First, if you undervalue your work, you are telling the world that it has little worth. And if you give it away, you are giving it zero value. In the first instance, you will attract only those who want the cheapest bargain, not the best one. In the second, you will attract those who would take advantage. If you are professional, then act accordingly. If your plumber or your lawyer doesn’t give it away, neither should you. But I am always amazed at the number of writers who do exactly that. Magazine writers and web writers, please take note.

You might infer from that little diatribe that I would never “give it away.” Not so. I have, and I do. Under circumstances of my own choosing.

As citizens of good standing in our community and in our country, we undertake a social contract. A contract to give back to our collective family. At home. Next door. Down the street. Around the world. Some citizens fulfill their contractual obligations through volunteer work for nonprofit organizations. Others through coaching Little League. Still others with financial means choose the philanthropic route by donating to their favorite charity or cause.

As writers and communicators, we have a skill much in demand by those who are willing to pay for it and much in need by those who can’t. Think of all the non-profit agencies that don’t have extensive PR budgets but are in desperate need of some communications help. The newly elected board member who needs to make a speech but has never done so before. The countless newsletters that must be written with the sweat equity of volunteers. Pick up the phone and inquire. My bet is that they will welcome you with open arms.

But there’s another way of fulfilling your end of the social contract bargain and that is taking your professional expertise and passing it on to others.

Put it under the heading of what goes around should come around. On your way up the freelance ladder, as you’ve networked and relied on others for advice, you were building up a debt of sorts. When people freely gave you the wisdom of their experience, they were also giving you another precious commodity – their time. There comes a moment in your career when you can – and should – reciprocate.

So when people – most often young people – come knocking on my door to pick my brain for advice and whatever wisdom I have picked up over the years – I am usually inclined to give it to them.

That said, I listen very carefully how they ask for advice and whether they are respectful of my time. Although I am predisposed to give just about anyone the benefit of the doubt, I must advise you that what is very annoying is to have people ask you for advice and then give a whole slate of reasons why they might not be able to follow it.

Then there are those who want you to do the work for them. They say things like, “You probably have more clients than you can use. Can you pass your overflow on to me?” They don’t want to do any of the marketing work. Rather, they just want to grab the clients you may have spent months or even years cultivating.

In fairness, those who take this route are rare. Most people are genuinely looking for advice and encouragement. I believe it is incumbent upon all of us who have been around for a while to freely dispense both.

There’s another instance when you might want to give your expertise away and that is when doing so becomes a good marketing tool. For example, I write articles like this from time to time. I never know who might be reading them. If the email I get in response to them is any indication, quite a few people are. Most of the emails I get are – to be frank – from people looking for free advice. Which I am happy to give for reasons already noted.

But I also get comments from other professionals who might need my services, and we enter into the arena of dialogue. A cautionary note here. One of my mantras is that for any marketing activity you undertake, you should never be attached to the outcome of any single interaction. Rather, you should have enough marketing efforts out there in the ozone that you never count on any single effort paying off at any particular time or in any particular way.

For essays like this, I write it and forget about it. If it generates a response that leads to other things, that’s fine. If it leads to nothing, that’s okay too. Because at the very least, I have a track record of writing articles that might be recycled for other purposes. And writing them helps me to focus my thinking about the subject at hand. I simply enjoy what I do, and that is its own reward.

From a “good business practice” perspective, there’s another concern about “giving it away.” As a speechwriter, I am very happy to talk to potential clients about particular challenges and concerns they might have about writing or giving a speech. I am pleased to answer questions that will lead them to conclusions they might reach on how next to proceed. And I am not at all perturbed if they should decide to do the work in-house rather than use me.

On the other hand, I won’t write their drafts, do their research, or tell their stories. And I never write on spec. The bottom line is I don’t do their writing for them. That’s what I get paid for. The initial advice is free. The work is not.

In the end, it’s all a judgment call, of course. That’s how I do it. You might find other ways to meet your social contract. “Giving It Away” is just one aspect of your professional and personal life you need to think about and act on. One thing for sure. The subject will come up. Forewarned is forearmed.

1.  Don’t fight your client on process, but push back on product. It is counter-productive to fight your client on their process.  If they want to micro-manage every word, or if they are so hands off that you are spending a lot of extra effort tracking down information, remember it is their dime. And it is all billable time.  Do push back on product.  If you think they are going in the wrong direction on what the final product should look like, you do them a great service by extending the value of your experience.  That is what they are paying you for.

2.  Lighten your client’s load. Most freelance projects involve working with a company’s or government agency’s communications division.  These days, almost by definition, if you work in a communications job, you are on overload.  To the extent that you can be a confidant and adviser to your client, over and above delivering the goods on a specific project, the more they may turn to you when other issues come up.  I have had numerous clients turn to me with extra work to take some of the pressure off them when they are on overload and need some fast help.

3.  Get your best return on marketing efforts. Figure out what sort of marketing gets you the best return on your time and effort.  The traditional cold calling?  Networking?  Social media?  Informational interviews?  Examine your marketing methods and ask yourself if you couldn’t be getting a better bang for your buck.

4.  Subcontract your work but only if it doesn’t require a lot of rewrites on your part.

5.  Go outside your comfort zone. Whether you are talking marketing or the type of work you pursue, there is the human tendency to stick to what you are comfortable with.  That means you may be ignoring clients and money that may be at your finger tips, but you haven’t considered through fear or laziness.

6.  Specialize. Or be a multiple specialist.  But above all be seen to be an expert.  And experts command more money.

7.  Fish where the fish are. This is an expression used by a colleague of mine, meaning of course, refining your product and service selling to clients who might actually bite.  Study your markets!

8.  Become invaluable and your clients’ path of least resistance. Nothing begets repeat business with a new client than being utterly reliable and useful.

9.  Deliver excellence. But don’t get hung up on being perfect. At some stage you have to figure out when good is good enough and send the product along.

10.  Market when you are busy. The biggest mistake freelance writers make, including yours truly, is that we tend to ignore marketing when we are busy with current work.  And when we are in famine mode we tend to panic and scramble with our marketing.  That’s backwards.  Remember the marketing you do today may take 3-6 months to pay off.  Better do it now and consistently.

11. Answer your phone! And follow up on potential leads quickly.  You may never get a second chance to land that first time client.

12.  Write faster.

In the normal ebb and flow of economies this is what usually happens. In bad times the first thing corporations do is downsize – that wonderful euphemism for throwing their workers on the trash heap with little thought to the human side of the equation. They have to preserve shareholder value don’t you know. Fools that they are they tend to first chuck out what they consider the most expendable part of the operation, the Communications Division. And in one fell swoop they get rid of half their corporate memory.

When the shit hits the fan, and it always does in bad times, all of a sudden when they go to their communications team to explain to the press what went wrong…. whoops they no longer have the capacity to do so. What to do? They temporarily turn to freelancers to fill in the gap.

And when times turn good again they slowly bring their communications shop back up to strength. But the problem is, much of that corporate memory is now gone.

None of which is our problem except to say that if we position ourselves properly we can take advantage of those ebbs and flows.

But if the American economy really does blow up – not saying that it will – but if – then all bets may be off. So as a freelance speechwriter, if I dwell on that possibility and go to a dark place, this is how it might play out.

As oil and travel costs go up, will many of my current crop of clients curtail their attendance and speaking engagements at international conferences. There goes 10% of the business. As corporations ask all their divisions to cut back all costs by 15%, the head of PR insists on no more contracting out of speech work. Another 20% gone. Governments send out a similar message to their various ministries and departments and all of a sudden there is no more work to bid on. And so on.

Since we don’t know for sure what the economy will bring us over the next year, I would suggest you hope for the best but plan for the worst. I won’t go into the various marketing strategies that I have talked about so often before. But I would suggest that you think of as many ways as you can to bring in multiple sources of writing income.

Assuming you are a specialist – and please tell me that you are – then you could, in addition to providing your regular services:

Write articles for magazines on your specialty.
Double up by selling reprint rights for articles you have written for your web site. you do have one of those do you not?
Teach your own specialty at a community college.
Host your own course online or in person.
Write and sell your own eBook.
Hold your own Teleseminars on your specialty.

The secret is having multiple irons in the fire. Out of writing can come the teaching. Add the Internet as a marketing tool, and you would be amazed at how many possibilities can come up.

We freelancers have to be a little like cockroaches…the ability to adapt to any set of circumstances that the working environment sends our way.

But start now. All the above are doable but they take time. It is not as hard as you might think.

Now of course when he called me I wanted his business.

But you know what? He wanted me to be the right person even more. Why? Because if I wasn’t, he would have to go through the process all over again and hunt for someone else.

A secret truth here. It is much easier for writers to find good clients than it is for clients to find good freelance writers. And so in a reversal of what freelancers usually think, clients need us more than we need them.

So, did the convocation guy ask to see a whole bunch of work samples? Nope. Wasn’t interested. In fact I can tell you, that unless I am bidding on a competitive government job, clients have never asked to see a sample of my work.

I am guessing I had convocation guy landed within the first two minutes because even on the phone there was something he could tell about me that he knew we could work together.

He liked me because he felt I was listening to what he needed rather than me selling him on my virtues.

And that other word you always hear me use – passion. He felt I would be passionate about his passion of the moment – giving the best possible convocation speech he could. And I was.

Sorry to be so repetitious on this matter – but if you bring passion to the table and you perfect the art of listening – guess what – you are likeable. And the deal is done.

On the other hand, you never have a second chance to turn down a first time client.

This request and the decision to take it on was somewhat problematic. First, I generally only take on “emergency” speeches for my ongoing clients, not for new ones. Second, I count emergency as being 24 hour turnaround time, not the few hours he had in mind. Third, in this case both the client and I were buying a bit of a “pig in a poke”.

I didn’t know if I would be editing a disaster that was unfixable. And he didn’t know if and how much I could help him. He knew of me because he had heard me give a talk on speech writing, but that was it. It was entirely possible that we would be both committed to an enterprise that might all end in tears.

Even before talking to him on the phone I did do a bit of research – the gods of Google be praised – and got relevant background on him and on the sum and substance of the event.

“What the heck”, I thought. The subject matter was interesting and we seemed to talk in the same vocabulary. The process was not without its moments however. The draft I was supposed to get at 3 or 4 didn’t show up until 7 in the evening – so it was a pretty frantic 3 or 4 hours after that.

Fortunately my gut didn’t let me down because the draft he sent me wasn’t a mess. It was actually pretty good. I was able to tighten it up. add a few value-added comments of my own and turn it around by about 10:45 pm.

The job got done. The client was happy. The Saturday event apparently went well.

It’s not something I recommend on a regular basis. But sometimes you go with your instinct and you have the makings of a new ongoing relationship. In fact we had coffee the following week, exchanged war stories about things political, and we plan to keep in touch.

Was there a price to be paid? Well yes. Not financial. I was well paid for the work. But you forget how much this sort of last minute on-the-fly work can take out of your system. The output of mental energy can be physically draining. I sort of crashed the rest of the weekend.

Still, the adrenaline rush cannot be denied.

What about you. Do you take on emergency work? Do you make sure to charge a premium for it? Do you demand quick payment? Do you demand payment in advance?

But lest you think I am exaggerating on this matter – let me tell you a little story that is illustrative.

Last year I attended a workshop given by a very well known Internet marketer of information products. He talked about all the material he gave away for free and noted of course how much is given away these days on the internet.

So how did he decide what he gave away for free and what he sold? It didn’t seem to matter that much.

In the electronic universe it’s all basically electrons anyway. But wrap those electrons up with an offer of extra free stuff, add an audio file or two, perhaps a hard copy CD along with some very good copy about the value on the whole bundle and there you have it – a package with a price tag. Perceived value is everything.

Don’t get me wrong – the content has to be very good too. He produces great content and of course, if he didn’t, all the pretty packaging in the world wouldn’t help him very long. But the first sell definitely comes – in part – from the packaging. You best give that some thought as you consider how you are marketing yourself.

Fundamental to gaining a meaningful presence in the marketplace is starting and continuing a dialogue over the long term. Like all relationships that are worthwhile you want to be in it for the long haul.

So how do we get to that place of dialogue? It is at once distressingly simple and maddeningly elusive. Whether you make a cold call, send a warm email, go to a networking event, or receive an overture from someone looking for services like yours, the first things that come out of your mouth will dictate whether you encourage an ongoing dialogue.

So choose those words wisely. Are they interesting enough to elicit an enthusiastic response and a question or two. Will they make you seem to be not only an interesting person but an interested person. Are they delivered in a way that shows you not only have a pulse, but a passion for what you do. And more important a passion for what they do.

As a starting point I would join two groups. A writing or communications association – such as IABC or STC to name two that have active chapters the world over. If you are keen on freelance journalism – then there are specific writing groups devoted to magazine, science and magazine writing to identify three more. And there are national editing associations also on both sides of the border. You can do the search.

Go to a few meetings to get a feel if there is a comfortable fit for you and your interests.

Then volunteer for any job they’ve got going. It’s the fastest way I know to get to know your writing/communications community, earn brownie points, and meet potential clients. The delicious part of volunteering is that you set in motion a set of events the outcome of which you can never predict. Just do it. It cannot fail to pay off.

But there is a second group I would join. Let’s say you are really interested in matters of science and technology. Let’s be even more specific – you have a real interest in biotechnology. Dollars to donuts there is a biotech association somewhere near you. I would start with the university closest to you – the chances are pretty good you will track down such a group – made up of all the biotech firms trying to come up with the next cure for aging diseases to meet the demands of the baby boom demographic.

Go to one of their meetings and you will find yourself in a room full of people talking about their passions – their companies and what new discoveries they are working on.

And here’s the thing. You will likely be the only writer in the room. Even if you are not a scientist, I bet you could make the case that you could translate what they do into plain English.

Also, see if they have an association newsletter. If they do – ask them if they want help editing. If they don’t – suggest they start one – and you would be exactly the person to do the job. They would probably kiss your feet.

Now I am not in favour – at all – of selling yourselves cheap and giving your work away. But I am a big fan of volunteering – in an area that really interests you – as a part of you establishing your presence.

One more thing, don’t go into volunteering with the direct expectation that there will be a quid pro quo payoff for you. There will be – if you go into it with enthusiasm and pure of heart – but not so much if your only motive is a financial payoff.

It’s sort of like that butterfly thing and happiness. You know the story.

The more you chase after it with an expectation that your are going to catch “it”, it always eludes your grasp. Be a little still, and before you know it the butterfly just lands on your shoulder.

Well, ok the analogy doesn’t quite work. The point is with volunteering, if you do it with only an end goal in mind – that goal will likely exceed your grasp. But get yourself involved in meeting their needs and you would be amazed at the things that fall right into your lap. Trust me on this. The power of presence – it can’t be beaten.

The second statement reveals a basic truth about the freelance life. You are marketing all the time whether you intend to or not. If you choose to answer the phone and talk to a potential client you are marketing. If you let the answering machine pick it up, you are still marketing your message – such as you can in a short annoying machine message. And if unplug your phone entirely, you are still marketing, albeit in a very negative way by your silence.

When I say I don’t do any marketing anymore, I mean in the traditional sense. I don’t make cold calls (via the phone or email). I don’t go to networking events. I don’t belong to any associations. Let me very quickly emphasize that if you are starting out in your writing career these techniques remain a very important part of your marketing arsenal. VERY IMPORTANT. Next issue I will review some of those key techniques for getting a foothold in the freelance writing market.

But once you have established a substantial presence in the marketplace you reach a relatively joyful place where clients chase you rather than you chase them. And when they are chasing you, you have incredible leverage when it comes to negotiating price.

So how do you gain presence?

Certainly by the above noted traditional methods. They are tried and true.

But now, the power of the Internet has changed everything. You can have a Blog up and running in five minutes flat and at no financial cost. You can have a web site up almost as quickly and at reasonable cost. You can write your own newsletter and have it automatically distributed by an internet- based distribution company for incredibly inexpensive rates.

You can cross-affiliate with other newsletters. Or you simply contribute to someone else’s newsletter.

Now I can hear your skepticism already? In this day and age, where there are more web pages than there are people in the world – how can you joining the electronic fray make any difference anymore?

What can I tell you? I am now getting clients and referrals directly and indirectly through establishing an electronic presence. They are coming to me. With two newsletters and two Blogs of my own, plus making contributions to two other newsletters – this does take a commitment of time and writing. But let’s just say that the effort has more than paid for itself.