June 7th, 2009 §
Freelancers are suffering a recession-linked double-whammy – not only are clients and customers cutting budgets, but the newly unemployed are swelling the ranks of the self-employed, and driving fees downward.
This New York Time article (found via the Copywriter Maven) looks at the recession’s effect on the self-employed (and under-employed), and touches on an often-overlooked emotional side-effect (we’ll get to that later). First, the numbers:
Recession Takes a Toll on Freelance Livelihoods – NYTimes.com
The Bureau of Labor Statistics tracks the number of self-employed workers who say they are working “part time for economic reasons,” which means that they work fewer than 35 hours a week because they can’t line up more employment. In March 2008, 622,000 self-employed workers across the country put themselves in this category. A year later, the number had almost doubled, to nearly 1.1 million. “What you can see in this data spells real trouble for these people,” says Susan Houseman, a senior economist for the Upjohn Institute, a nonprofit research center.
OK, the numbers are terrible, but they only tell a piece of the story. There’s an emotional toll that doesn’t get a column in the unemployment statistics:
That trouble is about not paying bills. It’s also about the vertigo of falling out of the middle class. “We talk about it as middle-class poverty,” said Sara Horowitz, founder and executive director of the Freelancers Union, which has 70,000 members in New York City. “Your frame of reference, when you think of yourself as middle class, doesn’t include being scared about making ends meet, realizing that welfare and food stamps are your only option. Psychologically, that shift is devastating.”
Interestingly, the researcher also noted the different responses between those who lost jobs and freelancers who lost clients – an observation which will resonate with many freelancers:
Venkatesh sees a difference in how freelancers talk about the recession compared with workers who have been laid off. “They’re more alone, and they can’t help but feel like they did something wrong because they’re losing relationships with individual clients,” he says. “They think of themselves as ministering to their clients, so they also feel guilty about no longer helping them.”
It’s natural to develop relationships with regular clients – especially if you’re working hard, getting good feedback, and functioning as part of the team.
It’s easy to forget it’s a business relationship.
And when the client stops calling, it’s just as easy to blame yourself.
Don’t do it.
Sure – take a hard look at your business with an eye to making yourself more relevant. Are you offering the right services in a fast-changing marketing landscape?
But never forget this is business – and even the best agencies lose accounts, often for reasons far outside their control.
Add free-falling, recessionary marketing budgets into the mix, and suddenly, a certain amount of client loss can only be expected.
Do what you can to contain the damage. Beef up your service offerings. But don’t personalize the loss. Things happen, and getting depressed about it simply limits your ability to dust yourself off and find a new client – or develop a new offering.
Keep writing, Tom Chandler.
freelancing, freelancer, writing, recession, losing clients
February 12th, 2009 §
Ad agencies want to bill every minute of employee time to their clients, so they demand daily timesheets – which require each project have a unique tracking ID.
While I don’t track my time with such precision (any more), I have adapted my last ad agency’s job tracking system to my freelance practice, and while I’ve tried other methods over the years, I keep coming back to this simple, elegant system.
At the start of every year, I simply print a simple gridded spreadsheet with job numbers (each line increments by 1), and when I begin a new project, I pick up the clipboard/binder near my desk and assign that job the next number on the list (along with a start date).
The simple job tracking grid: fast, easy, and offline.
It couldn’t be simpler.
The Benefits?
Suddenly, each job comes equipped with its own unique job number, so I can simply note that number on everything associated with that job (copy files, invoices, passthrough costs, travel expenses, etc).
And because my numbering system begins with the year (“I started this year’s sheet with “2009100″ – the next job assigned will be “2009101″), I can tell at a glance which jobs have been invoiced (because yes, I do forget), which are finished, and even if a suspended job needs a tickler sent to a client.
More importantly, you’ll have a paper index of all your jobs – one that’s easy to scan, so you can tell at a glance which jobs are lagging, and which of your jobs haven’t been invoiced (yes, I have forgotten to invoice jobs in the past).
Every freelance writer develops an internal process for handling the business – and I’m sure there’s a technology-enhanced method for handling this one (if I wrote a lot of editorial, I’d probably integrate this into one of the PC or online submission tracking systems).
Still, simple offers a quality all its own (namely, it’s sustainable over the long run), and it’s hard to argue with what works, no matter how low-tech.
Click here to download the basic job-tracking spreadsheet in Excel format (.xls). Modify it to fit your process, and let us know how it works.
Keep writing, Tom Chandler.
November 15th, 2007 §
(photo courtesy Chris C)
If you needed a small shove to move you out of the corporate world and into freelance copywriting, perhaps this is it. From the New York Times:
AT&T plans to introduce a nationwide program today that gives owners of small- and medium-size businesses some of the same tools big security companies offer for monitoring employees, customers and operations from remote locations.
Under AT&Ts Remote Monitor program, a business owner could install adjustable cameras, door sensors and other gadgets at up to five different company locations across the country…
…Aside from helping to verify insurance claims, the system can detect break-ins, alert an owner if a boiler breaks down and monitor employees who “are just sitting around on the clock not doing what they’re supposed to be doing,” Mr. Roby said.
Suddenly, the lack of a view from my downstairs office seems like a lot less of a problem.
Why We Freelance
Every freelancer I know can point to a single, memorable moment when joining the ranks of the self-employed suddenly made perfect sense.
Like most, my “moment” was the result of a string of them; I was writing for an ad agency where promises to employees were routinely not kept. One day, one of my own Account Execs ripped me a new one in front of a client — for her screwup.
In the ad agency biz, it’s best to avoid fistfights with your own people in front of the client, so I simply turned on my heel and walked out.
After all, age doesn’t necessarily bring wisdom, but it does provide a useful backlog of experience. For me, this was one “experience” too many. I started packing my office later that day.
What was your bright, shining moment of clarity? Undergrounders, the floor is yours.
Keep writing, Tom Chandler.
(via Nicholas Carr’s excellent Rough Type blog)