Jake Poinier

Stick with Your System

About a month ago, I secured a ghostwriting job with one of my favorite all-time clients. Let’s call him Greg. After years of running marketing and ad agencies, Greg made a shift into a consulting practice for small and medium businesses. The goal of the book is to help popularize the system he’s created, so that entrepreneurs can either implement it themselves or hire him to manage the process.

At some point during one of our interviews, the conversation turned to pricing. It’s my favorite business topic, and one that I’ve written about extensively, including my own book, The Science, Art and Voodoo of Freelance Pricing and Getting Paid.

My go-to strategy, particularly for complex projects, is to use an estimated range: The lower end is what I’d calculate as a firm project bid, but then I also have a higher end that allows for a process that requires more work than I realized without having to renegotiate. As a side benefit, it incentivizes the client to be easy to work with, since they know they can save money if everything goes smoothly.

But when I estimated Greg’s project, I didn’t use a range — and he asked me why. Looking back, I’m not sure why I didn’t.

I suppose it was because I’ve worked with him so long that we have lots of trust and value each other and the relationship. Maybe I was so focused on details in the scope of work that I was too confident in my numbers. If the project runs longer than expected, however, or if the book comes in 40 pages longer than we discussed, he’s not going to quibble about the cost. He pays very well and promptly and has always had my back.

Still, it’s nagging at me that I made a rookie mistake.

The takeaway for me is that you need to stick with your system. It’s a key message in Greg’s book, and apparently one that I needed to be reminded of.

Jake Poinier
The Freelance Expert

Jake Poinier made the leap into freelance writing and editing in 1999 after a decade of positions in the publishing industry, giving him key insights from both sides of the desk. As the founder and owner of Boomvang Creative Group, he has worked with a diverse array of Fortune 500 and small businesses, consumer and trade magazines, and independent authors. Jake is committed to helping freelancers improve their businesses and shares his knowledge and experiences frequently as a speaker at industry conferences, through webinars, and on his blog.

In a Pricing Rut? Try These 3 Strategies

Thursday, June Post a comment

If you want a truly profitable freelance business, pricing and estimating aren’t just a matter of crunching the numbers on your hourly rate or looking up the ranges on an industry association website. We’re accustomed to putting most of our energy into creativity for our writing, editing, and design clients — but when was the last time you devoted some brainpower towards freshening up your pricing methodology?

Different Prices for Different Clients

I recognize that there are freelancers who price everything the same, whether the hourly rate or the calculation for a firm quote. (I won’t argue if that’s what works for their businesses. It’s certainly the simplest route.) Unless you have a truly uniform clientele, however, you’re likely leaving money on the table. To cite an extreme example, it doesn’t really make sense to charge a lawyer or Fortune 500 company the same rate as a local animal shelter. But the principle is also applicable to situations when you can detect that a client is going to be high maintenance with meetings, phone calls, etc.

Seek Out Other Resources

If you’re depending on industry rate sheets and surveys as your primary basis for pricing, you’re overlooking one of the best resources around: solid networking with people who use freelance services, but aren’t necessarily a client. Think graphic designers, marketing and advertising folks, web firms, magazine editors, and even freelancers who subcontract. Caution: This isn’t a shotgun cold-call situation; it needs to be people who you have a relationship with. (And if you don’t have cross-industry relationships, put that on your to-do list!)

Always Be Experimenting

It’s easy to imagine that an annual price increase is sufficient. While that’s a good start, it’s worth trying different strategies with how you present estimates. One example would be what I call the car sales approach — give the client low, medium, and high options, with additional bells and whistles as the price goes up. My favorite is to provide an estimated range rather than a firm price. That gives you more negotiating wiggle room — and it also encourages clients to go easy on the phone calls and rounds of revisions in order to keep their invoice down.

Jake Poinier
The Freelance Expert

Improving Your Vision

Wednesday, June Post a comment

I attended an academically rigorous high school, where As were hard to come by. My senior year, I taped a handwritten note above my desk that simply said HONOR ROLL. It was a constant reminder of what I wanted to achieve.

Truth be told, I missed the honor roll by one letter grade in the final term. Still, it was the closest I’d ever come to making it . . . and I was confident that putting my goal in writing (and in a place I couldn’t ignore) had pushed me psychologically.

Fast forward to life in the working world. During my early career in magazines, the goals weren’t of my choosing, but they were clear: Brainstorm the topics, assign the articles, hound the writers, edit the copy, get it into the art department’s hands, and stay up late gorging on pizza when it was closing week and we had to send everything to the printer. Rinse, repeat.

Putting Your Goals in a Place They Can’t Be Ignored

As freelancers, it’s on us to determine our goals. At least once a year, I’ll sit down at a local coffee shop for a few hours and write down an unedited list of things I want to achieve over the near and long term. But I made a mistake two years ago: I left the list inside a notebook, which I filed and forgot about for months.

If I’m honest with myself, it’s probably because it’s a bit overwhelming — and maybe counterproductive — to look every day at a piece of paper with 50 or more handwritten goals on it. That’s where a vision board comes in. Much like my honor roll reminder way back when, being able to glance at a poster board helps with inspiration. (If you’re interested in some great info about vision boards, I highly recommend Christine Kane’s process.) For me, it’s an extra step toward keeping the big picture, quite literally, right in front of me.

Obviously, a vision board doesn’t solve everything. You also have to create systems for your freelance business, a broader topic for another day. Nonetheless, for a daily reminder of why I’m doing what I’m doing, investing in a poster board, some magazines, and a glue stick pays significant mental dividends — especially since a vision board is far too big to tuck away and forget!

Here’s to a fantastic, prosperous year — whatever your vision is!

Jake Poinier
The Freelance Expert

Don’t Feel Obligated to Give an Off-the-Cuff Estimate – with 1 Exception

Friday, June Post a comment

You don’t have to be in business very long before you’ll have a conversation like this:

Prospective client: “What do you charge for X?”

You: “Honestly, it depends on how many words/pages X is.”

Prospective client: “Well, we’re not really sure yet. Can you just give me a ballpark number on what you usually charge for X?”

You: “I’d be able to give you a much more accurate estimate with additional information. Do you have time to answer a couple of questions?”

Prospective client: “Well, we’re still really early in the process and trying to figure out our budget. If you can provide me a basic number, I can take that back to the team.”

It’s a bit like an improv comedy skit, but unfortunately, it’s never funny. At the risk of seeming evasive, you really should never feel obligated to give an off-the-cuff estimate over the phone. If you do, there are three primary negative outcomes and a ton of permutations:

You tell prospects a number that’s too low — and then they’re shocked when they get the actual, much higher “real” estimate, once you’ve calculated the scope of work.
You give them a number that’s too low — and they want you to stick to it, as if you signed some sort of magical contractual agreement.
You provide a number that would be too high for the actual project parameters — and you scare them off without a chance to understand their needs and come to mutually agreeable terms.

Sure, you might happen to guess a number that works for the client, gets you the job, and results in a lucrative project. The odds are heavily against this, however, and it’s generally not worth the risk. You have no written documentation, just a verbal offer: the weakest, least persuasive position to be in. An estimate based on fuzzy information can be hazardous to both your business and your sanity. And there’s no way to price the latter.

What’s the Exception to the Rule?

If an existing client — one you have an excellent relationship with and have done multiple jobs for — asks you to give an over-the-phone quickie quote, there’s no reason to be coy. This individual knows you are an honest businessperson, and he or she is just trying to get some information based on limited facts, not trying to trick you into saying something you’ll regret later.

Even so, you’ll still want to provide a conservative range and offer a disclaimer that you’ll need more information to estimate accurately: “Sara, those types of projects generally run from $900 to $1,400, but as you know it’s going to depend on how long the actual document is, how many interviews I need to do and other factors. Sounds like a great opportunity, so please let me know when you have the details and I’ll turn around a more accurate bid the same day.”

This post was adapted from Jake Poinier’s The Science, Art and Voodoo of Freelance Pricing and Getting Paid, available on Amazon.

Jake Poinier
The Freelance Expert

Guilt-Free Vacations

Thursday, November 1 Comment

I just got back from a much-needed vacation in the Caribbean. It was the first time in a long time that I barely touched my laptop while out of the office — but that was more a matter of fortunate timing than anything, avoiding the weeks in the month where I have regularly scheduled projects due. Beyond a quick edit to a web page and answering a few emails, the rest of my time was available for snorkeling, catching rays, eating fresh seafood, and reading books with my toes in the sand.

I’ve been freelancing for more than 26 years, and I’ve always had my laptop with me when traveling — going back to the days of dialing into AOL on a phone line. I know people will make you feel guilty that it’s not “really” a vacation if you do work, or that it’s somehow stressful or less relaxing. For me, that’s never been the case.

While I did not bring work with me in my days as an employee, as a business owner I must take care of my clients. And, since my wife and I like to travel, it would actually be *more* stressful for me to not be available to my clients. Giving myself permission to do a little bit of work opens up opportunities, and I refuse to feel guilty about that.

That said, I have some ground rules for myself:

As was the case for this vacation, I hustled extra hard in the preceding two weeks before this vacation to get as much done as possible. I don’t want to have anything weighing on me just because I was lazy or procrastinating. This is especially true since I’m faster working on my desktop at home than I am on the laptop.
Once we’re on location, I keep my wife informed about my plans, so she knows what to expect and can do something solo if necessary. When I’m going to work on something for two hours, there’s no reason for her to hang around the hotel room or coffee shop waiting for me.
I limit the amount of work in a given day, and try to schedule it early in the day so that my mind is free during the remainder of the day for fun and adventure.

Do you have your laptop in tow when you’re on vacation, or do you prefer to be fully unplugged? What’s your reasoning for one method or the other?

Just Following Up

Monday, December Post a comment

Earlier this fall, I was contacted by a prospect for a potential project. He runs a marketing/advertising agency, and we’d worked together for a third party on a project earlier in the year. This was my first chance to do some work directly for him, so I wanted to make it count.

We had a 30-minute Zoom call to discuss the scope of work, and it sounded like a good fit. I crunched the numbers and sent him an estimate the next day. He said he’d discuss it with his team and get back to me.

As it happened, my wife and I watched the movie Swingers over the weekend after I submitted the estimate. If you haven’t seen the movie, it’s a snapshot of the mid-1990s featuring a young Vince Vaughn and Jon Favreau. If you have seen it, you’ll recall the agonizing scene where Favreau’s character Mikey leaves a string of increasingly desperate voicemail messages on a girl’s answering machine — against the advice of his buddies, who tell him it’s smarter to wait a few days before calling. (Or even, one suggests, till the next Olympics.)

So I waited. And waited some more.

A week turned into two and into three.

At this point, I was assuming that it wasn’t going to happen, whether I had priced it too high or they had decided to do it internally, or to scrap it altogether.

Then, at the beginning of week four, I received this email: “Estimate sounds good, let’s get started!” I was both excited and relieved, not necessarily in that order, and the project (which wrapped up a week ago) was a success.

In retrospect, I’m glad that I stuck to my Swingers principle of being patient. Even when you’re excited about a project, it can come across as too eager or even desperate if you push someone to a decision when they haven’t had enough time. From personal business experience, a “Just following up” subject line is a huge turnoff.

In retrospect, however, I would have done one thing different: When I emailed the estimate, I could have simply asked, “When do you think you might have a decision?” or something similar. That would have given me a reason to reach out after a specific number of days or weeks, without feeling like I was being pushy—and also without having to wait till the 2026 Winter Games in Italy.

How Is AI Going to Impact Your Freelance Business?

Wednesday, June 3 Comments

I recently wrote a feature article about artificial intelligence (AI) and how businesses can use it to their advantage. The inherent trouble with this type of hot topic, however, is that there’s breaking news every day, basically rendering the content obsolete by the time you send it to your editor. In the process of researching the article, I even went straight to the source with questions. (For the record, the AI answers were no more illuminating than anything I found on Google.)

Even the smartest tech people on the planet are actively debating where it’s all headed. Out of pure curiosity, I had started playing around with ChatGPT when the first version came out in late 2022. In the few short months since then, it’s gotten a lot slicker. And I’ve also seen a lot more freelancers debating whether AI is an existential threat to our livelihoods.

In the short term, I believe AI will serve the same purpose for text as free clipart and stock images do for graphics: It’s a way for clients who don’t care much about quality to fill up their websites, blogs, brochures, etc. with words. And it will look and sound like it: GIGO.

Nonetheless, that still represents new competition for freelancers at the low-end, low-paying end of the market, much like the advent of content mills more than a decade ago. In a way, though, it’s even worse: Cheap clients will choose a free AI option over a low-cost human one.

For freelance professionals with higher-end clients, the threat is not as immediate. AI bots are far from writing as persuasively or creatively as a skilled human, and intelligent clients know that. Even so, the various AI platforms will get more sophisticated — and like Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction, they will not be ignored. As creatives, we’ll need to figure out where they fit in our toolbox. What does that entail?

Investigating and experimenting with AI on your own time. The more you learn about AI, the less you’ll fear it. It functions quite differently from search engines, since you can ask long, complicated questions (a.k.a., superprompts) that generate more useful outputs. Plus, educating yourself will also prepare you when a client asks what you know about AI!
Leveraging AI to streamline processes. This could include tasks such as generating marketing ideas, brainstorming concepts, or tweaking the SEO of a blog post.
Being wary about anything you generate on AI. Because of the databases and programming, AI information is often incomplete, dated, biased, or all three. Come into the process with as much or more skepticism as you would using a search engine.

My final thought on this: Never present AI-generated content as your own, even if you heavily edit it. Which brings me back to the magazine article I mentioned at the top of this post. When I submitted it, my editor told me that they’re now running an AI check on all stories — and I predict that’s an inevitable best practice in the publishing industry.

Surviving Recessions as a Freelancer

Sunday, September Post a comment

In the 2000s, there have been several recessions: 2001, 2007–09, and 2020. Depending on your definition and which economists you listen to, it’s possible we’re in one right now or could be heading into one next year. I still feel sick to my stomach when I think back to 2001. I’d been in business for myself for two years, and everything was going great . . . till it wasn’t. Client budgets dried up and my phone stopped ringing. I knew I wasn’t going back to a corporate job, however, so I needed to hustle and figure it out. Here are a few of the ways that I have built my business up so that the ’07–’09 and ’20 recessions had far less impact on my freelance income.

You have more control than you realize. Even in a weak economy, there are companies that are chugging along or thriving — but it takes extra effort to find them. Here I’ll plug former NAIWE expert Peter Bowerman’s The Well-Fed Writer series, which I used as my playbook in 2001. Using his strategies, I made a few hundred cold calls, secured a bunch of new clients, and got back on track.
Saving up a go-to-hell fund is an obvious way to protect yourself against economic uncertainty. I love saving any way I can. The easiest is a monthly auto deposit into my brokerage account from my bank account, so I don’t have to think about it. Important to note that saving money isn’t about expecting to use it. It’s so you can make clear decisions and avoid taking lousy projects out of desperation.
Diversifying your freelance business with a mix of clients, project types, and industries is another key to surviving challenging economic times. My basic rule of thumb is that I try not to have any client be more than 30% of revenues. The phrase anchor client makes me break out in hives! I knew freelancers who made a ton writing about real estate during the housing boom . . . and then got wrecked when everything crashed. This isn’t an argument against specialization, but rather a cautionary note that booms never last.
It’s also about mindset. Are you in freelancing for the long haul? Are you developing client relationships strong enough that they’ll always find budget for you? Are they giving you high-quality referrals? Over time, your system needs to be resilient.
There’s no guilt in doing something on the side to generate a bit more income. (For example, I coached rowing for a long time and hope to get back to it.) As long as it’s not taking too much of your time, side income can help take the sting out of downturns.
It’s a good time to take a cold, hard look at your expenses and pare back where you can. A few months ago, I dumped a variety of subscriptions that no longer delivered return-on-investment, and I changed my Adobe account to a better option. I’m currently considering changing from cable internet to Verizon 5G, which just arrived in my neighborhood. Every bit helps.
In addition to the potential of recession, inflation is also taking a serious bite out of how far our money goes. I don’t do annual price increases, because my projects and clients are all over the board. But as I negotiate with new prospective clients, I am taking inflation into account.

Economic downturns are inevitable — and the same type of preparation you do for a recession can help eliminate freelancing peaks and valleys.

How To Navigate Conflicting Freelance Advice

Thursday, July Post a comment

There’s a lot of advice out there about freelancing. While that can be helpful, it can also lead to endlessly researching a topic without taking action — and paralysis by analysis is no way to run a business. Here are a few of the most debated topics and how your individual circumstances might influence your approach.

Is it better to specialize or be a generalist? I can’t honestly think of a topic that generates more heat and less light than this one. My opinion, after 22 years of freelancing and hiring freelancers is: It’s a false dichotomy and doesn’t matter, because I know successful freelancers in both camps. (Or, like me, they’re a hybrid — a specialized generalist or generalized specialist, depending on the day.) The main thing is that you should never feel guilty or wrong about your chosen path. After all, you can always alter your trajectory one way or the other. Making your choice requires a balance of what motivates you, what drives the most opportunities, and what makes you money.

How should I price my services? The most frequent debate in this realm is whether you should charge by the project or by the hour, and you can find solid reasoning on both sides. My personal preference is to use an estimated range, because it increases my negotiating leverage and potential revenue. But it is only a preference; if a client or prospect wants me to work hourly, or with a not-to-exceed estimate, or by retainer, that works too. To me, the key question you need to ask about pricing involves taking the perspective from the other side of the desk: What does the client want or expect?

Should I have a business name or use my own name? I have a difficult-to-spell last name, so that probably colors my perception. I’m firmly in Camp Business Name. (Psychologically, it also helps me reinforce the feeling that I’m a business, not just a writer and editor, just like having a separate bank account and a P.O. box.) Nonetheless, one of my friends — one of the most respected people in the industry — argues the opposite very persuasively. His contention is that writers and editors are different from other businesses, and that we’re more easily found by our real names than some obscure business name. Answering this question requires an understanding of how it will affect your own motivation and your ability to have prospects and clients find and refer you.

These are far from the only debates out there in FreelanceWorld, and yes, I realize the irony of giving advice about advice! My goal is to encourage you to seek your own answers, not just blindly implement some guru’s advice from a blog, Tweet, article, podcast, or webinar. Your business is unique: Your skills and experience, target audience, willingness to take risks, and finances (among countless other elements) are different from anyone else out there. When you find something that works, stick with it. And if you discover something that doesn’t fit your business or style, it’s time to move on and keep experimenting.

Test Your Website Forms or You Could Be Losing Freelance Business

Tuesday, June Post a comment

I run three different websites with slightly different WordPress themes: my customer-facing portfolio, my freelancer-facing Dr. Freelance blog, and my publishing company for books about freelancing. Unfortunately, that also means three sets of plugins and versions to keep updated, and three dumpsters of spam to empty regularly. The reason for this blog post today isn’t to whine about maintenance. It’s a reminder about one other critical aspect that is easy to overlook: test your website forms. And the reason for that reminder is because I don’t want you to do what I did: loose a piece of potential freelance business!

An author whose book I’d edited last summer sent me a note to expect a referral. I waited about two weeks, because the ball was in the new refer-ee’s court, then dropped him a line to find out the status.

He responded, “Thanks, but I didn’t hear back from you, so I went with another editor.” Ugh.

Lesson Learned: Website Forms Need TLC Too

It turned out that he had attempted to send me a message through one of my website forms rather than to my email. Sure enough, I tested the form. Despite the cheerful “Thanks! Message sent successfully” auto response, the message itself had disappeared into the internet ether, never to land in my inbox.

I was bummed but wrote him a nice note saying that I hoped we could work together on a future project. Then, I set about trying to figure out what the heck was wrong with my form plugin, Contact Form 7. I knew the problem had occurred after an update to my WordPress theme. Even though I updated the web form plugin, there was a setting—deep in the cobwebs of GoDaddy—that was preventing it from sending due to a conflict with Office 365. Basically, the default is to use the “local email exchanger,” and it needed to be set to “Remote Email Exchanger.” (If you’re struggling with the same issue, further details here: Contact Form 7 emails won’t send to Office 365.)

After a few hours of incredibly frustrating troubleshooting and a 5-minute call to GoDaddy tech support, my problem was solved. More important, a new item was added to my regularly scheduled maintenance: test my website forms.

Jake Poinier made the leap into freelance writing and editing in 1999 after a decade of positions in the publishing industry, giving him key insights from both sides of the desk. As the founder and owner of Boomvang Creative Group, he has worked with a diverse array of Fortune 500 and small businesses, consumer and trade magazines, and independent authors. Jake is committed to helping freelancers improve their businesses and shares his knowledge and experiences frequently as a speaker at industry conferences, through webinars, and on his blog.

Stick with Your System

In a Pricing Rut? Try These 3 Strategies

Different Prices for Different Clients

Seek Out Other Resources

Always Be Experimenting

Improving Your Vision

Putting Your Goals in a Place They Can’t Be Ignored

Don’t Feel Obligated to Give an Off-the-Cuff Estimate – with 1 Exception

Guilt-Free Vacations

Just Following Up

How Is AI Going to Impact Your Freelance Business?

Surviving Recessions as a Freelancer

How To Navigate Conflicting Freelance Advice

Test Your Website Forms or You Could Be Losing Freelance Business

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