The Content Byte

It's the million-dollar question for any freelancer - do you only chase high-paying clients, or take on the often more piecemeal work offered by small businesses? In this episode, we share the pros and cons to working with small businesses, our own personal strategies around this income stream - and tips for making it work.

While you might think your clients are hanging onto your every word on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, newsletters are a far superior way to stay in touch (and bring you more offers of work). In this episode, we touch on why newsletters work, platforms to create your newsletter on, lead magnets and more.

As a freelancer, you're going to be much more indispensable - and frankly, richer - if you take the time to educate clients about what they need (beyond what they think they need). Doing this is a way of adding value, making your client's life easier and helping them get a better return on investment. It can also create opportunities to talk about other services or packages you offer. In this episode, we talk about the kind of services to package, and how to do it.

Most freelancers will stumble on a PITA (pain in the ass) client or ten. These clients may quibble over your rates, try and renegotiate your services, query your invoices or encroach on your personal time (and that's just for starters). How can you spot PITA clients - and manage them, if you end up working with one? We share our tips in this week's episode.

Do you have a client offering you a regular amount of work? It might be worth negotiating a retainer arrangement. In this episode, we talk about how to structure these arrangements and what you need to be aware of (and there's an exclusive discount code for podcast listeners for the Rachel's List retainer template).

The peaks and troughs of freelancing can be overwhelming - so how do you handle them? What should you do during a slow patch? And are economic downturns something to fear? Not necessarily, as we talk about in this week's episode.

If you're a freelancer, how well does your website / online portfolio work for you? Does it bring in traffic? Convert leads? Is it something you're proud to share with clients? If not, don't stress - it's not as hard as you might think to improve your website's look'n'feel and make it more user-friendly. In today's episode, we run through a checklist of common website design mistakes - and what you can do to fix any that pop up on your site.

Moving from an in-house role to a freelance one is a MASSIVE change. Suddenly, time is money - and productivity is all important in order to make the income you need to get by. In this episode, Lynne and Rachel share their time-saving tips and tricks and talk about the productivity resources available in the Rachel's List Toolkit (bonus discount code for podcast listeners!)

It's all too easy to undersell yourself when you're freelance. You want the project, and think quoting a little lower is going to do the trick. But sometimes, under-charging can backfire - and actually lose you work. In this episode, we explain how and why you need to price yourself accordingly.

Once upon a time, journos simply had to file their copy and that was that. These days, you may be asked to do quite a bit more, especially if you're writing for digital outlets. Find out what editors and clients tend to expect from content writers these days (and where you might need to upskill).