Freelance Finance

I don’t care what your craft is. If you love what you do, the work will always have its own rewards. It will be your rock and bulwark in tough times. It will sustain you and enrich your soul. And you’ll only get better and quicker at it.

But marketing yourself is not often in the grab-bag of skills freelancers possess. Consequently, landing work from a client will usually take you more time than actually performing the contracted work.

In my world, pitching the article, getting it accepted, and doing the largely free rounds of revisions eat up most of the freelancer’s time. Writing an article actually takes the least time! I once calculated that the amount of money I’d been paid by a major magazine for a feature article, when divided by the amount of time I’d spent on it, would not have covered my monthly rent.

The lesson: Your cost-efficiency will rise as you a) perfect the art of landing work easily and effortlessly, and b) handily meet client expectations the first time around.

Links to previous posts in the 16 Things series.