5 Steps to Launch or Level Up Your Freelance Writing Business

There are 5 must-have categories in your freelance writing business that you need to sharpen and refine to either start or ramp up your business. This week’s livestream is going over each of those 5 steps:

- Niches and biz roadmap

- Attracting ideal clients (LinkedIn, website, portfolio)

- Marketing (LOIs (Letter of Introduction) and magazine pitches)

- Pricing plus contracts and negotiations

- How to complete your client work with scalable systems

If you’ve been wondering how to take your freelance writing business to a higher level, or even get started on the right path, this video’s for you!

Sign up for your first class seat in Runway here!

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5 Steps to Launch or Level Up Your Freelance Writing Business

There are five specific steps and more likely like categories and topics that we need to cover and we need to know about if we're gonna start or ramp up our freelance writing business. And these kind of cross over into a bunch of different areas. So I think it's really important to remember that this isn't just about starting and knowing.

And it's not just about ramping up, these are categories that you need to look into and do regular reviews. I don't care if you make a bunch of money and six figures, right? Like, I make six, six figures in my business and I make sure to go through these categories all the time, okay? They're critical pieces of analysis to make sure we're building our business in a way that we actually like, and that we're actually getting to the places that we want in our business.

Whether you want more money or free time or uh, you want different types of clients or you wanna switch to like strategy or messaging and positioning or brand messaging, that kind of stuff. Hey Vicky . Vicky says, I'm used. I'm getting used to, uh, used enough to day job to have remembered to watch the Stream

Welcome Vicky. We're glad you're back. I would put the wave up, but can I do that? Can I do that wave? Oh, no, I can't put in, I'm in E cam live, so I can't put in my. Emojis, but I'm sending all the waves to Vicky. All right, so let's get started with number one. Hey Marie, welcome. Marie's, one of my, um, freelance writer Wealth Lab students, soon to be my other runway student.

I think you got tagged in the community. Hi, tiny bean . We have a tiny mermaid that took her blanket all the way over here, and now she has like a six foot tail. Can you go back to your hava hole? Thank you. Good girl. All right, hold on. All right, lay down on squeaky bean. Why don't you lay down? I feel this might be a snack fiesta today.

Hey, Holly. Um, so here's what we're gonna do. Oh, first thing I wanted to talk about is runway. So I have a new, uh, I have a new class that I'm running and, uh, the enrollment goes until next Friday. So it goes until next Friday, 3 24. Um, if you wanna sign up for runway, you can go to mandy ellis.com/runway. I should pull that up.

So hold on. , let me, um, let me pull that up. So this should be, there we go. So now you guys should be able to see it. So if you go to mandy ellis.com/runway, I'm doing a live five day bootcamp, uh, where I'm gonna teach you every day at noon, uh, Pacific, 2:00 PM Central, 3:00 PM Eastern. I am going to teach material that is not going to ever be covered on this live street.

This is a question I've gotten a couple. So I'm not, none of, there's going to be similar topics, like we're gonna cover things like niches like we will today on today's live stream. But I'm gonna go a lot deeper and I'm gonna teach material that I will never, ever put on this live stream. It will never be here.

It's too deep, it's too intense. , it's too, it's too action packed to be on the livestream. So if you go to mandy ellis.com/runway, it's a $49 class. It's five days of live classes. If you can't make it live, um, you'll be able to get all of the replays, you'll be able to watch all the live replays. But if you do show up live, I'm giving away five free, uh, one hour coaching sessions with me.

So one-on-one sessions. Um, so if you do show up live every day, we're gonna do a drawing for those who showed up live to see who wins the free coaching sessions. Um, I'm doing something that I rarely do as well. So let's say you don't wanna leave it up to chance whether or not you win a free coaching session.

I'm also offering, um, 50% off one-on-one coaching sessions for runway students. So you can grab that for $97 at checkout, um, which I never do. I never do that. I only do that for like very specific course things. Um, so if you were looking for a one-on-one session and you wanted to join the class, um, it's one 50 basically.

So a normal one-on-one session with me right now is 200. If you were to do runway for 49 plus 97 for the one-on-one session, it's one 50, so it's $50 less than a traditional one-on-one session. So, . If you go to mandy ellis.com/runway, you can learn more about the class, the classes for people all over the world too.

I have a whole bunch of students from all different countries. Um, and if you are someone who does not live in the us, this class is still for you. Um, so go and check out the FAQs as well. At the bottom of the runway page, it'll tell you a little bit more. All right, so that's the spiel about runway for now.

I see a bunch of comments. Let's get back to . Yeah. Marie's coming to Runway. Holly's coming to Runway. Marie and Holly are both my Wealth Lab students too. So all of my Wealth Lab students already get extra classes for free. and Tina's coming. I remember Tina and I are now LinkedIn friends, so you can always friend me on LinkedIn.

Um, and Tina friended me. She's coming to the runway class. Let's see. Yeah, it's gonna be fun. Uh, Vicky says I won't be able to, uh, keep up with runway because of my day job. How long will the replays be up? This is a good question that I'm still trying to figure out. So I think at the very most, it'll be about a month.

So I think what I'm gonna do is the replays will be up until about the end of April. So anybody who can't make those five days, uh, the, the plan I have now is to have this, uh, we have the class, but we also have the community. So the community piece will be where all the recordings are. So if you need more time, I think I'm just gonna leave 'em up until, uh, the end of April.

So maybe not like the last day of April, but pretty close to the end of April. You'll have about 30 days to watch 'em. Um, and then that way people who are wanna sign up for the class and can't make it live and, um, , you know, can't be there all the time, still have a chance to do it. So right now it's about 30 days.

I may extend that, I'm not sure yet, but right now it'll be about 30 days. . Let's see. Yeah, I love the little, uh, yeah, leveling up for sure. This is something that I think is really important too, is that, um, can the same person win two coaching sessions? They cannot. You can only win one of the five coaching sessions.

So if you show up live every single day, you get extra bonus points. But if you win the live coach or the free coaching session on the first day, you can't win any of the other ones. We wanna give everybody else a chance to win a coaching session so you can only win one of the five coaching sessions.

All right, let's get to the live stream. Oh, and if I haven't said this, the material in runway, I guess I should leave this up, I took it down, but the material in runway, we're gonna cover the same overarching topics. So like we will go through niches and basically similar stuff to today, niches direction, um, inbound marketing, which is your LinkedIn and your website and your writer portfolio.

Your outbound marketing, which is your lois and your pitches for magazines or trade magazines, um, and then like your client systems and processes, we're gonna go over all that stuff in terms of topic. But the material I'm teaching and the way, like the, the stuff that I'm sharing is not never gonna be on this live stream.

We might cross over a little bit, but there's, the crossover is just topic-based. It's not material based. So the material will never be available on this livestream. Like I won't do it. It'll be too deep. Um, it's stuff that I think is, is really specific to that class. Um, and it's stuff where I feel like if someone's going to pay for the class, they deserve this high quality gold standard material, right?

Like they we're g we're doing a lot of intensive stuff. So it, like, if you join this live stream, um, there's a lot of wonderful information here that I share for free, but there is a different, In the material I share for free and the stuff I do for paid stuff. Um, and I feel like my students have mentioned that before where like there's a big difference between the level of material we talk about here on the live stream and the level of material that we go over, um, in the wealth lab or that we're going to go over in runway.

Whisper your Cat Whisper. Marie cannot win a coaching session. She can have a Zoom session, like what we have on working Wednesdays, like whisper on working Wednesdays and like the dogs being here, like these guys being here, um, during, uh, working Wednesdays. But Whisper cannot have a coaching session. She can have a little like snack date with these two.

Barry, can you catch it? Oh no. We were so close. Barry caught it the other day. I'm not throwing at it, it at him just because like, can you find it? You got it. Wanna do a high five? Good job. Other one. Other one? Good girl. All right. We found it. . So Whisper cannot win a coaching session , but we can have a whisper and update on the working Wednesdays.

Um, yeah, this too. Holly says, when I saw this week's topic, I thought it's a great primer before runway starts. Exactly. What I'm gonna give you here on the live livestream today is like a very small portion, like it, it's kind of an overview of what runway would kind of be like. So if you are interested in runway, this is sort of, kind of in the same ballpark.

So it, it's kind of like exactly what Holly said. It's a primer. It's just like the regular white paint you put on the, on the wall to like get it to the right shade. But if you want to pick your shade and pick a business you adore and like actually build things that take you to the next level, that's what runway's for.

Okay. Do, do, do, do. All right. Let's get to the topic. . Woo. Go back to your haba hole. Thank you, big girl. All right. Can you lay down, can you show everybody how you lay down? Can you lay down? Not high fives. Lay down, lay down, down, down. Good job. You go, buddy. Oh, I thought I switched the camera, but I didn't.

Yeah. All right. Can you go down? Down. Good job. All right. We're getting to material now. Let's go to the primer material. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Okay, let me pull up my notes so that we make sure we do this correctly. , remember, this is our, um, these are a bunch of things that I do in my six figure business and that I tell my students to do as analyzing different pieces of your business, okay?

This is really important. So whether you're starting or you're ramping up your business, these are important topics. So number one, , our topic is, um, niches and your business roadmap. So when we're kind of thinking about starting our business, really launching our business or leveling up our business, your niches probably will change.

Okay? You start out with a few niches. So let me give you some examples. I, um, Marie says that her business goes up and down like a rollercoaster, but the wealth lab keeps her sane and runway's gonna help her refocus. Good, I'm glad. Marie's a superstar. So is Holly. So is whoever. So is Vicky cuz Vicky comes here all the time and learns stuff.

So let's talk about this When we're working on our niches, I started with food and travel only. So when I started in my business, it was food and travel only. Woo. Go back to travel hole. And then I expanded to a bunch of different niches. So now I write in food, travel, restaurants, hospitality, tech, FinTech, sass, insurance tech.

Um, , what's the other ones? Um, I talk about pets, real estate, prop tech. Um, I've talked about all I've written about cybersecurity. I've written about all these random things that I never thought I was going to, to write about, and that's because I kept reanalyzing my business. So if I'm going to launch my business, I get to pick some niches.

Let's kind of pick those out and in runway, that's something we'll do. We'll go over cake and icing niches. I'll give you a bunch of lists, um, and things to look at that make sense for you. I also have a video in this channel about cake and icing niches. It just, um, isn't gonna go as deep as runway, so I'll link to that below.

But when I started, I had two niches and that's what I did, right? And then I changed over time by getting assignments, by reaching out to different customer or, uh, clients. Um, by making sure that I'm looking at what I'm interested in and what I like. And there's a lot of times where I meet writers, they're like, I only wanna write about what I love.

And I'm like, that's only what you love right now. That's not what you're gonna love in 10 years forever only, right? Like, I love my pets, right? We're gonna love them , they're, you know, they're my little fur babies. Well, I don't say fur babies, I say furs, but, so I have my furs and I love them forever, but it doesn't mean that I can't add pet health insurance on instead of just writing about pets.

There's this very small view sometimes about niches or like where you're gonna take your business in the future rather than understanding that you're gonna change and evolve with your business. So the niches that you pick are where you are right now and saying like, I hate tech. I don't wanna do it.

Nope. I'm telling you like there are lots of people who write about tech, me included, that are working for consumer-based products. So if I can understand the tech. And then explain that to a consumer that's writing about tech, right? It's not the backend engineering, like app development, super technical hard stuff.

It's like . It's like, how is this app? Or how is this platform software, um, tool system going to change my life as a consumer? If you can explain that, that's a niche for you, right? And these things you can get over time. So another good example here of my business changing was I had an editor who I love, love, loved working with, and she just randomly one day was like, Hey, do you wanna write about real estate?

And I was like, yeah, sure. Uh, and I fell in love with it. I was just like, let's just give it a chance. Let's just try it out. And I fell in love with it, changed the course of my business. Now I work with a lot of real estate companies, real estate, tech companies, mortgage tech, prop tech, uh, types of insurance that cross over into real estate.

And it really like opened up a lot of doors for me. . So your niche is just what you have right now. Like when you start out. I picked food and travel. That was something that I knew a ton about. I had obviously eaten a lot of food, but, um, I read a lot about food. I knew a lot about food history. I cared a lot about travel.

I knew a lot about different des destinations. I had traveled. Um, there's a lot of things that you pick up though as you level up your business. You wanna keep yourself more open-minded. You wanna give yourself a bigger opportunity to understand where that's going. That also leads into cake and icing, right?

So our cake niches are gonna be the ones that actually bring in the big bucks, right? Like anything where you have hundreds of thousands, if not millions of potential clients. And then your icing ones are like, things for me, for example, is like pet health insurance. There's not enough companies there for that to be a cake niche yet.

So it's icing because there's not enough companies where I could send 50 to 75 Lois every single month and reach out to only pet health insurance companies. There's the market's not big enough yet, but it will be go buddy. So your icing could also be fun stuff like pets or gardening or, um, it could be writing fiction or poetry like I know, um, Holly has gotten a couple pieces published recently about, uh, parenting and she got a poem published.

And so your icing doesn't necessarily have to bring in huge piles of money, but it does have to feed the creative parts. This is something that I think is a really nice balance. Like you don't have to just write in niches that make money. And every time I've had a writer that's like, oh, I just tell me which niches make all the money and I'll just write in those.

No, you won't. You'll hate your business. You will quit and then you will quit because you think freelance writing's not for you. No, you're quitting because it's done in a way, come on phone, I need my notes. It's done in a way where you've set yourself up to fail. Like you only focus on the money and you didn't focus on the things you actually like to write about.

So in our cake and icing niches, we are balancing what you're interested in, what you have experience and knowledge. The things that are your cake niches that have hundreds, if not million, hundreds of thousands, if not millions of potential clients. And they have big budgets. They're big revenue type companies, right?

And our icing ones are like feeding our creativity, feeding our, our, our, like our writer juice, right? Our brighter brain. And they're things that aren't ready yet. So it's kind of a combination. Like for me that's pet health insurance. It's not ready yet to be a cake niche, but I like to write about it and I like to be, I'm interested in it.

So you go buddy. So these kind of affect our business roadmap and they change over time. And there are, I have had students, this is a thing, I've had students who are like, I am not tech savvy. I don't wanna write about tech. And then I see them write about, Because the niche is a tech niche, but the people, the audience that the content is going to are consumers who need help with tech.

So if you can just understand the tech, you don't even have to use it. This is a thing. You can get this, you know, like, let's say, so here's a good example. Um, this is, ooh, Holly just said that her most recent pitch was, uh, accepted for a fiction writer's association. That's super cool. Holly, you're killing it.

This is like five, right? This is your fifth published piece. You're doing great, man. Uh, like now you're really getting 'em done. And Tina says, congrats Holly. Thank you for the support, Tina. Good job. I always like when we kind of congratulate each other and, uh, work together in our, in our livestream. Here you go.

Bug. Oh, no, sorry, . So as we're kind of going through these things, We wanna make sure we're paying attention to how our roadmap changes and we're kind of keeping ourselves open-minded, right? We're giving ourselves a bunch of different options. And like I said, like if you're able to take something and just explain it to someone else, some, some take something and explain it to someone else, well then you can write about it.

it's, this is what a writer is, right? This is something that I think is so basic. Writers take lots of things and they make them easy to understand for people. That's almost what we do as writers, is you write an article. and you make something easy to understand for other people, they enjoy it, they wanna read it, they wanna like research it.

That's all we're doing. So it's not that we're taking these complicated text systems and making them like, and, and not understanding them and then writing about them. Don't do that. Like, there's lots of complicated stuff I can't write about. Like it's too boring for me. I don't get it. Like, it's too heavy engineering.

So I just don't like, there's a lot of cybersecurity stuff where I've reached out to, um, I've talked to like companies and I'm like, oh, this is too complicated for me. Like, I can't do it. But there's plenty of cybersecurity stuff that's just for regular consumers that we can, um, we can write about. That's the thing is audience.

So if you can think about when you're thinking about your niches, right? Think about the audience that you wanna help with your content. What audience do you wanna talk to? What audience do you wanna help? What audience do you want to read your content? Back that up to a niche. Okay, so like a good example here, which is one I think I gave to Holly.

Is parenting apps, right? Those apps are being used by busy parents with like 5,000 kids who are trying to balance two adult schedules and probably grandma helping them and some other stuff, right? So your apps for families, even if it's an app, and it could be complicated on the back end, right? You're integrating three schedules and you are adding in all these appointments and you have 50,000 reminders, like on the back end of the engineering part.

It can be really complicated, but the front end is like, Hey, do you have three adults with three different schedules that you need to put into one app? Get this app, right? That's what you're writing is the get this app part. You're writing the piece of like, Hey, how can we help you via this app? Right? And that's the thing you need to think about when it comes to niches is like, it's not just about tech, which tech runs almost every piece of our lives.

Like there's an app for everything. There's an app for anything you can imagine, right? So work it backwards. What audience? What audience do you wanna help? Right? And then think about being open-minded about your niches. Think about your experience, right? Your knowledge, your expertise, what you're interested in in terms of niches.

Remember we can balance with cake and icing. Cake is like big tech things, or like boring stuff, like chemicals or like biotech is another one. Um, and icing can be fun stuff like gardening, or it could even be icing. Like for me, a lot of times icing can just be writing for publications. Like, I'm not gonna make huge piles of money, like 30 K on one project, but I will be able to do fun things that I like while making a little bit of extra money.

Right? Go buddy. Woo. There. So those are really important things to remember. And I wanna just give you guys like the overview. I don't wanna go too deep in here because like , I can, I can go like a little nuts, nuts, like going too far into this because it's really interesting. Like it's, it's so interesting to me that I, I meet writers that are just so afraid of these things and it's like, dude, your whole job as a writer is just to write about, like, things make things interesting for people.

Like if you can read it, then you can write it. And there are things that I read them and I'm like, I don't know what you just said. So another good example, um, this is this, yes, Marie is a good example. We talked about this. So Marie writes in construction, but she cannot use power tools. I can't use power tools.

I mean, I use power tools, but like, you know, it's not my thing. Um, and she says like , she had a joke that her husband said like he would only give her Fisher Fisher price, um, construction tools cuz like she, you know, did this, the power tool ran away from her. , but she writes about construction and she writes for construction companies, and she writes for different brands that like she personally, right?

It would be too complicated, but for other people, she's really good at translating the experience or the knowledge or the expertise to it, right? So she rocks at telling people about construction or helping them with different processes or, um, managing different things about a construction, um, project, right?

So these are things that keep in mind. Um, yes, this too, Holly says, we talked about, um, how the implement, it's the implementation piece. How do the parents use it? How does it serve them? Which I do know exactly. It's not about the tech. It isn't almost every, unless you're writing about like super spy, complicated, deep, like, like my friend who writes about Kubernetes, which I just learned how to say in the last year, which I didn't even know how to say that Kubernetes.

and I have no idea what that is, but she writes about it all the time. I don't have to write about that, but I could write about something Kubernetes adjacent that I can understand. And the audience matters. Like if you can tell them how they're gonna use it, implement it, how it's gonna change their life, that's a good niche for you.

That's a really important thing. Okay, here you go buddy. I got a road towed over here. I have a little road toed sitting by my feet. Can you go back to your ho hole please? Thank you. They're a road. No, no, you're such a cheater. Go back to your, thank you. All right, let's give everybody some high fives cuz they're, oh, you knocked tree down my hand.

Hold on. Cuz Holly and Marie. And Tina and Vicky and everyone gets some high fives today cuz they're doing great. All right, buddy. You ready? I'm not gonna throw it this time because I think that didn't work out too well. Can you reach, Ooh, reach. There we go. Good job. All right, let's move on to number two.

If this has been helpful so far, give it a thumbs up. If you wanna build a freelance writing business, you adore, subscribe. All right, let's go to number two. Like I said, this is my overview. So like, if this material is interesting to you, runway is the class for you. So let me just say that this, this material is my, like big brushstrokes runway is gonna go into tactical steps of like, what niches, how do I do it, how do I find clients, how do I make money, how do I actually send pitches?

And Lois, Lois are your, uh, letters of introduction two. Let's talk about attracting ideal clients. Let's talk about your LinkedIn website and portfolio. So I have a video on this as well about questions you need to ask yourself, um, in order to get your LinkedIn, your website, um, and your portfolio in Sharp shape.

So I will link that in here too. But again, same thing, broad brush strokes. So here, when we're talking about attracting ideal clients, It comes from the same kind of stuff as your niche. Can you understand the audience that they're targeting? Right? Can you also understand how to explain their pain points?

Do they struggle with actually getting the content done? Do they, are you talking to a lot of startups where one person is wearing 12 hats and if they can give you one hat so they only have to wear 11, is that you're, you know, like, is that going to be a marketing point or an interest point on your LinkedIn and your website to draw in more clients?

Right? Here you go, buddy. Good job. Um, is your LinkedIn or, um, are your ideal clients, ones who struggle with connecting with an audience? There are a bunch of engineers who cannot tell a bunch of parents how to use their app. Like they don't understand the difference between features and benefits, right?

There are features to an app and there are benefits, right? Features are like, Um, features are like 12 different integrations and benefits are like, you can connect three different calendars from three different adults, right? When we're also talking about ideal clients, and we'll go over this more in runway, is like, what are they, like what are your ideal clients?

Who do they look like? What kinds of revenue do they make? What kinds of niches are they in? What types of content do they create? How do we analyze their stuff? So we figure out kind of what's going on, right? When we have that analysis, we then can level up or launch our business, right? When we have these kinds of little building blocks, we now know exactly what to write on our website.

Cuz we're like, oh, per our client, I've, I've seen 10 different client websites and they've all said the same thing. That means they're struggling with this. I'll put that in my LinkedIn and they'll thi you know, they think, uh, I understand their struggles cuz I do. Right? I've read it 10 times. I know they're struggling.

Right? So when we're kind of putting all these pieces together, we now have this opportunity to basically read back what our clients said they're struggling with, so then we can help create content, strategy, messaging, whatever our project is to make , to actually make things work for them, right? To actually get the things they want, right?

The content marketing piece is the content as a marketing asset, right? So the content, blog posts, white papers, case studies, downloadables, apps, whatever it is, we won't, we sometimes people write app content, like they write the content that people upload into the app. It's not super common, but it happens.

Um, but if you're doing that right, all of that content is gonna help them get leads. Sales subscribers likes, comments, shares all the stuff that they want, right? That's what we're kind of relaying back. Here you go buddy. The job. And when we're attracting these ideal clients, we wanna understand like where are their struggles?

Where are their pain points? What are the things that that are preventing them from not only getting the content out there, but actually creating quality content, things that make sense to their actual audience, right? And our LinkedIn and our website are going to be honed into the three to five major pain points or struggles that your ideal clients go through, right?

They're gonna go over the pieces that when someone, when your client reads them, they're like, yes, I have, I struggle with all of those. Please help me. Right? And it goes back to that Simon sin quote that I share all the time, is like, if you can explain your ideal client's problems to them, they automatically think you have the solution, right?

So if I can explain in my LinkedIn, And in my website, all the problems that they're dealing with and how I specifically help them, um, with my own skills. Not just how a writer would, but how me, my experience, expertise, knowledge, all the things I can bring to the table. If I can do that, they come to my website, they come to my LinkedIn, they're like, that lady gets it.

Get her on the phone. Right? That converts, that actually changes them over into reaching out to you and it gets rid of a bunch of tire kickers, right? It gets rid of a bunch of people that are not going to be attracted to that. Like they don't get it. They're not on the same thing. They're just looking for a writer or they're like, I want it really quickly.

That's another thing we're gonna get rid of, a bunch of phrases and stuff that you might use that like attract the wrong clients. This also goes back to your portfolio. The advice that I give my students all the time is, if you don't want more of it, don't post it. Do not put it in your portfolio or LinkedIn.

If you do not wanna write any more blog posts about. Asian fishing. I don't know. I just picked a topic. Um, if you don't wanna write any more, um, social media posts, if you don't wanna write any more case studies or white papers, or if you don't wanna write any more of whatever content, don't post it because whatever you post, you're gonna get more of.

So post all the things in your portfolio and all the things on LinkedIn where you have that featured section that you actually wanna get people to pay you money for, right? If you want more travel articles or you want more, um, email drip campaigns, or you want more landing pages, that's what you need to post.

It's not a portfolio of like everything you've ever done, right? It's just a portfolio curated to like, I wanna do more of this, or I wanna work more in this niche. Right? That's really important. , that means that we're going to attract again, the right types of clients instead of getting more people being like, I saw you posted X and you're like, oh God, please don't make me write that again.

Right? And it's just because you basically posted on LinkedIn or you posted on your website in your portfolio, and now they think that's something you offer, like they found it, right? So we're gonna go over like a lot of these things in runway, in death. But our ideal clients attracting them is more about understanding them.

Like what are the things that they get like strung out about when it comes to getting content together, whether that's ideas, actually writing it and creating it, coming up with briefs or editing processes, images, seo, um, how we're actually gonna put all of those pieces together. , that's where we're helping them, and we just need to relay that to them.

That's what our LinkedIn and website are for. Therefore relaying this information to them, back to them right back, right, yeah. Relaying it back to them. So like they're struggling with this type of stuff or they're struggling with, um, these types of things. And like I said, either even if you're launching and you haven't had any clients, there are tons of things that are just kind of basic one-on-one things that almost every client struggles with that we can put in your portfolio or in your, uh, LinkedIn and website to get you on the right track with the right clients.

There's like a subset of, I don't know, 10 to 20 things that almost every client has a problem with. That's why they're seeking you. Right? That's why they're seeking out a freelance writer or someone to partner with on this actual project. . Vicky says, what if I'm open, um, to more articles in a niche from a better client than I had last time?

That's okay. You can still post that in your portfolio. Then you get to be pickier about whoever that is. So if you have an article, like let's say you had, um, an article in you back, go back to your hobble. Let me think of a topic. Um, let's say I had an article that's about like healthcare, and I only got paid 200 bucks for this super intensive article that was like 3000 words.

That means that I'm going to make sure I change my rate going forward. And even posting that article, there's no like, there's no like database, right? Where, um, there's no like database where someone's like, oh no, I found out that Vicki only made this amount last time. Right? Like that, that doesn't happen.

So if you go to a client and you charge a brand new rate and you have a brand new client, it's not like they're gonna. No, like that you worked at a super low rate before and, and it took all your time, right? So, hey, go buddy. That means that when you have a client who reaches out to you about that type of article in healthcare, you say, Hey, I would love to write that piece for you.

The, you know, the price is this, right? You're not going to quote the same price. You're, you're gonna go much higher, right? You're gonna go to the rate that actually matches the value of the work. And then that way, if that doesn't fit the client's budget, then they're not your client. That's, you know, we, we don't have to accept low rates just because we have that clip, right?

I always kind of relate it to like, if someone sees a clip and they're like, I like that writing from Vicky. Vicky killed it. I love this. I want a piece just like this. You'd be like, great. It costs this much. Right? You wouldn't go to the grocery store and find like the best orange and be like, I want this orange.

And then be like, okay, the price is right there. You know, if you want this specific orange, and they're like, oh no, it has to be whatever I paid last year for oranges. Like, no, that's not how it works. So you wanna think about it as like, if they want that quality of writing that you're bringing to the table, it costs x.

It doesn't matter. Like the worst client or whoever you had last time, you can just start the slate clean. You, you guys are getting a lot of snacks today. I feel like I'm putting out too many snacks. All right. Um, yeah, this was something Marie talked about, um, was that she was doing a ton of press releases and she hated them, right?

So then she saved the testimonial. She got rid of the press releases, so she stopped doing that type of work. Right. And then she doesn't have them anywhere available or listed on services, so that way, right. No more clients are reaching out to her about it. Um, and that makes it so like you're actually getting work from the clients that you want.

Right. Tina said, should you limit the niches you work with in the beginning? I have a few writing samples from paid work, but they're in different niches. And I'd also like to get involved in other niches too. I like to pick three to five. So if you're starting out as a freelance writer or you're kind of in the ramp up stage, I like three to five niches.

We have enough room there to kind of mix cake and icing. And we also have enough room to kind of experiment with what's actually gonna be our best bet. Like what types of. Um, makes sense for us that we actually like what types of stuff that we wanna grow. It gives us a bigger sandbox to play in. The other thing too is that I've sent samples, um, to people who are not, they're in a totally different niche and I still get the work because they like the quality.

So even if, and this is something we'll go over in runway too, is like how to get, um, clips and new niches. How to get new types of niche clients with your old clips. I've done this a ton of times. Either it's gonna work or it's not. So you send a sample and say, Hey, I'm actively moving into X niche, right?

I'm actively, um, I've worked in these three niches and I'm actively moving into these two other niches right now. I don't have any. Um, as I transition, but I'm letting you know, like, here are some clips that I have from my past clients. If the qual, you know, if you're interested in the quality or these clips work for you, I'd love to talk about X, Y, z.

There are so many people who will give you a chance. Like, I, I can't tell you how many times I've talked to writers who are like, no, I need to have a hundred percent the clip they want. No, I've sent totally different clips, like I've sent food clips to like super technical things and I've still gotten the work because the food clip was like the quality and it talked about the inter it had interviews and research it, it was the format that they wanted, right?

It doesn't always have to be the same topic. And there are lots of people out there that if they read your work and they like your work, they're like, yeah, we love Tina. Get Tina on the phone. Like, this is great. So we don't always have to match. Exactly. And there will always be a transition period. So I have the similar example where like, I think I used my real estate clips to get insurance stuff, um, because I had like a paragraph in an article that was kind of like talking about insurance.

It didn't go into it in detail, but it's the quality of the work, right? And then once you get one of those clips, you get one clip from that new niche. Now you send that to everybody. Right? Now you have one clip. We can move on, we can charge more. No one, no one knows your past history except for you. So we leverage the assets that we have.

They work or they don't, and then we charge more and we move on, right? Once we get that clip charge more and move on. Tina says she wants to focus more on tech and I don't really have. , um, samples there. Just exper work experience and tech. That's fine, Tina. That's perfect. I've written about tons of tech things and I Well, okay.

To be fair, I have an engineered dad, so like I kind of have a tech stuff, but if you have full-time work experience or you have work experience to leverage, that's another thing that we talk about, we will talk about in runway, is how to write pa like to a client and say like, Hey, um, I don't have a clip, but I worked 20 years or how five years or one year in at this tech company.

Doing X, y, Z tasks, uh, focusing on this part of the tech. Like there are tons of ways that we can leverage our past work experience, our clips, different niches. Um, just because you're switching into freelance writing and launching a freelance writing business, or just because you're switching niches or just because you need different clips doesn't mean we erase all of our experience, right?

We don't just, it's not like a blank slate where we're like, I have nothing now. Like, no. We get to leverage the skills and experience and knowledge that we have from before. Yeah, Tina, you're in good shape. Don't, don't worry about like that much. Like, especially if you have work experience, we can leverage that.

And like I said, like some clients will be super picky and they'll be like, no, you have to have this very particular clip. Okay, right now you're not my client. But three months from now or six months from now, if I have clips to share with you, I can go back to that client and say, Hey, remember how you were super picky?

I have those clips now. Can we work together? Right? We always have the opportunity to keep leveraging as we gain experience and clips. Let's talk about three people. Three. Three. Three. All right? Yes. Hello. Would you like to make an order for snacks? You look super cute, but you're not on camera. Can you go back, , can you back to your H hole?

Can you go back to your hul? Nope. All the way back to ho Hole. Good job. Can you give everybody some high fives? Yeah. Yu, good job. Oh, hold on. We gotta break this, treat down. Good job Barry. You ready? You ready for treats? You're so far away. Ooh. At, uh, you know, Bo being 16 and a half, he makes like the minimalist effort.

So like I really have to stretch to reach him, to give him snacks. So like he's, he is like, come on buddy, this is a little, okay. Whew. So like, he just has the , he just has like the minimalist version of moving around, which is fine. He's 16 and a half. He's like a thousand years old. All right. Um, Holly says that she was a homeschool, a stay at home homeschool parent for 10 years and did no other work.

And I thought I didn't have any skills, but Mandy told me I was being silly Goose. You were, you were, because you have tons of skills. That's the thing is I've known plenty of writers who were stay-at-home parents or were homeschoolers, and they translated that into a great freelance writing career. Like you always have skills, experience, and knowledge.

It's just understanding how to actually leverage that. And Holly writes in, um, she does Parenting f Tech education in EdTech. Yep. Okay. Let's talk about three. So, uh, three is our marketing, our lois and our pitches. So basically what we're gonna do in runway, just specifically is I'm gonna give you templates.

So you're gonna have an l o i template, um, and some pitch templates to work with. And then we're also gonna go over like how that works, right? So, classic thing I've said on the live stream is 50 to 75 Lois a month, um, to businesses or, um, it's pitches too. Like you'd be wanna be sending like a reasonable number of pitches.

Like if you really wanna get magazine clips, you're gonna have to pitch a lot. So 50 to 75 lois a month. But, but caveat, I struggled with that a lot when I was becoming a freelance writer, when I was really launching and like starting over and fixing my business. I could, even if I made 49 or even if I made 67 outta 75, I would feel like a failure.

So the deal is that we agree to one hour of marketing every single day. So if you feel like that's too many, lois, fine. Do one hour of marketing every single day. We've gotta do something to move our business forward. I don't care if that marketing is physically sending things like you're actually emailing out your lois and pitches, or you're writing them, or you're making a list of companies or magazines, or you're checking revenues or finding contact information or growing your LinkedIn network, um, or sharing things.

We have to do an hour Monday through Friday. So 50 to 75 Lois a month sounds too overwhelming. Totally cool. I know you can spend one hour a day doing it. It's not complicated. This is something too that I feel like as long as you break it down into manageable steps, you get it done. Like if you have templates and you understand who you're targeting, why?

Um, what revenue they have or what pitches they're looking for, or you read the publication and you know, like who to reach out to. It becomes very formulaic very quickly, and then you get it done really fast. So for example, like, um, I sent like 25 Lois in an hour a little while ago, like a few weeks ago.

And it's just because I have a list and I'm already doing things. So like the hour is like me sending them and I've spent other hours collecting my list, checking revenues, making sure they're the right companies for me, looking at their content and websites, checking out LinkedIn and social media, right?

But the hour is actually spent sending those things out. And just like I said, it becomes formulaic and you start, like, I always joke with my students, like my wealth lab students, that it's a smell. Like you start, it's like it just becomes a smell where you're like, oh, this client is for me. So yes, yes, yes.

No, no, no. Like you, you start honing in on exactly who the client is and then it becomes a lot faster. So your marketing is not this sleazy gross, like, Desperate attempt where you're like coming in with the stink of desperation. You're like, Hey, do you need help? I can help you. I'm qualified. Have a great day.

That's it. Like our marketing, like these are our lois. Our Lois always say they're drive through Lois because we're driving by, right? We're driving by saying like, Hey, do you need help? I can help you with these things. I'm qualified if you wanna hop on a call, cool, let's do it. Have a great day. We don't have to make it complicated.

People are super scanners now, so we need to make sure that that stands out from the noise and that it's easy for them to get through. And with your pitch, it's similar, right? I always kind of like, there's like a, pitches are like a little bit of a wiggle worm. So like some people say like, no more than two paragraphs for your.

I'm kind of like a four paragraph, like, I, I kind of like a paragraph that's like the intro, the middle paragraph is like, um, what are we actually doing and what are some things we're covering? The third paragraph is like, who I'm interviewing questions I'm gonna answer. And like the fourth paragraph is like, here are some qualifications or publications I've been in.

So for me, I have a little bit longer format. Some people write super long pitches, like multi paragraphs, like five or 10 paragraphs because they're pitching a big feature. Um, or it's just their style. But for me, the pitches like you, they become formulaic too, is like you get this groove and understanding of like par, you know, like the pitches paragraph one fill in these four types of information.

Paragraph two fill in these three types of information, right? It becomes this, um, this thing that you can get done. So like the more you kind of do the pitches, the more you send out. Same thing with ideas. The more you work on, like giving fertilizer to your idea muscle, right? Well that's not a good thing.

Uh, giving vitamins to your idea muscle. Cuz fertilizer would be weird. If you were fertilizing your muscles, you'd probably fail a p test, right? . So if you are, um, giving vitamins to your ideal muscle, the more you work out that idea muscle, the more ideas you have and the more ideas you have, the more pitches you can send.

And they all kind of like go into each other. These are the things where it's like when I talk to writers where they're like, I'm not making any money. And like, how many pitches are you sending? How many Lois are you sending? Who are you targeting? Are you actually cutting down by revenue? Are you actually paying attention to like what the magazine pays or what's going on?

Like, there's a difference between getting clips because you wanna be in certain publications and the need to make certain amounts of money. We need to balance that right. . It also depends on everybody's situation, right? Like some people, uh, don't need to make any extra money. They just wanna be in certain magazines, right?

They just wanna get some clips in certain magazines. That's totally fine. You still gotta pump up that idea muscle and you still gotta get in the format of like sending those pitches and understand kind of your template. Um, and the same thing goes for Lois is like our lois are gonna be based on like a bunch of different factors, but we wanna refine those things as much as possible to target the right clients so that our number of answered Lois goes up.

and the more people answer, then the more work you likely get. Right? So like if you send 10 lois and you get a 10 to 20% response rate, that's really good response. Like they just say, Hey, whatever. They say, Hey, no thanks, or they say, Hey, try again later. Or they're like, we're gonna add you to a list. Or they respond to say, let's get on a call.

Right? The more we can kind of refine our process pre lois and understand our templates and get in the groove and build the muscle, the faster it all becomes, the more clients we have, then we can be picky and the pickier we get to be, then we get to charge better rates, right? And then we get to turn down work that doesn't fit our, our business goals.

It all is this nice little like beautiful terrarium that we get to live in, right? So that's really important. Um, hold on one second. Here you go buddy. Holly says, boo boo boo. . Um, Holly says, hold on, I've missed a bunch of comments. , um, I refined my pitch template and it makes it easier. The more formulaic I'm able to get it.

So I just plug and send. Exactly. You get so used to this formula, your brain starts saying like, you need to stat here, or you need to have a question here, or you need to say what experts you're gonna reach out to, or you need a really snappy headline. Like, it, it comes to you a lot quicker and it doesn't become so, like, it doesn't take you four hours or th four days to do it.

Right. And then, um, Marie says, I've hit a hundred Lois once, and I felt like I needed to check into a mental hospital. Um, but the templates helped me so much. They're worth gold. Yeah. The templates like, excuse me. The templates make it so that it's a lot easier to just kind of like move forward. We don't have to reinvent the wheel every single time we send an l o I or a pitch, we just kind of like get the format, understand, move on.

Right. . Now we get to actually do the fun part of writing, right? Like once we get a client, we actually get to write. Vicky says, I've realized that the reason why Lois may be more useful than cold calling is because cold calling methods expect me to spend time building a bigger list. Yeah. And the I agree, that's totally true.

It also depends on your niche. I have, um, I have, yeah, the freelance writer, terrarium. I have a student who cold calls because her niche is super old school. Like no one's on LinkedIn. Like her niche is so old school. They're like not really on the online. Um, . And so some niches, very random old school niches, like she does paper and chemicals and some other complicated stuff that I don't understand.

Um, and she was a stay-at-home mom. She was a stay-at-home mom. She homeschooled her kids and she did a lot of these projects where now she works for like paper and chemical companies, um, because of what she taught her students, or I mean her kids. And so now she cold calls, she was doing Lois and she's like, this isn't working.

And I'm like, okay. Like are they on the, you know, like, are they on LinkedIn? Is this, how is this working? And she was like, well, they're not there. And I'm like, okay, you're gonna have to call. You're just gonna have to call. And she's like, everybody's being pretty nice. Like most people are pretty nice. And when you call, all you're doing is grabbing their email, right?

Hi, um, you're just calling their main number. Hey, can I get the email for the marketing person, this person's name? Because you grab the name from LinkedIn, they give you the email, then you send 'em an email. So it depends on the niche, but yeah, like most of the time, almost everybody's on LinkedIn and you can find their name and you can either send 'em an InMail or you can send 'em an email.

And cold calling can be you. You sometimes have to build a very big list to do that. Yeah. Um, let's see. Okay, let's talk about, so our marketing piece should be more, um, we should be able to get that done so we can get back to our paid work. Our marketing should be not, like, you should have a template. I'm not, the formulaic part is more like pulling stuff from your brain to put on paper rather than it being like the same stuff.

Your LOI will be pretty similar, but you'll customize that per niche so then it's easier to send out. Your pitches will be per magazine, so you'll have to customize those a little bit. Um, but your pitches should be like, to the point still, like, we don't wanna ramble and go on, like, we wanna just get to the point.

Editors get hundreds of pitches a day, . So you gotta stand out and you gotta do it, you know? Um, hello. Thank you for the lick. Um, you gotta do it in like a snappy way where they can kind of get through it quickly. Let's talk about four. Let's talk about four. Okay, we have two more things. So let's talk about four.

If you feel like this has been helpful so far, give it a thumbs up. If you wanna build a freelance writing business, you adore, subscribe. If you want to join my live. It's coming up. It's, uh, uh, enrollment ends a week from today. So if you go to mandy ellis.com/runway, you can join my five day live bootcamp where I'm teaching material that is not in this live stream.

Okay, let's talk about four. So pricing guide, right? If you have not grabbed my free pricing guide, mandy ellis.com/pricing guide to grab it, right? If you haven't grabbed my free pricing guide, go grab it. Okay. It's for everybody all over the planet. I've had people in all countries, so this is a question I've gotten recently.

Um, I've had people, um, all over the place. So like, uh, the US, Canada, um, across the uk, across Europe, um, India, Australia, south America, Africa, Mexico, Thailand, just people all across the world have used the pricing guide to increase their rates and get better. So I don't want you to get it and think that it's only for us clients.

It's not, they build businesses in their home countries. They don't have all US clients. They, if, if anything, they rarely have us clients, like almost all of them, um, build businesses in their own country. Like they're not seeking out a ton of us clients. So you can still get the free pricing guide mandy.com/pricing guide and you can apply it to all of your clients all over the world.

I've seen it done. Like I, I didn't even do it. Like people got the pricing guide and they're like, Hey, I live in blah, blah, blah. Um, and I used it to increase my rates. It was great. Like I didn't even tell them to do it. They just got it. Um, and they live all over the world and it worked for them. Yeah, it's actually really cool.

Um, I didn't realize that so many different countries had used the pricing guide. Like, I, I didn't realize like the reach of it, um, until I started naming it out just for runway. Cuz I've been getting questions for runways saying like, is this for me if I don't live in the US? and then I'm like, oh yeah, all these people have, but I, I never made a list realizing like that many types of areas and people had been using it and that they'd been using it in their home country.

So I think it's important to, to mention that in terms of pricing. So pricing guide is one. We're gonna go over pricing and value pricing more in runway. The pricing guide is the best way to get information on how to price things. Now we're also gonna talk about contracts and negotiations. So that's something else that will, you'll get in runway is the, um, contract templates.

And we'll go over negotiations as well. So contracts, we have different contracts for different things. So some clients will send you their own contracts. Um, you're gonna get templates for this. So you'll have templates for all different types of contracts for businesses and magazines. Um, and you will be able to.

Like send your own real freelance writing contract and if you get a contract that you don't like from a business, hi will go back to your hobble. If you get a business contract that you don't like, you can say, Hey, can I send my contract? Um, and they'll sign that most of the time, unless legal gets involved.

And then you have to go through legal, which we would talk about in negotiations. So your contract should include a few really important clauses. So like we would go over an indemnification, we'll go over scope of work payment terms, how to do e-signatures, all that stuff. Cuz we wanna make sure that the contract has a legally binding e-signature.

That's really important. All right, Barry, you wanna try for it again? You wanna see if you can catch it? Ready? Oh, so close. So close. It's by your foot buddy. Can you get it? Good job. and we have a bunch of tools that we can use as well. So don't worry that you have to pay a ton of money. Um, I used Ssao for my contracts as well as my proposals and my invoicing, everything that runs my business.

But you can use ssao for free up to three clients. You could use something like Harvest or Fresh Books. You could use like, um, PandaDoc. You could use uh, hello Sign, which is now Dropbox Sign. You can use Drop, uh, DocuSign. There's so many free tools out there that give you legally binding signatures that you can use.

Um, and we'll go over that more. Like I said, like your contracts are really important when you're starting your business, when you're like doing the launch phase so that you have like a lot of freelance writers are like, I don't need a contract. Yes, you do. And then they're like, I didn't get paid. They're like, did you have a contract?

They're like, no. It's like, okay, . That's why. The deal is that your contracts are, there's several things we need to include in them, right? Like I talked about indemnification, you don't have to include that in yours, but it often comes across in client contracts. So you need to at least know what that means and what you should try to change, like weird language in there.

Um, and we'll talk about like, a little bit about business insurance, um, because, you know, some clients are requiring that. And then the negotiations part, um, I did a video on that recently, I don't think, was it last week? Um, anyways, I'll link to that in the year too. But, um, we'll go deeper into negotiations and you just wanna think about it as like, what are your boundaries, what are your terms that, like, are non-negotiable for you?

And that's it. Like you're not, you're, we're not gonna be like pushing sales on people or negotiating super hard because like, oh my God, like we have to get it. Like, there's lots of other clients who would love to work with you, who you don't have to negotiate so hard with. And the, the, how the negotiations go.

is a precursor for how the relationship goes. So if things aren't going well in the contract proposal, negotiation upfront, invoice phase, things are not gonna go well in the working relationship. I've seen it happen to me many, many times. Like, if you're like, why is this so difficult? And then you start working for them, you're like, oh, everything's difficult.

You got a little like snack crumb, here you go. Um, . So you're like, everything is difficult. Why? That's, that's what we need to know about negotiations in terms of like attitudes, in terms of how it will go for the work. And our negotiations are also about boundaries. Understanding what we'll accept and what we won't, what types of niches or what types of projects we're willing to bend on and negotiate on a little bit more.

What types of things we are willing to either. Get paid less on or change our terms a little bit. Or there's a lot of little, little nitpicky things that we might wanna look at in terms of like how we work with a client, the clips that we want, the niches that we want, how we wanna leverage our experience and our income, all that stuff.

So we're kind of making sure that we're having a freelance writing contract in place, right? But we're also making sure that we're standing up for ourselves like you are your clients Equal. Don't forget that. Okay. All right. This live stream is going much longer than I anticipated, so let's get to five

Okay, let's get to five. Five is going to be like, how do we actually complete our client work? So this is like one of my nerdiest things that I love. I love systems and processes, I love it. I love tools and I'm always looking for like the best tool that does the thing like that I need it to do all the time.

So for. When we're completing our client work and we actually need to scale, right? So there's a point where your schedule gets so full that you're like, Hey, I'm turning down work, but like I wanna get to a higher up level. This is where these scalable systems and processes come in, right? This is how we actually make more money and less in less time.

We don't have to do so much admin. We actually get to places where, uh, excuse me, we actually get to places where, um, we can do tasks in like an hour for the whole week instead of having to spend an hour every day. And this is something that where if you have the right foundation and tools and steps, like what ends up happening is you, you just, it, it frees your time to actually do more stuff.

So you either don't have to work as much and you actually make more money cuz you have systems and processes running. Um, it allows you to like actually scale your business. It allows you to work on different phases of your business. So like you get to. Um, so for example, I run my six figure freelance writing business, and I run now my two courses and I run my one-on-one coaching business and my communities, um, and some other stuff.

But I do that because I'm able to move these scalable systems, right? Like I'm able to do actually put my good brain space into writing or into helping my students or into doing strategy like content strategy or brand messaging strategy because my brain is using like the good juice on the good stuff and like I get to kind of automate a bunch of other things, so I get time back to do what I actually want.

Hug, go buddy. That's a really important step that a lot of freelance writers miss. Like they miss the tools and the systems and I, I feel like it's more fun that way. Like once you kind of set. and you see it running like a well-oiled machine. You're just like, oh, this is fantastic. Like, why didn't I do this sooner?

Um, and you can do a lot of things for free. Like there's a lot of things that you can use for free. You don't have to pay for them at all. Um, so you're not even raising expenses in your business. So you're not raising expenses, you're making more money, which means not more money being taken away by expenses, get time back that all these things kind of go together.

Hold on, I missed some stuff. Um, yeah, Holly said, I remember how intimidated, uh, intimidating all this sounded the first time I went through the wealth lab and now I'm like, oh, I feel like I know stuff. Yeah, it's just kind of, I know that there's a lot in this live stream. Like I'm throwing a lot of things at you in this livestream, but the point is that these are things that you will use over and over and over again.

And like I said at the very beginning, even if you're lev, even if you're launching your business or leveling up, these are things I look at, analyze, change. , uh, fix, upgrade in my six figure business all the time. These are fundamental building blocks to building a business you like. I don't care if it's six figures or four figures or a dollar.

I don't care if you're building a business you like, these are foundational pieces you need, and it sounds like a lot, but I always try to make it manageable. Like I always try to make it so it feels doable. Woo woo. Are, do you wanna just be part of the livestream today? You wanna come up here and say it?

Hello? You wanna say hello to everyone? Oh, she went to position three. She's in position Three. People can't pick her up. So it's not that, it's like, um, it's not that it's not doable, it's just that it's, oops, that it's a bunch of things that a lot of freelance writers don't normally think about that are actually really important.

Marie says, I have lo, I had loads of red flag clients from hell and Mandy helped me change things so I didn't attract them. Um, and figure out how I could, uh, leave early on a call and not get swamped in client. Hell yeah. That's again, like why I teach these topics. These topics are like the building block FA framework so that we can actually do stuff.

Like Marie was someone who got time back, she actually got to go on vacation. She doesn't work like 8,000 hours a week anymore. Right? And Marie says, I love tools and systems. They are so juicy and help me focus on working in my business, not on my business. Yes. That's why five is super important, is you get to work in your business, you get to do the writing, you get to do the cool stuff, you get to actually work on the projects you care about rather than the, on your business, which is like admin or setting things up or tracking things or finding that email or, uh, to-do list or whatever it is.

Like this makes it much more focused. Vicky says, um, how do you give prospects the impression that you'll wait? How do you give prospects the p the impression that you'll need to slot in their project a couple of weeks into the future? How many months ahead do you generally goal. So I like to plan three to six months ahead in my business.

So how are things going over the next three to six months? Oh my goodness. Go back to your huble. You sass, you're sassy today. Sassy. What mean sassy green? Um, so one, I just tell them, so like if I get on a call with someone and they're like, what's your typical turnaround time? Or What does your schedule look like?

I'll tell them like, Hey, um, I have an opening starting in April. Like, it depends on where my schedule is and what I'm doing, right? Sometimes it could be two weeks. Like I'll say, Hey, I have a two week turnaround right now. Um, usually if you work with a client long enough, then you get to bulk your work. So like I'll turn in four blog posts or something once a month because then I can bulk my work and it's due once a month and now it's over.

Um, so I don't have to turn it in every week, which is, can be a pain. But I'll tell them on the call, like the initial time I talked to them, I'm like, yeah, right now I'm planning for. April, or right now I'm planning for May or right now I have a two week turnaround. I just, I'm upfront with them on that.

And then the other thing is when I'm planning my business, so right now, right, I have runway coming up and I actually have client deadlines coming up that I need to deal with. Here you go buddy. So number one, my systems and processes allow me to both run runway and launch runway while also getting my client work done.

Um, and also that I've been doing this for 10 years, . And then the other thing is like I already know, like what my next three to six months look like in terms of runway or the freelance writer wealth lab community, the masterclass, the book club. Um, how we're doing things in the wealth lab in terms of like new students coming in, when the launch periods are, um, what my work schedule will look like during the wealth lab, or how I'm going to like, organize my freelance writing work.

So I feel like a lot of freelance writers don't think far enough ahead. Like, I've talked to people that are like, oh, I have work for the next two weeks, and I'm like, what? No. And they're like, I don't need to do marketing. I have worked for the next two weeks. No, you need to be thinking three to six months.

You need to be thinking further out. You need to be looking at what things are coming in, how things are working, what types of projects you're working on. And that also helps you get picky, right? The further you plan out, the further you look at your calendar, the more marketing you get done and the more clients you have come in.

Now our work schedule moves further out, so if I get a client or a prospect or like a potential project that I don't wanna do, my schedule's already filled up. I don't have to do it. It's there's, you get rid of the feast and famine, desperation mode. So if you are thinking three to six months ahead, and you don't necessarily have to have three to six months of work or three to six months of invoices, can you go back to hobble?

Thank you. Um, you don't always have to have paid work, but you at least need to know like when your paid work ends or how long that retainer is gonna be, or, um, what, what does it look like with taxes? Right? Here you go, buddy. We'll go over taxes and runway. Um, but you need to kind of know what's coming up and what's ending and what's, what's coming in, and that actually helps you, um, not only give your potential clients a better turnaround time or a l like a better kind of how I would set this schedule up, right?

But it also gives you better planning in terms of like how your money's coming in and um, like what you can actually physically and mentally and emotionally take on. This is another thing that happens with right or burnout. Is that they end up burning out because they're not planning far enough ahead and they're just always on the hamster wheel, right?

And that's a big problem. Vicky says, um, Vicky says, do you take the deposit as soon as you book the time instead of at onset? It depends. So, um, there's a couple things. Okay? You might have to leave cuz you're bokey today. Goodbye. Have a great day. You can lay down, but you can't bo we're not gonna bork today.

All right? So, um, it depends. It depends on what it is. So magazines, right Magazines, you usually get paid on publication or you get paid on acceptance or you get paid on net 30, 45, 90, 60, whatever, like the magazine payment terms. Sometimes you can negotiate that. , usually you're subject to the magazine's terms.

It just depends on what they are. Um, you can, like I said, you can negotiate. It just depends. Um, with business projects, it depends on what it is. So, for example, if I do a retainer, um, and it's like the same thing, right? Like, let's say I'm doing a retainer and someone wants four blog posts a month for three months, and I tell them that, like, Hey, if we're doing this type of project, it's an initial 90 day contract.

And I will tell them that on the first thing. Like, I'm not gonna hop on and do two blog posts and like one off it and see how this goes. Like, it's gonna, the, the way this type of project works, um, especially if it's repetitive retainer style Pro project, it's an initial three month, 90 day contract. The first month is due upfront every continuing, like every month.

After that, I will invoice on the first of the month and it's due mid. . So then you get paid before the end of the month, which a lot of people end up having tons of bills at the end of the month. So it's better to do it that way. So you get an initial retainer, like the first month is upfront on that one.

The other one is if I'm doing a project that has like, let's say four to five different types of content, right? Like they want two case studies, three blog posts, an ebook, and a landing page that I do 50% up front, 50%, 30 days later. So if it's repetitive retainer style stuff that I do every month, or if it's like a mix of project stuff, 50% up upfront, 50% do 30 days later, sometimes people end up doing like 50% at the end of the project.

Um, but that can just go on forever. Like that can just be six months down the road and it, so it's really just, that doesn't work . So I like 50% up front, 50%, 30 days after first invoice, right? Um, the other thing too is that you're taking deposits or you're taking. , um, you're, you're ending up taking initial payments for other stuff too.

So like there will be other projects that you work on where you will get an upfront deposit of like the first article, right? So let's say you're doing a test article and you're gonna do a smaller, uh, collection of blog posts. You're like, okay, the first article is due upfront. I just like the idea of doing, like retainers are one way, right?

Re regular repetitive work for the next three months or six months, or however long the retainer is. That costs this much. I invoice on the first do mid month, you know, no questions asked. And like, that's the thing is I have net 14 in my payment terms. So if someone signs a contract, they're already agreeing to net 14, which just means 14 days after invoice.

Um, your client may have their own payment terms, but like I said, like you, there should al almost always, except for magazines, if you're working for businesses, Get money up upfront because there are lots of times where writers don't get any money up upfront and the client ghosts them. They, they use their work without their permission and they post it and they never end up paying the writer.

This is not super common, but it still happens, so you need to at least get something upfront. I don't care if it's one article payment, I don't care if it's 50% or a hundred percent. I have friends who do a hundred percent upfront on everything. I'm still moving in that direction and I feel like I've been saying that for a year, so I probably just need to just bite the bullet and do it.

But I have friends who just do a hundred percent upfront on everything and, and their clients are just like, sounds good. That's the level of client, right. So if you're working with clients that are really finicky about payment terms, they're gonna be finicky about other stuff and there should be some kind of like skin in the game, right?

You are gonna go off and do content, which means you're working and spending time researching, doing interviews, finding stats, whatever you're doing right? You should be paid for that, at least somewhat, right? So at least if something happens, you at least got 50% up upfront, but 50% up front and getting paid up front is also kind of a good, like, it's like a good faith thing.

Like they signed your contract, they give you money up upfront. We're kind of like on the same boat. Instead of you just like going off and then being like, here's the invoice pay, you know, and then chasing an invoice, like you can chase an invoice for like years or like months. Like I chased an invoice for nine months.

Actually I'm pretty sure I probably chased an invoice for a year, but I know I chased one for nine months and that was money I didn't get up front. And that was a just a pain. So you wanna make sure that you do get, um, You're, all of those things go together. So you would send your proposal, contract, and invoice all at once.

They sign the proposal or agree to the proposal, they just click a button in, do Soto, they sign the contract legally binding. And then the next tab in Do Soto is the invoice. They all go together. Um, and this is something we'll go over in runway, more in depth, but I love do Dosa cuz they get the proposal, contract, invoice all at once.

Nothing gets lost. Like they can't sign the contract and then like be like, where's the invoice? Like they're all together. It's really easy for them to do steps one, two, and three. Um, with um, dosa, you can connect Stripe as well. So you can immediately get your 50% deposit by ach cuz they can pay by bank payment.

So like instead of paying fees, you pay only up to five bucks for the bank, um, transfer, which is just ach. , um, which is great. Instead of using credit cards, if your client needs credit cards, you can change that on an invoice by invoice basis, but you can make your default bank payments, so you pay lesson fees, but you always have this kind of nice flow of proposal, contract, invoice, proposal, contract invoice where someone's like the ne like you are, you are training your clients in the onboarding process of like, this is how I work.

I'm a pro. I send this stuff. And as you're onboarded, you do the contract, you pay upfront. This is how it works, this is what it's like to work with me. Okay. Um, I think that's all I'm gonna say. I did have one question that I wanted to get to that someone popped in. Um, so I hope that this has been helpful so far.

I hope that this has been kind of a nice overview of the things that I constantly am updating things. I'm updating contracts, I'm updating invoices. I'm constantly updating my systems and processes. Right now, just as like a little insider thing is like I'm looking at different checkouts. So different checkouts for the backend of runway or different checkouts for Freelance Rider wealth lab so that everybody has a better checkout experience.

Um, and I have like more options to play with in terms of what's on the checkout page or how the checkout works or what's plugged into it. So like I'm always playing with different pieces from like, am I gonna go into the pet healthcare niche? Or how am I gonna do my business roadmap? How should I change up my lois or what wouldn't what now that I've talked to 10 new ideal clients, what are some repetitive things they've said to me on calls than I need to add to my website and LinkedIn to attract more of my ideal clients?

Um, What are the things I need to think about in terms of pitching or pricing or increasing my prices or changing my client structure or, uh, how I negotiate or how I change the systems, right? I'm always doing these things, and that's why this live stream is important, is it's not just about me telling you like, we're gonna do this in runway.

This live stream is important because these are things that no, like pretty much no matter what level you're at, you will keep at reanalyzing, rechanging your framework, but at least if you know what they are now, I've brought them into your awareness so you can pay attention to them moving forward, whether you're launching, whether you're ramping up, whether you're leveling up, or whether you have a six figure business that you need to kind of poke holes in and see where you can actually, you know, scale some more.

All right, let's talk about questions. So question that was submitted, if you ever wanna submit a question, you can go to mandy ellis.com/question and I can do it on the live stream. So, question or topic. Um, I've had many topics submitted by people, uh, for the live stream, so you can go there. So anonymous question, how much work would you expect to provide, uh, to receive a per project amount of US dollars?

1500 or 15,000 to 20,000? So, um, this depends, , this is a complicated, but then not complicated question. So the deal is that, let's say I'm gonna do one of my content strategy, brand messaging, messaging and positioning, or some kind of strategy marketing, consultative type project, right? Let's say that you've been really good.

You're being over there being nice and cute and quiet. Here you go. Good job. Let's say I'm gonna do a strategy or marketing consultative type project, then that would be a bunch of deliverables. Here you go, buddy. Can you see it? There you go. It's still in my hand. Good job. Okay. Good job. So, If I'm doing that, it would be a bunch of deliverables.

So the work that I would provide for that, um, is like, let's, so I'm gonna do, if I take a content strategy project, like a 15 K or 20 K one, I'm gonna be doing like, um, like I can probably pull it up on my phone. Hold on. Um, I just wanna make sure I say the right deliverables. So like, if I'm doing so like messaging and positioning, uh, let's say, so I would, for 20 k it would be like a positioning canvas, which includes a tagline, marketing ca category, p o v, uh, customer segments.

So like buyer personas, um, and user persona. Um, characteristics of companies in target markets. These are names of deliverables that I would send to my client. Okay, so like they would get a worksheet. The positioning canvas is the deliverable, but then in there these are the things that get delivered. The types of information they need, uh, solved pain points, ideal solutions, competitive alternatives triggers unique value, unique attributes and proof points.

They would also get the messaging and the strategic parts like the strategic narrative, which includes market category, the narrative itself, tagline, options and suggestions, one-liners, um, the mission in the problem space, target audience, uh, any types of elevator pitches they would need or descriptions.

Value point tables features, benefits and themes. Competitive messaging and top competitors and potential customer assets. So that would be like a messaging and positioning project for 20 K. Um, I could also do something like, let's say, so let me give you content strategy. So content strategy would include, um, the competitive analysis, the review of critical insights with a SWAT analysis.

So a strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. Swat, s w o t. It would also be their, um, positioning, messaging and audience and top producing content of competitors. It would include the content strategy deck, which tells them basically like what is the content strategy and how to kind of like start executing what we should look for.

Content goals, topic clusters, which are really important for making sure that we have our content in place, which are like content pillars. So topic clusters, content pillars, uh, types of content that work best, like type from their competitors and from their own audience. Um, then they would also be able to get like the higher tier content strategy would add onto that.

So if I was doing content strategy, brand messaging, messaging or uh, marketing, consultation, messaging and positioning, that's kind of those packages. Um, but if I'm doing something like this is hard to say because it depends on what it is. Like a super, like here's a good example. I have a student named Vesna where we've talked about her stuff before, where she had a white paper that she did that we talked about that was beautiful.

It was wonderful. We had a white paper masterclass yesterday and we talked about it. Um, and it was, we all agreed that it should be 10 K. Like basically the, those of us who looked at we like, you should charge 10 K for this, right? That's one white paper. It was a big white paper. It was like 10 pages or nine pages.

It was really long. Um, it was just beautiful. She did a great job, but she should have charged 10 K and that's one white paper. So if I'm gonna charge 10 K for a white paper, plus let's say two, three K case studies based on what, however long they are, that could be something that I have is 16 grand, right?

Or I could do three months of blog posts. at, um, 4K a month for blog posts, which would be te uh, 12 k plus $1,000 a month for tons of social media posts, which would then put me at 15 K, right? So 4k a month, 4, 8 12 for three months of blog posts, plus a thousand dollars added on, which would be an extra three K for social media.

That would be 15 k. Um, if I'm gonna do $20,000, let's say, I would end up doing like, um, like it's pretty easy to get to 10 or 20 K when you have a ton of deliverables. So if you're ending up, um, with a lot of case studies or white papers or landing pages, can be three to five K per landing page, depending on length.

Like some landing pages could be more, way more than that, um, based on length or, um, you could end up with, nope, go back to your hobb hole, you could end up with, um, here you go buddy. Uh, a drip campaign, an email drip campaign that you charge 5K for, depending on how many emails are in the drip. And then you add on, um, deli, like an ebook, and you add on, um, some other subscriber things that they would want from being in the drip campaign, and that could be 15 or 20 K.

There's a lot of different pieces that go into something that's 15 to 20 k. It just depends on what it is, like how much research are in these blog posts? What level am I at in my freelance writing career that I feel like I can charge this rate or whatever it is. Um, or do I feel confident enough really to charge this rate?

Uh, am I doing a lot of research interview stats? Am I doing a ton of legwork? Like it could take me forever to do this white paper or, um, it could take me like, you know, for example, um, like one of the things Holly just said is how long does it usually take for a project? So it could be done in a month.

So I could do a whole content strategy project in a month. But that depends on me getting things from my client. So if my client is super fast at setting up a b I have, I put a bunch of folders in Google Drive. So like I need all their sales and marketing material. I need them to give me feedback. I need them to review the deliverables I send.

If they do that fast, we can get it done in a month. A lot of times it takes three months because they have more people looking at it. It takes them two weeks to review. Um, it takes a while to do feedback or changes. So it could be one month to three months to do a, a content strategy, messaging, positioning, brand messaging project.

Um, one month I think is the minimum though, because you still have to get the deliverables done. And that is a lot of research. Like it's a lot of deep dive searching and stats and using tools like Uber suggest, or you could use like Moz or you could pull, um, if they let you have access to Google Analytics, you need to go do that.

You need to go look at competitors and their top producing content, which takes a lot of time. , go back to your alcohol. Um, so yeah, so something like that would be, I think at a minimum is a month. Uh, at most, I think three months. But if you're doing 15 to 20 K of work, you could complete it in a month.

Like even if it's like a bunch of, like, let's say someone wanted to do a ton of blog posts, like I guess you could get it done in a month. It would just be a lot. So you'd wanna make sure that you kind of know the timeline for that as well. And you're, the work that you're expected to provide just really depends.

And like I said, the pricing also depends on, like, if it's a basic blog post that's a thousand words with no interviews, no research. Like, they're like, here's four things to go look at. And, and it's not hard. Like, that's not gonna be as much as something where you're having research and interviews and uh, you need to go do some seo and you need to find images.

Right. So it kind of depends. Like you would be . Yeah, Marie trios, uh, you would be expected to, it's not so much expected. It's like what you would be pricing in terms of your own work and the complexity of the project and like what ends up happening, whether it's like a collection of deliverables or it's like a 5k, a month retainer for three months, um, which is 15 K.

Or it's a project where you split it up, right. And you say fif, you know, um, it's 20 K, it's 10 K up front, 10 k later, and that includes 10 different deliverables or five different deliverables. But like I said, I, I, it really depends. Like you could have a case study that's $2,000, or you could have a white paper that's $10,000, or you could have a case study that's $5,000 or $3,000, or you could have a white paper that's 3000 or $5,000, right?

Like it really depends on the complexity of it and what you're doing. Go back to Hava Hole. Thank you. This is a record, Charlotte. I'm pretty sure this is a record number of times. I've said go back to your hava hole today. . Uh, so it really depends, but yeah, so it's just, I wouldn't say expect, I would think about it more as value.

The value that you are providing for 15 to 20 K is high. You are providing a lot of content assets or a lot of strategy or messaging, positioning, or brand assets, rather than saying like, if someone gives me 20 k, what do I have to do? No, it's like I'm providing $20,000 worth of value. I know I am. And not only am I, do, I know I'm providing $20,000 of value.

I know based on your business and how this, you know, sales cycle works or how content marketing works, you're gonna make 10 times the money back. Like, like content marketing has like a 3600% O roi. So for like every dollar that's spent in content marketing, people make like $360 or $3,600. I forget what it is, but whatever 3600% is.

So for, it's 3600% R o roi, . Okay. Don't forget that. Yeah. So how long does it take? Says Holly. One month to three months. For something like content strategy or brand messaging or messaging positioning. Okay. I think we went through all of our good stuff. If you found this helpful, give it a thumbs up if you wanna subscribe and get more tips and tricks about freelance writing.

Hit the button that says subscribe. Um, like I said at the very beginning, runway is gonna be open for enrollment until next Friday. So Friday 3 24 will be the last day to enroll in runway. It's 49 bucks. It's going over what we talked about today in terms of topics, but it's going much deeper into specific strategies, how-tos like actual lists and templates and all the good stuff that you're gonna get in runway.

Um, I also have the option, you're gonna get a bonus masterclass. So I'm gonna have the class vote like everyone who joins runway will vote on a topic and everyone will get a bonus masterclass on the topic that gets voted the highest. Um, and then we will also have the chance to win one of five free one-on-one coaching sessions in runway.

Uh, it's a live five day class. You do not have to be there live. If you are there live, you will be able to win one of the coaching sessions if you can't make it live. No big deal. There are recordings of everything. Everything will be recorded and you will have a community to ask questions, meet other students.

Um, you will have like a little chat space. I'm like testing this little, like slack chat space as well. But you'll be able to get a ton of support and uh, and help if you need it. After the live classes, you'll be able to watch the replays. It'll be all good stuff. And my current students, some of my current students, um, including Maria and Holly, and, um, Zo actually will be there.

Funny, not that we talked about here, but a bunch of my current students will be there to support you guys and cheer you on and participate and do the work. Um, the other thing I wanna mention is you will have action sh like, uh, worksheets as well, that'll have action steps, like things that you can do right now.

They're not overly complicated. They are easy to execute. These action worksheets will have three things per day that you can do to take action in your freelance writing business and actually see results, like things that actually move the needle in your business. I do love. Yeah, project Runway is, I love Project Runway as a show.

Getty's here. Hey Getty. Um, I do love Project Runway as a show, but I couldn't call it Project Runway as like, it's, I'm sure it's tmd, right? Obviously, but yeah. So in any case, um, you can join Runway if you go to mandy ellis.com/runway. There's the link. Uh, if you haven't gotten my free pricing guide, which we talked about pricing in here, it is for everybody around the world.

I've had tons of people all over the world in all different countries. Um, use the pricing guide to raise the rates and get better clients. Mandy ellis.com/pricing guide. Um, I think that's gonna be it, but if you have any questions, you can always send me an email as well. So if you ever have any questions about freelance writing or about Runway or Freelance Writer Wealth Lab, you can always send me an email.

But I hope that this has been helpful. I hope everybody has a really good Friday. And, uh, hope, see you in runway. Um, that starts on the 27th. Bye.

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