The Harsh Realities of Freelancing

This week I got my first real introduction to the harsh realities of freelancing in a down economy (or any economy for that matter). For the past six months freelancing has been tough, but busy. I've had four regular monthly columns in four different magazines in a family of publications, plus a pretty regular speckling of corporate and agency public relations and writing work. This week, however, my freelancing life suffered a major blow.

Because of the economy, the four magazines, which make up my core business, had to cut their freelancing budgets - severely. I went from about a column a month to perhaps one or two more articles this year. Talk about a shock. I would say that I lost at least 50% of my business, maybe more, in one fell swoop. So now what?

Well, at first I was in a dead panic. The magazine work was so wonderful because it was monthly, I didn't have to go out and look for it, it was fairly well paid and I enjoyed it. On the other hand, it was also tough because it took up a lot of my time and required me to depend on multiple sources who were frequently hard to reach. I spent a lot of time playing phone tag and had a lot of late-night (or all-night) writing sessions to get them completed.

Now I'm preparing to storm back with some business development efforts. I'm going to look for some partnerships, work my network, offer more to my current clients and take some time to build my skills further.

I'm also looking forward to at least one week of "me" time. The past few months I've been working night and day. It would be great to spend a week working on spring (summer?) cleaning, getting my financials together for the first quarter and maybe even reading a book. 

I've learned a valuable lesson: diversify. I write about diversification all the time, but it has really been driven home by this experience. It can be hard to do when one client offers you enough work to fill your days and nights. That means stable work and one contact to communicate with. Still, you should still consider rejecting a little bit of their work to make room for other clients. If you can get no more than 20% of your business from each client, you'll be good to go if one of your clients has to slash their freelancing budget. 

Comments

[John Ettorre]

Hang in there, Julie. It'll all work out in the end.