Sara Gates

#general - January 28, 2025 at 11:50 PM

That rule of thumb is exactly what I was looking for. Thanks Melissa!

#general - January 28, 2025 at 11:19 PM

What a generous offer! I have a general question as a freelancer — when do you see becoming an S-Corp and paying yourself a salary as advantageous compared to being a sole proprietor LLC? I’ve had this question pinging around in the back of my mind but haven’t brought it up with an actual accountant yet.

#local-portland - January 27, 2025 at 05:30 PM

@Alexa Johnson Hey there! Yep, made a big move last fall. I don’t know about season tickets — with a 2-year-old, I’m not THAT ambitious — but I will absolutely be attending at least one performance! And the Britt Festival in Jacksonville is doing a screening of Jurassic Park with a live orchestra, so, yes to that as well 😜

#local-portland - January 23, 2025 at 07:53 PM

I was Portland-based for the last many many years, but as of September moved down to Southern Oregon (Eagle Point specifically, outside the Medford/Ashland area.)

#local-portland - January 21, 2025 at 06:19 PM

Woot woot to my fellow Oregonians!

#general - December 05, 2024 at 05:00 PM

Happens to me all the time here, came to share the solve but @Rachel beat me to it 🙂

#freelance-talk - November 29, 2024 at 10:35 PM

I usually charge 25% for rush fees, but I know some folks charge up to 50%. This sounds like a scenario where a rush fee would be reasonable to ask for.

#CJE3XC0H3-announcements - November 26, 2024 at 07:20 PM

@Eric Doty (Superpath) The “Apply for this position” link on that Tremendous freelance position has been going to a 404 page all week — I just assumed it was already filled, but since you’re sharing it here, just giving a heads up that it’s a dead end 😉

#freelance-gigs - November 22, 2024 at 12:02 AM

@Chloe Thompson Sounds like a fun project! Just sent you an email.

#general - June 18, 2024 at 03:56 PM

I’ve never been interested in playing this game. I have set rates for standard deliverables (like 1000-word blog posts) and develop custom estimates for more complex projects like white papers or ebooks. I do have one recurring client who will give me their budget or range for one-off projects, but it’s always in line with my own rates since they’re used to and value working with me (i.e., they aren’t going to lowball me). I’m sure I might have underpriced a project here or there since I didn’t find out what their ceiling was, but overall, this process works for me. I have a successful business where I make a great living, lots of returning clients, lots of referrals, and don’t have to stress about this standoff game.

#freelance-talk - June 05, 2024 at 09:42 PM

My go-to approach when I can’t find any motivation is this framework @Jess Cook shared on LinkedIn a few weeks ago — I’ve used something similar in the past but I reallllly like the way she laid it out. https://www.linkedin.com/posts/jesscook-contentmarketing_semrushpartner-activity-7196880483266248706-v3oi?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop

#general - May 29, 2024 at 06:44 PM

I work almost exclusively with B2B SaaS so it’s LinkedIn for me. Totally depends on where your audience spends time (mine is also probably on X but I’ve chosen to focus on one channel).

#general - May 20, 2024 at 10:18 PM

Nothing nearly as formal as a certification/training, but still lots of good insights in these.

#general - May 20, 2024 at 10:17 PM

I’ve been covering this for a few clients lately, and some of the favorite resources I’ve come across include: Kevin Indig’s writing, this CMI LinkedIn Live with Mike King & Andy Crestodina, Lily Ray’s conference talk, lots of stuff from Wil Reynolds/SEER Interactive. My article’s here if you want to read some summaries/find even more links to other folks’ great work!

#general - May 17, 2024 at 06:38 PM

I really enjoy Foundation’s teardowns — lots of real-life wisdom —and Emma Stratton’s Punchy newsletter’s highly actionable messaging tips.

#freelance-talk - May 17, 2024 at 03:30 PM

Exactly this — ask permission. This covers your ethical bases and makes sure you can get the right title, website/portfolio to link to, etc. I used this approach in an article recently and the lovely @Kai Davis even gave me some extra context to include. (Here’s the article, which has a mix of LinkedIn and Slack quotes like you mention: https://webflow.com/blog/ai-and-marketing)

#general - May 15, 2024 at 05:28 PM

@Erin Balsa did a course on this a few years ago!

#general - May 14, 2024 at 08:00 PM

I think it’s still way too early to tell what’s actually going to happen with SGE. But if these developments push marketers and content creators to focus on building direct relationships with readers and show up on other channels beyond SEO, it will probably be a good thing for their businesses. (I did a fairly deep dive on this recently for Webflow’s blog and my key takeaway was “The truth is, it’s not possible to future-proof your SEO. No schema markup or keyword strategy is eternal. New platforms and channels will continue to emerge, and consumer preferences will keep evolving right with them.
But for marketing and brand teams, the bottom line doesn’t change: show up where your audience spends time, with content they find valuable and relevant.“)

#local-portland - May 02, 2024 at 09:12 PM

@Kelly Schwarze Thanks for sharing! I always forget it’s First Thursday when First Thursday happens 😛 Such a great event. I probably won’t make it myself tonight, but have a blast!

#general - May 02, 2024 at 09:11 PM

I’ve done this kind of work several times for different individuals/orgs, and found that it’s one of the few occasions where I believe a (high) hourly rate works best. You can end up spending a LOT of time on project management/followup/scheduling meetings/rescheduling meetings/chasing down feedback when working directly with busy execs. Ideally, you can get to a project fee after the initial strategy and setup for regular post writing or editing, but IMHO it’s very easy to underestimate the time this work will take starting out.

#general - May 01, 2024 at 04:54 PM

@Alyson I’ve had a similar experience in the vacation rental industry — where professional short-term rental property managers are the target audience for my clients, but there just aren’t enough of them searching for keywords to generate any useful data from typical SEO research tools. But this audience lives and breathes in Facebook groups and conferences, so I like to look for common questions in communities or popular conference talks to get ideas for blog topics and social posts. Then, I conduct searches for the related terms to see what kinds of suggested search queries or zero-click content pops up. Whatever those corresponding venues are for your audience, you can use the same approach. You won’t have the search volume data upfront, but if you publish good content and rank for those long-tailed niche keywords, you should see valuable traffic from your ICP come to the site after the fact.

#general - April 24, 2024 at 08:38 PM

I used Frontify in a prior in-house role, and I think you’re right that it’s overpowered for your team size. Just to validate that thinking!

#freelance-talk - April 22, 2024 at 03:53 PM

I worked with an agency owner who was creating content for content marketers, and one of his UVPs was “We make content marketers sound smart in meetings”. I loved that one!

#intros - April 15, 2024 at 04:20 PM

Hey Joey! Welcome. Fellow freelancer here with very similar niches — let’s keep in touch!

#general - April 12, 2024 at 07:48 PM

To me, it sounds like you’ve wasted enough time and energy on this prospect, and they’re not a good fit. If they’re demanding lower prices and free work, they don’t value content. I’d politely end the conversation and move on.

#general - April 11, 2024 at 07:01 PM

Yup, cross between UX and IA from my experience. It’s used in that realm but not outside (like I would say most content marketers wouldn’t be super familiar with the term “content designer”)

#general - April 10, 2024 at 10:51 PM

Ercule (agency), Raisin Bread from MarketerHire

#general - April 10, 2024 at 10:50 PM

100%

#freelance-talk - April 04, 2024 at 03:28 PM

Totally common and acceptable unless you have some kind of provision in your contract. Most of mine say that the content I produce is owned completely by the company, and it’s theirs to use however they like. This is why it’s always best practice to download a PDF of your articles instead of relying on live links. If you didn’t do that before they changed them up, you might be able to use the Wayback Machine to find the older versions with your byline: https://archive.org/

#freelance-talk - March 27, 2024 at 07:59 PM

Agreed. I’d leave on good terms with an “I’ve really enjoyed working with you, so reach out if your plans change in the future” and connect with all your contacts there in LinkedIn so you can be easy to reach if/when they move to other orgs that may have freelance budget.

#CJE3XC0H3-announcements - March 26, 2024 at 04:56 PM

One of the rare occasions I miss having a 9-5 job and a 9-5 boss is when I want someone to pay for that expensive conference ticket for me 😅 #freelanceproblems

#freelance-gigs - March 25, 2024 at 04:15 PM

I have a friend/former coworker who’s an illustrator and has also self-published his own children’s book. He’s His style is better-suited to the samoyed, but check out his Instagram if you’re curious! https://www.instagram.com/dacostadraws (He’s also just a great human to work with.)

#local-portland - February 23, 2024 at 10:37 PM

Awesome!

#local-portland - February 23, 2024 at 10:37 PM

@Nick Nielsen Sorry I missed this question for a while — I actually got into freelancing unintentionally. I’d spent 8 years in-house at one company, then finally made the move to a B2B SaaS brand — only to get laid off six months later, in March 2020. I felt a lot of whiplash after such a fast change, so I decided to start freelancing while I got my feet under me and figured out what I wanted to do next. It’s somehow been four years already, and once I got my business running, I’ve never looked back. I love the flexibility, the work-life balance, and the income potential compared to FT roles. Especially now that I have a young daughter. But I’ve been fortunate to have a lot of good clients over the years, so I haven’t had quite as much feast-or-famine times as some freelancers have dealt with, especially over the last year.

#local-portland - February 23, 2024 at 09:27 PM

Congrats on the new role @Brit McGinnis (editing, research)! What lucky company are you joining?

#freelance-talk - February 15, 2024 at 05:06 PM

I’ve been in this situation too, and agree that Erik’s approach is a great path forward. It’s an awkward place to be as a writer but a great opportunity to sharpen your strategy/SEO skills and improve your own service offerings going forward.

#general - February 13, 2024 at 08:39 PM

Hey pals — looking for insights on where channel marketers hang out and share or read content! Background: I’m a freelance writer, and one of my regular clients is adding enterprise channel marketers (ideally at large tech manufacturers, i.e. Cisco/HP) to their buyer personas this year. I’m not as familiar with channel marketing as their typical demand gen audience, and want to do some supplementary research to understand this audience’s pain points and lingo. If anyone has favorite channel marketing-specific publications, LinkedIn content creators, other communities, etc., please share! TIA.

#general - February 12, 2024 at 09:23 PM

Darren, are you guys B2B? If so, think about the likelihood that a large percentage of your unengaged contacts have moved to a new company and no longer check that email address — that’s potentially really damaging to your sender reputation and likelihood that your messages are going to sent to spam. There are some good insights in this article, and it even predates a lot of the recent updates to deliverability requirements (which are much stricter than when this article was published). https://blog.kickbox.com/b2b-deliverability-challenges/

#general - February 10, 2024 at 05:58 PM

Yes, good caveat! I’m totally comfortable signing agreements about not recruiting away clients or employees from agencies I work with.

#general - February 09, 2024 at 10:25 PM

I’m a freelance writer, and I despise non-competes. When I see non-competes come up in my client’s standard contracts, I ask them to a) remove them; or b) get VERY specific about who their competitors are that they’d like me not to work for concurrently. I work primarily with martech and data engineering companies, and limiting my potential clients in a particular niche means limiting my income. I’ve had these conversations a handful of times, and have never had a client insist on keeping a non-compete once I ask them to remove it.

#general - February 07, 2024 at 10:08 PM

I don’t have a specific prompt for you, but I’ve found ChatGPT to be incredibly helpful at generating examples and use case scenarios. My two audience niches as a freelancer are marketers and data scientists/engineers. For my SaaS clients, I can come up with marketing use cases off the top of my head all day long, but data engineering isn’t my personal background. So I find ChatGPT helpful to develop relevant use cases. For example, recently, I was working on an article about how machine learning projects go wrong because of inaccurate problem framing, I was able to ask ChatGPT for specific examples of what that looks like across common ML applications, like personalized recommendations or fraud detection. In the case of the personalized recommendations from a streaming service, ChatGPT supplied “Optimizing for immediate clicks on recommendations without considering long-term engagement or content diversity might lead to a narrow set of recommendations, potentially reducing user satisfaction and long-term platform engagement.” That’s a precise mistake that I wouldn’t have necessarily thought of off the top of my head, but was useful to add to my article — without having to ask my client for additional input. (BUT, I totally rewrote the actual language to fit my client’s overall voice and tone. For me, ChatGPT is an ideation partner, not a writing assistant.)

#local-portland - January 31, 2024 at 07:42 PM

I’m a freelance content writer, mostly for B2B SaaS firms, mostly in the mar-tech and data space. But I was an in-house marketer for about a decade prior to going solo, at a vacation rental company (Vacasa) and a customer experience software company (AskNicely), both based in Portland. Way back when I was an editorial intern at Portland Monthly, and then freelanced for them occasionally, so I have some distant background with media Nick! 😉 These days, I’m trying to work as efficiently as possible because I have a toddler and want to spend as much time with her as I can before she grows up and doesn’t want anything to do with me.

#local-portland - January 30, 2024 at 10:12 PM

Hey friends! I’m a freelance writer based here in Portland — appreciate you breathing a little life back into this channel 🙂

#freelance-talk - January 24, 2024 at 04:56 PM

When I’m working with agencies, it’s 50/50 — sometimes they have a budget, give it to me, and ask if it’s acceptable. Sometimes they want me to quote a rate. For direct clients, I usually provide my rates for straightforward, repeatable content projects like blogs. When we’re talking about a big campaign asset like a whitepaper or ebook, I give a ballpark range, and then refine it based on the specific asks (number of SME interviews, rounds of revision, level of involvement with the design team, etc.). I get the principle of not being the first person to say a number in a negotiation, but in my experience of working with dozens of B2B companies, that’s just not the way it works.

#freelance-talk - January 24, 2024 at 04:53 PM

Nope

#freelance-talk - January 16, 2024 at 06:15 PM

I avoid hourly rates when possible, but when I do take on that work, my rate is now $125-150/hour. This usually is for a mix of content writing and strategic consulting, though — not solely writing for blog posts. I have had both agencies and direct clients accept my rates without an eyebrow raised, and I’ve had some say that I’m too expensive. So my advice is stick with your rates and find the clients who are the right fit for your expertise.

#general - December 20, 2023 at 06:29 PM

Was the webinar sponsored by WordPress 😛

#general - December 14, 2023 at 05:01 AM

Curious if anyone has favorite examples of trendjacking for B2B content — or any cringe-inducing, “for the love of Barbie, please don’t do this” examples of what NOT to do 🤪

#freelance-talk - December 14, 2023 at 04:58 AM

That is invasive and yucky. Sorry you had to get those heebie-jeebies while you’re just trying to do your job. I do think a lot of dudes do not get how frequently women are harassed online, and they don’t understand how “innocent” gestures can come across as creepy AF and trigger a lot of negative emotions. Hopefully your conversation here is an eye-opener for somebody and you make the internet just a little bit better.

#freelance-talk - November 17, 2023 at 08:59 PM

I like Freshbooks because the times captured can be automatically populated onto invoices. But it’s not free.