A Hard Decision

One of the hardest aspects of being a freelancer is knowing when to walk away from the work. This is particularly true when you haven't got any backup.

After a month at LoveToKnow, I've decided to leave. When I first looked into them I was put off by the pay ($15 for a 650-word article), but Deborah Ng talked them up in her blog so I decided to give them a try. They seem like a good crowd and Betsy Gallup was a great editor. I learned a lot from her and that was one reason I wanted to stay.

But it's $15/article.

I have a mortgage to pay. I knew that the secret to success in that arena was learning to pop the articles out quickly enough to earn a reasonable amount per hour. I managed to get my time down to an hour and a half per article. That's $10/hour which is too low to pay my bills, and yet my quality was really starting to suffer. It was the worst of both worlds.

After agonizing about it over the weekend, I walked away today. I let Betsy know I'd finish out my articles for the month but then I'm done. It was steady work, but if all I want is steady I can go flip burgers.

I want to pursue other article opportunities, probably in the print media rather than the web. I want to follow up on that grant writing opportunity. I talked with my cousin over the weekend who writes grants and she says NIH grants are a real specialty and some writers do nothing but. I should also push the technical writing more. I need to revise the front page of my website because it's, well, crap. I tried too hard to do the marketing thing and it sounds just awful.

I've probably said this before, but it bears repeating: a freelancer who forgets about career development is dead. It is important in any job, but absolutely critical for the self-employed. It is too easy to get stuck in a safe job and never make what you are worth. I know this was the right decision, but it's still a tough step to take.