Learn to be a Freelance Boss

At some point in your freelance career, probably when you first start freelancing, you’ll work for some kind of writing company. In other words, instead of working directly with a client, you and other writers will work for a “head writer” of sorts, and that person will be the middle man. It can be a good set-up, as long as the freelancer in charge isn’t taking advantage of you with low prices. You get to avoid job trolling, they make a little money serving as the project coordinator.

Yes, you will need coffee to be a boss. Trust me.

Then, if you’re like me, you’ll start to want that coordinator job yourself. You’ll start to think, “Why can’t I be the boss?” You know what? You CAN be the boss, but don’t for one second think that it is easy. I actually had about ten writers and and two editors working under me. I was definitely the boss.

And I gave it up. After about 6 months, that level of stress wasn’t good for me, and I missed writing – I was doing too much job trolling, formatting, and so forth to have time to take projects myself.

So, I let my writers know that I wouldn’t have much work for them in the future and I went back to being more of an individual than a writing company. I still have a single editor. I still have a few writers who do a little work for me from time to time. For the most part, though, being my own boss is better than being the boss of others.

That may not necessarily be true for you, though. You might be an amazing freelance boss – and if that’s the case, you can actually make a lot of money doing it. For those of you interested, I’ve put together a series over the next week to teach you about becoming a freelance boss, from my perspective at least. Here’s what I have in store:

• Be a Boss Day 1: Hiring Writers – How to find great writers, keep the writers you do have, and “fire” the writers who just aren’t making the cut
• Be a Boss Day 2: Records – Keeping track of the money coming in, the money going out, who you need to pay, and tax-related records
• Be a Boss Day 3: The Stress – What about this job will be stressful and how to avoid that stress as much as possible
• Be a Boss Day 4: Clients – How to find clients who will jump on board with hiring a writing company rather than an individual writer
• Be a Boss Day 5: Pay Rate – Determining how much to pay your writers…and how much to pay yourself

I’ll then open it up to questions and do one or two more days to help answer questions. Because of all of the competition in the freelance world, I think that many people are hesitant to ask other freelance bosses for advice on getting started. There’s a lot you have to learn for yourself, but if I can help you by talking about my own experiences, I will!

If you already have questions that you don’t think will be answered with any of the above posts, feel free to leave a comment here or email me at allison@abcontentonline.com if you don’t want to ask publicly! I’ll answer everything, to the best of my knowledge, at the end.

Image by Ever.