I will never condone shoddy, mass output work. I think that regurgitated information is the bane of the Internet’s existence and that all employers who want quantity in place of quality deserve to be fired.

Okay, that disclaimer is over and done with.

Now that we all know where I stand, I am going to say that the freelancer who can work quickly is much more likely to succeed than the one who can’t. I’ll even say that the freelancer who can’t get his or her work done efficiently needs to find a way to cultivate the skills of speed. (Either that or find a killer specialty niche that makes him or her absolutely invaluable.) Writing, editing, and simply working faster will result in higher income, a larger client list, and – perhaps the most important of all – more time with your kids.

How Speed Pays

Most freelancers get paid on a per word or per article basis. Hourly wages tend to fall in the rare category – and that is exactly where they need to stay. When you get paid by the word or article, you don’t have to disclose to the client how much time you spent working on their project. If you can write four $15 SEO articles in an hour, you just made $60 that hour. Many clients would have a heart attack if they knew they were paying $60 an hour for – gasp! - just a writer.

However, you probably have experience writing SEO articles. You know where to find the research, how to use keywords effectively, and the type of voice most SEO clients want. You deserve to make more money for your experience. And as you add on the freelancing years, these skills only get stronger and (generally) faster. This means that your “rates” increase even though you still might be landing the clients who aren’t crazy about paying a whole lot of money.

Even if you do make money on an hourly basis, being fast can help to set you apart and get more high-quality referalls. If an employer is happy with your output for the $50 per hour that you charge, they are more likely to give you additional work and tell other businesses about “this great freelancer I use.”

Fitting More in Your Schedule

Being a fast worker can also allow you to fit more clients in your schedule. While working with 20 clients on piddly projects every month isn’t necessarily the ideal way to work, the freelancing field is filled with clients who want articles and WANT ARTICLES NOW. Much of the time, these are smaller projects (say, one or two SEO articles, a press release, a sales letter).

One of the biggest challenges to being a freelancer is keeping a full schedule. When you have tons of work to do, making bids and sending out queries is the last thing you want to do, especially when clients come back and would love to hire you if you can get the work done in three days. However, if you don’t make these bids, you’ll probably end up with a stack of completed projects and a whole lot of nothing else to do. These smaller, ABSOLUTELY IMMEDIATE projects are great for filling in the cracks. If you know you can do these types of things really quickly, you’ll be able to fit them in even during your massively busy times. A press release at the end of the day is pretty minimal for someone who can write one in less than an hour; and, after awhile, they really start to add up to big monthly profits. Plus, if you do a good job, these small jobs often lead to bigger, more substantial projects.

Quality Above All Else

Of course, the trick to being a fast freelancer all boils down to being a fast freelancer who can still produce quality work. Writing an ebook in three days is great, but if what you end up with is a pile of barely coherent mush, you’re not likely to be signing that client again any time soon (you’re also giving freelancers a bad name and I implore you to stop it).

Several weeks ago, Tamara and I realized that we were both wanting to go out of town during the first week in August.  “Hey, let’s close down for a week and take a real vacation!”  It sounded like such an awesome idea.

Awesome and totally, totally doomed to fail.

My little family arrived here in Seattle this evening.  As I unpacked our clothes and set up a changing station for the baby, my husband got to work setting up an internet connection.  Within 15 minutes, I had checked the company email and was drafting my to-do list for the week.

• 12 SEO articles
• 3 blog reviews
• 3 Mama Hacks
• 1 Nonprofit Perspective post
• 1-2 Freelance Parent posts
• Podcasting class on Monday night
• Catch up on Google Reader
• Oh, and that sooper-secret thing I can’t tell you about ’cause it’ll spoil the surprise

So, I suppose there is a bit of a question as to whether or not I’m really on vacation.  The fact that I am practically in the shadow of the Space Needle tells me that I am.  (Seriously, I’m looking at the Space Needle and typing this right now!)

My plan for the week is to intersperse the above projects in between visits to the Children’s Museum, the Pacific Science Center, and whatever other wonderful things I find to do.  I have a sneaking suspicion that I won’t have any trouble finding a Starbucks with an internet connection around here!

Not too long ago, Tamara took a risk and shared her freelance income here on the blog. To be honest, we didn’t know how people would react. Would other freelance writers think we lacked class for talking about money? Would they laugh at how little we make? Would they be inspired to work harder at their own businesses?

James, Allena, Melissa, and Genesis weighed in, and they were all really supportive. We wanted to say “thanks” to all of you for that.

But, it turns out that we’re not done with this topic yet. In fact, it seems that we don’t plan to ever be done with this topic. One of the basic tenants of Freelance Parent is that we want to encourage those who are willing to work hard enough to take the leap into freelancing. In order to do this, we feel it’s important to share the truth and give people a factual example of what others are doing.

In honor of our recent revelation, we’ve decided to offer a monthly look into the finances and workload of the Berry-Brewer Freelance Agency. We are opening ourselves up to scrutiny in hopes that our struggles and successes can inspire others to learn what it means to be a freelance writer in the current market.

Whether you want to compare your own successes to ours (for good or evil purposes); you are a new freelancer wondering about the hows, wheres, and whys of making money on the Internet; or you are simply a lookie-lou of the freelancing community, there is information here for everyone. Please feel free to contact us if you have any questions as to how we came up with our numbers or why we do things the way we do.

Total Income for July: $2248.88

Total Number of Clients Served this Month: 13

Number of These Clients Who are New: 3

Original Client Contact Point
Guru.com: 6
Elance.com: 0
Subcontracted work: 1
Referrals: 6

Total Number of Projects Completed: 18

Project Types
SEO and web-based article writing: 3
Website content: 4
Blogs and blog-related work: 5
Nonprofit: 2
Product descriptions: 1
Press releases: 2
Newsletters: 1

Look for additional tallies in the upcoming months. This is no fair weather project; we mean to expose ours numbers every thirty days or so regardless of feast or famine.

Quite some time ago, I let it slip that our freelance business was embarking upon a new marketing adventure. At the time, I also more or less promised we’d fill you in when the time was right. Well, eight weeks later, we’re finally ready to unveil our latest endeavor.

Today marks the official launch of The Nonprofit Perspective. Since I worked so hard on the About page, I’m going to copy and paste a description from there.

“The Nonprofit Perspective is a special project of the Berry-Brewer Freelance Agency. This outlet allows us to combine our love for writing with our passion for social justice. We are striving to create an open, informative space that can act as a starting point for nonprofit professionals who want to grow themselves and their organizations. It helps if you like to laugh, too, as we try not to take ourselves too seriously around here.”

So, the big question: Why are we starting (yet) another blog?

• We really do love the nonprofit world. We understand it, we appreciate it, and we want to support it.
• Nonproft organizations are our “niche” market, and we want to establish a presence there.
• We want the decision makers in nonprofit organizations to realize that we know what the heck we’re talking about.
• We also want them to hire us when they need writers.

Let’s say you’re the Development Director for a nonprofit organization, and you have a big direct mail campaign coming up. Who would you rather work with: Joe Blow & Co. who you’ve never heard of, or those personable, knowledgeable ladies over at Berry-Brewer? And did you know that their company focuses primarily on nonprofits? And that they have personal experience in the field? And here are examples of their writing skills right here on this blog . . . I should hire them for to write the direct mail piece.

At least, that’s how we’re hoping it will go.

We know the blog isn’t perfect. We hired iDesign Studios and then totally hog-tied them by making them tweak an existing template rather than crafting something even more spectacular from scratch. So, thanks, Selene, for working within the parameters we had to set. We’ll certainly be keeping you in mind when it’s time to create something a little more “our own.”

We’ve been working hard on the new blog, and we know the work’s only just begun. We’re really excited, though to be able to combine our passions and interests in this way. Isn’t that one of the best reasons to work for yourself?

My daughter has always been a very verbal child. Which is a euphemism for saying that when she wants or needs something, she demands it at the top of her lungs. Everything from getting a drink of water to a barrette falling out of her hair is a matter of the utmost urgency. I’ve always attributed this to her diva-like personality and tried to stress politeness and reasonable decibel levels.

Over the weekend, I did a little babysitting for my niece and nephew (aged almost two and four). My house was pretty much a zoo of giggling children. At one point during the day, the kids were being pretty independent, so I took the opportunity to answer some emails and make a few job bids on my laptop. All was going well for awhile until my daughter came running up to me.

“Mommy, Mommy, Mommy!” she screamed with her normal, frantic tendency. “Piggy* is stuck. He needs help. Help him! Help him!” I sort of murmured a response, saved the email I was working on, and trailed my eyes to where she was jumping about and continuing her screams.

Lo and behold, there he was. My nephew had worked his way through the dog door and all I could see was his bottom half, his legs flailing about trying to work themselves free.

After I had a quick chuckle (and took a picture), I went to go help the poor little guy. He was calling for assistance, but in a way that I have no framework for understanding. His voice was barely above talking level as he cried, “Aunt Tamara, Aunt Tamara, I need help. I’m stuck.” Don’t get me wrong – he was upset about being stuck – but in a quiet, understated sort of way.

I was suddenly struck with a thought: Why does my nephew make calm demands while my daughter screams every little thing as though it were end of the world? Is it inherent personality that makes them so different, or is my daughter reacting in the only way that gets my attention – by screaming bloody murder?

I’ll be the first to admit that I am really, really good at tuning things out when I’m working. I’ve adapted the way I focus so that nothing but obvious danger can penetrate my productive haze. My daughter is smart. She probably just found her own way of getting my attention no matter what.

By screaming.

I’m curious if other freelancing parents have discovered ways in which their work-at-home status has a negative reflection on their kids. We always talk about the benefits of working form home (spending more time with our kids, saving money on childcare), but we rarely address the potentially negative side effects that surely exist in full force.

Care to share?

* Not his real name. Nor is it in any way a reference to Lord of the Flies.

This is just a quick linky update for those of you who have your own blogs and might be interested in going to Blogworld Expo in September. Derek Semmler is one of the Sparkplugging authors, and he is giving away free admission to one lucky reader. Basically, you have to write about why you would make a good speaker at the conference (no, you won’t actually be speaking, it’s just sort of a way to gauge who should win), and a panel of judges will choose from the entries. Our very own Wendy Piersall is one of the judges, too.

So, since Freelance Parent readers are such awesome writers, I thought you should know about the contest!  It’s on his Derek Semmler dot com blog, and you should check it out!

Most of the time, I assume my clients are working from a traditional business setting. No matter who they are, I envision a nice, air-conditioned office, a telephone answering service, regular working hours, and a professional wardrobe that puts me to shame. Working from home is still new enough to me (and seemingly incredible from time to time) that I assume I am the exception rather than the rule.

However, while individuals working from virtual offices may still be in the minority, there are substantially more work-from-home professionals and parents than you think there are. This is because people working in offices still seem to carry a bit more authority than individuals clocking their hours around soccer schedules and day care issues, so those of us in the latter category tend to “hide” the fact that that is exactly what we are doing.

Although the rational part of me knows that working from home or a virtual office is no source of shame, I can’t help but perk up when I hear the screams of someone else’s children on the other end of the phone. I adore getting apologies from seemingly collected businesspeople as they are forced to attend to what only can be teenagers demanding the keys to the car or money for the mall.

That’s why it is a continual delight to come across clients who are in the exact same situation as the rest of us. In the past two weeks, I have discovered that not one, not two, but three of my client contacts are WAHMs. They work from virtual offices and around the needs of their small children. And these aren’t small potatoes clients either – some of them are incredibly successful professionals amongst whom it is an honor to work.

In reality, working with individuals in virtual offices is beneficial for a number of reasons:

• They have more flexible schedules, so questions are often answered in the middle of the night and phone calls can be set up during untraditional hours.

• They understand the costs of working as a freelancer or an independent contractor. When you ask for a reasonable hourly rate, they automatically know that you are calculating taxes, administrative hours, and PayPal fees into the overall charge, so they don’t balk at the total number.

• They are an incredible networking opportunity. Our website designer and our nonprofit blog designer (yet to be unveiled, thank you very much) both work from virtual offices. We send work their way, and they send work ours. We all belong to the same club, with the never-discussed-but-readily-apparent rules of loyalty and reciprocation.

• They employ the latest in communications technology. Instant messages, Twitters, and emails abound among the virtual office set. Telephone and face-to-face communication methods are oftentimes a heavier time investment than sending off a quick email every now and then, so it’s nice to work with a group of people who operate along the same lines.

• They work on different pay schedules than traditional offices. When I submit an invoice to a large organization, I typically have to wait until the right department approves and submits the payment. The work-at-home set typically pays much, much faster (oftentimes on the same day as the project completion).

The work-from-home set is an incredible bunch of people (as many of us will attest). Although I would never turn down a job from a traditional office setting, I am happy to include so many WAHMs and virtual office professionals in my client list.

Writing website content for a company you are working with for the first time is a tricky business. Because a website is a very personal representation for many businesses (especially smaller businesses, which are the ones doing the bulk of the hiring for freelancers), you really have to focus on capturing the essence of who they are and what they are trying to accomplish. (This is, of course, excepting those websites that just want a cheesy sales pitch in CAPITAL LETTERS with exc!lam!ation! points placed randomly throughout the text and emphasized wherever possible. Those, in my estimation, are another category entirely.)

For the most part, website content writing is very hit-or-miss. There will be instances in which your client loves every single word, and there will be times when you get what is the email equivalent of a blank stare and several bemused blinks. Rarely, if ever, have I landed anywhere in the middle.

There are typically three client types when it comes to needing website content:

Type A: Has no idea what they want to say. You get a brief overview of the company and general writing directions (“I want it to be creative but traditional; innovative but not too risky”). Once you complete the writing and turn it in, they immediately pounce on what needs to be changed. What you don’t change, they do, eventually compiling your sentences in a random pattern that for some reason makes them happy.

Type B: Has no idea what they want to say. You get a brief overview of the company and general writing directions. They love every word and immediately put it up on their website (occasionally changing your punctuation in a manner that completely nullifies your intent) since they know very well that they could never write anything better.

Type C: Knows exactly what they want it to say but can’t say it themselves. They offer what they have attempted to come up with in the past as well as insight into their company’s vision and founding. No matter what you turn in, they are happy with the result, oftentimes asking for one or two revisions on a tricky portion, but still pleased with the outcome.

Fortunately, a good freelance writer can navigate a relationship with every single one of these client types – even the Type A folks. The outcome is all in how you handle your side of the job.

• You usually can’t tell a Type A from a Type B right from the start, so it’s best to always assume you are working with the former. Avoid a conflict by asking probing questions designed to get a better understanding of what they want before you get started. Who is their primary audience? What words would they use to describe the reaction they want from readers? What do they hope to accomplish right away? In two years? How important is search engine ranking? How hard should sales be pushed? Eventually, you’ll come up with your own list of pertinent questions that will become a sort of template for each website you write.

• Have patience with the Type A clients. Here at Berry-Brewer, we’ve been there ourselves; when we asked for a website design, we had no idea what it was we wanted. It was so much easier to nitpick a sample than it was to clearly define what it was we wanted in the first place (mostly because we didn’t know). It’s not that we weren’t happy with what our designer came up with, it’s that we wanted it to reflect us a little bit more – and we did that by picking out what we wanted to change. That’s the nature of this type of work. (Trust me, if you look in your past, you’ll probably find that you, too, have been a Type A at some time or another.)

• Always reinforce your willingness to make revisions (assuming you are willing, of course). If your clients come back horrified with the outcome of your writing, they might actually be worried that this is a one-time deal and that you won’t work with them to achieve a happy outcome, thereby making you a complete waste of money. I consider website writing a collaborative process, and I let my clients know that from the start. I also make sure that my cost to the client includes this process, so that they don’t end up with hidden fees for revisions.

• Never, never take rejection personally when it comes to websites. It’s easy to be affronted when someone comes back and dislikes what you’ve come up with – but it’s not your website. Your job is to make the client happy. If that means they want to move paragraphs around and add sentences to the point at which you are no longer willing to use their website as a sample, so be it. Of course, you may want to gently offer your professional opinion, especially if you know more about SEO or marketing than they do, but in the end, it’s not your decision to make.

If you’re the type of freelancer who gets website content spot on every time, good for you. (Or, perhaps, how fortunate that you never had to work with a Type A.) At the end of the day, most of us will come across at least a few of those hard-to-please clients who seem to dislike anything and everything that we do.

The moral of this story is that you can’t win the first time every time. What makes a good freelancer great is being able to make revisions and collaborate so that the client is satisfied with the end result. In this case, it’s the destination that counts, not the journey.

The question of how to charge more money (and how to make more money) as a freelancer is one that continually plagues us here at Freelance Parent. A little while back, I mentioned that we are just learning to walk that fine line between making good money and having enough work to keep us busy. When all is said and done, perfecting these navigation skills is really all it takes to charge more and make more as a freelancer.

The “Charge More, Make More” Idea

One recurring theme in the “how to make more money” game is to just charge more. However, the concept of charging higher fees in order to raise your income level is a deceptively simple one. The idea is that by selling yourself as a professional worthy of commanding higher prices, you will find the clients willing to pay that much. Period. However, I recently ran a little experiment wherein all my bids for jobs for a month were placed at the rate I really want to make rather than my usual, slightly-lower rate.

You know what the response was? Not a single bite. In fact, I placed a bid yesterday at my lower rates and already have a job lined up. Go figure.

I wasn’t catastrophically upset by this experiment, since it fits in with my theories about charging more and making more (and I made sure I had enough work lined up to keep me busy in the interim).

How “Charge More, Make More” Really Works

Making more money and getting higher rates of pay is actually a really complicated balance that most of us are still working out. If you want to make more money, you have to charge more money – but not to everyone, and not all at once.

When I break down my income into averages and include all my own administrative work, I make a decent hourly rate. However, it is hardly achieved with any measure of consistency. Here’s how it works: I have one client who pays very, very well. I love them, but they are the exception rather than the rule. I’ve built a solid relationship up with them over time, and they continually send more work my way. Understandably, my income has risen with these changes.

The rest of the time, I fill in the “gaps” with lower paying work. While I’m not making the kind of figures I want with these clients, it is still income. Some pay better than others, and some are simply a great way for me to expand my experience and make more connections. I have enough work to fill my 15 to 20 desired hours per week, but not all of it is blow-me-away fantastic.

The next step in the “Charge More, Make More” game has been said all over the blogosphere: a freelancer should fire his or her lower-paying clients and slowly ease his or her way into the upper echelons of clientele. Although I rely heavily on my good-paying client right now, I know that sticking to just one client is not a feasible long-term plan. Securing several high-paying sources will (over time) replace all the lower paying ones I currently rely on to make up my income differences and fill my time. Eventually, I should be sitting exactly where I want to be financially.

When “Charge More, Make More” Doesn’t Work

There are several scenarios in which this process might not work:

You don’t have any high-paying clients yet. Although I’m willing to take on what amount to $15/hour jobs as a secondary measure, it would not be a happy situation if that is all I could ever get. Remember, freelancers have quite a bit of communication to do and administrative work to attend to. If you’re only billing $15/hour (or making the equivalent with flat-fee or per-word writing), you’re probably making half that by the time you clock all your hours. That’s minimum wage. You have to have some better-paying gigs to balance out the lower-paying ones, or you’ll just get burnt out and frustrated.

You really aren’t worth the amount you’re charging. Whether it’s a lack of experience, a lack of skills, or a lack of effective marketing, you may simply find that people aren’t willing to pay more for your services because they can get better for less somewhere else. That’s the nature of competition. Sometimes, you may have to beef up your skills/education/experience, create a stellar marketing platform, discover a new approach to writing queries, network better, or simply charge less in order to get the jobs.

You aren’t being patient. When a potential client posts a bid on an online site or a job board, we freelancers typically scramble to get a query in ASAP. However, your client may not get back to you with the same hustle and bustle. I’ve had clients hire me as much as four months after I made initial contact, without a word in the meantime. The moral of this story is that even though you might feel like you are climbing ladders to nowhere, things can turn around very quickly. Stick with it, try a few different techniques, and be patient. Old clients may return or new ones may discover the other guy they hired isn’t working out. You never know.

Most of us take the things we read online with a grain of salt – a wise move, since you never really know what kind of cracked-up individuals are purporting to have years of experience and mountains of expertise. Unless you take the time to check references, look businesses up in the Better Business Bureau, and call various universities to ascertain if said Master’s Degree is a reality (none of which is a bad idea), you pretty much have to assume that blog writers, clients, and freelancers are telling the truth. That’s why any freelance writer worth hiring double checks all facts gleaned from the wonderful world wide web before putting them in an article; and why that same freelance writer won’t work with a new client without taking some contractual and/or escrow-related steps prior to getting started.

That being said, I’m going to tell you a little something: as I move my way around the Internet and the blogosphere, I’ve caught several blog writers, clients, and freelance professionals in a lie. Oh, not the sort of lie that smacks of utter deceit or that will cause anyone undue harm. It’s more like a few bluffs now and then to make themselves seem more professional, more experienced, more something.

Good for them.

So What Good is an Online Personality?

Sanity

Freelancers are notorious for their inability to separate home lives and professional lives. With children screaming underfoot, last-minute work occurring well into the night, and telephone interviews taking place in the bathroom with the door firmly closed and locked (or is that just me?), it’s no wonder that we struggle to create a boundary between what we do and who we are.

Building an online persona is a great way to strengthen that boundary. Although blogs are known for being an opportunity to bear our souls and air our grievances (at least it is here on Freelance Parent from time to time), there still remains a barrier between the you that others see and the you that you really are. This is simply a healthy part of this kind of life; by keeping a part of yourself closed to your audience, you are maintaining a semblance of privacy.

Marketing

Depending on what you are trying to sell and who your primary audience is, having an online persona can be a great way to bring in clients and get yourself that elusive USP. I always feel deeply mortified when I see a used car salesman on a commercial, since I have yet to see one (a salesman or a commercial) that doesn’t fit into the sleazy, I’d-sell-my-kid-for-a-million-dollars stereotype. I have sincere hopes that at home, among their families, these guys are perfectly nice and normal; and that for them, the car salesman persona is simply a part of their sales gimmick.

While we freelancers don’t have quite the same stereotype going (nor do I think we should plan on getting one), building up a quality online personality can help to strengthen your image as an expert (or whatever else it is you want to convey) in your field. That could very well mean more money. More money is good.

Confidence

Having an online persona is also a great way to boost confidence: your own and that of your clients in you. Opening yourself up as the neurotic, second-guessing freelancer that you really are isn’t a great way to inspire confidence among those who might hire you. Most clients want someone who can take charge, ask the right questions, and get the job done in a smooth, professional straight line. Putting forward that person - even if he or she appears to be taking an extended leave of absence - might mean the difference between getting one or two jobs a month and making a living.

Having a confident exterior will inevitably work its way inside, as well. Even if you still quake in your shoes every time you have to do that telephone interview from the bathroom (again, is this just me?), knowing that others think of you as a calm and cool professional does wonders for your self-esteem. If they feel certain that you are qualified (and you didn’t lie in your qualifications), then you are. Go with it.