Of Writing
As a full-time content writer, you must understand that you're playing a different game from the world's creative writers.
Without an advance, a patron, or a cushy academic position to tide you over while you craft a masterpiece, you've got to learn to treat writing like a business instead, finding ways to be more consistent, productive, and robust to risks.
Here are some of the ways I do it as a writer with a business background.
How To Make It In The Writing Business
1. Consistency
One of my favorite accounts on the website formerly known as Twitter is The Lindyman. He draws a distinction between two realms that he calls "Payoff Space" and "Consistency Space."
People in "Payoff Space" have enough money to do what they want, and it doesn't matter if they fail. They can afford not to be consistent.
Everyone else is in "Consistency Space." Their income comes in trickles, not lumps, and they have to keep grinding to keep the tap flowing.
Content writers are in consistency space.
To earn the same amount from one month to the next, you need to write roughly the same amount to the same standard. That's consistency, but that's a hard ask in a creative activity like writing.
This doesn't mean it can't be done, it just means that you have to strategize and prepare. The following are some of the things that help me stay consistent.
An Idea-Generation Process
If you're like Mozart or Schubert, and inspiration is like some internal wellspring that has you overflowing with ideas, then you're very lucky.
The rest of us mere mortals cannot afford to wait for inspiration to emerge from within. We need to make sure we capture it on the rare occasions when it does, and we need to induce it when it doesn't.
I use a mixture of passive and active methods to induce inspiration. You don't have to copy them, but if you're serious about turning writing into a business, then you do need to have a process for the times when inspiration doesn't come easily.
Your process will also depend on the type of writing you do. If you're an SEO writer and you get your ideas by researching keywords and trends, that's great too.
A Stopping Point
Even with a great idea-generation process, you can run into trouble if you are adamant that every idea must be something you feel is truly great.
This kind of perfectionism will end up costing you time and money, because you'll dismiss ideas your client probably would've been happy with.
Focus on their needs, not yours, and learn to stop when you have something "good enough."
If I'm working on a piece for a site like Listverse, I'll stop searching for ideas as soon as I've found one that's completely original, on-brand, and which has ten strong examples I can write about, even if I'm not 100% confident in it.
A surprising number of these have been accepted, while some of the pieces I was most confident about were not. This leads us nicely to our next requirement.
Thick Skin
You know how you like different books to your friends, but there's not really any rational reason why?
Well, sometimes editors are going to dislike things that you thought were really good, too.
"There's no accounting for taste," as they say, and there will be no money going into your account if you let this put you off your stride, so you've got to be able to move on to your next thing straight away.
Something that really helps with this, which I'll cover in more detail later, is having a liquidation strategy.
But for now, the take-home message is to accept rejections as part of the game and to not let them throw you off your writing routine. You've already lost money on the rejected piece (for now), don't let it cost you even more by stopping your other work.
2. Productivity
This favorite topic of self-help fanatics started in the business world, and although most of us are tired of hearing about it by now, it is something that you need to be thinking about if you are trying to act like a business.
As a writer, your chief productivity challenges will likely be staying focused and speeding up the time each piece takes to write. This is how I tackle them.
Plan Writing Hours Around You
If you've ever read Mason Currey's book, Daily Rituals, you'll know that pretty much every great author keeps a regular schedule. That's because routines work.
What you'll also know, is that they don't all have the same schedule. Their routines are planned around their lifestyles and natural working rhythms.
You'll have one of the latter, too, and it pays to figure it out.
My business day runs from 8am until 6pm, but my actual writing is done from 8am-12pm, then 3-6pm.
What happens between 1pm and 3pm?
Well, I learned that I get so sleepy and slow during this time, that it's just not worth writing at all unless I have something really, really urgent.
Now I use this time to look for new opportunities and do outreach. And you know what? I'm not doing any less work than I was before.
Prepare Templates for Regular Clients
Despite English being the most widely-spoken language in the world, nobody seems to be able to agree on how it should be written down.
Everyone you write for will have their own opinion on hot topics like double-spacing after periods, speech marks, and Oxford commas (I'm pro, if you hadn't noticed).
They may also have "readability" rules that tell you how many paragraphs are allowed under a subheading, how many words they should have, and so on.
Having to learn these every time you write something is guaranteed to slow you down. My solution is to use templates.
I make these on Google Sheets, because that way I can use formulas to do things like give me a live word count next to each paragraph, track how many times I've used keywords, and create a little table with the client's guidelines in it so I don't have to keep switching between their website and my work.
Tools (If You Need Them)
Personally, I don't find myself idly browsing or checking my phone while I'm writing. Regardless of the topic, I can get in the zone pretty easily (except from 1-3pm).
However, I have tried some productivity tools before, such as the browser extension Leechblock on Firefox. This is easy to set up and will stop you from visiting distracting sites during your working hours.
I also use an extension called "Pomodoro clock." This chimes every 25 minutes, then I take a five-minute break.
I don't believe this is wasted time at all. Moving around almost always solves writer's block, and it's also good for motivation.
By the time the break ends and I know what I want to write, I'm itching to sit back down and get typing.
I also use the breaks to check my phone, so that I'm not tempted while working.
3. Robustness to Risks
A writing business, like any business, involves taking some risk.
- If you accept work from a new client, how can you be sure they'll pay you?
- If you do lots of work for the same client, what happens if one day they're gone?
- And if you spend a few hours on a piece, what happens if it's not wanted?
Every big business is planning for problems like these, and every content writer should be too.
Start Small and Scale Up
A phrase I've never forgotten from Jim Collins's book, Great By Choice, is "muskets before cannonballs."
It neatly sums up the way smart businesses try things out in small, controlled, less-risky ways first, then invest more once they've got some proof that it works.
I use this approach with new clients, such as an SEO content agency I started working with recently.
They had lots of work, and I could do as much as I wanted. However, it was a long time until payday when I joined.
If I did as much work as I could, and they didn't pay, I'd not only miss out on the money for those pieces, but pieces for other clients that I could've done instead. So I initially only did one piece a day for them.
In the end, they paid, and I started doing more. But if they hadn't, I'd have been annoyed, but I wouldn't have lost much.
Have a Diversified Client Base
"Diversified client base" is basically a fancy way of saying, "don't put all your eggs in one basket."
If you're doing this full-time, try to keep at least three regular clients, and dedicate some time each week to seeking out new opportunities.
This will make sure you're never left in the lurch if one of them suddenly drops you or goes out of business.
Have A Liquidation Strategy
Big companies by Amazon buy products from manufacturers by the thousands. If these don't sell as well as they expect, do you think they just leave them sitting around in their warehouses?
Of course not! They sell them in bulk to discount retailers.
The prices are drastically reduced, but they get at least some of their money back.
The point is, they have a way to liquidate unwanted goods and still make some money, and you should too.
My focus as a content writer is factual entertainment, so my approach has been to find a handful of websites that publish this type of content, and start by pitching or submitting a draft to the top payer. If they reject it, I'll try the next.
I keep doing that until someone says yes or everyone says no. That hasn't happened yet, but if it does, I'll post it on my own blog or turn it into a YouTube video.
Freelance Content Writer: A Business, Not a Job Title
As you can see, there's much more to the writing business than just bashing out words.
There's even more to it than what I've written here. We haven't even gotten onto differentiating and marketing yourself, but I wanted the advice here to be practical and easy to apply.
Head over to my blog for even more practical writing tips.