April 24, 2009  |  Vol. 2 No. 12  Published by Biotech Ink, LLC

The Biotech Ink Insider
Inside the Insider

How to Make a Living as a Freelance Writer--The Importance of Pricing
by Mitch Gordon

Many activities are important to your success as a freelancer, such as marketing, time management, and networking. However, I'd wager that none of these is as critical to your success or failure as how you price your services. A bad pricing decision becomes carved in stone when you sign the contract with your client, and can haunt you when the project doesn't go smoothly. Alternatively, a well-thought-out, sensibly priced contract can be a great source of satisfaction, not to mention income. As you progress through your working year, the results of your good and bad contracts add up, and determine whether you're struggling, getting by, doing pretty well or making yourself downright prosperous.

Thankfully, for those of us who are baffled by how to approach this difficult and important subject, there's a terrific little book that may be helpful. It's called What to Charge: Pricing Strategies for Freelancers and Consultants, by Laurie Lewis (Aletheia Publications, 2001), and it can be had on Amazon for about $20.

Ms. Lewis writes very clearly and conversationally, and the book is only a few hours' read. She reassures and gives sensible, real-life advice to readers who might easily close her book, wishing to avoid the uncomfortable subject of what kind of price tag to put on themselves.

Why is pricing such an intimidating subject for the new freelancer? I think it's because we come into freelancing after spending most or all of our working lives at staff jobs. Staff positions are a different world with different rules from the world of freelancing. In a staff position you have a pay rate that gets decided at the time you accept the job, and doesn't alter except for once a year at performance review time or when you leave and start another staff job. Your income doesn't change when you're sick for a couple of days, or when you work a 60-hour instead of a 40-hour week (if you're salaried). Your pay certainly doesn't fluctuate with the type of work you perform, and you're paid just as much for that chat at the coffeemaker as for your actual writing time. It's all very comfortable and financially predictable, but you may wish you were making more money.

Freelancing, in contrast, is anything but predictable. And yet, predicting what will happen, and writing each contract accordingly, is an important key to making it work.

So, how do you price your work? Your first assumption is probably that you should charge by the hour. As Laurie Lewis explains in her book, this can be a perfectly good approach in many situations. With an hourly rate, at least you know you'll be paid a certain amount of money for a certain number of hours expended for the client. And this system automatically adjusts for unexpected changes in the project scope or difficulty-namely, if the work takes longer than expected for some reason, you make correspondingly more money.

And yet, an hourly rate may shortchange you or exclude you from good projects. The client may balk at paying you the hourly rate you need, because it seems like so much more money than employees earn. The client may think you're padding your hours or wasting time at home at the company's expense. Or, more commonly, the manager simply fears the unpredictable project cost. You are asking your client to assume a certain amount of financial risk, and this doesn't jibe well with the budget process. And you certainly can't assume that you'll be working a steady 40 hours a week, since most projects include slow periods and unbillable work.

There are alternative ways to price a project, and each can have advantages for certain kinds of work. Setting a fixed project price is the most commonly used of these. You negotiate a fixed price for the entire project, payable on completion or at specified milestones or intervals, and subject to special pricing for contingencies that come up. If you do a good job of setting the price, you may earn more money than you would have with an hourly rate. This is only fair, since you're the one assuming the risk instead of the client. You probably will also get projects that you otherwise couldn't. Other pricing methods include per diem, retainer, and per page fee, each of which may make sense for a particular project.

A key point that Laurie Lewis makes in her book is this: for freelancing to work for you financially, you have to be systematic about how you arrive at your pricing and the terms you negotiate. You can't just randomly pull numbers out of a hat and hope that every project will somehow be a money-maker. This is especially true for fixed-priced projects, but can apply to hourly work as well.

Importantly, Ms. Lewis describes the activities you should do before, during, and after each project to ensure that your pricing decisions are sound, and to lay the groundwork for pricing future contracts:

She emphasizes the value of keeping logs of your time on your projects, recording the time spent on various activities. The logs from past jobs will help you price similar projects. It is very important to learn everything you can about the job and analyze it carefully before quoting a price. You also need to research what the going rate is for similar work. She lays out a system for calculating a fixed price based on best, worst, and likely case scenarios. These figures can then be used in negotiations with the client, enabling you to negotiate knowing what you'd like to get, what would be acceptable, and at what point you should refuse the work.

Your ability to write sensibly priced and sensibly defined contracts is crucial to your success as a freelancer. It's fortunate that you can buy inexpensive but excellent guidance on this subject from someone who knows the ropes.

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About the Author
 
Mitch Gordon has been a professional writer for 16 years, and is now a freelance medical writer. He is working on his Masters degree in Regulatory Affairs, to be completed in early 2010. His specialties are regulatory, clinical, and quality documentation. 
 
Mitch Gordon
Freelance Medical Writing
Guerneville, CA
Tel: 707.869.4561
 Marketing is NOT a Dirty Word
by Cyndy Kryder

I often have the opportunity to meet new medical writers, and their most frequent concern is that they don't like to/want to/have the money to [insert your choice here] market themselves to prospective clients. In one breath, they admit they hate to market; in the next they lament their lack of projects and, as a result, their limited income.
 
In our first book, The Accidental Medical Writer, I made a statement that if you have the skill to sell yourself and you can string words together to make sentences, you can probably get hired in this industry. I've encountered a lot of mediocre writers in the business who make an adequate living despite their mediocrity. Why? Because they're experts at selling the sizzle since they don't have the steak.

That doesn't mean that every medical writer has to be an expert marketer. Few people I know enjoy pounding the pavement and soliciting work from strangers. But in today's environment, marketing is no longer limited to selling yourself via cold calls and face-to-face networking. Nor does marketing have to be a high-budget item. Here are some no-cost or low-cost options you can use to establish and later grow your medical writing business:

Websites: In my opinion, all writers need websites to showcase their skills and backgrounds. At the very least, establish a site that has samples of your work prospective clients can view. Be careful, though, not to put anything on your site that is protected by confidentiality agreements. Some Internet service providers offer websites for free. You can also buy domains for as low as $1.99, with monthly hosting fees as low as $4.99 per month. To achieve a fairly high Google page ranking, however, the content on your site must change on a regular basis. If you want to drive people to your site, but can't commit to updating it frequently, consider blogging.
 
Blogs: Blogging is a great way to establish yourself as an expert in a particular niche and also offers an opportunity to polish your writing skills. WordPress, Blogspot, and Blogger (Google tools) are popular platforms where you can set up blogs for free. To attract and keep readers, though, you need to blog on a regular basis, about three times a week, at a minimum. Along with frequent blogging, adding pictures and graphics to your blog is another way to increase your Google page ranking.

Twitter: At this moment, Twitter is the social networking darling. If you're not Twittering, you could be missing out on potential future customers. The challenge of Twitter is to give your followers value in short snippets of no more than 140 characters. I've found the best use of Twitter is to become a filter, updating my followers on topics of interest in the field. To get followers, you have to follow people. Use the "advanced search" function to find Twitterers in your area of interest, follow them, and comment on their posts. You can find me at http://twitter.com/cyndyandbrian and my coauthor, Brian, at http://twitter.com/brianandcyndy.
 
LinkedIn:
 What MySpace is to preteens and teens, LinkedIn is to the business world. And like MySpace, it's free. Complete your profile, upload a real picture, and start inviting people to become a connection. But don't stop there. LinkedIn has hundreds of groups. Search out and join those in your areas of interest. I belong to several, including Medical Marketing and Communications, Technical Writers, Content Wrangler, Continuing Medical Education, and several more. After becoming a group member, start a discussion or respond to discussions posted by other members. I've made some great connections this way.

These are just a few tactics you can use to increase your exposure. In Part 2 of this series, I'll discuss some other social networking and syndication strategies you can use to position yourself as an expert, which can lead to more clients and more work.

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About the Author
 
Angel Bivins photoCyndy Kryder is an experienced freelance medical writer with more than 16 years of experience. As one-half of The Accidental Medical Writer writing team, Cyndy writes books for aspiring and experienced medical writers.
 
You can find more medical writing tips at Cyndy's website: http://www.theaccidentalmedicalwriter.com

Open Jobs and Gigs for Writers

The jobs listed in the Biotech Ink Insider come to us mostly by word-of-mouth and direct contact with hiring managers and recruiters. If no new jobs are communicated to us in a given week, the newsletter will not be published that week. See also our disclaimer at the bottom of the newsletter.
 
If you're a writer or editor and are getting calls about staff or contract positions you aren't interested in, please forward that job information to Susan Caldwell at [email protected]. We'd be delighted to publish such positions in the next issue of the Insider.
Senior Medical Writer, Oncology
Atlanta, GA
 
General: Permanent full-time position with relocation
 
Company: Medical communications company
 
Position: Sr. Medical Writer with strong experience in oncology
 
Description: Global medical communications company located in Atlanta is looking for a medical writer with experience in oncology.  The candidate must have an advanced degree and at least 3 years of experience.  This is a growing company offering a very competetive salary and benefits package.
 
Contact: Please send all inquiries to [email protected].
DISCLAIMER:  Biotech Ink, LLC, and the Biotech Ink Insider provide the Insider jobs list on an "as-submitted basis," and neither assumes responsibility for, nor guarantees the quality or accuracy of, any listing or response. All listings are provided as a free service and courtesy to subscribers and users, and users assume all risk in using the information in the Insider