North Americans read thousands of articles from various online sources every single day which means that someone has to keep that content flowing. Owed to the force of freelance writers, many of whom earn a good living keeping the rest of us entertained and informed, Miranda Marquit is a six-figure freelance writer whose work has appeared in Forbes, The Huffington Post, and the U.S. News and World Report. And she’s no stranger to the Maple Money Show. Miranda joins me this week to talk about her career and she has plenty advice for anyone willing to make money as a freelance writer.

Welcome to the Maple Money Show, the podcast that helps Canadians improve their personal finances to create lasting financial freedom. Do you prefer to invest in companies are socially responsible? If so, our sponsor, Wealthsimple, will help you build a portfolio that focuses on low-carbon, clean tech, human rights and the environment. Get started with socially responsible investing by visiting maplemoney.com/wealthsimple. Now let’s chat with Miranda…

Tom: Hi, Miranda, welcome back to the Maple Money Show.

Miranda: Hey, thanks for having me on again.

Tom: The last time you were on we were talking about outsourcing things so you’re able to do more of your freelance business and spend time with your kid. But this time I wanted to have you back on to actually talk about the freelancing side. We’ve done a few episodes where we’ve talked about different side hustles. We had Ashley on talking about how you can get in to jobs as editors and we had Bobby Hoyt on to talk about Facebook ads. So we’ve had various people talking about different ways you can make money online but I think the most traditional way, at least in our world, is as a freelance writer.

Miranda: Yeah, definitely.

Tom: Can you just start from the beginning and tell us how this started for you?

Miranda: I have a journalism degree. You don’t need one to get started as a freelance writer. It’s not necessary. But I do have one. I actually started by wanting to be a freelancer in general and going online to do it just seemed like the easiest way to find jobs. Online is great because you reach people all over the world. Back in the day, freelance used to be where you would go to your local newspaper or submit pitches to print magazines, that sort of thing. You could go to your local newspaper or go to a regional newspaper and say, “Hey, I want to be a stringer,” then you would do a little bit of freelance reporting for them when they needed it. Or you could submit pitches to glossy print magazines and if they accepted, then you’d write for them. It was different then. Now, as a freelance writer online, you have the option to do a lot of other types of stuff; provide content for websites, blogs, do email newsletters. There are freelancers that do email newsletters for people. You might do white papers, reports on surveys. There is a whole lot of stuff you can do as a freelancer online that maybe you didn’t really realize was possible before. And it’s just so much easier to connect. I live in Idaho but I don’t have any clients in Idaho. All of my clients are across the country and in other countries. So it’s a great way to connect as well because then you have a wider client base. I find that once you get to a certain point you do less pitching and less chasing down of jobs. You have more regular gigs. That’s the other nice thing about the internet is that you always need content. You’re not writing for a magazine that comes out once a month because the blog needs content every day. I have several clients who I write an article a week for. That’s what I do, I write one article a week. They have other freelancers that are also writing an article a week. It’s just a little bit easier online to find that regular work and also connect with people that maybe you wouldn’t have regularly thought about.

Tom: You mentioned you had the option of writing for newspapers and such back in the day. Back then did you need a journalism degree diploma?

Miranda: I have a Masters degree. It’s on my wall.

Tom: And I have my PLUTUS trophies.

Miranda: Those who can’t see the video, I’ve got a degree on my wall. It’s from Syracuse. It helps a lot if you’re going to write for a newspaper to have some sort of degree. It didn’t necessary have to be in journalism but it helps to have a communications degree or an English degree. You dodn’t need one. Good writing is good writing but it helps in terms of getting your foot in the door. Today, if you can write decently, people care less about your degree and more about what you’ve written. And really in the old days, too, once you had enough clips, once you had put together a portfolio and you could send people samples of your work, the degree mattered less and less and less. It was really more about getting your foot in the door. But today anybody who can write well doesn’t need a degree. You just need to prove it. You can start your own blog and prove you can write well then send people to that.

Tom: And like everything online, they seem to drop these barriers to entry. You don’t have to go through traditional routes to become a journalist and try to get a job with the local paper. There is no barrier to entry. I’ve hired staff writers at Maple Money Show. We’ve done it at Get Rich Slowly and I’ve never once looked at a traditional resume. I couldn’t tell you if they had any Masters degree or not.

Miranda: Exactly. And that’s the beauty of it, right?

Tom: Yeah, for sure. But you didn’t start off all that glamorously, right? There was a real hustle of low-paying jobs to really start getting your foot in the door.

Miranda: Yes, if you’ve decided you’re going to be a “jobbing” writer which is somebody who writes as a job to make money, then making money is the goal. You’re not writing high-minded articles about politics and deep philosophical issues and getting paid for it. When I started (in the dawn of the internet, almost 15 years ago) a lot of people were just getting new content online. So what I did a lot of was writing online catalog description for bamboo flooring, Venetian blinds and things like that. It was not glamorous at all but it paid the bills. There are plenty of websites where if you need to get started and get some money in your pocket, you can do that work while you’re looking for other stuff. I’m happy that I’m not still writing about bamboo flooring. I like what I write about now so much better. But basically, there was no job that I would not take because my child needed to be fed and the rent needed to be paid. And if you’re willing to become an all-purpose, utilitarian writer, it can really help out.

Tom: One thing I don’t think I know is, when you started out were you working a traditional job or were you a stay-at-home mom? What was your situation then?

Miranda: When I entered journalism school to get my Masters degree, I quit my job as an ad rep at a newspaper and I’ve never had a real job since. So that’s nice. I had just finished my degree. My husband at the time was working on his PHD so I immediately started freelancing so I could stay home with our son and still support my husband while he went through school.

Tom: When we had Ashley on last week, one of the things we talked about was this idea that a blog can help you find other work. You did it backwards.

Miranda: I did it so incredibly backward. Everything I did was wrong.

Tom: I remember talking you into getting a blog but you were already a very established writer. Looking back at it, do you think that would have helped? How did you get that first few jobs without any kind of presence at all?

Miranda: What happened was I was writing for Content Farm and somebody who was constantly looking at Content Farm seeing who was posting regularly and what kind of work they were doing saw my stuff and messaged me through the website’s messaging system. She said, “Hey, I noticed you post regularly and that your stuff is good.” This was a Content Farm where one of the articles was about the “Grand Canyon in Colorado.” For my U.S. audience, I’ll let that sink in. But for the Canadians, the Grand Canyon is in Arizona, not Colorado. Anyway, she messaged me saying my stuff was higher quality, better fact-based and she liked the idea I wrote very regularly and wanted me to write for a blog. Blogging was new back then. People had their live journals and all but blogging as a marketing tool was very new. She was with a company that was just placing content for different companies that wanted a blog but didn’t have the time to deal with it themselves. I thought to myself, “Well, do I want to keep writing these catalog descriptions and slaving away on this Content Farm? Or do I want to learn about retirement and Forex trading and write for these blogs?” So I chose to learn about retirement and Forex trading and write for those blogs. One of those corporate blogs happened to be reasonably well known as far as businesses go. With a little bit of social promotion (as it existed back then) it led to the website AllBusiness coming to me saying, “Hey, we’ve got this business website but don’t have any personal finance content and we’d like personal finance content aimed at business owners.” It just sort of went from there. It helped me build a portfolio. Afterward, when I was applying for gigs I could point to these other things. It was kind of a happy accident. Having a blog to showcase something like that would have been good. In 2007, I did start a personal blog, but I mostly wrote about politics and religion. I saw a gig for a Catholic website and actually used some of the stuff from that blog (even though it wasn’t about Catholicism) to show this Catholic website that I could write about religion. And they actually hired me to do two or three pieces for them. But if I had known I was going to be getting into money, yes, I think a blog could have been good. I also had my little author page on AllBusiness. And I also had a blog I was being paid to do when it was B5 Media… This is all stuff nobody has heard of because it doesn’t exist anymore. But it wasn’t stuff that I owned and it wasn’t stuff I could take with me. A lot of the stuff I wrote way back then has disappeared. Not that it matters. I wouldn’t link to it now anyway because I’m a much better writer.

Tom: One thing I find interesting in what you just said there was that your niche found you; you didn’t find it. You didn’t start out knowing you liked personal finance and wanted to write about it. When you fell into this as a writing job, you needed to do some research because I assume you weren’t a personal finance expert when you were handed your first assignment?

Miranda: Exactly. I had to start researching. The main one was about retirement so I was writing for this company that managed people’s retirement funds and realized I didn’t know anything. I was writing about science at the time for fiz.org, and another physics website. I had also done some stuff for Discover Magazine. I just assumed I was going to be a science writer so when they approached me, I told them I didn’t know anything about money. But they said, “Well, science and money—it’s all just math,” so I was very fortunate I was able to do that because today it really does help to have a niche you can focus on and build some portfolio clips from that you can move forward with. Back in the day it really was the wild, wild, West. It was like, “Anybody who can write—for the love of heaven, please provide me with some content.” Today, it’s a little more demanding—a little bit harder to break in. It’s easier than breaking into a lot of other things. But at the same time, it requires a little more thoughtfulness. I didn’t think of any of this stuff. I thought of nothing. I didn’t treat it as a business. I didn’t know what I was doing. I just wanted a way to pay the rent that month. That was pretty much it. If I were starting today, I would take much more of a thoughtful approach.

Tom: If someone wants to get into this, how do they start? Do they set up a blog? Do they go on job boards? How does this work when you’re looking for client number one to get started as a freelance writer?

Miranda: You start by figuring out if you want to do utilitarian stuff like just general knowledge or whether you want a niche. The nice thing about a niche is that you can usually charge a little more and you’re doing a little more tailored writing. If you’re going to be more of a utilitarian writer, you’re always going to have work but it’s probably not going to be very high paying. If you want to just be a utilitarian writer there are lots of places like Text Broker, Writer Access and Content Runner where you can get low paying to mediocre paying gigs and just start making some money. It’s relatively easy to do so but you’re not going to be building a specific portfolio. You’re not going to be having stuff that’s going to be out there online. Yes, having a blog is definitely good. If you’re thinking of a niche, you definitely want to focus your blog on whatever that niche is. If you want to write about money, start a personal finance blog, investing blogger or entrepreneurship blog. If you want to write about pets, start a pet blog. Interestingly enough, there’s a fairly solid demand for pet writing. If you want to write about science, start a science blog. Look at what you’re interested in, what makes sense for you and start writing. Sport is another big area as well as entertainment. My gosh, you read some of those entertainment blogs and think, “That’s easy. Why am I just sitting here doing this when I could be doing that?”

Tom: Things like entertainment and sports has a constant need for content. It’s literally that day’s news when it’s about celebrities and such. It’s something that’s constantly changing.

Miranda: Whatever niche you’re kind of interest in, start a blog that covers that. You can pick a couple of sub-topics or secondary niches. Maybe you make your blog mostly about fashion but you also have like a little sub-topic there that’s maybe about some sort of lifestyle thing. Maybe you have some other lifestyle stuff in there like cooking tips or whatever. Maybe you just make a lifestyle blog about fashion, cooking, parenting, where you have those three main things on your lifestyle blog. Or maybe you want to do travel so you can start a travel blog. It helps to do that because then you can say, “Okay, I have these different articles. Now I’m looking at the job boards.” Pro Bloggers is a great one to look at. You hire people off of Pro Blogger, right?

Tom: Yes, I’ve hired writers in the past.

Miranda: So look at Pro Blogger and you’ll find something in your niche where you have examples of that writing over on you blog that you can send people to. That’s a really good way to establish yourself and get practice writing about things. It also helps to read a lot of the things you want to write about so that you can see how it’s approached.

Tom: Even if you don’t have your own blog or you’re just writing about general things, at least have a website. I’ve had these submissions from the Pro Blogger job board where it’s pretty much a Gmail address with very little information. Maybe there was some sort of attached Word doc that actually did have a post in it. But still, there is no way to really connect it to them to make sure it was theirs. So just have a website even if it isn’t a blog. Like you said, have a bit of a bio and a contact page on there just so you have some presence online. That really is your online business card nowadays.

Miranda: It really is. And even if you don’t have a blog on your own site, find a way to get some sort of links that you can send to people. Did you enjoy opening all of those
Word files to read posts?

Tom: It wasn’t fun.

Miranda: But did you enjoy it, Tom?

Tom: It wasn’t good. It made my decisions a lot easier because I got it down to the point where I could very quickly decide that probably more than half of the applications were not even worth my time. I guess that goes back to traditional jobs too where you go through resumes. You can pretty quickly spot the ones that just aren’t going to be a good fit, immediately. Things like that were very similar. Hiring a writer in our niche, I wanted to see they had their own site (at least) if not a blog. And that they had worked in other places. But when you’re totally starting out and going on Text Broker or something like that, how do you set that up? You haven’t written a single word so how do you get on these platforms and convince someone to pay you money for that?

Miranda: So the bummer thing about Text Broker and similar platforms is that you normally have to take writing tests. You take the test and then they parse you out into tiers. Back when I was doing a few on Text Broker, they had three different tiers. You’re only eligible for gigs that were in that tier. If you were in the lower tier it’s going to be a lower paying gig but they’re going to be much less picky. If you write really well and you’re in this upper tier, then people on the site are going to see that you’ve written well. Most of the people on sites like that are not looking for really great writing. They’re not looking for something really expensive. They’re looking for something quick and easy and inexpensive. So it’s a little bit easier to convince them because you’re willing to take the rates. Another thing is, I don’t usually say go Fivver. Fivver is not my favorite place. But if you want to get something where you might get a link and a byline, you can go to Fivver and offer something. You don’t have to necessarily do it for $5 because Fivver doesn’t require you to do it for $5. But if you go on there and there’s a niche that you want and you say, “I will write 10 articles for your blog in ‘X’ niche for ‘X’ dollars,” and somebody takes you up on that package deal the you have some content you’ve written and can link to. It’s a crappy way to do it. Nobody likes doing it. But really, the easiest way is to figure out what niche you want and start a blog in that niche because then you have samples of writing for that. You can show that you’ve written about it and it just makes it that much easier.

Tom: I doubt most people listening to this are going to be super attracted by this idea that they can write through Fivver. How do you go from starting there to making any kind of legit money where there is a decent side hustle income? Or where maybe it eventually becomes full-time? How do you build that up? I assume there’s a mix of just working more but also raising rates?

Miranda: Yeah, there’s that kind of mix of, “Okay, now that I have a couple of good solid pieces I can use as examples, I can go to Pro Blogger and apply for jobs. Another good thing to do is go to LinkedIn. If you are willing to pay for LinkedIn premium, it’s $50 a month. I don’t use it, but a lot of freelancers I know, do use it. We actually have a thing about it in our freelance writer academy. But a lot of people do use LinkedIn. And if you do that you can look for people who are looking for writers. They’re a little pickier but the pay is better. You can apply for more jobs on different gigs because now you have some samples you can send them to. You could do some networking by reaching out to other freelancers. One of the best ways to get freelance work is to network with other freelancers. There are a lot of Facebook groups for freelancers. Look for those because a lot of freelancers have more work than they can handle so they’ll refer other writers. For instance, I have some clients who say, “Hey, we’re going to keep you on but we’re ramping up our content and need to hire three more freelancers to work with us. Do you have suggestions?” Then I could suggest three freelancers I think they should take a look at. So it’s good to network with other freelancers because the other thing you get is an idea of what rates to charge so you’re not just flailing about in the dark wondering what you should be charging. So that helps, too.

Tom: Yeah. I’m a big fan of Facebook groups. I’ve mentioned before that there’s a Facebook group for everything. When it comes to on these side hustles, without even looking, I know there will be a Facebook group for it even if you’re driving Uber or walking dogs with Rover—any of these other online options you have to make money. There’s going to be an unofficial support group to get through this and learn the inside track on these things.

Miranda: For sure. That’s really kind of where you’re at; where you kind of get started doing some low paying stuff to try and establish yourself, get a few good pieces you can use to link out to. Then you just apply for better jobs. That’s why I love the blog approach. You don’t have to wait until somebody takes you or publishes something. With some of these websites like Text Broker or Writer Access, you might not always get the byline. It might not even be something you want your name on anyway. I’ve done some of that. Having your own blog is really very helpful because you can choose what you’re doing. You can take the time to make sure your crafting something that looks really good. Go to your local paper maybe even. I actually used to write a column for my local newspaper once a week. They didn’t pay me very much. They paid me a little bit but it was something I could show that I had done. If there’s a local news website that needs a little bit of help with some content or some stuff, ask them. They’re not going to pay you very much but it will give you a link.

Tom: I have no real freelancer experience, but one thought I had was if you were really desperate to just get a post up somewhere like on Medium. It would be a huge idea if you could literally write a post that looks pretty official with nothing stopping you from getting on Medium. But it is somewhere where you can put a post and say, “Here I am. I’m published on Medium.” Then you’ve got something.

Miranda: Well, that’s a very good point. I wouldn’t have thought of Medium because I don’t do anything on Medium. I think it’s a really great point. If you don’t want to do it on your own website or you’re worried—one of the problems people run into is what if they send them to the blog and they see there are only posts on there and nothing else? Medium is a great place to be able to say you’re published on. Then you can show them one thing from your blog and something you wrote for another person. Now you have three clips you can send and that works really well.

Tom: This has been great. I like how people can lay this out and actually go after this. In past episodes, I’ve ragged on blogging a bit, even though it’s worked well for me. But I just don’t think it’s the money tip that people want when it comes to getting a side hustle or a full-time business going on. You have to be very patient where, with freelancing or driving for Uber or any of these other things I prefer them because someone else is still literally paying you. You are still working for someone but it’s under your own terms and everything. There is freedom there but there’s also a bit of feeling of stability in that you’re actually getting this payment on day one practically.

Miranda: That’s why my blog is never developed much beyond paying for itself.

Tom: But it makes sense for you, though, because something else is working for you and that’s where you should focus.

Miranda: But I’m not I’m not saying it’s a bad thing. I’m just saying that’s one of the reasons why I never did much with the blog because I was so spoiled by immediate payment. With freelancing, I can get the payment immediately.

Tom: Exactly. Do you ever have payment issues? What’s it like to run the invoicing side of this? Do these platforms help? Like if you on Text Broker, I assume you just get paid. But as you work your way up, it’s probably a little looser?

Miranda: I invoice once a month because I don’t want to go crazy. I have a spreadsheet. I keep track of the work I’ve done, how much they owe me and all that kind of stuff. So many of my clients now are just recurring clients where I’m writing between four and six articles for them each month anyway so I just invoice once a month. That’s worked really well. But there are platforms like Short List and bill.com that can help facilitate the payments so that you don’t have to do things like go through PayPal and pay fees. I have one client that still insists on paying me through PayPal. It’s not a huge client so I pay my $3 in fees each month for that payment. In the past, one client completely stiffed me. He’d been a good client too for like a year and I had done a month’s worth of work and he didn’t pay. I messaged him saying, “Hey, you haven’t paid yet.” He told me not to worry, that the money’s coming and asked me to just keep doing the work. At the end of the month I said, “Hello??” Then I said, “I’m sorry. I can’t do any more work for you until you have been paid for what I have done to this point.” He didn’t respond. I found out about three weeks later that he was in rehab and his business had gone bust. So that was fun. But other than that sad situation that happened so many years ago, sometimes you have to follow up with people. I’ve had to follow up and say, “Hey, you haven’t paid this yet,” but most of them are pretty good about paying. I haven’t had a lot of problems. And when I have had to follow up beyond two or three months, I tell them I’m going to refer their invoice to my legal and accounting departments if they don’t pay up. Or I’ll just say, “Hey, if you were unsatisfied with my work, that’s fine, you don’t have to pay for it. But I want you to explicitly grant me the copyright back and I’ll sell it elsewhere.”

Tom: Yeah, that makes sense. What are your thoughts about diversifying a little bit? I get that this isn’t a huge issue about not getting paid but maybe most of your full time job is all with one client and suddenly the client disappears. Would it be best to have multiple streams even within freelancing?

Miranda: Yeah, I have been in the position where I have lost a client that made up half my income. It happened when the Forex client got bought by another company. They had bought them because they didn’t want the competition so they bought them and got rid of them. I lost half of my income in one fell swoop. The thing I learned from that is that I no longer rely on more than about 25 percent of my income to come from one client. I just try and make it so that if a client is to the point where they’re making up 25 percent of my income, it means I need to go find some new clients or I need to cut back a little bit on the work I’m doing for that one client. But I’ve been successful for the last several years making sure I balance that out so that no one client accounts for more than 25 percent my income. I also try and make sure the types of articles I’m writing aren’t consolidated. We’re recording this in the middle of this Covid-19 pandemic where credit card affiliates have got hit hard. And freelancers I know who focused almost exclusively on credit card reviews are dying. They’re just struggling and it’s terrible. It’s not great for me either because my own credit card review content has been cut back. And the most lucrative type of writing you can do is credit card reviews. It just does the best. It’s the easiest and the best paying. Nothing pays better than credit card reviews. But all of that got cut with this Covid-19 and the lack of travel and so on. Many credit card issuers cut their affiliate programs so websites that relied on that had their budgets cut so they had to cut freelancers. Paying attention to that kind of stuff and making sure you don’t have an over abundance of stuff can help. I write about credit cards, student loans— actually, in the US, federal student loan rates just were cut by 40 percent for next year. Student loan refinancing topics are going to tank very soon. I write about investing, insurance… I’ve tried to make sure that I spread out my expertise a little bit. So even though personal freelances my niche, I’ve kind of spread it out a little bit to make sure that if one type of financial writing goes down it doesn’t take my entire income with it.

Tom: And if this is concerning anyone, I have to add that; I often hear the idea that if you’re in your own business there is a lot of risk to this. You just laid out one of the examples where this can happen. But don’t forget, if you’re working a corporate job, you really do have that same risk. People sort of feel safe with a traditional proper job. But quite often (even in those kinds of situations) you can be gone the next day. It’s just as unpredictable. Even as a regular employee, there are always risks. Can you let people know where they can find you online and tell them about the course that’s coming up?

Miranda: Along with two other six-figure freelance writers, we are releasing the Freelance Writer Academy. It will have three different courses; beginner, intermediate and advanced courses. There will be access to other resources and everything like that. We’ll be doing webinars, Q&A’s and will have different things you can access as well through a membership site (if you so desire). That should be launching sometime this summer. Everybody’s lives got upended by this whole pandemic thing. But, it’s the freelancewriteracademy.com. You can sign up to join the waitlist and be first to know when we launch. You can also find me at mirandamarquit.com.

Tom: Perfect. Thanks for being on the show.

Miranda: Thanks for having me.

Thank you, Miranda, for the tips on how to get started as a freelance writer and for showing us where we can go to find our first paid gig. You’ll find the show notes for this episode at maplemoney.com/099. If you’re interested in starting a freelance writing side hustle, you’re definitely going to want to check out Miranda’s upcoming project, the Freelance Writers Academy. Join the waitlist at freelancewritersacademy.com. Be one of the first to know when the course launches this summer. Thanks for listening. Make sure you tune in next week when we’ll have JD Roth back for the big 100th episode. We’ll be discussing the most important things in your finances you need to focus on.