Nuts & Bolts
Business of Freelancing

Ramping up Your Freelance Load?
Here Are Seven Tips to Make the Process More Efficient

By Phil Piemonte, WIW Member

A few years ago I might have called myself a freelance writer. But today, now that I have taken on more "real" clients and significantly more work, I think of myself as an editorial contractor.

These days I do more than the occasional freelance article. It has become a business. I have contracts with PR firms, publishers and consultancies, all of whom have different needs, editorial processes and deadline structures.

Luckily, my workload has increased gradually; so I have had time to get my act together, figure out how to do a good job for all these folks, yet get work done as fast and efficiently as possible.

The Need for Speed

If you decide to ramp up your freelance output—make no mistake—speed and efficiency are everything. And unless you and your clients have the luxury of too much time and money, you'll need to master the practice of doing a good, solid job in the least amount of time. Clients like that.

The ability to work fast and well will also help you. There's a real benefit, for example, in being able to do a $400 flat-fee job in five hours instead of eight. That provides a gain of $30 an hour—and frees up three hours for other work.

As a freelancer—or contractor—I have done everything from wire copy to press releases to research reports. Along the way, I discovered some pretty simple ways to improve the comfort and ease of my job, and make the work go faster and more efficiently.

Seven Ways to Boost Performance:

Clear Your Desktop . Let's start with the simple stuff: Don't waste time searching in clutter. When you work for yourself, it is easy to get too casual. I have to admit that some of the best deadline writers I have ever known were slobs whose desks were crammed with old papers and half-moldy coffee cups. But the rest of the best—and the fastest and most productive—were writers with clean, organized desks and decent files. It's easy to get sloppy, so I always start a new project with a clear desk. Everything on that surface belongs to the assignment and nothing gets lost in clutter.

Keep Facts in Reach . Don't squander 10 minutes of every hour digging out simple facts. I keep a dictionary, Associated Press Stylebook and desktop atlas near my desk. I do mostly B2B writing, so I also keep an MBA reference on hand, as well as paperback financial and law dictionaries. I use the thesaurus in my word processor, and I have key online glossaries and reference guides bookmarked in my browser. If I need to know what an "odd-lot short-sale ratio" is, I don't have to Google-step through a bunch of links to get a concise and authoritative explanation of what it is.

Stock Supplies . You are a writer. A house painter doesn't arrive without paint, and you shouldn't be frittering away valuable writing time fetching the tools of your trade during work hours. I don't know about you, but I use more paper and ink in the "paperless" society than I did before, so I run out more. In the olden days, sources sent background materials—documents, product sheets and reports—in hard copy. Now it's up to me to print them from PDFs. So it pays to keep a stock of paper, ink and other supplies on hand. You won't lose money driving to Staples in the middle of a project.

Buy a transcription stand . Don't be a bobble-head. A stand with a binder clip puts documents and notes right in front of you. No more squinting at the fine print on your desk. I have a deep, upright "copyholder" that has a lip on the front to hold up the fat government reports I often need to work from.

Use Technology . Identify gear you need to make your work simpler, and get it. A few bucks worth of basic technology can greatly improve your ability to get work done. I added a second line and equipped it with a cheap automatic call distributor to handle business calls and faxes with no help from me. I also bought a call recorder to log interviews, and a two-line phone so I can conference at my own convenience.

Back Up Large Documents Off Site . Don't let a computer nightmare destroy your deadline. Your word processor may auto-save frequently, but that won't always bail you out. Nothing cripples a deadline more than a document that has disappeared into a fried computer. It's happened to me once too often. Now, when I work on a file more than 1,000 words long, I stop a few times a day, clip my work to an e-mail and send it to my off-site e-mail account. If everything crashes, I can access my work from another PC.

Watch the Clock. Remember the $400 editing job I cited above? Time really is money. When you have a full plate, deadline writing is like triage: You have to make judgments and set your own internal deadlines. You may have to sacrifice something you wanted to include in your work. No matter if you have four hours to write a clean 1,000-word piece, or four days to draft an 8-page newsletter—if you are serious about picking up more freelance work, you will need to track your progress against the clock to make sure you are staying on schedule.

Get Professional

When writing turns into a real job, you owe it to yourself to treat it like one. These simple tweaks are just a few of the ways you can knock the rough edges off your writing process, and wring more productivity out of your work day.

Phil Piemonte is a full-time freelancer. Information about his work is available at www.philpiemonte.com .