How do you break into the lucrative field of commercial freelancing --
writing ads, sales letters, brochures, catalogs and other materials that will
earn you as much as a six-figure income?
You can earn
that kind of money as a freelance writer without producing a bestseller or
selling scripts to the movies or TV. A six-figure income is a realistic and
achievable goal for freelancers who pursue commercial
freelancing, i.e., writing for corporate and institutional clients
instead of book and magazine
publishers.
In commercial
freelancing, you perform writing services for corporations, entrepreneurs,
trade associations, professional societies, colleges, museums, hospitals, and
other commercial enterprises and organizations instead of for the traditional
editor at a magazine or book publishing house. The material you write may have
as its goal any of the following: to educate, to motivate, to entertain, to
inform, or to persuade. But most assignments involve writing documents designed
to sell (or help sell) a product, service, organization or idea.
What types of
commercial assignments are there? In a given year I will produce for my clients ads, sales letters, annual reports,
direct mail packages, sales brochures, capabilities brochures
("corporate" brochures), catalogs, press releases, feature articles,
speeches, slide presentations, videotapes, films, newsletters, booklets,
pamphlets, and any other materials they need to sell their products,
communicate with employees and customers, or describe their activities.
The biggest
advantage of commercial writing is that it pays well. Many freelancers working
in this field earn $50,000-$125,000 a year and more. Unlike the magazine and
book marketplace, where authors prepare queries and proposals they hope to sell
to editors, clients in the commercial sector approach you, the writer, with
specific assignments. They also provide all necessary background information,
eliminating the need to do outside research.
According to an Adweek survey, 75% of commercial freelance
writers charge by the project, while 25% bill at an hourly or day rate. And as
freelancer Sig Rosenblum points out, "Fees are all over the lot." I
know many freelancers who charge $25 for a one-page press release; my fee is
$300. 1 charge $3,000 to write a direct mail package; my friend Don Hauptman is
asking for -- and getting -- $10,000 for the same assignment. Hourly rates for
freelancers also vary widely according to experience and geography. In my area,
northern New Jersey, some freelancers
charge as little as $25 per hour, with $50 being closer to average. Ben West, a
good friend and successful freelancer specializing in financial copy, was
getting $75 per hour last time I looked.
To get a feel
for what to charge, remember: your initial meetings with your first prospects
will quickly give you an idea of what constitutes a reasonable fee. For
instance, let's say you ghostwrite speeches for local businesspeople. You find
that some want to pay only $500 per speech while others agree to your quoted
fee of $2,000, but no one expects to
get it for less than $500 and no one is willing to go to $3,000. The range,
then, is $500-$2,000.
It also helps to
find out what fellow freelancers are
charging for similar services. Many publish fee schedules, which you can get by
calling or writing. Some, surprisingly, are happy to advise novices on what and
how to charge. Your own fees, of course, will probably fall somewhere in the
range of what others in your area are billing clients.
Any organization in your area that produces promotional, educational or
informational materials is a potential client for your freelance writing
services. But many freelancers find prospecting for clients easier when they
focus on companies in a particular field or industry --an industry in which the
freelancer has prior experience.
When I started, I knew I could write competently in many different
fields. Clients saw it differently, however. Banks wouldn't hire me because I
had no financial samples in my portfolio. Pharmaceutical companies said to me,
"We need a medical
writer." Chemical and industrial firms,
on the other hand, were thrilled to find a writer who was a chemical engineer
by training and had been the advertising manager of a major manufacturer of
chemical equipment.
The lesson here is that we live in an age of specialization. Your best bet for breaking into commercial writing is with clients in industries in which you have inside knowledge or previous experience -- either as a writer or from some other job. Clients are eager to hire writers knowledgeable in their industry who can advise them on promotional and marketing strategies, not just write copy.
How do you locate clients? The Standard Directory of Advertisers, available in most libraries, is a good place to start. It provides
detailed information on more than 17,000 companies nationwide that actively
market their products and services, and is indexed both alphabetically and by
state.
Who do you want to reach in these companies? If you write advertising
materials -- print ads, TV and radio commercials, sales brochures,
point-of-purchase displays -- contact the advertising manager, marketing
manager, sales promotion manager or manager of marketing communications.
If you specialize in corporate communications -- annual reports, speeches, capabilities brochures, material for in-house publications -- contact the manager of corporate communications.
If you write public relations materials -- press releases, feature
articles, case histories, newsletters -- contact the manager of public
relations.
If you specialize in employee communications writing, contact personnel managers or managers of human resources.
At large corporations, each area may be handled by a separate person. At
smaller firms, one individual may be responsible for all these functions. In
either case, call the company and ask the receptionist for the name of the
person in charge of the department you want to reach (if it is not listed in
the The Standard
Directory of Advertisers). Nine times out of ten, this
information is given freely over the phone.
Some freelancers get most of their work directly from corporations,
called "clients" in the ad business, while others work
primarily for advertising agencies, public relations firms, graphic design
studios, audiovisual production houses, and other "vendors" that
supply communications services to corporate America:
Listings for such vendors may be found under the appropriate category in
your local Yellow Pages. For more detailed information on each company, consult
industry directories. Ad agencies, for instance, are listed in The Standard Directory of
Advertising Agencies, again available at your library.
Your contact will be the creative director, copy supervisor, or -- at very
small agencies -- the owner or president. Writer's Market also lists some ad agencies, although the listing
is incomplete and represents only a fraction of the agencies that purchase
freelance work.
In magazine and book publishing, writers approach prospective
"clients" (publishers) with ideas they hope to sell. In commercial
freelancing, the opposite is done: You approach clients and try to sell them on
using you and your writing services. You are selling yourself --not a specific
idea.
If the client likes you and decides to hire you, the client gives you an
assignment to write according to specified guidelines. For example, the client
may tell you, "We need a one-page ad selling our chemical product -- a
degreaser -- to firms in the pulp and paper field."
If a client instead says, "Here is our product; tell us how to sell
it," answering this question would require considerable thought on your part and would be considered a separate consulting assignment for
which you should get a contract before starting. Giving away ideas for free,
which is accepted as standard practice by book and magazine writers, is not
done by successful commercial freelancers.
How do you make the initial contact and sell yourself to clients? Use the
same approach as any business trying to sell its product or service: Market yourself.
What are the marketing vehicles used by successful freelancers working
primarily in the commercial field? They span the spectrum from
"hard-sell" promotions (such as classified and display ads, sales
letters, brochures, self-mailers and telemarketing), to "soft-sell"
publicity vehicles such as giving speeches, networking, seminars, and writing
articles for the trade press.
Direct mail is especially effective in making the initial contact. You
can send a straightforward letter describing your background and writing
services, either preprinted or computer-personalized, to prospective clients,
both on the ad agency and corporate side.
In my own such letter, I include a reply card the prospect can mail back
to request additional information on my services and a package of writing
samples. The response rate of people sending back my reply card is 7%, which
means by mailing 200 letters I can produce responses from 14 potential clients
who say, in effect: "Yes, I'm interested in the possibility of hiring you
to write for our firm. Tell me more about you.” This is the type of response
you want to generate.
Another powerful marketing technique is to publish articles in the trade
press. Such articles, written by you on some facet of advertising, marketing or
business communications, help position you as an expert in the field and
increase your visibility among the target audience you want to reach. Reprints
of articles, imprinted with your address and phone number, make excellent additions
to direct mail packages and can be used as handouts at shows, conferences and
meetings.
The most important ingredient of success in commercial writing is
attitude. A recent conversation with the president of a small public relations
and advertising agency summed this up nicely for me: "I have been
dissatisfied with most of the freelance writers I have used. The problem is,
they don't understand what they're doing. They think they're
just putting words on paper. I tell them the background on a story, and they
hand it back to me exactly as I gave it to them and say, `Here's the story you
wanted.' What they fail to realize is that our words have a purpose -- they
must sell, educate, inform, and motivate -- or the client is not getting his
money's worth."
Or as ad man David Ogilvy puts it: "When I write an advertisement, I
don't want you to tell me that you find it 'creative.' I want you to find it so
interesting that you buy the product."
Let me give you a few tips that can help you produce the kind of copy commercial clients desire:
ü Keep it simple. On an episode of Thirty
something, college professor Gary
questioned Michael's simple-minded approach to advertising. Ad man Michael
replied angrily, "Much of the public has a second-grade reading level;
they're not big fans of Shakespeare."
I don't know
about the second-grade reading level, but I agree that commercial messages
should be clear, simple and understandable. Remember, you are writing not to
dazzle the reader with your prose, but to get the client's message across.
ü
Be
concise. Don't waste words. Get your point across, then move on.
ü
Put
yourself in the reader's shoes. The reader could care less about your client's
products, or sales goals, or corporate policies. The reader cares about himself
-- his needs, his goals, his fears, his hopes. Always try to start with the
reader, then build a bridge that relates to your sales message. For example,
instead of "Our new telephone system. . .", say, "Your
telecommunications needs . . .", or "Tired of paying through the nose
for sky-high telephone bills?" You get the idea.
ü
Stress
benefits, not features. Tell how the product, service or idea helps the reader
save time, make money or improve his life. Instead of saying "The
Encyclopedia of Health is 467 pages long with 44 charts and graphs," say,
"Now all the information you need to live a healthier, happier life is
available from one single, authoritative source."
ü
Be
specific. Avoid superlatives. Good commercial writing is fact-filled: imparting
information the reader can use to make an intelligent decision about using your
client's products and services. Many commercial writers mistakenly believe that
consumers are stupid and that puffery will somehow bluff them into making a bad
buying decision. They are wrong.
How do you get
started in commercial freelancing? Although you can use the marketing
techniques outlined above, the best way is simply to grab the opportunity to do
this work when an offer comes your way.
And chances
are, it will. Most magazine and book writers receive occasional offers to do
corporate or ghostwriting work for commercial clients. But they pass it by.
Next time such an offer comes your way,
take it. Then build on this foundation.
The first
client is the hardest to get. Once you have one commercial assignment under
your belt, you can approach prospective clients as an experienced writer with a
portfolio and client list, not as a novice.
Ask friends if their companies have employee newsletters, in-house publications or annual reports. Ask them to find out the names of the people in charge of those publications. Then see if they can arrange introductions for you.
Getting your
first clients and serving them well
is extremely important. Do everything in your power to satisfy these clients
and get more work from them. They become an important part of your marketing
effort, providing references, testimonials, and proof of your ability to serve
clients successfully.
Don't worry too
much about fees at this point. The important thing is to build a portfolio, a
client list, and a reputation for quality. Once you expand your client base and
have a comfortable amount of work coming in, you can think about raising fees
and dropping difficult or unprofitable
accounts.
Successful
commercial freelancers often talk in terms of "billable hours." These
are the hours during the work week spent writing, researching, and doing other
work on projects for paying clients. Most writers and consultants find that
only half their time can be spent on billable hours; the balance is taken up
with such matters as administrative tasks, training, reading, and marketing for
new business.
Thus, if you
work a 40-hour week, you put in only
about 20 billable hours each week. Multiplied by 50 weeks a year, this is 1,000
hours. Even at $100 an hour, your income peaks at $100,000 a year. And that's
the gross figure, before subtracting for business expenses and. income tax
payments.
Increasing your
income beyond this $100,000 "ceiling" is difficult, but not
impossible.
One way is to
raise your fees, and as your reputation grows, you may want to do this. Another
option is to find ways of working more efficiently, thus increasing billable
hours. A computer, for example, can eliminate hours of needless retyping for
drafts and revisions. And why run down the block every time you need a
photocopy when you can buy a good machine for your home office for less than
$1,200?
Another option
is to hire an assistant to handle the mundane tasks of typing, correspondence,
bookkeeping, and other general administrative functions, thus freeing you to
concentrate on writing and marketing. And several writers I know subcontract
work to other freelancers who write at lower rates, and keep the difference as
profit. This sounds fine in theory,
but in reality finding other writers who meet your own standards of excellence
can be difficult: And often, the work they produce for you is not what you
would find acceptable for submission to the client.
One writer I
know of describes himself as a "freelance information packager," and
this is a good description of the direction many self-employed commercial
writers are going in these days. For instance, in addition to writing ads and
brochures, I also consult, teach, and market my own seminars on direct mail and
other communications topics. Recently, I professionally taped one of my
seminars; I now market the cassettes as a separate product.
The idea here
is to take your expertise and offer it to clients and buyers in many different
ways, shapes and forms. You are no longer subject to the whims of the
publishing world, but can become a self-sufficient entrepreneur -- a
"mini-conglomerate," if you will -- selling information, expertise
and writing ability in a variety of ways and formats.
If you can
think, learn and write, there's no limit to what you can accomplish. And
commercial writing -- putting your skills to work for corporate clients paying
big money for writing services -- is one of the best and easiest ways to expand
your writing activities.. .and your income.