My So-Called Freelance Life - Michelle Goodman [33]
On the flip side, you don’t want to become too dependent on one client (or for that matter, the agency work we talked about in Chapter 7). Don’t be the freelancer who sucks on the teat of one cash cow, leaving no time for other work (and no time to scratch your creative itch). In the mid-nineties, that was me. I’d spent two years writing marketing copy and editing books almost exclusively for a small California-based technical book publisher. Without warning, the firm was sold and swallowed up by a giant publisher in the Midwest, leaving me and the company’s other freelancers twisting in the wind. Suddenly I had a sinkhole where my jam-packed schedule used to be and had to scramble to put some new gigs together.
In retrospect, losing that cash cow was the greatest thing that ever happened to me as a freelancer. I’d become complacent, bored, and burned out, and I’d stopped making time for the fun writing gigs I enjoyed most. But three weeks after my cash cow bought the farm, I had a shiny new client list, complete with a couple of more creative, less vanilla projects. I was a freelancer reborn. Suddenly work was fun again. So let this be a lesson to you: No client should account for more than a third of your revenue each year. And not just for financial reasons, but to keep your creative, variety-loving self energized about your work. Because isn’t that why you want to be your own boss in the first place?
Specialize or Starve!
Early on in my freelance career, I did a lot of dabbling until I found a couple commercial writing niches that held my interest and fueled my bank account best. My first couple boss-free years, I did much more PR writing—and even a handful of start-to-finish publicity campaigns, complete with pitching story ideas to the press on behalf of my artist/ author/musician clients—before realizing I couldn’t stand doing PR. I also tried my hand at writing infomercials and scripts for authors looking to adapt their work to audio, neither of which appealed to me and both of which I sucked at.
When a few years into my business I finally sank my teeth into copywriting and editing for book publishers, dot-coms, and software companies, I knew I’d found my home, at least on the bread-and-butter side of things. On the creative side, finding my home was much easier. From the get-go, I wrote articles and essays about things I knew and loved: alt careers, self-employment, dating, mating, and dogs.
But honing your expertise and cultivating a couple of specialties doesn’t just help you stay at the top of your game, it helps you stay gainfully employed. Clients don’t have the time to teach a freelancer about the nuances of their industry, product, or subject matter. They want to hire someone who’s been there and designed, edited, photographed, built, trained, tested, or healed that, someone who can hit the proverbial ground running. Build up a niche or three for yourself, and suddenly you’re a hot commodity. In a crowded creative marketplace, you’d be wise to set yourself apart from the pack this way.
“Typically when I pick up clients in niches, I start picking up all their friends,” says Denver-based personal trainer Alisa Geller, who works with a lot of ballet dancers, people training for triathlons, and people with MS. Likewise, because I have more than a decade of experience writing and editing for the software industry, I get far more freelance gigs and can command a higher rate for editorial tech work than a writer/editor who doesn’t know a router from a Roto-Rooter. But Alisa and I don’t hold a monopoly on niche building. Laura Michalek, the auctioneer you met in Chapter 7, specializes in fundraising events for nonprofits, community groups, and schools. Interior designer Piper Lauri Salogga