So, how do you make it as a forced freelancer?

By David Morrow

No one really expects to be laid off. Although I had suspicions that the start-up magazine I was working for in November 1990 may not make it, when the big drop kick came, I felt like I had been hit in the gut.

Business history buffs will recall the economy was in a recession in November 1990, and little did I know then, but I would be freelancing for the next eight months.

Forced freelancing is a common occurrence nowadays, with newsrooms dwindling from pared budgets. Unfortunately, the end of the year is a common time for reporters and editors to be let go and be forced to fend for themselves.

So, how do you make it as a forced freelancer?

Since my inopportune dismissal some 19 years ago, I have spent much of my career recruiting and hiring freelancers. During my eight-year tenure at TheStreet.com, I used some 200 freelancers on a regular basis. Some made a paltry amount per story – around $100 – but others who had specialties, especially in investing, made well into the six figures annually.

If you were like me some 19 years ago, your goal is to simply pay the bills and keep yourself insured. And that you will be able to do with a lot of hard work and stamina.

Contacts are crucial. This may sound like cruel punishment, but the first place you should look for freelance work is your old employer. That’s right, the one that just kicked you in the soft parts.

Sucking up your pride can pay big dividends. A little more than a year ago, TheStreet.com closed its San Francisco bureau. It was a very heartbreaking day, but I offered the staff freelance work and one reporter took it. As fate would have it, one of our investment gurus needed help writing and reporting a daily column. She wound up making almost the same amount of money and stayed with us for the better part of a year.

One editor from the bureau signed on as a freelancer, and was eventually hired back when I had an opening.

Let’s say that your old employer will provide you will freelance work, and even if he won’t, your assignment is still the same: You need to expand and find work in other places. Business sites and news organizations are always looking for freelancers. And even when I didn’t have openings, I was always on the look out for good ones.
Identify several sites and publications that you would like to freelance for, and read them religiously. When you are a forced freelancer, you have to come up to speed fairly quickly. Web sites are easier for this, since most keep all of their articles in its search database.

Here is the time to display your specialty. If you covered a beat, be sure to focus on that. I don’t know of any business news organization, national or otherwise, where the editor can say that he has too many people focused on one area. And even during the boom years, so to speak, I always needed writers to pen personal finance articles, or to cover an aspect of spending money. Thought that would be easy, do you, finding folks to write on these topics? Think again; pulling my own teeth would have been easier.

Your first contact with an editor is critical. Obviously, you want to make a dynamic impression. Here is what always bowled me over. I would receive an e-mail from a potential freelancer who demonstrated a thorough knowledge of the site and of business. In the e-mail, the freelancer would send nine story ideas, each one numbered one through nine.
I liked this approach because I could glance through it quickly, mentally numbering the order of the stories that I wanted first. See how successful this is? You have the editor prioritizing your assignments. One special touch I liked to see was the freelancer ending the e-mail asking me which story did I want him to do first.

Even when I didn’t like any of the ideas, I always invited the freelancer to send more in. When I did like one of the ideas, I e-mailed back with the order that I wanted the stories, and the freelancer and I worked together to come up with deadlines.

When you send your e-mail, include your resume. I didn’t really need to see clips. The story ideas were what got someone in the door. The resume was helpful, so I knew whom I was speaking to, and had a general feel of their experience.

Multimedia is enormous on Web sites, and we used freelancers in our audio and video programming. The same approach with the story ideas will work but you want to be a bit more aggressive. Once the editor is hooked, or interested, in one of your ideas, you want to set up an appointment quickly. Remember that shyness is not a quality a forced freelancer can afford.

So, you don’t live in New York City? Bully for you. You can freelance from anywhere, and when I was at TheStreet.com, I looked for writers who lived in other parts of the country. You want to make your location part of your specialty. If you covered a beat locally, a national Web site or news organization would be interested in your coverage. You can write a national story and include local color. On top of that you can use a local dateline, which expands the Web sites presence and coverage.

Don’t kid yourself: freelancing is a lot of work. I can’t remember a time when I was not stressed out over one assignment or another, and instead of having one boss, I suddenly had 10, each one demanding and unreasonable. That’s part of the business.

You should realize, too, that you are running a business. And you’ll want to avoid the mistakes that I made. Keep all your receipts, and deduct everything from your taxes. If you are especially profitable, you may want to hire and accountant to work his magic. I didn’t, primarily because I was so money scared during that time that years passed before I would part with any, and I wound up paying the Feds some $5,000.

You will want to take advantage of some resources now. One organization that you should contact is the Freelancers Union, which provides benefits – including health insurance — for freelancers and lobbies in Washington for independent workers. You also want to read the want ads at Media Bistro or JournalismJobs.com. When I was looking for writers, I advertised on these sites.

A friend of mine who left Fortune Magazine to freelance told me over drinks once that the best way to approach freelancing is to relax.

I almost fell off my barstool.

“Look at it this way,” she said. “You never really stopped working. And eventually, you may even have a day off in the middle of the week.”

David Morrow was the Reynolds Endowed Chair in Business Journalism at the Reynolds School of Journalism at the University of Nevada. He wrote this article before his death on Feb. 1, 2010.