The biggest mistake new freelancers make is wasting time on the wrong priorities. Here’s what to do instead

Every few months, I get a call from a former colleague, asking for advice about freelancing after having left a full-time job — whether voluntarily or not. I hold my breath as I ask the first question: “What have you done so far?”

What I’m hoping they will say is, “I reached out to people and started marketing myself.” But often, they respond with what I dread to hear, “I hired a lawyer, graphic designer and website developer.” Or a similar comment on the investment they’ve already made in this hypothetical freelance career.

The sad truth is that freelance journalism pays less and less each year, so journalists need to be even more thrifty and strategic in order to make a good living. It’s still possible, don’t get me wrong. But you’ll encounter more red herrings and possible dead-end paths than a few years ago, so you must be judicious and thoughtful about how to spend your time and money.

When you’re just starting, it can feel overwhelming to consider the many ways you could be using your time: 

• Establishing a legal business structure and name
• Networking with former colleagues and friends to find work 
• Figuring out tax obligations and risks of being a freelancer
• Putting together a portfolio of your work and updating your LinkedIn page 

To cut through the confusion, I’ll share the same advice for beginners that an entrepreneurship coach gave me 16 years ago, when I launched as a freelancer: “Find three paying clients.” To do that, before you do anything else, you need to figure out the answer to these three questions:

• Is anyone buying what you want to sell? (The market)
• Will they buy it from you, based on your expertise and skills? (Your brand)
• Will they pay you enough to make a living? (The price point)

Unless the answer to all three questions is yes, you do not have a freelance career in the making yet. Maybe your track record is long-form podcasts and true crime, which expanded rapidly a decade ago but collapsed in recent years. Or maybe you want to write long-form narrative magazine pieces, but the only clips you have are service journalism or breaking news. Your track record isn’t going to persuade clients to green-light your pitch. Perhaps you’re trying to sell articles on parenting and children, but a slew of well-paying publications have all gone out of business, so the rates for most remaining outlets are sub-minimum wage. (I can attest that’s true! RIP Parents (in print), Working Mother, Child, Fatherly, Parenting, Family Circle; the list goes on.)

The reason I recommend finding three clients is that it’s a decent test of the market. One client could be a fluke; two could be your cousin taking pity on you; but three indicates that the answer to the first two questions is yes. So you only need to answer the third question: is this enough for you to make a living. If not, you could consider freelancing on the side of another job, but please don’t fool yourself into believing the math will magically change.

Freelance journalism is a marathon, not a sprint. I thrived for 16 years because I kept my overhead very low and I didn’t waste time pursuing clients that didn’t exist, or didn’t know they could benefit from my services; I pitched work that my track record and clips could support; and I closely managed the hourly rate I earned from freelance work, by giving myself a time budget for each assignment and turning down any work that paid less than my threshold.

So when people ask where to start, I always say the same thing: Land well-paying work.

That doesn’t mean you ignore the other possible things you could do. But the first steps you take should all support that quest to immediately land clients. Do the minimum for a web presence that showcases your expertise, such as an automatically-updating Authory profile or a LinkedIn page. Network vigorously, with an eye to the type of clients that are in that sweet spot for your expertise. Leave the other stuff for later, once you have three clients.

For my RJI fellowship, I’ve designed a freelance start-up guide that takes new freelance journalists through a checklist of highest priority steps, in an interactive online set of modules. Based on your circumstances and background, the guide will recommend the best order to work through more than 75 different exercises and analyses that enable you to create a sustainable freelance practice. The guide is close to finished, so I am now looking for beta testers to try it out and give me feedback.

If you’re in the start-up phase of freelancing — or remember it well — I’d be grateful to include you in my group of beta testers. Please email me if you’re interested in checking out the guide. 

Cite this article

Lewis, Katherine Reynolds (2024, Dec. 4). Where do you start in launching a freelance career? Reynolds Journalism Institute. Retrieved from: https://rjionline.org/news/where-do-you-start-in-launching-a-freelance-career/