Getting Down to Business Installment 2

So I've decided to take this freelance writing thing seriously, treat it like an actual job. Which is good, because I wasn't exactly doing any freelancing earlier. Er...I'm still not, but I'm making steps. Still, I'm young and the world is ahead of me...and the sooner I start making good money at this, the sooner I'll be able to stop scrounging for work at coffeeshops and burger joints.

I've been researching the Fiction Writing market for years, and understand the mechanics and the system pretty well. I also am mostly familiar with the basics of freelancing, but am not as comfortable with it. So I'm doing some in-depth research on the basics right now. (literally. I have another window open that I'm googling).

The thing about freelance article-writing is that it all seems a little bit backwards. You start with interests/skills/specialties that you have. Then you find a market that caters to those areas. Then you come up with an idea for an article--but don't write the article--and query them. Then they either agree to look at your work, or reject you. If they agree, you write the article and send it in for editing. if they reject, you find a similar market and query THEM your idea. The entire concept is very, very strange to me...especially that you query before you even get an article written. But I'm starting to understand it a little better.

This whole freelancing gig, moreso than my fiction-writing pasttime, requires some serious business-oriented thought. So I'm taking steps to make myself more...er...business-ey.

Step 1: Create a business-only email. Check.
Step 2: Create a business-oriented personal website with clips and contact info.
Step 3: Find a number of free newsletters and resources for writers and subscribe to them for useful articles and markets. Check.
Step 4: Find some books on home-business-owning and learn how to run the business end of things, including income tax.
Step 5: Find small, non-paying markets to practice querying and writing for to build up creds/clips. Preferably ones that still give you some rights so you can republish at a paying market after minimal editing.
Step 6: Start learning legalese, and preferably make a lawyer friend that you can buy a few drinks for in exchange of their reading over your contracts.
Step 7: Search paying markets and start sending crap. Rinse. Lather. Repeat.

So there we go. Right now, I've created a work-only account on my computer, where I'll logon to do writing without distractions from video games and IMs. I've started looking into my own areas of interest and expertise, and am slowly realizing that I have a little bit of street cred already (if I do a little bit of smooth-talking) that I can build a resume off of. I'm subscribing to e-mags and newsletters about Freelancing.

...now I just have to remember that in all of my freelance excitement, I still have a novel to finish and some short stories to write. But I'll fit it all in somehow.

Yep. I'm feeling productive already. A little scared...but productive. Baby steps.

Getting Down to Business Installment 1

The semester is over, which means summer is upon me--which adds up to two things: 1.) extra free-time and 2.) the need for money. My excuses for unemployment that I use during the school year are all running out, which means I actually have to do some kind of work over the summer--or at least try to. Also, my bank account is also running out, which means that if I have any intention of pursuing a Master's Degree--or eating regularly--I'll need a source of income.

So the yearly Work Scrounging begins. And I say to myself, the sooner I launch a successful freelance career, the sooner I'll be able to avoid relying on burger-flipping or secretarial work. So I should get on that.

The theory is this:
I start building up credentials and clips now, so that I can augment my minimum-wage-income while gaining invaluable work experience. Not too long afterward, I'll have enough publishing cred to query higher-paying markets. If I can get regular writing jobs with those markets, I'll be able to devote more of my time to writing fiction, and less of my time to scrounging for work. By the time I'm in grad school, I might be able to land a book deal; definitely by the time I get my master's. If I play my cards right, I can make a living from freelancing and fiction-writing by the time I'm done with school, and if I pick up a day job it will be more to pay off student loans than to keep me fed from day to day.

The Money Aspect:
Okay, so I'm not totally sure how to make this work, but this is my rough guestimate, more for inspirational purposes than building expectations. Say I get your average college-student job--I'll be working part time, about 20 hours a week. We'll say they're paying me $6.00 an hour. That's $480 a month, roughly, a little over $5,500 a year, assuming I can actually work 20 hours a week every week in the year.

Average low-end freelance/magazine markets pay about .10 a word. We'll say the average article is between 500-1,000 words. This is $50-$100 a piece. Which means I should average about 10 published articles a month, or 120 articles a year, in order to make the same amount of money as I would working the job above. If I did my math right (always questionable) the part-time job would take 960 hours a year; that means I should be spending no more than 8 hours a piece writing the articles in order to make the two jobs equitable.

It doesn't sound like that great of a deal, does it? There's no way you can actually support yourself on less than$6,000 a year...but look at this--well before I've written 120 articles, I'd be able to query bigger markets. Some markets pay .50 or $1 per word--I could definitely be into those markets by the end of the first year. That's $30,000 if I publish a year's worth of .50 markets, and $60,000 if I publish a year's worth of $1 markets.

So if I start now--while I'm in college and still have parental support and student loans to live on--I can build up enough cred to make up to 60k a year by the time I get out of undergrad. Not mentioning any money I make publishing fiction, or any money I get from reprinted articles, or any money I make doing any other kind of odd writing job. It could work. It really, really could work.

In addition to writing articles, I'm also fully qualified and willing to do parttime freelance web design. I have experience with both Dreamweaver and hand-coding, and I have work experience as the tech-designer and content-editor for a professional website. I'm researching fees for that now, and apparently the common practice is to charge a flat fee--I'll get back to that in a sec. I emailed a friend of my mom's who does webdesign, and I'll also be emailing Jennifer sometime in the near future to ask her the same questions--how do you get into the business, how do you find clients, etc. etc.

Right now, my big goal is to figure out how to operate the business end of the job. Freelancing isn't quite like writing fiction--I'll have to keep good records, and probably pick up a couple of books on running a home office/business and filing taxes. Apparently when you're a writer you can get tax deductions on paper and printer cartridges--how cool is that? So I'll look into that, and hopefully get my ass in gear.

According to some quick, sloppy math, in order to reach my quota of Freelance Articles, I'd need to spit out an article every 3 days. Hmm. Let's see what I can pull off, eh?

There's another entry to follow that's less Nuts & Bolts...this one's running a little long for my tastes.