This post contains advice for anyone considering a career as a freelance journalist. I was a freelancer for five years, writing for Wired, Popular Science and some UK business magazines. You can see a list of most of my journalism on my personal site. Now I am the CEO of Articulate Marketing, and I wrote this article before I stopped freelancing several years ago in 2007. It has since been updated in 2022.
If you want to be a freelance journalist, then start your journey by doing your research. Read articles and watch videos made by people who've been there and done that. That's the best place to begin your journey as a freelancer.
Just before we get into the detail, I'm making a few assumptions about you, dear reader. These are:
It’s impossible to be a good writer on every subject. Find one or two areas that really appeal to you and in which you feel confident that you can become an expert and concentrate on them. It doesn’t matter whether it is chicken farming or tribal politics in Mongolia, there’ll probably be a market for your work. To write about absolutely anything you need to be the greatest writer in the world. Me? I write about business, technology and planes – the stuff I know and love. You'll do better as a freelance journalist if you specialise.
The NUJ has a ‘Rate for the Job’ website which gives guidelines for how much you can ask for different freelance journalism jobs. Typically, these rates are expressed in terms of ‘rate per thousand words’. This usually includes all your expenses and time for interviews and so on.
Another way to tackle the problem is to work out how many days a year you want to work (240 working days a year, minus 30 for holidays, minus 30 for administration and business development is a good start). Then, work out how much you want to earn from writing and divide one into the other to get a daily rate. Then work out how much you can write in a day, factoring in interviews and research, and charge that (if you can!).
Freelance journalism is a business. You are your own CEO and marketing department as well as your R&D department and factory. You can be the best writer in the world but if you don't sell your stories, nobody will read them.
Again, read lots. I get most of my ideas by reading obscure trade magazines and insider websites and then selling the stories to more mainstream media.
Keep a notebook for ideas and write down anything that seems interesting and saleable. When you come to make your daily pitch, just pick the best idea from the current crop and pitch it. That way pitching doesn’t become a creative process subject to the usual blocks and anxiety of writing.
Also get in the habit of tearing out interesting pages from magazines as you read them. Go to trade shows and conferences. Chum up to companies in your field and PR firms and get on their lists. Cultivate good sources.
Most business professionals shouldn’t have a problem with this, but don’t be fooled into thinking that a freelance writer lives in a mound of creative chaos and thrives on late nights, whiskey and hand rolled cigarettes. Prussian efficiency is required to make freelance journalism pay. You’ll need:
To avoid going crazy, you need to plan your time. Books like 7 Habits of Highly Effective People can be useful in starting to think about this stuff if it is new to you. Otherwise a bit of planning and thought are required to adapt what you already know to the job of writing. I use:
One good way of coping with writer’s block is to do lots of research and lots of interviews. Then just arrange the good bits of research and the good bits of an interview into an order that seems to make sense and then précis it, leaving the very best quotes and stats in place. It’s easy to generate quantity, let the quality come out in the editing. Better to chuck out 4,000 words quickly and edit down to 1,500 than struggle to write 1,500 but hope that each word is perfect. The book “The Artist’s Way” is very good on writer’s block.
One tip: I like to finish the article a day or two early and then do something else. Coming back to a piece after a break is very healthy. It gets rid of word blindness and makes it easier to do drastic reconstructive surgery if it is needed.
Another tip: I get my partner to read my articles to see if they make sense and I’ve explained everything. Since she knows nothing about business, technology or planes she can quickly spot anything I’ve missed or assume the reader knows.
Final tip: edit from the back to the front. Read the final version slowly OUT LOUD before you send it in. I find at least one howler every time I do this, even though I think I’ve finished the piece.
Don’t forget you’re running a business. You need to get the finances right, market yourself, actually sell your work and collect the money. VAT and PAYE taxes need to be sorted out and there is some paperwork to do to become self-employed. There are good books on starting a business and lots of practical support online. In my (limited) experiences one-man businesses typically fail because:
Here are the guidelines from Business 2.0, an American magazine I wrote for occasionally. They are good guidelines even if you are writing for a less scrupulous magazine. One day you’ll be able to blow an editor away by the authoritativeness of your research. It’s happened to me a few times and I’ve confounded PR companies and editors to my great credit! (However, you don’t need to send in annotated versions of your articles to most magazines – only do it if they ask.) I tend to take contemporaneous written notes, typed transcript or voice recordings of all my interviews. I use templates for interview transcripts that remind me to take a note of the name, title and contact details for everyone I interview.
FACT -CHECKING GUIDELINES FOR FREELANCE WRITERS
Our goal is for Business 2.0, and for your writing, to be the most authoritative business journalism around. As a compliment to your careful work, all articles accepted for publication are checked for accuracy, timeliness, clarity, and context. Because facts and assertions must be verifiable, we will need to see your published sources and speak with your live sources. Please tell people you interview to expect a call from a fact-checker.
Here are the three types of fact-checking materials we require:
1) Copies of key research documents
Every fact must be verifiable from a primary source. The primary source for a given fact is the source that originally generated that piece of information, or one that is able and authorized to report on that information first hand. Common primary sources can include live experts, company literature, analyst reports, reference books, government agencies, and official organization Websites. Please give us printouts (and the URL) of any Web page you're relying on as a primary source (Sites change and disappear).
We don't accept popular publications such as magazines or newspapers as primary sources; even back issues of Business 2.0 and Fortune are not gospel. Popular books may be used to confirm the book-author's one-time stated opinion. Please have at least one verifiable primary source person or publication-before including any fact in a story. Details that can't be verified by at least one primary source will be deleted.
Please include any newspaper or magazine articles, Website URLs, or any other material you feel would be useful as background for the editor or fact-checker, or as resources for our online readers. If a great interview was cut back in the magazine, our Web team may still be able to use information from your notes or transcripts online. We place these background materials in our files, so please make copies of anything you want to keep.
2) A list of live sources
Please include an independent list with the full name, title, mailing address, and e-mail, phone, and fax of every person cited in your story .We also need the phone, e-mail, and URL for each company or organization that garners more than passing mention. Also please provide us with your own street address, e-mail, phone, and fax. If your editor has agreed to change the name of a person in your story, we still need to check back with that person; please send the real name and phone number of every live person cited in your story .In special cases we may ask for interview notes, tapes, or transcripts.
3) An annotated copy of your story
Every fact and assertion in your story must have an identifiable source. Effective methods of annotation include using traditional footnotes or writing the names of live sources-as well as the titles and page numbers of written sources-in the margins beside each fact or factual section in the story. Your editor may want you to annotate your first draft or may have you wait and mark up a subsequent version of the story. Check with your editor before you annotate, or you may have to repeat the task on a later version.
Being a journalist is an honourable and important profession but in the eyes of the general public, we’re down there with estate agents and politicians. I always get an ironic laugh when I tell people, ‘I’m a journalist so I’m interested in truth, beauty and justice.’ Mostly, I tell them I’m an accountant.