We love what we do. We say it all the time. But freelance medical writing is not all puppies and unicorns. You need to be aware of some of the unsexy realities of this profession. Here goes.

1. Just because you're good doesn't mean you'll get work. It's true. No matter how good you are as a writer, project manager, or strategic thinker, if clients don't know who you are and where to find you, you'll spend a lot of time sitting at your desk worrying about how you'll pay the mortgage. If you're not out there marketing your services, you won't get work. Don't know how to market? Buy The Mighty Marketer, a step-by-step guide filled with practical steps to help you market your freelance medical writing business.
    
2. Clients don't really care about you. This may be a hard truth to accept, but most of your clients don't care if you make money on a project or you have to work nights and weekends to meet a deadline. It's all about them and their needs--your needs don't matter. Don't get us wrong, the truly good clients do care (and there are a few out there). They want you to be paid fairly for the work you do; they empathize with you if your cat dies in the middle of the project or your kids come down with chicken pox days before a deadline. Nevertheless, they don't want your personal circumstances to adversely affect the project, so make sure they don't.
   
   
3. At some point every freelance leaves money on the table. Regardless of how well you estimate projects, there comes a time in every freelance's career when he or she blows one and ends up losing money. Expect it, and don't beat yourself up when it happens. Learn from the experience and do better the next time.
    
4. If you don't pay Uncle Sam every quarter, he'll come after you. We recall a freelance just starting out. She wasn't making much money--perhaps she earned $30,000 annually from medical writing--and she didn't think she needed to pay estimated taxes throughout the year. Uncle Sam hit her with a hefty penalty she wasn't expecting, and she didn't have available funds to pay it. Don't make the same mistake. Get advice from an accountant who can tell you how much money to put aside from your earned income each month to cover your quarterly taxes.
    
5. Sitting at your desk day after day ALONE gets boring. When we tell people we're freelance medical writers, they imagine us wearing bunny slippers, sipping tea (or beer), and eating bon-bons while we type away at our keyboards in an immaculate home office. The reality is much less exciting. It is boring to work in isolation plugging away on our computers, and sitting for hours is bad for our health. That's why we arrange lunch dates with colleagues and clients, volunteer in our communities and for AMWA, and try to get up and walk around a couple times each hour. We do it for our physical and mental health and well-being, and you should, too. In fact, we're even considering Standing Desks as an alternative to sitting.

Why is Cheap Actually Too Expensive?              

Last month, Brian presented a webinar for the American Medical Writers Association (AMWA) on The Secret Marketing Tactics of Top Freelances. He swears it was the most challenging presentation he's ever put together because it forced him to put into words the actions that come so naturally to top freelances that they're able to market themselves constantly without even thinking about it. He says it was also the most fun presentation he's ever given!

Secret Tactic #3 is right up our alley for Dollars & Sense: Don't Give Yourself Away. The idea behind this tactic is that Big guns aren't cheap, and what freelance doesn't want to be the big gun in their client's arsenal? If clients pay you more than they're willing to pay anyone else, you're their big gun. If not, there's someone bigger--and more important to your client--than you.

Another insight to be gained from this tidbit is that underpricing yourself is bad for you and bad for your clients. Clearly, it's bad for you because you don't make as much money as you should for the value you bring to the table. Allow us to clarify why underpricing yourself is also bad for your client.

Clients expect to pay top dollar for freelances who are at the top of their game. So if you're not charging top dollar, you must not be at the top of your game, right? But what if you are? Clients might miss out on the great work you do because you priced yourself like you're not that good.

So as you can see, when you consider how much you and your clients have to lose, cheap is too expensive! Too expensive for you, and too expensive for your clients.

Of course, if you're going to charge like a big gun for your services, you've got to deliver the goods. One misfire and it can all blow up in your face. That means you've got to deliver consistently on time, on target, and on budget. You also have to be good at setting and negotiating fees. And when something goes wrong--which happens sooner or later to everyone regardless of how good you are--you've got to be good at making things right.

Brian and Cyndy started off the year with presentations at the AMWA Mid-Atlantic Chapter Conference and the AMWA Delaware Valley Chapter Freelance Conference. if you didn't attend, you should definitely put these conferences on your schedule for next year!

Brian just presented a webinar for AMWA on The Secret Marketing Tactics of Top Freelances, where he revealed some of the secret marketing tactics successful freelances use every day to make their clients love them, hire them, recommend them, and pay them more than anyone else. Check back with us because we're looking into ways to repurpose the content.    

Be sure to attend Brian and Cyndy's open session at the AMWA 75th Annual Conference in San Antonio, TX, September 30 to October 3, 2015. The session, Unlock the Secrets to Freelance Success, is scheduled for Thursday October 1 from 2:00 to 3:30. Put it on your calendars. Brian also will be presenting his workshop on The Fundamentals of Freelance Business Marketing. It will be a huge event and also a very important 75th Anniversary celebration for AMWA you won't want to miss!

More webinars are also in the works, and you'll hear more about these soon.

We would love to present at your next upcoming meeting or event, so invite us!

A Marketing Hack to Cement Your Value to Clients          

Every freelance wants it to be easier to market themselves to current and potential clients. We have just the thing--a marketing hack you won't want to miss! What's a marketing hack? It's a quick and easy way to market your freelance business beyond the boundaries of traditional marketing tactics.

In the past we've written about the value of subscribing to newsletters and news feeds as a way to stay on top of whatever part of the industry in which you're interested. In Pencil Points Issue 61 we even wrote about one of the news feeds we watch regularly for inspiration and business opportunities--Medical Marketing & Media.

This month, something unexpected and exciting happened that we just had to share with you. A great marketing opportunity came to us! Literally. Not that an idea popped into our heads. An incredible and timely opportunity actually showed up right in our Outlook inbox.

Because we subscribe to the Medical Marketing & Media news feed, Mark Iskowitz, Editor-In-Chief of MMM, sent us an email with a link to download a free e-book titled Innovations in Oncology. We're constantly working in oncology (these days it may be easier to ask who isn't?), so we were immediately interested. It turns out this awesome resource--which came to us without even having to look for it--is "A medical and commercial trend report for marketers of anti-cancer modalities." How timely! After reading it, we knew exactly what we needed to do. We used it to prove what awesome partners we are by sharing it with a few of our clients with whom we work in the oncology field.

Within an hour of receiving Mr. Iskowitz's email we had read and gleaned a few choice morsels from the report, demonstrated to our clients how on top of the oncology field we are, and pointed them to a few insights within the report we knew would be of particular value given the clients and products with which each of them works. It was a grand slam.

Our clients were thrilled and very thankful we thought of them. They were impressed that we stay so close to the industry. And we reaffirmed once again why our clients love to work with us. Best of all, an hour and 5 minutes earlier there was nothing happening but the usual workload. Next thing we know, we're heroes. We accomplished an immeasurable amount of marketing with just a few keystrokes. Now you can, too!