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Courtney Danyel started her freelance writing career seven years ago after she completed her Master’s in anthropology and decided to take a break from academics. Today, she runs two successful websites, Academia to Affluence and CourtneyDanyel.com, and even offers a mini-course called How to Turn Your Liberal Arts Degree Into Endless Freelance Income.
She launched Academia to Affluence after receiving several emails from academics who wanted to know how they could get into freelancing.
“It’s for grad students who need to earn extra income, it’s for somebody who has finished their PhD and they’re between jobs, it’s for people who are in academia and are thinking they might want to leave, and it’s even for people who are thinking about retirement,’ she says.
Courtney admitted that when she got started as a freelance writer, she had no idea what she was doing, and had to learn everything the hard way. She didn’t know where to get clients. She also didn’t know what she was qualified to write, and for whom. The resulting journey was sometimes difficult, but ultimately rewarding.
Smarting small
Her first jobs were on freelance job sites like Fiverr, where she wrote press releases. Then she moved on to marketing topics, although she initially doubted her expertise in that area.
“It’s just something I fell into. I have no background in marketing, I have never taken a marketing class in my life. I was not paid very well, and I thought to myself, ‘That’s fine. I shouldn’t be paid very well because I don’t know anything about marketing and I’m just making this up as I go along.’”
One day, she was Googling a marketing topic and found an article published in Forbes. To her amazement, it was an article she had written.
“I started poking around more, and I found my writing all over the top business blogs and magazines all over the internet and it had been there for a while and I had no idea.”
At that time, Courtney was writing for an agency that wasn’t paying well. Once she realized that her work was being published on platforms like Forbes, she left the agency, tripled her rates, and started getting her own clients.
She encouraged podcast listeners to learn from her mistakes. “I undersold myself for at least a year and a half,” she says. “Imposter syndrome can follow you outside of academia, as it turns out. Just charge what you’re worth from day one and if people don’t want to pay you that, then go find somebody else who will.”
Charge what you’re worth
She emphasized that experience and qualifications are less important than research skills. “That was a big milestone for me: to realize that I could write about anything I wanted to, and I could write well and I deserve to be paid well for it.”
Since then, Courtney has been raising her rates every year. She loses clients who can no longer afford her services and quickly finds others who can. For her, the price is non-negotiable.
“I used to give people discounts, but now I don’t. So, another big milestone is to stop giving people discounts. That’s how you ramp up your business and earn more year after year after year.”
Get a website
Courtney advises freelance writers to set up a website with samples of their work. Having an online presence makes it easier to win jobs on sites like Upwork and Kolabtree, which connects academics and researchers.
“When you’re getting started, I do recommend job sites because it’s just so easy to get up and running and find clients,” she says. “But in the long run, I recommend not using job sites at all. Once you have a few clients and you’re starting to get busy, that’s when you need to get off the job sites and start pitching your own clients.”
She is a big fan of cold emailing. Since her niche is marketing, she uses Google alerts for keywords like ‘digital marketing’ and ‘business expansion’ to identify potential clients before contacting the CEOs directly, especially if they have a blog that hasn’t been updated in awhile.
“I prefer to reach out to the CEO instead of reaching out to the content manager or somebody lower down. I feel like I get a higher response rate from them. There’s also the fact that the CEO doesn’t always know what’s going on. (They) read your email and they’re like, “Wait, our blog isn’t updated? What?” So then they email the content manager and say, “Hey, we got to get our blog updated. Hire this freelancer.” It works like that.”
Get it in writing!
Courtney recommends that freelance writers have a contract in place that specifies the scope of the project, payment amount and type, and deadlines for project delivery and payment. Having everything in writing reduces the likelihood of scope creep (clients asking for more work but not paying for it) and overdue payments.
Her course, How to Turn Your Liberal Arts Degree Into Endless Freelance Income, covers the following topics:
- How to build your website
- How to research your niche on Upwork
- How to figure out what you’re going to charge and what kind of services you’re going to offer
- How to pitch your first clients
“It has basically everything you need to start your freelance business,” she says.
Freelance writing is a rewarding and effective way for academics to earn a living. If you have questions, you can take Courtney’s email course or reach her on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram.
If you’re already freelancing and have some tips to share, please leave us a comment below!
