Who to Connect to and Build Relationships With to Discuss Writing Projects
Yet another great question from our community has arrived hot and ready for this week's livestream! How do you know the right person to reach out to at a company? who do you connect with to discuss writing projects? And is there a process for what I normally do?
Short answer: yes! Long answer: come hang out on the Friday livestream to find out how I connect with the right people at specific businesses, who they are, how I know they're the right person for writing projects, and how I foster relationships.
________
Who to Connect to and Build Relationships With to Discuss Writing Projects
Who do you build relationships with for writing projects or who do you reach out to talk, to send your Lois and pitches to? Like, what are the types of people that you talk to, or that you need to build relationships with to build a high earning freelance writing business? That's what we're talking about today.
Hey, SHA. Welcome in. So we have a bunch of questions this was actually a question submitted, um, for the live stream and I thought it would make a fantastic topic. So we are going over all of that stuff today. To make sure that you know exactly hello, who to talk to, who to build relationships with all of the things that matter for getting writing projects.
1) How Do Freelance Writers Connect With the Right People at Companies and What are Their Job Titles?
So for me, I have a bunch of processes because I had to do trial and error. I learned from other freelance writers who were like, this is working for me. Maybe try this. So I had a bunch of things that I trialed for a while. And then after some time I decided to kind of change what I was doing, because it was working better to.
Not only get my marketing done quicker, but to just get clients kind of in the door faster, or have more conversations or build longer term relationships. So all these things I'm sharing are like the newer version. The thing that I've been doing for the last few years that have been more effective than what I did for like the first part of my business.
So let's talk about this. So the first thing is that, what are we doing? Like how do we connect with the right people at specific businesses? How do I know they're the right person? Who are these people? Right. So I have my notes to make sure that we go over all the right. So here's the deal for me. It took me a while to figure this out, but here is the deal.
You need to make a list. So it's not just about connecting with the right. People are building the right relationships. You need to know where you're going, right. So you need to know what kind of niches you're in. Like I'm in a bunch, right. But those built over time. So now I write about real estate and prop tech and food and restaurants and health.
Uh, hospitality tech and SAS and FinTech and mortgage tech and all these different types of things. Right. Um, and sometimes, you know, I write about insurance and insurer tech, all this stuff. So I built those things over time, but you need to have some kind of direction because this is what I've noticed with a lot of freelance writers is it's okay for some freelance writers to start out as generalists, because they already kind of have an idea of where they're going, right.
Like they already. Have written for publications or they already have a background in healthcare. Like they're coming out of a full time FinTech job or something like they have a piece of the puzzle. Hey Vicky, welcome in. So for me, when someone says they're a freelance writing generalist, almost every single time I've met someone, who's a generalist.
They have a background in a bunch of different things that they can leverage as part of their niches. Right. For me, I didn't really have that. So I needed to define kind of my niches and where I was going and what I wanted to write about. To move forward. So that's your first step is who are you reaching out to in terms of niches and companies?
You can be a generalist if you have some, some backgrounds to pull on, but for me, I would go through and look at all the different niches that are available. Go look at other freelance writers and figure out who they're writing for, what they're doing and this isn't to steal their clients. This is to figure out the types of companies that they're going after the niche.
Like, it's kind of like, oh, this freelance writer writes in healthcare and they seem to work with a lot of hospitals, but this other person writes in healthcare and they write for a lot of supplement companies and a lot of, uh, D healthcare device manufacturers it's to figure out basically the categories that people are in.
So after you do that, then what you wanna do is, um, make sure that you, um, hold on, make sure that you know who to reach out to. So now that you have your list of C. Now, you know, like who do we target? Right. So like I've figured out I've got a hundred companies that are all SAS companies that I would like to reach out to.
These are the people I reach out to. These are your content, marketing managers, your content managers, your, um, marketing managers, marketing directors, vice presidents of marketing. And then the CEO. If none of those other people exist, you reach out to the CEO and you do this a lot with like series a companies or seed companies or series B companies.
Sometimes series B companies, series B is kind of where everybody's kind of getting up on the marketing. That's what I've kind of noticed. Hey, veno, welcome in. So the deal is that you wanna reach out to these people and sometimes they don't always have the right title. So if you can't find a content person or a marketing person and you look through, let's say five or 10 profiles, and nobody talks about creating content.
Send it to the CEO because your job is to reach out to the person who's managing the content. Who's actually creating it because they're the ones who assign the freelance writing projects. So in order to start building the right relationships and connecting with the right people, you have to figure out well who actually sends out the assignments, right.
Who's actually connecting with outside people like freelancers, right? To give them assignments. Those are the content marketing managers, the content managers, the marketing, uh, marketing managers, marketing directors, or directors market. Vice president of marketing, VP of marketing. Right. Um, and the CEO, it just depends on the company.
Sorry. So as you're kind of going through this stuff, I've had to reach out to people sometimes who are called like the social media manager and they just happen to run all the content like. They don't actually, um, have the right title, but it's someone who runs the content. And I found that by going through other profiles.
So when I go into LinkedIn and I search for the job title of content and nobody comes up or nobody of relevance comes up, or I search for the title of marketing in LinkedIn on the company page, and nobody comes up. Then I start sifting through profiles to figure out if there's anyone who manages the content, who has a different title.
That's the person, right? That's always the person. And if you can't find any of that stuff, sometimes you work directly with the CEO because the CEO is kind of, you know, the person with all the hats, right. And maybe they didn't hire a marketing person yet, or maybe they just let go of a marketing person.
And they're kind of in this, in between phase. So you wanna make sure that, you know, the description of someone's LinkedIn or the best idea of someone who's managing the content, that's the person that you wanna make sure. Um, that you're reaching out to, and I know that these are the right people because I've reached out to like thousands of people by now and I've it's trial and error.
Right? So like for a long time, there was no content marketing manager. Like when I first started 10 years ago, um, I wasn't reaching out to the content marketing manager. I was reaching out to, um, like a whole BU they had like different titles. Sometimes they were marketing people sometimes as the CEO. Um, it was all these, they had all these different titles, but now content marketing managers, um, and content managers are like way more common.
So for me, I know that they're the ones who typically manage the content. And if I get stuck, let's say I'm in there. And I can't find a content or marketing person, and I've looked through a few profiles and I'm like, okay, none of these people seem right default to the CEO because the CEO, if they do like, if, you know, if they answer your LOI, that means.
They're gonna send you to the right person and then the right person might be them. The difference here is the difference between magazines and businesses. So businesses are the ones where you're looking for all of these types of managers, marketing, and content and VPs of stuff and CEOs, but with magazines, it's a totally different story.
So this is more about sending things to companies and sending Lois than pitches, because pitches are a different, are a different beast, right? Like when you go to a magazine, sometimes it's like, you go to the editor in chief and sometimes you just go to the associate editor. Sometimes you just go to the editor of a special section.
So those are way different kind of beasts. So here we wanna make sure that we know the difference between them. So when we're sending our Lois to our business, That we wanna make sure like, as long as it gets to one of those right. People that I mentioned, you're usually fine. Like, they're very rarely if someone's interested, like if the CEO is interested, they're, they're not gonna like blow you off and then be like, oh, forget it.
Like, you know, I'm not gonna pass you off to Meredith. Right. Like if they're interested, they're like, oh, you should reach out to so and so, and then you go reach out to them. Right. Um, or if it's a magazine, a lot of times, like they just get a ton of pitches. So you wanna make sure you really get the right editor and follow the directions and stuff.
So that's who we wanna connect to. Right? Like, so we wanna make sure we connect with the right people at these specific niche businesses that we're interested in. And then we wanna make sure that we look at some of their profiles and make sure they're managing the content. And then we have specific job titles to go after.
this also helps with building relationships because you, these people move around all the time. So I've talked to content Mar like content managers or marketing managers for years. Like I've followed up with them for years and then they leave the job and they're like, Hey, I started at a new company. I would love to work with you.
And you're like, okay. So building these relationships and following up and reaching out to the right people, these people move around, they have different budget. Things change at the company, um, priorities on content change. So it could be like, they're like right now, our content is a PRI isn't a priority.
And then later on it becomes a big priority and they wanna talk to you. So reaching out to all these different people, especially like CEOs where their company can be growing. Right. That's all really important stuff. Plus when you're in the right niches and you're reaching out to the right people, They're moving around to similar companies, right?
That are in your niche, that you have an opportunity to write for. Plus they, they share your name around. Oh, I worked with Mandy and she was a blast. Like it was so great. She turned in her work on time. It was really, really quality work. Uh, you should contact her, right? Like they talk to each other. And you wanna be in the right pool.
You wanna have these built relationships between you and the content people or you and the marketing people or the CEO. So they're passing your name along to fish in the same pond, like people with similar revenues in the SIM, um, in similar niches who have similar needs, that's all really important stuff.
All right. That was number one, which I should have put the number one up there, which I forgot. Okay. So that was number one, who to reach out to who, what their titles are, the process of doing. Connecting with them, figuring out that they're managing content. So that was number one. Now we're gonna do number two.
2) How to Know You Found the Right Person for Writing Projects
There we go. Number two. All right. If you feel like this has been helpful so far, give it a thumbs up. If you feel like you wanna learn more about building a hiring freelance writing business, or just a freelance writing business in general subscribe. All right. Number two. How do I know that they're the right person?
So this took me a long time when I'm kind of looking through all of this stuff, right? Um, we wanna make sure that these people are the ones who are man, not only managing content, but assigning stuff. A lot of times people will put that in their LinkedIn profile. They'll put it in there. Hey, I'm assigning content or I work with freelancers or I manage freelancers.
Those are the type of people we wanna reach out to. Um, there are times where people just leave their experience section blank, and then you just kinda have to make a guess. But the deal here is, is that I went through a lot of mistakes and it took me a long time to fi figure out who was the right person and who wasn't, but anybody who has their fingers in the content, like that's pretty close.
Um, you definitely here's. Some people you don't wanna reach out to, like, usually you don't wanna reach out to someone who's already creating content for them. like, if they're someone who's like a copywriter or like someone who's a content writer there, those are the, not the people you wanna reach out to cuz they're being managed.
They're not the ones who know about opportunities, right? So let's say that there's a, a company where there's one marketing manager and one content writer, but the marketing manager actually needs more help. And the content writer actually is overloaded. But if you go out to the content writer, they don't have the power to like, do anything.
They're kind of like lower on the totem pole per se. Um, And then with your marketing manager, if you reach out to them, they're like, oh, thank God. You're here. Our content writer is overloaded. I'm overloaded. We would love to like farm out some stuff to you so that we're, you know, we can take some stuff off our plates.
So anybody who's doing content writing or copywriting or someone who is, um, Dealing with, uh, social media or like account acquisition or stuff like that. That's not your person. Sometimes. They're like the people that you wanna talk to are like growth managers. Sometimes they that's, their title is growth manager and they handle all the marketing activities.
Um, sometimes like it's lead generation people, but it pretty, pretty rarely ISN. Um, you don't wanna make, you don't wanna reach out to anybody who's in different parts of the business. Like the people who are trying to get more, um, leads in sales and that kind of stuff like they're on the sales team, that's different than the marketing team.
So when we're kind of building these relationships with different types of people and different managers and different marketing stuff, um, it's okay. If you make a mistake, this is something I wanted to make sure I, I, I said, it's okay. If you make a mistake and you send your LOI to the wrong person, most of the time, they're like, Hey, I'm not the right person.
Um, but SRU is the right person. So go, go give it to SRU. Um, and if you, if I'm pronouncing your name wrong, just let me know. because I hate pronouncing names wrong. So if I pronounce your name wrong, Always put it in the chat and let me know, like, Hey, this isn't, this isn't right. So here's the deal. Um, it's okay to reach out to the wrong person.
You're gonna make mistakes sometimes. And most of the time they'll be like, Hey, go talk to SRU. That's the right person. You're like, okay. So you go and send your LOI to them, or you, they say her email is this or their email is this. Or his email is this. Uh, and you go off and send them their email, like L LOI send your L O Y V.
Email to. Um, there's been lots of times where I've sent the wrong thing to the wrong person, or I've sent the wrong pitch or whatever it you're going to make mistakes. You're a human being. So for me, it's much better to actually get the marketing out and get the marketing done. Rather than worry about every single little thing.
Of course we wanna make sure it, it gets to the right person as closely as we can. And most of the time that person is pretty obvious, but sometimes when it's confusing, you're gonna make mistakes. And that's all right. Um, it's not like you're gonna get banned. No, one's gonna black book. You, you know, like there's no, um, magic portal, that they're gonna throw you in where they're gonna be like, Hey, you, you're not allowed to contact us anymore.
uh, she vanish she, can you pronounce that phonetically? Cause she vanish just a YouTube name. Oh, okay. Cool. All right. So hi MI. We haven't done a pub date yet, but this is the deal you're gonna make mistakes. You're gonna send it to the wrong person. It's okay. To, you know, you can apologize and then say like, well, who's the right person.
It's always okay to ask if there's a right person to send it to. All right. Let's do pub date real quick. Oh no. Oh, I know. I don't have the pub date camera in here. The pep date. Camera's downstairs. Okay. Well, Charlotte's over here. We're gonna give him a quick, I forgot to get the pub date camera. It got moved from my time off.
All right.
You do a high five. Good job. Good girl. All right, Barry, can you catch? You were so close, buddy. Can you get it? You're laying on it. Good job, buddy. Good job. All right. She and ish. She ands, uh, oh man, I'm not good with this. She even it, she, she Ann's. H okay. I will try my best. Sometimes I have trouble. I'm trying my best.
All right. Here's the deal. Um, yeah. So if you reach out, yeah, they're the cuties are they're here, that my dogs are here, but the camera's downstairs. So I can't like I can pick my dog up. Maybe Tommy will bring the camera up. cuz he has Tommy has the camera downstair. So maybe Tommy will bring it up. I know you're a woo princess.
You're a woo princess. All right. So that's the deal. Um, writing projects a lot of times, this is another thing that I wanted to mention in this in number two, here is that high woo high. Woo. Is that, um, I oftentimes get asked this question of where do I find, um, uh, where do I find. There you go look writing projects.
Like this is something that I get asked a lot by newer freelancers, which is like, where do I find writing projects? Like, where do I find who's looking for writers or who's looking for writing projects and that's the backwards way of thinking about it. So the backwards way of thinking about it is like, who's already broadcasting this out to tell me I should just go there and apply.
That's like the full time job mindset. That's not really how it. So with the freelance stuff, you're not, you don't wanna go to cattle calls. You don't want to be part of these mass job boards. You don't wanna be part of like these platforms where it's like, you're competing against tons of other people.
Ooh, the camera's here. Thank you. Um, you want to be kind of one of one in a way. So when you're sending all of your, um, Lois and stuff, this is allows you to be kind of one of. it allows you to, um, it allows you to reach out to people who don't just like broadcast that they don't know sometimes how to find freelancers.
They're not gonna put up a job ad cuz they don't want someone full time. They don't, you know, there's like a lot of disconnects there. So oftentimes you reach out to people and say, do you need help with this? And yes, they need help. So that's the important part. It's you're not, excuse me. You're not looking for people.
Who are just cattle calling like they're like, well, who post writing jobs, or who's already looking for writers. A lot of times that's too late in the process. That's why you wanna make sure that you send these Lois on a frequent basis. You know, you're 50 to 75 high woo. Go to your ha hole, go to your ha hole.
no, don't step on my foot. That's why you wanna send these 50 to 75 Lois a month. Oops. There they.
There they are to make sure that you're filling the pipeline and reaching out to people who need help. That's really important. All right. Ready? All right, Minnie, can you catch good job. All right, buddy. Ready? 1, 2, 3 dogs. So close it's on your foot. It's on your three. Here. There you go, buddy. There they are hanging out on their blankets.
all right. So that's the deal. It's really important to remember that we gotta send out enough Lois and we're looking to contact people who may like, we're asking if they need help. And a lot of times, you know, if you're sending these at the right time, like, which means like right time in their process, like, let's say that it's a.
Um, a, uh, startup that just got a new round of funding. That's a good time to reach out because that means that they could be upping their marketing efforts, which could mean that they're upping their content efforts. Right. So that's all important stuff. But you wanna make sure that you're paying attention to those things, right.
That's really critical. And that you're sending fellow wise, you don't wanna be one of a hundred writers. You don't wanna be in a like there's times when you, when that happens. Right. There's every, every once in a while you end up getting an interesting inbound lead where you do end up, um, being reviewed against other writers or, um, it's an opportunity that you really want, and they just so happen to, to post it on a job board or something like that.
Every once in a while that happens. Right. And I've gotten a bunch of good opportunities from that. Uh, but most of the time, what you wanna do is send those Lois out and you wanna just send them to companies in your niche. You never know who's gonna pass you on. You never know, like how things are gonna kind of like unfold.
You don't wanna be in this situation where it's like a full-time job where you're just like on the job boards, every. That's not building relationships, that's just answering different different cattle calls, right? Building relationships is reaching out to people one on one. That's how you get more work, more referrals, more writing clients, more projects, um, more writer, friends who can refer work to you.
That's the really important stuff. And to be a hiring freelance writer or to build a business like a freelance writing business that you really. The important part is building relationships and understanding that you need to connect with a bunch of different people. You don't need to like keep going on job boards because you going on job boards is not, um, a two way conversation.
3) How Do I Foster and Nurture Relationships With My Freelance Clients?
It's just use of mini applications. Okay. So I hope that was helpful. And last things I'm gonna tell you how I foster relationships. So number three, let's go to number three. Number three. This is how I foster relationships. All right. Yeah. This is the last thing I wanna make sure we mention. So how do I foster relationships a lot of different ways.
So the number one way is that, um, I do a lot of stuff. That's really important. So like for me, when I have a client it's really important for me to know, like the things that they want, like pay attention to edits or changes or things that they're looking for. So I always ask for examples, like, what are you looking for?
Like, gimme an example of the type of content you want or what you want it to be. Um, so that I can build off of that. So that's the first thing is examples. The next thing is that you treat your clients like gold. Like you answer their emails. Um, I like a 24 to 48 hour window to answer my client email.
Sometimes that isn't, you know, I'm busy and that doesn't always work. So like I'll email them and be like, I'll send 'em a short email. Hey, sounds good. I'll get back to you in shortly. So at least they get a. Um, so you respond to them, you, you do what they ask you to do follow directions. This is really important.
This builds credibility and trust with your clients. Hi, woo. So that's really important for relationships, right? You wanna make sure that you have trust. You wanna make sure that, um, hi. Woo. You look so cute that your, that your clients feel heard that your clients feel understood. Ready. Barry's not paying attention.
He's over in lick land so that your clients under that you understand their directions, that you're doing, what your client asks, that they feel like you get it. Right. That's all really important stuff. And you wanna clarify a lot of different things before you move on to writing. Right? A lot of building the relationship is like making sure that you know what to do and how to fix things that pop up before you actually start writing.
So you're like, okay, well, I'm thinking about interviewing this person. Does that person work for you? Instead of saying like, sure, I'll get an interview and then you go off with no direction. You wanna make sure that all of the directions for the content, for who you interview the type of research they're looking for, the format, the design, whatever it is that you have that before you start writing high.
Woo. Just lay down. You SA that's really critical because that cuts down on edits. It shows your client that you're listening and paying attention. You end up getting really good testimonials a lot of time from that. Ready? Hold on. Ready? 1, 2, 3 dog. Oh, popped up in the other area. It's over there, honey.
Can you get it? Good job. Ready? 1, 2, 3 dogs. Good job, buddy. You caught it. Good job. So that's how we're building relationships is we're listening to our clients and following directions. And when they give us edits, right, like after we've done all of this upfront stuff to create good content, we're gonna have edits and comments and questions.
So. being diligent about that is really important. The more that you foster paying attention to your clients and their needs and what they're asking you to do and making it clear, we're not, I just wanna make it just wanna say, we're not reading our clients' minds. We're asking questions. Like we are already kind of in a relationship with our clients.
So we're not guessing we're asking questions so we can create the right thing. And of course it's not always perfect. Right. So we're gonna have to do edits. We're gonna have to do other stuff. Right. But. We're listening throughout the process. Oh my goodness. No, you go back to your HAA hole friend. Go back to your HAA hole.
Go back to your HOA hole. Yeah. Wooed. Woo alarm today. Charlie. You're so sassy today. Ready? 1, 2, 3 dogs. Oh, so close. Ready? 1, 2, 3 dogs. Oh, about you're so close. Did you get it? Good job. All right, Minnie, why don't you lay down you. Woo ass. Um, So then once we do our edits and everything, and once we cleared that up, then our clients might feel comfortable referring us cuz they're like, yeah, like she asked a bunch of questions up front.
This content was pretty much on par. There was just a few edits we needed to do. Um, and they would refer you out or they would, uh, give you a great testimonial or, you know, if they moved companies, they would wanna take you with them. There's a lot of different things that we do with these relationships.
That's diligence and paying attention and asking questions and being interested. Um, following up with them. So that's another thing that I wanted to lead into. So this is the second part, how I foster relationships, not only am I diligent in my client processes with like onboarding and doing the work and paying attention and, um, answering their questions and asking them specific questions.
But. When we're kind of through all these processes, I follow up. So like, if I have an LOI that I sent and someone got back to me and we did a proposal or a contract, or, you know, and they just weren't ready at that time, I follow up. So there's a lot of times that I've gotten work from someone by following up with them.
like many, many times. So like it's basically someone I've talked to, I don't really follow up on, on Lois where no one gets back to me, but I do follow up on Lois where, uh, I've had a conversation with them. Like we've emailed back and forth, or we had a zoom call or, um, I sent them a proposal, that kind of stuff.
And that gets me work. Like if following up gets me work, but then also the important piece. Um, that those people then refer me to other people cuz they see like that I'm paying attention. They're like, yes. Thank you. Thank you so much for following up. Uh, you know what? We don't need work. We don't have any work, uh, right now, but we know someone else who needs a writer, um, or who needs help with their content marketing.
We'd love to pass your name along. Here's their email, blah, blah, blah. That stuff is really important. So following up with my Lois, where, or my warm leads, basically people I've had a conversation with or sent a proposal to that's really important for fostering relationships, long term. That's really important.
I know a lot of people kind of just give up on those things, but, uh, if I've had a conversation with someone or they've gotten back to me in any capacity, I set them up on boomerang and I just have the, I hear you. Woo it over. I set them up on boomerang, um, to just come back every three months and I check up, Hey, is there anything that you need help with?
Good job. Ready? Um, sorry buddy. It was so cool. Cause it was a little high for you. Um, I check up on them and say like every three months I boomerang just automatically puts their message back in my email inbox. So then now I, all I have to do is follow up with them every three months until I either decide I don't wanna follow up with them anymore, or they tell me to stop or whatever, and I'm not sending them the same message every time I'm crafting different messages every time I'm following up.
So it's not like. I'm copying and pasting every time, but it's like a quick message, right? It's like, Hey, hope you're having a great week, uh, quickly popping in your inbox to see if there's any content strategy or content marketing efforts that you need help with. Happy to chat about anything or answer any questions that you have.
And I do different versions of that. Every single time I follow up every three months. And that really fosters relationships, not only with future clients, cuz they see how much I'm paying attention even before they hire me. Right. Or we work together. We work partnership. Um, But then they I've had other people, like people I haven't even worked.
Have referred me to others or people who I've followed up with for a year or more have, have signed a contract and worked with me and it's gone really, really great. Uh, or it, it ends up being this type of thing where they start to get to know me and pay attention and they can share my name, or it can be someone where they're like, Hey, you know, we're um, doing this other project and maybe you're interested in that.
Or we heard that through the grapevine that this other thing might need help. um, and then that's your opportunity, right? That's your opportunity to, um, you know, build relationships and build long term, like, you know, long term people who will refer clients to you or who will refer work to you or will think of you highly.
That's really important. So as we kind of, um, build relationships and we get writing project. This is kind of what I wanted to leave. This this live stream with is like being diligent and paying attention are really important. Those things come across, not only in how you put your writing together and how you kind of put your content, like your editing and writing processes, but it's also in your follow up processes, your onboarding processes, the questions that you ask at the beginning, so your client can get to know you, right?
Like, and you get to know what types of content they want, how you do your edits, how, um, how much. Um, attention that you pay to the changes that they want or what types of content they need. All of that stuff is really important. Like every single time you get a client, I, you have to like nurture that. And it's not just nurturing the relationship.
It's nurturing all of the processes that go with having a client. I see you. Woo. I see you. You're sitting over there. in position two. This is what we call position two. When she sits, sits like that. Charlotte, you're such a funny little dog. You're nurturing them through all the different stages. And that's really important for long term work for getting more projects for getting referrals.
And this is something that would show up in testimonials, right? Like you would end up getting great testimonials where, uh, people point out. The importance, right? Point out the importance of having the right writer for them, not just any writer, but the right writer. And they're like, Mandy was the right writer for us because of blah, blah, blah.
And then they specifically say what those things are. So then other people who visit your website are LinkedIn say, oh, I need that. Like, I want that. Right. I hear you, Lou. I hear you. Well, I hear you give you, give you some pets. All right. That's kind of all the stuff that I wanna make sure I said. We have other questions that came in and I wanna make sure that we actually go through those on different live streams.
So I have other questions, um, that I was gonna pop up here, but I think that, I think I wanna make those into a different live stream. So I get a bunch of questions. And if you, this is just as a quick explanation. So, uh, this question, sometimes people just email me them, but if you go to Mandy ellis.com/question, and put your question in there, we can do a topic like this.
You know, submitted from the community. So if you wanna pop in a question or a topic that you want me to cover, all you have to do is go to mandy.com/question. And I can answer that for you and I'll put it up on the livestream. I also have shorter questions that don't necessarily need a high woo that don't necessarily need a whole livestream.
But I think a couple of questions I have. I'm gonna do those later. All right. Uh, that's super professional Mandy. One last question. If you agree on 30 K. Contract. Okay. So if you agree on 30 K words for a contract, do you like getting paid upfront or do you prefer getting the payment after the work has been done?
Yeah, so I don't do my contracts by words. Like if I, I guess if I was doing a like book, ghost writing assignment, I would. So like, if I would do a book, ghost writing thing, it would be like a hundred thousand words for this ghost written. But for me, most of the time, it's like a case study. That's three to five pages, plus two blog posts at a thousand words, plus whatever.
So mine, it's not like total word count. So there's that. But yeah. So for me, it depends like if I'm doing a retainer and it's like four blog posts a month for three months that I get paid, uh, a hun, like the first month is paid up front and then every following month I invoice on the first of the month and it's due mid.
And if it's more of a project where it's like a bunch of different types of content, like a case study in ebook and, um, two reported articles and a guide that I get 50% upfront and 50%, 30 days later, the important part here is that we both have skin in the game, right? So you are, you need money, right. To do your job.
Um, and for me, them paying up front is part of their skin in the game. Right. You go off and do the content and follow directions. Do all that stuff, but you need to have some kind of money before you get started. This is why proposals and contracts and talking about all these payment. Things are really important.
Magazines are a different story, but with businesses, you either do a retainer style thing where it's like the same amount every month and you get the first month upfront and every other month you invoice on the first of the month, it's due by mid month. And then, um, For, uh, like if you have a big clump of work, that's a bunch of different things.
Like, okay, you have to leave now. Goodbye. Have a great day. Oh, now you don't wanna leave you can't w at me, while I'm telling someone something, um, if it's like a big clump of different types of projects, like for me, retainers are more like it's, it's regular stuff. Like one case study, a quarter or one case study a month or four blog posts a month, or some kind of repeatable contract or, uh, content that goes in the contract.
And then if there's like a bunch of different things that are like, yeah, we have five different types of content we wanna get done. That's 50% upfront, 50%, 30 days later, some people do, uh, 50% upfront, 50% on the completion of the project. It just depends on how you wanna set it up. I used to do that, but it would take six months.
And that was like not, you know, like there would be delays and there'd be all these other things that went on and changes. And so for me, it just made more sense to just do. 50% upfront, 50%, 30 days later, some people do 50%, 45 days later. I think it just depends. I have friends who do a hundred percent upfront I would like to be there someday.
I haven't done it yet. Um, but I may, um, but it just depends. I think it just depends, but yeah, you need to have at least something, you need to have some kind of, um, money in hand before you start working, because that's how writers get. A lot of times where I've talked to writers where they're like, oh yeah, my client never paid me.
It's because they did all the work. And then they were supposed to get paid like $10,000 or $5,000 or a thousand dollars at the end of the work and the person just never paid. So there needs to be some kind of payment so that like everybody, you know, everybody's on the boat, right. There needs to be some kind of skin in the game to, to say.
Um, but yeah, you, you, I think in terms of payment stuff, the other thing to remember. is that, um, if someone's not paying your invoice, right? So like, let's say they paid the first month of the retainer up front, right. And then the second month of the retainer, like, you know, something goes wrong and they, they haven't paid you yet, or they stop responding.
That doesn't mean keep submitting your work. That means you need to make sure that that person pays you. Right. You need to make sure that, um, You get paid your next retainer fee before you submit any content. This is another problem that writers get stuck in is they're like, oh, well we have this contract.
I need to submit this, this content to them, even though they haven't paid. It's like, no, you agreed that these are your payment terms. And you agreed that the content is due at the end of the month. Like. That's really important. Um, the other thing is that there's kind of this grace thing that happens when you have clients.
So let's say you've had a client for like six months or a really long time, three to six months or a year. And let's say they just forget. Let's say there's just something they forget to pay you or whatever all you have to do is send 'em a reminder and get paid. And that is like a less stress situation cuz every other time, you know, they've paid you on time, but for newer clients where you haven't established kind of a payment relationship.
You're kind of learning how to work with them. We need to all make sure that we're on the same team. Right. We all need to make sure that, um, we are, um, like not only that we submitted our work. Right. But we're also getting paid for that. I hope that was helpful. Cool. Okay. All right. Um, any, let's see, I'm gonna do, I have questions that came in.
I have a couple questions, but I'm gonna do those next time. So if you submitted a question, I actually have two. Um, oh, you know what one was a comment. So this was from, um, winter. So winter sent me this note about my newsletter that I sent out this week. So I sent out a news. I sent out a weekly newsletter every week.
And if you sign up for my pricing guide, which is, hold on. If you go and get my free pricing guide, if you go to mans.com/pricing guide, you will sign up for my weekly newsletter and you'll get my free pricing guide, um, which I just updated. So it's super cool. Now so winter sent me this note and she said not a question, but a compliment, a good, good article on the nightmare client had I've had having had a business as a graphic designer in the past.
I can spot these people pretty fast. You know that they'll put you through hell and then refuse to. Dump them immediately ignore their threats about never recommending you. Yes. Thank you for never mentioning me to your friends. So this is such an important thing, right? This is important to know. I wrote this, I write a weekly email, right?
And this week's weekly email was all about, um, what to do basically like what to pay attention to with, with kind of red light clients. Um, and this is something that I think is important. There's a lot of times red light clients will threaten you to either not pay you or not recommend you, or like tarnish your name.
And it just like, it's not a thing. Um, the people that you wanna work with wouldn't do that. They just understand that, like you're not a fit, right. You just go back to them and say, Hey, this is not working out. We should cancel our contract, whatever. Right. And then you kind of move along with your life.
But this, I think is a really, um, really good comment from winter. Because you just know, like, after you go through all these client experiences, you can spot the clients pretty easily where it's like, you're just like, Nope, Nope. I don't wanna work with you. And you can spot the ones where you really do wanna work with them.
And then it's also like when you get in these situations, when you start realizing all of the red lights kind of like, or the red flags kind of pile up, just, that's why we have that in our contracts to say like, Hey, with 15 days, notice we both can get out of this contract. That's what happens, right. When.
Just not, it's not working out or sometimes, you know, things happen where your clients end up. Like there have been times where I've, you know, had other writers tell me that their clients lied to them or they were two faced or they, um, just stopped answering them. Or there was all these other random things that happened.
Right. Um, and it's really important to kind of pay attention to. so I'm glad we actually went through. I have another question I'm gonna do later. Cool. All right. So I hope this was helpful. I hope that this kind of, um, helped you figure out who to reach out to, how to build relationships, how I nurture her a lot of my relationships.
And, um, I'm glad that we had this topic submitted. It was really important. And, um, you're welcome. Um, so you're, she says you're such a sweet R Mandy there. Thank you so much for this. You're welcome. You're welcome. Um, this was a really, I thought this was a really good topic that a lot of people, you know, need more help on.
I hear you. Woo. All right. We've got a wo machine over there. So we're here every Friday at noon central time, unless I take the week off like I did last week, but we're here every Friday at noon central time, you can always come hang out. You can submit. Questions. If you go tos.com/question, or you can join my, um, weekly newsletter where I also send out tips and tricks and you can get my free pricing guide by going to mans.com/pricing guide.
Cool. So I'll see you next Friday. Thank you so much for this question. And, um, yeah. Hope you have a good weekend. Bye.
________
Trying to figure out how to price your work for what it’s worth? Check out my FREE Pricing Guide!
Need some fantastic contract and marketing templates to make your freelance writing biz run as effectively and efficiently as possible? See my Templates!
Want to stay in touch for weekly detailed advice plus updates on new freebies and courses? Join my email list!
Want to follow me for inspiration, tips, and to stay connected?
So psyched you’re joining me on this livestream adventure!
