Tell me a little about your career before freelance writing.
I’ve held a lot of “jobs.” A lot. The actual career path I was pursuing was nonprofit theatre administration, but living in a small city put a real kibosh on that dream. Instead, I did a little here and a little there, doing my best to get jobs with nonprofit organizations when possible. I was perpetually disappointed in the fact that despite a Masters Degree and $100,000 in student loans, the only things I ever seemed to “qualify” for were $9/hr front desk jobs.
What led you to freelance writing?
My life was following my plans rather nicely, as I had scaled back from two part-time jobs to just one that allowed me to work from home. Next up was starting a family, right on schedule. Well, the pregnancy happened according to plan, but I was almost immediately laid off and discovered that the company I was working for was bad news and was going bankrupt (without paying what they owed me). The next thing I knew, I was in the midst of morning sickness and sending out resumes almost not hoping for an interview because who was really going to hire me when I showed up in maternity clothes?
One of my coworkers from the previous company offered me a crib, and when I went to pick it up, I told her that I thought we should go into business for ourselves so that we could be home with our children. She apparently liked the idea and called me up two days later to see if I was interested in stating a freelance company with her. I had some experience freelancing and was really excited about the idea.
What were some of your first steps?
We tried to be as reasonable as possible when we got started. We set goals and put together most of a business plan. From there, we spent a lot of time researching what we were doing, including reading lots and lots of blogs. Oddly enough, we were invited to start a blog chronicling our experience, and that required us to learn a ton so that we’d actually have something worthwhile to talk about on the blog.
At the same time as we were learning via research, we were also experiencing the trial by fire method. We were bidding for jobs on Guru.com and hitting up anyone and everyone we knew who might need writing services at their companies.
What reasons did you look at writing as a career option?
Probably the most important motivation for really making a go of the whole freelance writing thing was my pregnancy. I knew that I wanted to be home with my baby as much as possible, but we weren’t financially in a position where I could just not work. Once she was born, I worked from home, with a Mother’s Helper who would come three afternoons a week to keep the baby entertained between feedings and needing to be rocked.
Of course, the other major contributor was the fact that I’ve always enjoyed writing and have a reasonable amount of skill in that area. I’ve wanted to be “a writer” for as long as I can remember, I just didn’t realize at age nine that I would be writing articles and website content instead of the next horror novel. I knew that I could do good work, and in most cases, I would enjoy what I was doing.
About how long have you been freelancing now?
The Berry|Brewer Freelance Agency was founded in August of 2007, so it’s been a bit more than two years now.
What were some of your reservations or worries when you began?
I had many of the typical worries about freelancing, such as “how much should I charge,” “will I earn enough to make this worthwhile,” “am I good enough,” etc. I also spent a fair amount of time worrying that my husband would tell me to quit playing around and go get a real job. Because my partner and I didn’t know each other really well when we started the company, I also had concerns about her commitment to the overall idea of what we were trying to do.
How did you address your fears?
Well, I think I just tried to avoid the topic as much as possible with my husband, making a point to tell him about the exciting stuff that would happen, but leaving out most of the negative things as the company got its footing.
With my business partner, I strove for a lot of communication about both the positive and the negative stuff. She and I were very honest with each other about everything that was going on, and it helped allay a lot of fears.
As for the “how much to charge” aspect, I think we still struggle with that, even two years later. One thing that really helped was reading the blogs of other writers. Even though no one really tells you what they charge or what you should charge, there’s still a lot of advice and a sense that we’re all in the same boat. Camaraderie definitely helps with the fear aspect of striking out on your own.
What is your greatest accomplishment to date?
It’s hard to pick just one, now that I think about it. I’m very proud of the fact that we’re going to surpass our financial goal for 2009. On the other hand, I’m even more thrilled that we’ve been able to help other people realize their freelancing goals, especially other parents who have discovered that freelancing has allowed them to spend more time with their children, which is exactly why we started doing it in the first place.
What direction has your freelancing career gone in? Have you cultivated a specialty or a niche?
It hasn’t taken the path expected, that’s for sure. Our original intention was to primarily service nonprofit organizations. At this point, however, a whole lot of what we do is for-profit business marketing. Part of that is because we work closely with a local marketing company and do a lot of their web content, brochure text, etc. It also stems from the fact that we write SEO copy that is useful, rather than fluff that is just full of keywords. I’ve had the opportunity to write articles for a couple of magazines and will probably continue to pursue that angle.
