Since I’ve been doing more and more guest posts as of late I’ve been formulating questions in my mind about freelance writing. I thought it would be good to interview a well-established freelance writer to get some of answers to those questions. Chris Bibey was kind enough to take some time out of his day to lend me a hand and tell us a bit about his freelance writing career.

You had a pretty successful freelance writing career before you launched your blog, correct? Do you feel like your blog has helped your career? If so, in what way?

Yes, that is correct. Before I started my blog, I was already working as a freelance writer for a couple of years. With that being said, my blog helped me in two ways:

1. It allowed me to share my knowledge with others; which I take a lot of pride in.
2. My blog has brought in a few new clients which is always a good thing. While I do not actively pursue clients via my blog, I do receive inquiries from time to time.

What have been the downsides to maintaining the blog?

The main downside of maintaining my blog is the time that it takes. Although I only post once per day, I spend a lot of time making sure that the information is accurate and useful.

Would you recommend other writers that are starting their freelance careers, or even those who are firmly established, start their own blogs?

Yes, I would. I think that a blog is a great way to connect with other writers, as well as bring in some extra work if they so desire. It is not easy to update a freelance writing blog everyday of the week, but it is a lot of fun nonetheless.

What niches do you think are the hottest for freelance writers to get into
at the moment?

This is a tough question becausethere is work to be had across hundreds of niches. Personally, I focus on the topics that are of the most interest to me; not what is hot at the moment. My best advice for an aspiring freelance writer would be to focus on three topics that excite them; even if the markets are saturated. When you are passionate about your writing, you have a much better chance of success!

Are you seeing an increase in the number of job requests from web developers, affiliate marketers or other blog owners as of late?

As each month goes by, it seems as if I receive more requests for my writing services, partnerships, etc. I think a lot of this has to do with the fact that my name is making its way around the blogosphere a bit more.

What are your thoughts on pay rates for those types of jobs? It seems that any rate you can offer can be beaten soundly by non-English speaking workers offering their services on job boards online. Does that increase in competition and, presumably, quality bother you?

You are 100 percent correct. There are a lot of non-English writers who will work for less than one cent per word. Obviously, it can be difficult to compete with them because of the descrepancy in price. By offering higher quality work, I can attract high level clients that are willing to pay the industry standard or more.

I do find it bothersome that so many poor quality writers are taking money from clients. The only way to put an end to it is for clients to stop shopping for content based on price, and instead focus on quality.

I know you’ve mentioned branching out your focus to other things besides freelance writing. How are those efforts coming along?

They are coming along quite nicely. At this time, I am working on several other projects including a freelance writing course, as well as a blog network that is growing by the month. For me, expanding my focus allows for increased income as well as a break from the freelance writing world.

Since I’m all about web development and WordPress lately let’s end on that. You’ve had a bad experience with a WordPress designer… Do you have any brief advice for anyone looking to hire a designer to rework their blog theme?

Sure do! When I hired a designer a few months back for a new theme, I made one major mistake: I did not ask for enough samples. I received maybe one, and figured that would be enough. Anybody who is going to hire a designer should get a solid feel for what they have accomplished in the past. One quality sample is not enough!

I want to thank Chris again for taking the time to answer my questions. His blog on freelance writing can be found at chrisblogging.com.

I have a handful of posts on this site about tech support problems I’ve solved for clients. I write these posts because I usually have a hard time finding the solutions to the problems online and hope that maybe it’ll be easier for the next person who has trouble to find help. These posts are actually some of the most popular on the site and they receive a lot of visitors coming from search engines.

What’s that got to do with being a Web Developer?

It’s important to remember that just because you know how to build web sites does not mean you can or should fix any of your client’s computer problems. I promise you that the second you fix one of their problems with a printer, an email client or whatever they’ll be on you every time something goes wrong in their office. That’s fine if you’re charging them through some kind of service contract but never do this kind of work for free.

People who work for free get taken advantage of.

There’s definitely an urge to fix small problems for free or to go that extra step above and beyond what you originally agreed to with a client. I understand that and I’ve certainly done the same before but I know through experience that once you take on the two-headed role of Web Designer and Go-To Tech Support Guy your life will become miserable.

The only support requests you should ever handle are ones that are directly related to any of the programming or design work you’ve done for the client under your original contract. Extra support requests come at a huge price concerning your time. This is why I recommend against providing hosting solutions for clients as well.

I stumbled into freelancing pretty much by chance. While I was in college, working on a Computer Science degree, I would get local contract jobs here and there for a variety of clients with no real relation to each other except for one thing: they had all been referred to me by someone they knew. With each successful job I was generating more and more word of mouth about what I could do and it was leading directly to more leads. I never actively advertised any of my services and yet people were managing to find me.

My very first big time project after I graduated was with an area minor league baseball team. I heard they were taking bids on a re-design of their site and its content management system so I wrote a proposal, had a meeting and won the bid. After the new site was completed and launched I began receiving quote requests out of the blue from people who had either seen the site or had been referred to me by the team’s staff. One project eventually snowballed into the majority of my current client base.

I put together this dopey little graphic to help illustrate my point that you can take one successful job and spin into a lot of future work with a little bit of luck and good word of mouth. As a freelancer, you’re more than capable of making a living bidding on job after job but once people start talking about your skills your reliance on job boards will begin to dwindle away.

I have a guest post up on Collin LaHay’s Mixed Market Arts called Four Tips For Hiring Freelance Web Developers that some of you might be interested in reading.
This post is written from the other side of the fence that I usually stand on. The tips can also be useful for any web developers or designers looking to outsource some of their extra work but the main focus is on non-technical folks looking to hire freelancers.

I use Google Apps for all of the email tasks for i am jack’s design. GMail has a simple feature that lets you “Star” a message and have it placed in a special Star-only folder. This turns out to be a very simple way to organize your tasks from clients.

I’ve tried using web apps for task management like Ta-da List and Remember The Milk but in the end I always come back to the simplest solution: GMail. It’s much easier to just star an email containing a client request than it is to open up a separate site/program to write down what you need to get done.

If you’re running GMail and looking for a way to stay organized give the “Star” feature a try.