Tag Archives: copywriting

Ten things any freelancer’s home office needs   

Every self-employed person goes on a journey, and one of the less heralded aspects of the freelancing journey involves the organic development of a more professional workspace. I started out with an antiquated old PC balanced on a glass display unit in my living room, with no storage or space for paperwork. It’s a far cry from today’s dedicated home office, where a six-foot oak desk packed with drawers and cupboards supports a high-end laptop and twin 27-inch monitors through a docking station.

I’ll come back to some of these efficiency-bolstering elements in a moment. First, let’s consider some of the benefits afforded by an appropriate and well-configured working environment:

  • – It’s ergonomic. Freelancing from a laptop at a dining table or on the sofa can induce numerous physical ailments, from RSI and tendonitis through to tech neck and eyestrain-related headaches.
  • – It’s professional. When a client calls, you need pads and pens, Dictaphones and documents to hand. Running around the house trying to find a Biro is tiring, unprofessional and unduly stressful.
  • – It’s distinct. The boundaries between work and home life are blurry for most freelancers. They’ll disappear entirely if you work where you eat or socialise – making it harder to switch off at night.
  • – It’s private. A dedicated workspace avoids unrelated clutter building up. It means children coming home from school don’t suddenly appear in video calls. It ensures you can work in relative peace.

Gone are the days when you could eke out a skinny latte in the local coffee emporium for an entire day while exploiting their free WiFi. Also gone are the days when employers or clients accepted people answering Zoom calls in onesies, with piles of laundry in the background or accompanied by unscheduled interruptions from other household members. In today’s ruthlessly competitive freelancing market, battered by generative AI and budgetary constraints, only the most professional freelancers will flourish. Doing so requires a dedicated place to work (even if that’s just a corner of a room) with the following ten essential attributes:

  1. Full spectrum lighting. These lamps cast a clear white light that’s easy to read by, great for designing in and capable of minimising the symptoms of Seasonal Affective Disorder in the GMT seasons.
  2. An ergonomic chair. It may involve trial and error to find a chair deep enough to support your thighs and bolstered enough to offer lumbar support, but it’s a vital investment to avoid back or neck pain.
  3. A storage-equipped desk. Don’t try and work from a breakfast bar – you need drawers/cupboards/shelves for documents, brochures and post. Solid wooden furniture will last forever.
  4. Sound-cancelling microphone-equipped headphones. This ensures you can work in peace when the house is noisy, be clearly heard on video calls and listen to webinars without anyone eavesdropping.
  5. A docking station and laptop. Laptops are ideal for taking to meetings, pitches and presentations. Plugged into a docking station with hardwired peripherals, they’re also as practical as a desktop PC.
  6. An attractive backdrop. Blurring your background inevitably distracts with flickering, suggesting you’re hiding something. A nice picture is fine, as is a garden view; avoid clutter, clothes or mirrors.
  7. Full fibre broadband. Most UK households now have access to full fibre. ADSL lines of 10Mbps aren’t enough in today’s OneDrive and Zoom age – they’ll slow you up and result in stuttering streams.
  8. Privacy. It’s lovely freelancing from home with pets mooching around, but not during interviews or meetings. A door you can close (or a screen you can put up) is vital for appearing professional.
  9. Proximity to a window. A glance at trees or sunshine can provide inspiration, while daylight boosts our mood and simplifies reading. Position workstations beside or below windows wherever possible.
  10. Space to pace. A surprising addition, perhaps, but many people find it easier to talk on the phone or think while moving. A hallway will suffice, providing there’s nothing to bump into while you muse.

A professional approach

Having been founded back in the mid-Noughties, G75 Media is a paragon of professionalism, elevating freelancing to a fine art from a dedicated home office which ensures we’re able to deliver optimal work to every client. Get in touch to see how we can collaborate with working partnerships, marketing copy and content production for businesses in any industry.

How many clients should I have?

For freelancers, there’s a perennial balancing act between finding enough work and becoming overwhelmed. If you haven’t got enough clients on your books, the days can become frustrating and drawn-out in equal measure.  Attract too much work, and the only way to meet the constant barrage of approaching deadlines is to start working in the evenings and weekends – or let your quality control drop in the interests of getting work out of the door. Since these options will respectively lead to burnout and lost clients, it’s far better to seek the Goldilocks solution – just the right amount of work to keep you busy without precluding holidays or a good night’s sleep.

The problem many freelancers face is knowing how many clients to have on their books at any given time. It’s a tightrope act every self-employed creative or company director will wrestle with on a regular basis. To help people who want to be a freelance writer set realistic targets, and to benefit people already struggling with this thorny problem, we’ve shared our thoughts based on our own experiences. These are the key factors to bear in mind…

Frequency of work

Firstly, review your existing client portfolio (assuming you have one). How many of your accounts are regular, as opposed to sporadic or seasonal? G75 Media produces weekly blogs for a leading Ofcom-approved price comparison site, and a biannual newsletter for a national chain of opticians. The latter is more time-consuming, but the former requires several hours dedicating to it every week. Get a year-to-view planner and map out the level of work you can expect in the rest of 2024, which will highlight gaps in your schedule and indicate how many clients to have.

Existing commitments

Next, think about your own lifestyle. Do you need to finish at 3pm every day to do the school run, or take a few weeks off every summer for childcare? Do you go abroad every December to escape Christmas, or struggle to work regular hours due to unpredictable caring responsibilities? Many companies don’t care when or where freelance writers produce content providing it’s supplied by a certain deadline, but some firms might expect you to be available at set times. And that’s before we get into the thorny issue of whether you’re allowed to work from a home office or expected to attend client premises…

Complexity of assignments

Every client has varying expectations. We have clients who are happy to receive Word documents, and others who want articles uploaded into a CMS like Wix or WordPress. Some clients want copyright-free images supplying, while others expect pull-quotes and meta descriptions. This affects the amount of time each piece of work requires – in turn affecting how much free time you have. Spend a week compiling a timesheet at 15-minute intervals to get an idea of how busy you really are. This will reveal the proportion of your week being wasted on procrastination/social media/coffee breaks/chatting.

The risk of losing clients

In G75 Media’s first full year of trading, we had two clients who provided 75 per cent of our annual turnover. Today, we have a dozen clients, none of whom individually contribute more than 15 per cent of our income. Consequently, the loss of any one client wouldn’t be catastrophic. It’s easy to put all your eggs on one basket, especially early in your freelancing career, but always think about how you’d fill the working week (and pay the bills) if you suddenly lost your biggest source of income.

Your personality

This is far too diverse a factor to sum up in one paragraph, but essentially, it relates to how you cope under pressure. If you’re a single workaholic, burning the midnight oil enables you to increase turnover, whereas a fifty-something parent may be less keen on weekend working. Everyone copes differently with pressure, impending deadlines and project management. Being organised also makes it easier to juggle multiple projects; Trello boards are a great way of highlighting key deadlines and ensuring you don’t forget anything.

Although G75 Media has a healthy roster of freelance copywriting clients, we’re always happy to discuss new assignments and projects, from one-off commissions to regular work. Contact us to discuss how our award-winning copywriting services could benefit your brand or business.

How to source copyright-free photographs

Media degrees receive a lot of criticism in the press these days, and much of it is deserved. Yet it was a HND in Communications that first encouraged me to step outside the classroom and start taking photographs on a digital camera as a teenager, subsequently leading me to major in video production at university. I quickly became the unofficial custodianship of the company-owned digital camera in the two jobs I held between graduating and dedicating my career to G75 Media, which included a seven-year stint as a full-time property journalist.

Today, I have thirty years of photography experience, with an expert eye for framing and composition. This instinctive expertise was honed to perfection during the 11 years I ran G75 Images as a property photography sideline to G75 Media’s copywriting and content production business. I reluctantly closed G75 Images down following run-ins with clients who seemed to think paying for photography services was optional. And in one respect, they’re right – free images are widely available across the internet. You just need to know where to look.

Aren’t free images just a Google search away?

It’s a common misapprehension that pictures found through search engines are free to reuse. In fact, the penalties for infringing a copyrighted image (whether or not it shows up in normal results) may be punitive. If you want to source copyright-free photographs, there are specific avenues you’ll need to go down, some of which require delicate navigation. This is why I routinely offer to source and supply images to G75 Media’s copywriting and journalism clients, leveraging my expertise to simplify matters for them while ensuring the copy I write is accompanied by suitably dynamic visuals.

In many cases, the photographs I supply were taken by myself, sourced from my vast trove of digital photography. The photo accompanying this article was taken a few years ago during a travel journalism trip to the Netherlands. I could have subsequently provided a client with this quintessentially Dutch scene alongside an original piece of writing, though as yet I haven’t had the opportunity to write about Zaandam, clogs or bicycles. Alternatively, I could have simply searched for images in one of the curated collections of copyright-free photographs online.

Why would photography be free?

It’s a good question. Photography is an artform just like any other, and photographers have bills to pay just like the rest of us. These are some of the reasons why artists might share Creative Commons Zero (CC0) images online, effectively opting out of any right to royalties or accreditation:

  1. To build their reputation, in preparation for selling pictures later.
  2. They view taking photographs as a hobby rather than an income stream.
  3. They have a passion for a particular subject, which they’re keen to share with others.
  4. They don’t feel the images are sufficiently high-quality or high-resolution to be saleable.
  5. Their photographs complement another income stream (such as painting or graphic design).

How do I source copyright-free photographs?

Firstly, it’s advisable to look beyond search engines. There is a way to find CC0 licensed images on Bing or DuckDuckGo, but it’s not intuitive. Taking Google as an example, it involves going into the Images > Tools > Usage Rights submenu before choosing Creative Commons licenses. This tends to reveal visuals from a handful of sources such as Wikimedia, but it will also display photos with copyright details clearly displayed in the photo title and summary. In these instances, you can reproduce the photo without paying, but you’ll have to credit the photographer in whatever form they request every time you use the photo.

More unambiguous collections of CC0 images are hosted on websites which are specifically focused on helping people source copyright-free photographs. There are numerous examples of websites where the default setting involves images suitable for reproduction and republication with no attribution or acknowledgement, including FreeImages and Stockvault. Be aware that some sites (such as Unsplash) intersperse CC0 image results and their own paid shots, which require either a subscription or one-off fees. This replicates the model of paid photography websites including Getty Images and Shutterstock, which charge a fee for each reproduction or (in some cases) allow you to purchase exclusive copyright to individual shots.

If all this sounds too complicated (and it does take a while to master), you could always ask a freelance copywriter to source copyright-free photographs as part of their contract. It’s something G75 Media routinely does, and we’d be delighted to discuss this as part of any quote. Get in touch to discuss how we can meet your editorial and photography needs.

Another high-profile award for G75 Media!

G75 Media is delighted to announce that our founder, award-winning writer Neil Cumins, has just been honoured at the 2021 Global CEO Excellence Awards. Neil won the Content Production Business Leader of the Year trophy, in recognition of G75 Media’s journalism and copywriting services throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Global CEO Excellence Awards are an international celebration of small businesses and C-suite executives. CEO Monthly magazine is read by 60,000 business leaders and executives around the world, and award nominees had to “demonstrate expertise within a given field, dedication to customer service and commitment to excellence and innovation.” CEO Monthly undertook an in-depth evaluation of each contender’s skills and services, while the market reputation of each nominee was also taken into consideration.

Commenting on becoming an award-winning writer for the second time, Neil said: “There have been some tough moments over the last year, trying to keep the business on track through unprecedented challenges. Winning this award is more than an honour – it feels like we’ve drawn a line under the pandemic. It’s also great to be able to describe myself as a multiple award-winning writer, though I’ll probably leave that off my business cards!”

G75 Media is now among an elite group of content production and copywriting agencies who have won multiple awards over different decades. Our first win came in 2010 in the national Freelancer of the Year awards, and our latest trophy has arrived 11 years later. We hope more commendations will follow in the years and decades ahead; in the meantime, we’d be delighted to discuss our copywriting and journalism services with prospective clients.

A very merry Christmas from G75 Media

After a strenuous year at the copywriting coalface, G75 Media will be closing its doors tonight. We’ll be returning to action on Thursday January 3rd. In the meantime, have a wonderful Christmas and New Year – and get in touch if you’d like any assistance with copywriting, content production, journalism or web copy…

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas in the G75 Media office...
It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas in the G75 Media office…

G75 Media and GDPR – keeping your data safe

Later this month, the EU will roll out its General Data Protection Regulation. After four years of development, GDPR will effectively replace the UK’s 1988 Data Protection Act. As such, it will place additional regulatory burdens on companies retaining any client information on file. This can range from the names and email addresses of corporate contacts to bank account details and social media posts.

At G75 Media, we take these responsibilities very seriously. We are preparing for GDPR’s introduction on Monday the 25th, and these are some of the steps we’re introducing to protect and preserve the confidentiality of client data:

• From today, every email we send will contain an invitation to unsubscribe from future correspondence. If you reply with the word ‘unsubscribe’ in the subject line, we will immediately delete any contact information we hold relating to you.

• If six months has elapsed since we last worked with you, we will archive any sent or received electronic documentation. Data will be saved on a password-protected USB key with AES 256-bit encryption, which is stored offline in a safe.

• Current documentation and related client data (including email addresses) is stored on a password-protected drive of a desktop computer equipped with sophisticated antivirus software. We do not share client data with anyone, in any circumstances.

• Any historic databases or spreadsheets of contact information we previously held have all been deleted. This ensures any information provided to us by former clients has been securely destroyed.

• If you contact us via telephone, email, post, text message or social media, we will only communicate with you regarding work-related briefs or assignments. We will never send you marketing emails, event invitations or other unsolicited sales missives.

• We’re working towards a paperless office, and we never print out emailed documentation. Any paperwork we do receive is securely stored in a locked building until it’s no longer needed, at which point it’s destroyed in a cross-cut shredder.

We recognise there is a great deal of confusion about GDPR and its effect on small businesses around the UK. As technology bloggers, we have already been commissioned to produce a number of features on GDPR and its impact, so it’s a subject we’re familiar with. However, if you have any concerns about how we use or store client data, please don’t hesitate to ask.

Finally, if you’ve found this page while searching for information on GDPR, G75 Media has produced a number of practical guides on behalf of clients on both sides of the Atlantic. If you’d like content creating for your own company, we’ll be happy to provide you with a quote – in strict confidence, and with full adherence to GDPR regulations! You can get in touch with us here.

Easter break? Not for us!

While the rest of the UK enjoys a welcome (if rather chilly) Easter bank holiday weekend, work continues at the copywriting coalface for G75 Media. In our new role as copy editors of a national magazine, there are articles to be revised and proofread in preparation for next week. We have the usual turntable of weekly deadlines to be met – even if copy that our clients would normally upload on Monday won’t be seen til Tuesday! And there’s also the small matter of entering a national competition for freelancers, with our entry ready to be uploaded. If we’re nominated, you’ll hear about it here first…

Consumer advice? All in a day’s work…

After a thoroughly enjoyable break over Christmas, G75 Media has returned to a packed inbox and a busy schedule. Our first January job involves producing consumer advice articles for one of the UK’s leading price comparison firms. We’re currently writing four features a week for this client, providing practical advice about mobile phone contracts, broadband accounts and on-demand services.

We work with IT and computing firms on both sides of the Atlantic, writing everything from keyword-driven blogs to in-depth white papers and infographics. G75 Media’s founder Neil Cumins grew up in a family of amateur programmers and created his own art package in BASIC at the tender age of 13, so computing has always been an area of personal expertise. By researching topics like website hosting, WordPress and cybersecurity on a weekly basis, creating original content on these subjects has become as intuitive as writing about games consoles or streaming media services.

If you need any assistance with technology writing, consumer advice journalism or any other form of digital media content, get in touch with G75 Media for a quote. Wherever you are in the world, we’ll be able to find the right words for your products and services.

Ten years of copywriting excellence

Ten years ago today, G75 Media Ltd was officially incorporated under the Companies Act 1985, becoming Scotland’s newest media company. And without wishing to lapse into cliché, the intervening decade has been quite a journey…

 

G75 Media was founded by Neil Cumins with a three-figure budget. It was based in the spare room of a house in East Kilbride, where an antiquated PC perched on a second-hand dressing table. There was no website, no income and no budget for advertising, and work had to be fitted around Neil’s day job as a property journalist.

 

Little did anyone know on that chilly November day that the global economy was about to enter the most protracted recession for a century. Setting up a new media company in the midst of the Northern Rock bailout (and an unexpected decline in British house prices) was clearly not a ideal for a property-based copywriting agency. Throughout our first five years, clients regularly went out of business and new custom was often frustratingly hard to acquire.

 

Nevertheless, G75 Media has survived – and even thrived. We’ve worked with clients on four continents. We’ve become experts in industries as diverse as optometry, tourism, computer networks and mental health blogging. And Neil’s contacts throughout the housing and automotive industries have ensured a steady flow of motoring journalism and property writing, for local and national media clients.

 

While it’s tempting to make predictions about the future, the last ten years has demonstrated how events can change a media company’s direction. G75 Media was named after a postcode in our home town of East Kilbride, and intended to serve local businesses, yet most of our copywriting clients are based in England. While our plans to offer services to ex-pats in the United Arab Emirates didn’t bear fruit, we regularly work with high-profile companies in America and Australia. And we certainly didn’t expect our white label copywriting services to be as sought after as they have been, with constant demand for technology blogs and brochure/website content.

 

Here’s to ten years of copywriting excellence. And if you’d like to join us for the next leg of our journey, why not get in touch to see how we can help with journalism or content production?

Driving up standards among freelance writers

In our last news story, we explained why two days are rarely the same for freelance writers. And to demonstrate this point, yesterday saw G75 Media’s founder Neil Cumins visiting the Brooklands motor racing venue in Surrey, for a rather special assignment…

Neil was invited to this iconic location by a leading motoring publication, to preview a forthcoming model from Mercedes-Benz. As a long-standing motoring journalist and former motor trade marketing executive, the invitation was too tempting to refuse. Neil’s findings will be published in a few weeks’ time, as part of a special feature by What Car? magazine.

It’s always nice to spend a day as a guest of the media, rather than as a host. However, the cycle of deadlines and assignments familiar to freelance writers has now resumed in earnest. As the Motoring page of this site outlines, G75 Media is ideally placed to produce dynamic motoring journalism – as well as helping other people to create their own automotive content.