A freelance writer is the sole proprietor of a small business, and treats his or her business accordingly. There are overhead costs, taxes, occasionally there are employees or contractors to be paid, but as a small business in Ontario there is help available.

Opening a business is always tricky. In Ontario, entrepreneurs and small business owners can turn to the federal, provincial and municipal governments for financial assistance. Governments at all levels understand that small businesses drive local economies, and do all they can to support these businesses, helping to ensure they have a strong foundation on which to build.

I had an interesting email exchange with a friend of mine yesterday. He was struggling with a client’s needs, and finally sent the client an email asking a very basic but very under-asked question:

How do you define the success of this project?

If you are a freelance writer, are you asking that question, and any necessary follow-ups, in order to fully understand your client’s vision?

If your client has you writing blog posts for their company, what are they hoping to achieve from your work?

• Increased sales
• Increased awareness
• Return readers

Many business people unfamiliar with the blogging world will check site statistics and think – “Hey, 1000 clicks, my writer is doing well!” or “Hmmm… only 100 hits. That writer isn’t worth the money.”

Better ways to look at it might be:

• Out of the 1000 hits, what percentage took the action you hoped for (a sale, a call, an email, a subscription)

If the writer delivered 100 clicks that resulted in 7 successes, or 1000 clicks that resulted in 4 successes, which is better?

Now, don’t you think it would be that much better if the writer had any clue as to how the client defined a successful website visit?

Writers are creative people, but we can’t read minds. If you are a freelance writer, you will have to pry the necessary information out of your clients, because they may not know that it is their responsibility to know these things. Many think that by just hiring a writer, the writer will know all the magical stuff about the client’s business.

Be sure to ask the question before signing the contract!

Beyond the client, you have to ask yourself how you define success. Is it by the amount of hours you have to work? The amount of money you make? The flexibility to meet other life demands? Once you know which questions to ask yourself, you’ll better know what to ask your freelance writing clients.

Being a busy freelancer is wonderful. The dream is to make a good living from your freelance writing business, and being busy is a badge of honor.

But are you making time for your own projects?

As long as you are freelancing, you’re still working for someone else. No, it’s not as bad as corporate whoredom in a cubicle cage, but the work you do isn’t for you.

Many freelancers have the goal of creating their own products – info products, e-books, books, etc – and reaching those goals means dedicating time to your own projects.

Recently I’ve spent an hour a day optimizing old, forgotten websites. Does this give me billable hours? No. However, in the long term these sites will pay off – they’re already generating 1/3 more ad income than they were a couple of months ago. Two of them have good affiliate potential, and two of them have room for info products like reports and e-books.

In addition, I have just completed an e-book I began some time ago for one of those sites, and it is just being polished now. Writing an e-book isn’t a sure thing for income, but any income you earn is off your own work for your own products. It’s something you are passionate about – not something you’re being paid to care about, like you do for clients.

Client work is the bread and butter for all of us freelancers, at least in the beginning. But there comes a point where we may want to transition over to working for ourselves, and at that moment, we need to make room in our lives to accomplish those goals.

An hour or two each day. Is that really going to set you behind on your work schedule? Where can adjustments be made?

• Use a DVR to record your favorite show while you work on your project
• Hire a sitter for a couple of hours once a week
• Get the family more involved in household chores and responsibilities
• Wean off low paying clients (especially those that pay little for time consuming work)
• Use a portable voice recorder to keep track of ideas and flesh out passages while you’re on the go

What methods can you incorporate into your freelance writing business in order to make more time for your own projects?

Related: The 14-day e-book challenge starts today! Are YOU ready?

Goals are not like New Year’s Resolutions, meant to be cast aside as soon as the hangover wears off. Goals come in many forms: Short term, mid term and long term.

I sat down with someone today who wanted to know my goals. Specifically she wanted to know the personal ones, but because I run my own business, the professional is personal. Everything is intertwined.

So I actually had to think about my goals. It’s been quite a while, due to various personal disasters, since I’ve had the time to revisit them. Because my personal life has so changed, my professional goals are a little different, too.

Originally my mid term goal was to earning as much as I did at my last corporate job, which was $45,000 per year. The long term goal was to beat that, and to earn at least $45k after taxes.

If you’d asked me a month ago, I would have said my short term goal was to earn enough for the next meal. Mid term would be the meal after that, and long term would be meals for the week.

Now I have a little breathing room, and I can set some realistic goals while still having enough ready cash to feed myself.

Short Term Goals (three months)

• Gain two backbone clients within the next 2 months
• Produce my own marketable work

Medium Term Goals (6-12 months)

• Finish my memoir, pitch it
• Create further marketable work
• Earn a set monthly minimum

Long Term Goals (18-24 months)

• Publish the memoir
• Have 5 backbone clients
• Be clearing $4000/mo (doesn’t seem like a lot, but it is to me right now!)
• Be earning predominantly through my own products

What are your freelance goals? More money? More freedom by XX date? If you’ve not yet made the leap to full-time freelancing, how are you structuring your transitional goals?

Sometimes a writer is facing an empty bank account, and just has to bite the bullet and start word whoring.

I’m slowly coming back after a long hiatus, and I need to rebuild my client base. Currently I have a few clients who I do small jobs for from time to time, but I’ve lost my backbone clients.

Backbone clients are the ones who provide the bulk of monthly income for any freelancer. They are the recurring contracts that help a freelance writer budget from month to month, knowing they will do at least XX number of hours at XX dollars per hour. Because I could not commit hours over the past few months, I have been unable to retain these backbones.

Time to start over.

In the meantime though, while hustling to score new regulars, I’m walking the dark alleyways of freelancing, using services like Elance, Textbroker and Demand Studios to drum up pay-per-piece jobs. They don’t pay much – sometimes mere pennies per word – but do enough of them and you’ll make some fast, generally easy money. Believe me, though, this is the difference between being a crackwhore or being a high class escort. My normal hourly rate is $25+, but with places like Textbroker I’m making maybe $13/hr. Yes, I feel dirty, but momma has bills to pay!

Another bit of word whoring is Examiner.com. This is an online news source which pays per pageview. I have been the National Republican Examiner for almost a year. I haven’t updated in ages, but I’m currently working on an article to get back into it. If you can post a relevant article 2-4 times per week based on news in your area, you can be an Examiner, too! Click here to find out more about becoming an Examiner (Tell ‘em Wendy Sullivan, Examiner 3339 sent you! Yes, I will be paid for successful referrals.).

The thing with freelancing is that even when the chips are down, there’s always some menial, McDonald’s-esque job you can do for fast cash.

Ugh. I fell ill last week. Really, really, hospital ill. And that sucks for me, but it also sucks for my clients. Being the sole proprietor of a freelance writing business means there’s no partner or secretary who can grab my address book while I’m being rushed away by ambulance, and give my clients a heads up.

So now I’m in a place where I’m feeling a little better, a little stronger, ready to work – and I have to apologize to my clients for dropping the ball. It’s awful. I feel terrible for letting people down – in some cases with time-sensitive work.

In addition to having to apologize, I need to implement a backup to make sure something like this can never happen again. A telephone tree, a Virtual Assistant – something to ensure that my clients will always have their work completed or at least regular updates as to my return.

I’m not sure how to implement this, but I’m certainly open to suggestions. Do I make a copy of my clients’ numbers for a friend? Do I get a MedicAlert bracelet made with “In case of unconsciousness, call clients!” written on it?

This is where I’d love to hear from other freealncers who work alone – whether it be in writing or some other medium. What do you have in place in case of emergency?

Sounds wonderful, doesn’t it? You make your own hours, set your goals, achieve them, and grab a martini to celebrate at the end of a short but satisfying day.

Or, you know, not.

The reality is that when you are entangled in an entrepreneurial life, there’s never a right time — for anything. There’s no right time, because there’s no time (and usually no money, either). For having kids, for buying a house, for getting a dog, for taking a vacation, for going out to dinner. Planning becomes difficult when income (if it exists at all) is insecure and savings are usually (to put it gently) unsubstantial. No matter how loudly private life calls out for investment — of time and of money — the business screams even louder in its demands for both. An entrepreneurial life becomes all about postponing — “When we break even…,” “When we get that contract…,” “When we hire that salesperson…” — ah, yes, that’s when our lives can move ahead.

When you are your own boss, you are the one in charge of figuring out where your next meal is coming from. There’s no handy drone in the HR department cutting your bi-weekly paycheck. You can’t make a budget in May and expect it to be valid in December, since half your clients will be scarce around Christmastime.

As a freelance writer, everything is feast or famine. There are months when I have too much to do that I end up outsourcing some of it. And other months where I am sitting on my hands, praying for work. Some clients pay on receipt of a job – others are Net 60. How do you plan around that?

Some people choose to put their lives on hold for a few years while they get set up. Others refuse to live like that. It really all depends on how thick your skin is and how much sleep you want to get.

As the author of the quoted article points out, some things can’t be put off. A woman can only put motherhood off for so long before that window closes forever. You can only put off saving for retirement for so long before you actually reach retirement age. Time doesn’t stop just because you’re trying to make your business profitable.

Many thanks to @missusP on Twitter for pointing this article out to me.

I once got a freelance writing job because I tweeted “What should I do? Get up and make coffee or stay in bed and masturbate?”

Sometimes just being yourself is enough to make people trust you.

I’m still shaking off the last vestiges of my 4th of July hangover, and I assume you are too.

From a declarative and constitutional standpoint, America declared her independence from the British Crown on July 4, 1776.

Have you declared yours yet?

From what, you ask? From the cube. From the boss you hate and the hours in traffic that kill your car and weaken your arteries as your blood pressure rises a little more every day. From the fast food lunches and the $7 lattes that get you through the mind-numbing day. From the undependable daycare and the dry cleaning bills.

Have you?

That decision was made for me last year, when I lost my legal job. Yes, I looked for another one, but I didn’t really put my heart into it. I just didn’t want to go back to the cube. I began writing for business, not just for pleasure. Built up a few regular clients. Expanded. And never looked back.

Oh, I don’t pretend that it happened overnight, that I went from miserable paralegal to successful freelancer writer. Bah! In fact, I still haven’t hit my regular income goal yet. But I’m sticking with it. I simply don’t ever want to have to depend on someone else for my income and financial well-being ever again. Being a professional freelance writer means I call the shots, I choose the work, I set the wages. I’m independent.

Will you be declaring your independence this year?

One of the ways I have declared my independence is to take the thing I love most – blogging – and turn it into a career. I strongly recommend Ali Hale’s Staff Blogging Course for anyone who wants to make their love of blogging into a career. At just $19, it’s a bargain, and the lessons learned could earn you thousands of times the cost of the course.

I had a strange and somewhat amusing situation with a potential client a few weeks ago I thought I would share with you.

I had applied for a website content gig, through Craigslist if I remember correctly. I heard back from the client later the same day, and she seemed really excited to get things going. We chatted back and forth before I sent her some samples to give her an idea of what I could do for her.

Her response to these samples? “They do nothing for me.”

Ouch. Nothing? Not even make you itchy or something?

At first I felt like I’d been slapped, but I figured I had a chance to save this business relationship if only I dug deeper to find out what the client was really looking for (her instructions had been somewhat vague at the outset). So I asked her some questions about exactly who she would be marketing to, and more importantly I asked how hard a sell she wanted. My samples had all be very soft sells – suggestions more than anything.

I never heard back from her again. I really did “nothing for her” I guess.

Instead of being upset, I found the whole thing rather funny. What a way to address someone in a business transaction – a dismissive comment with absolutely no critique as to why you didn’t like it. Clearly I wasn’t meant to work with her. She wasn’t – as Havi Brooks always talks about – one of my right people.

So I didn’t let the rejection get to me. I got right back on the horse (I love that analogy, because I once was actually thrown from a horse and got back on it. A proud moment indeed) and kept plugging away to find my right people.

The very next day after this absurd rejection, I got a call from a guy who not only liked my work, but liked my mouthiness. My style. He was one of my right people, and I had applied to him on the same day as I had applied to Little Miss Not That Into You. I’ve been working with him ever since, and we’re getting along swimmingly.

Look, I hate rejection as much as the next person. I’d make a shitty telemarketer, because I’d probably cry all day. But I believe in myself, my talent and my product. I know someone else out there will, too. It just might take a little hunting is all.

I strongly suggest that anyone who wants to break into freelance writing or blogging for a living tries Ali Hale’s Staff Blogging Course. Do a read-through of the 6 modules, then go back and put the lessons into practice. I did, and have since scored TWO THREE blogging jobs in the last three weeks. Cost of the course: $19. Income of jobs I’ve scored: $125/wk. $180/wk.