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26 Feb 10 Freelance Writing: How Many clients You Should Keep?


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A better title would have been: “Freelance writing: how many clients you should keep at one time?”, but I didn’t want to make the title run for miles.

Whatever! The answer is all the same, which is: as many as you can handle. Do not chew more than you can digest. It will give you an upset stomach.

What’s the benchmark?

There is no external benchmark; the benchmark is the quality of work you produce. The moment your quality starts deteriorating you should put a stop sign outside your home office. You would not like to risk producing second-rate content, articles, or whatever it is that you write for your clients.

Then…

How many should I keep?

I cannot say for sure how many you should keep, but I can tell you about how many I keep and how you can decide how many you should keep. Generally, I keep 2-3 fulltime clients—depending upon the volume of work given— and work 1-2 one-off projects that do not have too tight deadline.

How you can decide how many?

How much you want: Say what you may, but you are doing freelance writing to pay your bills, be it your fulltime venture or part-time juggle. Therefore, you need to keep in mind your monetary target for a month.

How many hours can you devote: You also need to find out how many hours in week you can put aside for your freelance writing job.

How many articles can you produce in an hour: I understand this sound like absurd, but bear with me because I know people who can produce two articles of 500 words in one hour. Initially, you will not be able to write more than 40-50% of an article in an hour, but soon you will improve.

Do the math

Use the number you got from the above and calculate to find how many articles you need to write in a month to meet your monthly monetary target. The number you will thus get is the amount of work you need per month. If one client can fulfill this requirement then you do not need a second client—which is unlikely.

So, how many clients do you need at a time to fulfill your goal? Post the number you get after doing the math. I am eagerly waiting to hear from you.

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Tags: Benchmark, Content Articles, Find Articles, , , Math, , Rate Content, Stop Sign, , , Upset Stomach, Writing Articles,

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