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Managing Your Pricing as a Freelancer

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 The third area you must manage as a freelancer is your prices. This is often the most overlooked area of the three. Content and clients are much more straightforward to manage and less intimidating. To be a successful freelance writer, you must consider pricing on a regular basis. What It Means to Mange Pricing While you may understand what it means to mange content and clients, you may not understand how to manage pricing. The first step to managing it is setting your prices. A common question with freelancers is how much they should charge. Even though you can find all kinds of information online about prices that range from a couple of cents per word to more than $1 a word, it all comes down to you. How much do you need to charge for a livable income?  Of course, you must also consider your niche and the demand for content, type of content, your experience, and other factors. In the end, your goal is to make a living from what you write. To accomplish this goal, you must charge eno

How to Manage Your Content

 This blog post continues from the last one where we talked about managing clients in your portfolio. It's important to think about the clients you have and how you will be impacted if one or more of them aren't providing work for you. You may decide to increase the number of clients you have or diversify with clients in different niches.  In this post, we focus more on managing your content. Content is the key component for how you make a living, so it only makes sense to think about what you are writing. There are two specific areas to focus your attention: Subject and Types of Content. Subject of Your Content The subject of your content relates to whether you have a specific niche or do general writing. If you prefer to write on multiple topics or do general writing, you'll want to consider diversifying your subjects to ensure you have work at all times.  Maybe you like to write about travel. You could choose clients who are in this industry, such as resorts, hotels or r

Thriving as a Freelancer in a Pandemic - Part One - Manage Your Portfolio

 To say that 2020 was an unprecedented year is an understatement. It was a difficult time for a lot of people, both personally and professionally. For me, a line in A Tale of Two Cities sums it up: "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times."  For the best of times, I got married in the middle of the pandemic. Dealing with mask mandates and ordinances limiting gatherings proved that I can go with the flow. A wonderful new chapter in my life began in an otherwise dismal year. However, I had other personal challenges to deal with as well, so my world wasn't perfect.  Professionally, I fared a lot better than many people with jobs or even those who were freelancing. In fact, even though I lost a couple of clients to COVID-19, I earned more than in any previous year as a freelancer. And more than I ever did in a traditional job.  The unexpected happens to us all, so how do we prepare for it in our freelancing? In this three-part series, I want to share some things I

You Really Can be a Successful Freelancer

 The title says it all - you can be successful as a freelancer. I speak from personal experience as a freelance writer, but it can happen no matter your area of expertise. My goal for this blog is to help others enjoy the freedom and success that comes when you make a living from freelancing. The first step for anyone is to define what success means to them. My Start Toward Success I began this journey almost 9 years ago. At the time, I just wanted to make a little extra money from my writing. I stumbled across some information that said I could get paid for writing articles online. I got started right away by writing an article and getting it published on a site called Hubpages.  I soon learned other ways of making money with content mills and bid sites. I read every article and blog by successful writers and followed tips. I bought ebooks, subscribed to blogs and took courses to help me learn my craft.  It was only a few short months before I earned enough to quit my full-time job to