Tag Archives: creative writing

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.