The Pros and Cons of Freelance Copywriting

Much of the advice on this blog is geared towards writers who freelance for magazines and websites. But that’s not all I do. In fact, a good chunk of my income comes from copywriting projects for nonprofits, small businesses, and marketing agencies. So, when a reader emailed me asking how to land copywriting gigs, that was my lightbulb moment to use her question as blog inspiration.

But before I share some tips on getting started in freelance copywriting (that comes later this week), here are some of the benefits of this type of work:

• No writing query letters!
  You may need to brainstorm some strategy ideas or snappy headlines, but often the client will tell you what he or she needs instead of you having to convince them to assign an article on a given topic. You may need to sell them on the idea that you’re the right copywriter for the job, but that’s very different from writing a zillion query emails.
• Steady, ongoing work.
  Cultivating long-term relationships instead of constantly pitching yourself to new markets can help build a comfortable freelance income. Often copywriting clients have an ongoing need for content and they want to work with the same freelancers instead of training new ones. If, for instance, you find a client who needs content for a monthly newsletter or has a constant flow of new products that need descriptions, that means more money with less hustling.
• The ability to negotiate. 
  Depending on the copywriting client, you may be able to set some of the terms, which almost never happens with magazines or websites. Sure, you might get a magazine to drop an indemnity or noncompete clause from a contract. But you’ll rarely get them to pay a 50% deposit from a magazine, while in many cases copywriting clients won’t flinch when you ask for a deposit. While magazine editors typically say, “we can pay X,” copywriting clients will usually ask what you charge.

And some of the downsides:

• Scope creep!
  Copywriting projects can be hard to define, especially with a new client. I try to create a detailed scope of work for each project including the number of revisions, but sometimes clients don’t know what they want or they expect everything but the kitchen sink to be included in your flat rate. For instance, I had a client who wanted several pages of website copy so I wrote up a scope of work based on the number of pages, the approximate word counts for those pages, and the number of revisions. But when I turned in the copy, she asked why I hadn’t included meta data. And didn’t my flat rate also include taglines for her new business? Yes, you also get scope creep with magazine assignments but because copywriting can take so many different forms, it gets even messier, in my opinion. That’s why it’s so important to discuss the project scope at the beginning and put it in writing.
• No byline.
  If being recognized for your brilliant prose is important to you, then copywriting may not be your thing. Aside from the fact that companies don’t generally attribute their website copy or brochures to the freelancers they hire, they often change copy after the fact, shortening headlines to fit the design, adding punctuation because someone in the marketing department got comma happy, or deleting that clever metaphor you spent hours perfecting. They’re the client, so they call the shots. If you get too attached to your copy, then you’re bound to be disappointed.
• The “sell out” factor.
  Some people think that writing marketing copy means you’ve sold out to The Man. That’s not necessarily true, especially if it’s a product or company you believe in. But if you’re writing about something super-mundane or you get a sleazy vibe from a client, it can start to feel you’ve sold your soul and strayed from your original love of language. (“How the heck did I wind up writing about toilet bowl cleaners?”) I try to avoid that mental pitfall by screening clients carefully to make sure it’s a good fit on both sides. And when things start to feel a little too much like writing by numbers, I’ll look for inspiration elsewhere and try to approach it from a different angle (within the parameters of that project and the brand voice).

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