While most articles on freelance writing I write are all about the benefits of being a writer or things beginning writers need to learn in order to become more successful as professional freelancers, however this time I thought it would be interesting to take a look at some of the negatives that come with freelancing and see if any of these reasons, or combination thereof, would scare you off from a freelancing career. If it doesn’t, then you have a better idea if becoming a freelance writer is a good idea for you or maybe it’s much better as a side hobby or second income rather than your main profession. So read on to find five reasons why freelance writing might not be worth it.
Reason #1: Lack of respect. No doubt about it, many freelance writers have come across the scenario of telling someone what they do for a living and then being laughed at, mocked, snickered at, or having several insulting phrases or assumptions put forth. Two of the most common are being asked whether you’re on food stamps or not (or some other form of mocking your assumed lowly income) and the other being a question or assumption that leads to the belief that what you do isn’t hard or special and anyone can do it. While this has changed a little since the 2008 recession, the prevailing attitude in most cases is still going to be one of no respect.
Reason #2: Extra taxes. Have you ever heard of the self employment tax? If you’ve been employed all your life, you might assume that 7-8% payment tax for Social Security and Medicare is what you pay into the system…but actually it’s double that. When you’re employed by someone else, they pay half. So that amount you see taken out of your check every week – double it and that’s what’s expected of you from self-employed income, and that’s in addition to any corporate taxes, local business license fees, and both state and federal income taxes. Can you deal with the fact that to live at the same lifestyle $30,000 a year buys out as an employee that you will need to earn at least $37,000 or more? And you might want to look up quarterly taxes.
Reason #3: “Feast or famine” stress. One of the more stressful aspects of a freelance writer’s life comes with natural “feast or famine” cycles. This means one week you might make $2,000 and the next two weeks combined only make $200. Welcome to the life of a freelance writer. Now, with modern technology and all the content mills online there’s no reason you shouldn’t be able to get paid 2-3 times a week consistently, but sometimes you will still have very high income weeks, and others might require even more work and a lot less pay off. Can you handle the uncertainty of this stress and having to be vigilant in budgeting because you don’t know when your next major paycheck will be in?
Reason #4: Problems full time income vs. benefits of supplemental income. This “problem” isn’t discussed often, but it brings up some really interesting pointers about the life of a freelance writer. As a supplemental income whether for a college student, semi-retired worker, or even employed individual, freelance writing is awesome. Many full time writers started off as part time beginning freelance writers, and as an extra income it’s fantastic. Taxes get taken care of from the full time paycheck, budgeting can be done for that, and freelancing can be for a vacation, retirement savings, or upcoming event. However, once you try to make the jump to full time, the excitement fades and redundancy rules as you have to pay the taxes, pay the bills, pay the lawyers, and as you make money you must pay more taxes, which you do by making more money and so it goes.
Reason #5: Social isolation. This one is huge, especially for the full time freelance writers and might be one of the main reasons many go back to part time after only a short while. When you work as a full time freelancer you don’t have the normal office interactions, the hitting the bar after work, or the daily commutes to meet people. It’s very easy to become an isolated shut in if you’re not careful and you actually have to work to avoid major social isolation. If you can’t handle this, then being a full time freelance writer will prove to be extremely difficult.
As you can see, while there might be many benefits to becoming a freelance writer, there are also many drawbacks which must be considered before going this route.