It wasn’t bad enough getting laid off after only working for that company for 2 weeks. Now Valnet is refusing to me for the work I did. The last time I checked, that's called theft of services.

Maybe that's their game- hire people, have them write a few articles, then let them go and never pay them. I'm not letting this slide though, but all of my emails are being ignored.

I suppose the next step is to file a formal complaint, either with my state's labor board or the U.S. department of labor.

Hi everyone! I was recently approached for a collaboration to create a Black Friday gift guide and get it published on media outlets. But I don’t have established media contacts or much experience with these types of projects.

I’d really appreciate any advice on how to find media contacts for this or if anyone has ideas for where to start. If you’ve done something similar, I’d love to hear your experience or any tips you might have. Thanks so much in advance for any guidance!

An old colleague has recently approached me about writing a monthly newsletter for their small food business. I had done this for a few years as part of my old role as wholesale sales manager for another small food business, and they liked my work and want the same. I'm excited to get started, but we have yet to arrange payment and I want to bring my own ideas to the table. I'd like to work for them on a freelance basis, and I'm thinking of charging an up-front rate to set up the newsletter template, then a flat rate for a basic newsletter each month, plus extra for any special photography (which I will also be doing), plus a percentage of the revenue generated by the newsletter. Does this seem reasonable? Can anyone suggest specific dollar and percentage amounts? I've never worked freelance before and would appreciate some input.

Thanks!

Hi everyone. New to this sub, but I have reviewed some past threads and found some great insight and helpful people.

I stumbled upon an "ideal client" in the sense that they need to uplevel their content marketing, and I not only love their product line, but I have niche knowledge (and passion) which would be of great benefit to them. I have varied writing experience but not as a 'content creator' and I have a social media aversion... but currently design, edit and manage (but don't write) a weekly newsletter for a client - something I just transitioned into and am learning on the fly in Beehiiv.

So i sent the CEO of this company an email proposing I create and contribute content for newsletter (with all my relevant niche knowledge noted) and got a resounding yes - that they need to work on their marketing strategy as they now are distributing their products nationally (Canada, so a much smaller market than US, but still)

I also have ideas for new strategies to build their list as well as promote the product. So I bring more than content writing to the table. I also really long for some collaboration as I have been working alone for too long and it's worn thin..I love brainstorming sessions.

I am rhinking I'd do something like a monthly package with 4 (weekly) newsletters, plus an original article, which might include an interview (more time) and at least one strategy session a month. I don't want to charge hourly because I'm slow and don't know how to track all my divergent thinking time and energy!...at the same time I do need to gauge this around some sort of hourly rate.

Thank you for your advice.

Based in the UK. I've been a nurse practitioner for 10 years. Can't carry on with clinical work due to burnout. Previously published an article for a journal a few years ago. I have an English & Linguistics bachelors degree. Prior to medical stuff interned with local newspaper. I'd like to write for health/medical/wellbeing for magazines NOT academic/journal stuff. I'm told I'm a pretty good writer. What are my chances of making it?

I'm a news reporter, but am interested in learning how to write Youtube and/or podcast scripts as a side business.

What's a good way to learn how to write these? Any good resources?

I don't mind finding a few gigs on Upwork or similar to get a portfolio started, but I need to create at least some samples first.

Any advice appreciated.

Hey there! Im a student in college looking to make some money on the side in the form of copywriting. I know copywriting is legit, but Im wondering where I should start. I think my writing skills are pretty good, but Im not sure they would transfer well to copy.

Should I get started with someone's course? Like copyMBA, copythat, or copysquad, etc.? Are there any books I should read? What do you guys recommend I should do? I have a low time preference so I am absolutely fine with working for a couple months without seeing any good pay. I also have realistic expectations and understand that most people on social media dont accurately portray what copywriting is like.

Let me know what you think! Thanks.

I've posted a couple of times over the last few months about how my full-time freelance job that I've had for a decade has gone downhill. It pays amazingly (six figures most years), but a colleague began some backstabbing stuff over the summer, the manager believed her without talking to me, and I've been pushed out in a way. I'm still allowed to work, but it's bread crumbs. There were also some issues with me getting paid within a timely manner, being lied to, etc.

Some of you offered adivce that involved not quitting but not prioritizing it, and that is what I have been doing for the most part. I reached out to some part-time clients to let them know I had more availability. I also ended up taking a part-time job from someone who has been after me for a few years. It's not something I really wanted to do, but it allows me more freedom and creativity when writing. In time, I think I'll be able to leverage it into more opportunities because it's kind of a public gig. I also resell things online as a bit of a hobby, but I've ramped that up to make it more lucrative and hope to continue to do because I actually enjoy it.

While the financial aspects still leave a little bit to be desired, I see a light at the end of the tunnel if things continue in the direction they're heading and I keep hustling. But more importantly, I feel healthier and happier. I'm not letting unprofessional people rule my life anymore. I'm not sitting at my computer 24/7. I'm not nearly as stressed out (though when I think about how this woman completely destroyed my income, I do get pretty angry). And I'm even finding time to work on my passion projects.

So, I just wanted to thank you all who suggested that and let anyone else know there is a life beyond a toxic workplace, even in our line of work!

And if anyone has any tips on how to not be so angry at that woman, please let me know. lol.

Hey everyone. This is Kia. I am a script writer for YouTube. One month ago, I got a project basis role of script writer in a new channel. I was working for other channel in the same time too so my videos are also published. I am facing issues in my work place and I have no idea.

So the issue is that I submitted the script 2 weeks ago and the script editor gave very harsh feedback with statements like you have spoiled, and many more.

So again edited the script according to her feedback and shared it a week ago. Yesterday, she again gave feedback, she pointed out same issues by making comments. It feels like she is only there to point out issues.

I even replied to her comments and feedback on the 1st draft of script but she didn't even paid any attention.

Now today I asked her if she can edit the script, since I can't meet her expectations and the cycle of feedback is time consuming and repetitive.

She said her job as a script editor is only about correcting grammatical errors and giving feedback.

I always thought (even Google says that the script editors job is about editing script if needed)

I am also working with other channels and even on these channels its script editor job is to edit the script.

Any advice?

I have been providing clients with various services under the content umbrella since 2012 - content writing, SEO writing, content strategy, copywriting, and some content marketing. But, for the last two years, it's a drying river. And not just for me. This is something happening to sooooo many other high quality freelancers in content as well.

I think I have reached the end of my rope with all of this, and will have to drastically pivot my career in a whole new direction. I am curious to know if anyone has recently been in the same situation? What did you pivot to? How is it going?

I have been writing for a website paying a miserable rate of $0.015 for almost two months. In the first month, I didn't rush to ask for a payment, since I wanted to get enough money so that the banking fees would not consume most of my income.

The second month rolls around and I ask if it would be okay to send an invoice. I wait 10 days for the reply "yeah sorry, send the invoice." Takes me 1 day to calculate the invoice, sent the invoice after calculating. Nothing, crickets for a couple of days. Then I try to explain to him how IBAN and SWIFT work. Client "I will talk with the accounting," fine talk with the accounting. All in all, 2 months have passed and I have not seen a single dime for 100+ articles I have writen.

The reason I kept writing is that I really need the income to help out my family, and I did not think there would be issues with payment since its a bigger client. However, I am close to telling them to go fuck themseleves. I missed the deadline for 1 article out of 35 in the first days working there, and they were quick to point it out and soft threaten me, however, they can not pay the fucking invoice for a month.

I am in such a bad financial situation right now, but I feel so disgusted that I'd rather quit this than continue working for someone so disrespectful. Any thoughts?

I’m feeling more and more like tech, med, and finance writers get the highest paying jobs and have a fair bit of demand (at least from the outside looking in). I’d love to break into a niche like this to help my income. I’m currently I’m in outdoors and clothing. But I don’t have a background in any of these fields and am genuinely lost/overwhelmed at the thought of trying to break into one. Any advice?

I’m going to apply for their contract copy writing position but I was wondering how much they pay. They’ve asked my salary and expected salary too but I’m currently freelancing so not sure what numbers to give.

I am based in the UK. I have written for sites such as Digital Spy, Metro and British Comedy Guide.

It's very sparse though and I very rarely am able to successfully pitch an idea and be paid a decent amount.

I predominantly write about television and autism, while trying to fuse the two when I can. I don't know where I'm going wrong or whether I am missing something.

Feel free to ask any questions, and any help is appreciated.

I accepted an underpaid writing gig from a company I've worked with for years. Their pay has become increasingly worse and worse, but it's somewhat steady so I keep taking their jobs. They would give me feedback from time to time, nothing major, and I always made the changes no problem. They recently partnered with a sister company and now it seems that every time I turn something in, they want me to rewrite half of it. I recently took on a contract with them that included 5 small writing gigs within it. After receiving the feedback for the first gig, I calculated that, including all the revisions, I would be making less than 10 euros an hour (before taxes are deducted). There's no mention of rewrites/revisions in the contract they gave me. Has anyone been successful at renegotiating a contract once the work has already been done? Technically, I gave them exactly what is specified in the contract. I understand some rewrites come with the territory, but I really feel like I'm being taken advantage of...

I'm tired, boss.

Hi all,

Is anyone familiar with the Compose.ly writing service and the writer trials?

I just submitted my last of three trials, and I got a very generic email saying that my work didn't meet expectations. At the bottom, there was this boilerplate-looking content box that said they wouldn't be moving forward with my application.

What's weird is that I checked the status of my submission and it says my work was submitted to the client. That doesn't make sense -- if I had given them such a "generic" piece, it shouldn't have been suitable to deliver to the client.

This was the third of three writer trials I was asked to do. All the assigned trials were for the same client using the same content guidelines. The first two passed with no problems. I also had communication with the editor with each piece and an opportunity to correct something on one of the articles when they requested it.

Thanks for any insight!

Hi everyone, I've been working as a content writer for about three years with a steady flow of orders on Fiverr. But ever since AI tools became popular, my orders dwindled to zero. It's been over a year now, and even though I had a well-rated profile, I just don't get a single order. I even tried creating a second account to see if it would help, but no luck there either. I've also tried LinkedIn and Upwork, but never managed to get anything going on that platform.

I want to get back to writing, partly because I enjoy it, and also because I need the extra income. But honestly, I’m feeling stuck at this point. Does anyone have any advice/idea?

I've write mostly in Spanish which is my native language

Just curious because I sort of just got comfortable freelancing full time with my existing budget. Unfortunately, I have failed to account for taxes or retirement in this budget, which means I'm still behind the 8 Ball. I've read that you'll need to set aside roughly 15% monthly for each, but is this realistic? Thanks in advance

FYI, I googled around and looked through past posts before posting. I realize the market is not great for many people right now but assume that some people are still making a living at writing professionally.

For reference, I mostly write long form blog posts and guides (1200-3500 words) to a brief. Sometimes I’m expected to include keywords from a list, create a meta description, insert some links or source a few images but it’s not particularly onerous work. Occasionally I’ll get a demanding brief with an extremely arcane style guide or a request to meet a time-consuming punchlist of requirements.

I would say I’m decent at writing business content at the college level; people are usually pleased with my writing and don’t request too many revisions. That said, I’m trying to branch up and out. I will be cold-pitching to individual clients or publications and networking, but I'm also looking to partner with agencies for reliable income at a higher rate than I’m currently making.

So— I’m wondering who is currently making 35cpw and up working with an agency (either a standalone agency in a medium-sized city or some kind of corporate outfit) as a freelancer, not an employee (assuming said agency has something like a 100% markup... which means I'm assuming that they're billing the content at at least 70cpw, even if they're offering that content as part of a package and billing their client at a flat rate.) —

Anyway, is earning a decent rate with an agency feasible? If you're making this work, do you do mostly SEO writing, and if so, how much of your time is taken up by non-writing tasks, like keyword research? Does your per-word or per-project rate work out to a good hourly or does it get eaten up by persnickety tasks and edits? Does your agency give you a straightforward brief and let you get on with the work?

If you don’t do SEO writing, are you doing documentation? Business reports? Guides and ebooks?

I guess what I’m asking is, what is an agency expecting from a writer who is expecting to get paid a professional rate?

TIA

Lost all of my clients this year so asked myself "what now?" And while I think I can still find work, I know I can just lose it anytime due to technology.

But not only that, I no longer have the motivation to write for myself. I wanted to become an essayist and publish a book someday. But now everyone seems to be doing it?

This year sucks. Lost income, lost my goal/dream.

Please send some inspiring words.

Hello, everyone. I have seen people post here about writing for Collider in the past, and I knew they weren’t great to write for, but I’m pretty new to freelance writing, so I thought it would be a good thing to take on for some experience and to write some fun stuff, even though the pay is very low.

Trying to write for them has been really, really miserable. I’ve found it very difficult to get things approved with the editors, and they get nasty if you question them at all. If anyone has experience writing with them, do you have any advice on navigating the editors and actually getting to write things? I’m not ready to just abandon the contract entirely and feel I will regret it if I do. I would really appreciate any advice or guidance any of you may have.

Hello everyone! I recently completed a PhD in Comparative Literature and have interned in magazines writing fashion content during my masters degree. During my PhD, I focused mainly on academic articles and now have an upcoming book manuscript in the works. I have applied to different faculty positions and editing jobs in publishing houses and still nothing, so I am a bit lost at the moment. I am thinking of going into freelance writing full time since it has always been my dream to be an independent writer/scholar. Does anyone have any tips on where to start? Are there any master classes out there I can sign up for to begin this journey? I would really appreciate anyones input or advise! Thank you!

So I've been a writer on Medium for close to a full year now and my experience has been fantastic. I've joined a pretty neat publication, I've engaged with some great people, and I've managed to build myself a portfolio that I'm proud of.

However, the one weird thing I've started to notice more of is the bot engagement with some of my content. Sometimes, I'll wake up to notifications that several people have clapped and commented on my stories, only to find one word replies and copied/pasted sections from what I've already written. I truly do love the platform, but it's kind of sad to see how it's changed over the years from my time as a reader to now as a writer.

But that seems to be an issue with social media as a whole now. AI and bots appear to be making up more of the engagement than actual humans.

I’m looking to make a bit of extra money on the side of my full time job. I’m currently working as a content writer at a sports marketing organisation and have copywriting, SEO and content strategy experience across long and short form content. I’ve previously written for other sectors too.

While my plan right now is not to go freelance full-time, I want to explore picking up some additional work on the side as a bit of extra income but I’m not sure where to start.

What’s the best way for me to get started on this? Is it best to go with a website like Fiverr (or an alternative one)?

Hear me out, people! To make my question more clear, I want to quote from Zinsser's On Writing Well.

Zinsser writes that:

"If you master the tools of the trade—the fundamentals of interviewing and of orderly construction—and if you bring to the assignment your general intelligence and your humanity, you can write about any subject.

That's your ticket to an interesting life."

Do you consider that method beats knowledge? As a writer, can you write on any topic, having working-knowledge in grammar and style?

Of course, if a writer has a niche, then he or she should write better in that niche than a generalist writer. However, that writer will write better, I believe, because he or she has that extra knowledge on that particular topic, but still knows how to put together an article.

Hey all,

I’ve been a writer for a while and am now open to editing gigs. The thing is, I’ve edited articles before, but that was when I was working in-house. So, I’m unsure about pricing my services or presenting my portfolio.

How should I go about it? For reference, I write for a B2B marketing audience.

Hello!

Freelance writing seems to be challenging these days. I’m sorry so many talented writers are having difficulty finding work.

I’m wondering about the market for science writers. Does anyone know if this market has been as impacted by ChatGPT and the general downturn in the freelance writing market?

I’d like to try freelancing and I’m beginning to explore and ask questions.

I have six years experience writing science communications for a high tech company. Most recently, I spent four years writing more than 100 science articles for a large university. Most of the articles were lengthy features for magazines, websites and special projects.

I really enjoyed academic science writing. I’m thinking about freelancing in that niche. I’d like to market myself to universities as a science storyteller who creatively brings to life the scientific accomplishments of students, faculty and alumni.

Does anyone have any insights or thoughts about this market? Is it too narrow? Anyone ever dive into this end of the pool? 😊

I wish all of us the best as we navigate the changing freelance landscape.

Thank you for any thoughts!

So I'm writing emails, updating web copy & writing hot sheets for this company, part time around 20 hours a week. Week 1 we discussed that I'd work roughly 9am-1pm Monday-Friday to meet those hours, with maybe a few hours of flex if there was more work to be done. On the 3rd week I billed 36 hours because they'd given me 12 assignments, I had to wait at one point for full day for feedback from the client.

Quick timeline I sent work at 2pm Thursday afternoon, she left feedback at 4pm Friday and needed edits URGENTLY by 6pm that night. However that day I had no other projects to work on, so I was literally just awaiting her feedback from 9-4. I'd even logged off and gone out at 3:30 but she called my cell and asked me to come online to take care of the *urgent* edits ASAP.

When I gave her the invoice with the billing she asked why I'd billed for so many hours Friday, as all the other work had been finished earlier in the week. I reminded her that I bill for time spent waiting for feedback, particularly when the work is out of the scope of the previously agreed hours to which she replied: "I'm not paying you for time that you weren't actively writing." And she removed the hours from my invoice and didn't pay them.

I don't have a custom contract for when I do freelance work that blatantly states this policy but we did discuss it on my first day & I've also never had my billing questioned.

Since that week she's done this on two other projects which I find incredibly frustrating because it seems as if she expects me to be online 9-5 but not to bill for that time. Should I re-bill her for those hours from the third week, or should I let it go and bill her correctly moving forward? Or should I cut my losses and just quit since she has no boundaries? Furthermore do ya'll bill for time waiting for feedback or do you just bill for time spent writing?

New here, hoping someone can shed some light.

Been a Pacific Northwest-based freelance brand CD/Copywriter for nearly 30 years. Recently took an interesting, more-editorial style project that pays by the word. Never done that before, no clue how the billing works as I've always billed hourly.

Hypothetical: Let's say the assignment was 1000 words and I delivered 995. Editor chops a few things and word count goes to 950. Do folks commonly bill for the original 1000 word count, the 995 delivered or the final count, post edit, of 950?

Thanks for any advice you can send my way.