If you’ve been watching a lot of Mad Men, you might start to dream of expanding your freelance writing business into an agency. That show certainly makes working at an ad agency seem glamorous, no?
The agency model sounds alluring. You find clients, then sit back, let others do the work, give it a quick little edit, and boom — make a big cut of the fee.
Or at least that’s the dream, as expressed by this writer who recently wrote me looking for input on his plan:
“I’m starting a writing and editing business. My business model is to outsource to trusted friends and people in my network who are willing to help. They all have advanced degrees, are amazing writers, and are also subject-matter experts.
“Can you give me your take on outsourcing?” -Evan
Sure, I can: Starting a freelance business from scratch with the idea that you will instantly be an agency is not going to work.
The agency model works when there is a high volume of projects, as 50 percent or more of the pay will be going to other people. The volume needs to be high enough that by taking a 30-70 percent markup on each gig, you can make a living.
Needing to charge more to cover both the writer’s fee and your own cuts the client pool down. You’ll need to find bigger companies, in general, with the budgets to pay these bigger fees.
Especially if you’re hiring your friends, it’s going to be hard to take a big markup, as you’ll want to pay them well.
To sum up this little math exercise, you might need three or four times as much work or more to make close to the living you would have if you simply wrote for a smaller stable of clients.
Why newbies can’t be an agency
The big problem is, when you first start out, it’s hard to find clients. Any clients. Much less good-paying ones.
It takes a lot of marketing hustle to get those first few clients. Then, it takes more time to find good-paying ones that have a steady stream of work.
Give up most of the income from your writing gigs at this point, and you won’t have much left.
That is not to say that writers should never switch to the agency model. Some have done so quite successfully.
How do you know it’s time to consider becoming an agency? Here are five clues:
1. You have too much work
You’ve built your freelance business and you’re working too many hours now. Or you’re turning down gigs and leaving money on the table…money you might keep some of if you hired subcontractors.
You have enough client volume that you could earn a better living keeping a percent of all that than you do turning down gigs and writing only the best ones yourself.
2. You love marketing & have a great rep
When you’re an agency, you have more mouths to feed. You can’t ever have downtime, or your stable of writers will drift away and possibly be unavailable the next time you need them.
You want to have enough contacts that tapping them will bring you a large volume of ongoing projects. Your network will want to send you clients because you’ve established your credibility as a freelance writer and have a great reputation.
Barring having an amazing network up your sleeve, you’ll need sharp marketing skills and an eagerness to devote many hours to marketing and finding clients.
3. You know many freelance writers
While the writer above imagines his business can run off the aid of his personal writer friends, that path is fraught with problems. Are you going to be able to tell your best friend the client hates their writing and the copy all needs to be rewritten? Do you think you can even be objective about your friends’ writing?
What you need as an agency head are professional contacts with lots of writers.
Remember that good writers are often fully booked. They may not be available when you need them, or at rates you can afford to pay as an agency.
4. You like managing people
This one is important. As an agency head, you won’t be writing. You’ll be shepherding projects.
Your job is to:
- talk to the client and find out everything needed to do the gig
- find and hire suitable writers
- train them up on your needs and the writing needs of this client
- keep them on track
- call them when they blow their deadline
- call another writer when that writer flakes out
- stay up all night editing the late work to make deadline
- explain to the client why their project is late
…and so on.
You are a manager. Do you communicate clearly? It’s important because now you’re playing telephone — often, you’re talking to the client and then telling the writer what they said. The writer has a question which you relay to the client, and then relay back the answer.
There is more opportunity for miscommunication than when you were writing for clients, so you need really stellar skills here.
5. You prefer editing to writing
Unless you hire an editor as well, you will be combing through your writers’ work and getting it in shape to be turned in to clients.
You might think that’ll be an easy gig due to your awesome writers, but don’t bet on it. You’d be surprised the junk even pro writers turn in on occasion.
There’s also the issue of changing client needs and priorities, where they assigned 1,000 words but they’ve decided last-minute they want 750. Guess who’s going to fix that? You.
Why I’m not an agency
As it happens, I’ve asked myself these questions, starting back in mid-2011. I’d built my freelance writing business so big that I had way more leads than I could handle myself. It’s great to be able to pick and choose your clients…but I’d reached a point where I was turn down some nice offers.
I scaled back on active marketing, but I was still turning away leads that came from my writer website and LinkedIn profile.
As I thought about it, I realized I’d been on the other end of this equation — I’d been a subcontractor for another writer who’d just gone to the agency model. Formerly a very successful corporate speechwriter, as an agency the man was a complete mental case, routinely screaming at and randomly firing some of his new ‘team’ almost every week.
Recalling how unhappy he was trying to manage my project convinced me becoming an agency was a stress nightmare I wanted to avoid.
I don’t enjoy managing people and editing as much as I enjoy writing, and most of the good writers I know wouldn’t want to write for lower-than-usual rates to be subcontractors.
It’s harder to get and keep good subs than the writer above imagines.
Instead, I focused on raising my rates and being selective about client projects as my route to higher pay. And I send my extra leads to the Freelance Writers Den job board.
Yes, I could keep those gigs and take a cut, but I believe the headaches would not be worth it.
Ever considered becoming an agency, or worked for another writer? Share your experience in the comments.
