Freelance Writers Work
Photo by Andrew Neel on Unsplash
In a landscape of five-second videos, dwindling attention spans, and skippable ads, grabbing copy is more important than ever in promoting brands and growing sales. Some of the most successful businesses that have caught flame in recent years aren’t doing anything new, yet still manage to disrupt industries by touting product quality, sustainability, and positive social impact. The common thread? Storytelling interwoven into their mission statements.
Bombas, for example, is a company that doesn’t just make socks, they’ve “revolutionized sock design from heel to toe,” and for every unit sold, they donate an identical pair to a homeless shelter. Until a consumer takes the plunge on a purchase, there’s no way to know for sure if that company’s “revolutionary” new sock design is better than what you can get from one of the mega-conglomerate clothiers, but the story alone is enough of a secret sauce to nudge certain socially-conscious audiences into the right chute. While small businesses often don’t have the benefit of an entire marketing department brainstorming on the most compelling narrative, all that precision is just as easily attainable by hiring freelance writers to craft and sell your story.
Entrepreneurs (except those who have trust funds to fall back on, bless their hearts) need all the advertisement functionality of a major competitor without the overhead cost. Sugar might sell itself, but an emerging candy maker isn’t going to get anywhere without a healthy dollop of self-promotion. Marketing firms charge insane retainers, additional employees come with fees and taxes, and the local talent pool dictates who’s available to bring on board. Depending on the needs of a small business, it doesn’t always make sense to hire someone long-term when all that’s required is a single ad campaign, investor packet, explainer video script, or mailer copy to blast far and wide. In the age of the internet, remote hiring is the key to filling one-off, project-based positions because it’s unchained by all of these limitations.
Our example candy maker can solve his exposure problem by taking to the internet and finding a writer willing to contract out for an agreed-upon fee. By taking advantage of remote work situations, a small business owner has the flexibility to hire on-demand, which in turn offers leeway to scale up or down as necessary. Once the project has been completed, the interaction is finished. No benefits payments, no yearly bonuses, no employer taxes. If the project fee is paid, everyone’s walking away happy and the independent contractor will be more than pleased to engage in additional work at a later date, should the need arise.
Beyond the difference in cost, hiring freelance writers opens the door to a broader array of options. If a dairy farm in Wisconsin needs to jazz up its website, but the best copywriter for the job lives in Chicago, limitation to in-person hiring is going to ensure a major missed opportunity. The search for the Chicago-based writer may require a little more digging, but an ideal candidate is worth the search, and well-balanced symbiotic relationships can last a lifetime.
Remote work isn’t the future, it’s here and now. More writers than ever before have thrown off the yolk of traditional employment to be their own bosses as independent contractors, and they’re hungry to keep their coffers full. This trend has nowhere to go but up, as evidenced by successful business models like Upwork that have emerged in recent years. Like ride-sharing services aimed at pairing riders with drivers, these companies help thousands of employers source remote hiring solutions to their project-based needs every day.
Freelance storytellers are experts at finding the nougaty center of any story’s business and if one comes up short, the employer doesn’t have to go further than his or her computer to find another. It’s arguably the only example of “low risk, high reward” you’ll encounter as an entrepreneur, so why not give it a shot?
