We recently caught up with Peter Bowerman, author of the newly updated 2021 edition of The Well-Fed Writer: Financial Self-Sufficiency as a Commercial Freelancer in Six Months or Less. The new book includes the heavily updated content of BOTH original WFW titles, the 2000 edition of TWFW (an award-winning Book-of-the-Month Club selection, as well as its 2010 update—a quadruple-award-winner. We chatted about his new title, which is billed as a detailed how-to for breaking into the lucrative and surprisingly accessible field of freelance “commercial” writing.

What exactly is freelance commercial writing?
Commercial writing is writing for corporations or other business entities on a freelance basis. That means marketing brochures, ad copy, newsletters, direct mail campaigns, case studies, white papers, speeches, trade articles, video scripts, social media posts, the whole arena of “content,” and about a zillion other types of projects. Because the business world generally has a lot more money than magazines or other entities that might hire writers, the pay is considerably higher than in those fields. Hourly rates range from $50-125, with seasoned practitioners routinely making far more than that.

What sort of experience do you need for commercial writing?
Well frankly, I had no industry contacts, no professional writing background and no previous paid writing experience when I started out, and I was self-sufficient in less than four months. Meaning, full-time and paying all my bills through writing. I had a sales background, which helped get me going, but zilch in the writing arena. If you’ve got freelancing credits, you’re that much further ahead of the game.

Why is commercial writing a good field to go into now?
There are a lot of reasons, which I outline in TWFW, but probably the most important has been the corporate downsizing and outsourcing that’s been going on for several decades now, and in the wake of the pandemic, more and more companies are operating leaner than ever. Often, the first departments to be cut were in the creative and communications arenas – and that means writing. But the work still needs to get done.

People would be amazed at how much work is being outsourced by big Fortune 500 companies, not to mention thousands of smaller companies that have plenty of money, but which are less likely to have the in-house resources to execute their projects, and hence, far more likely to outsource that work.

Is the money equation in commercial writing different from say, magazine writing?
Very different. If you’ve done magazine writing, imagine the editor of a publication you’ve been writing for saying, “OK, for this next piece, add up all the hours you think it’ll take for research, background reading, travel, brainstorming, interviewing, writing, and editing. Then multiply it by $75 (or $100 or more).” You’d think he lost his mind. But, that’s pretty much how it works in commercial writing. Project fees are calculated based on those hourly rates of $50-150+ and all time counts. Unlike magazine writing, it’s not just these flat project fees with potentially vast, open-ended commitments of time.

How good a writer do you have to be for commercial writing?
You DO have to be a decent writer. I mean, no one’s going to pay you $50-$150 an hour if you’re lousy (not more than once, anyway!). But, you don’t have to be brilliant. If you are seriously talented, you’ll get into the fun creative arenas like ad copy, direct mail, punchy video-script writing, and more.

If your skills are even just modest, know that there are plenty of industries, such as healthcare, banking, manufacturing, insurance, high technology, and others, that simply need clear, concise copywriting that just doesn’t have to be a work of art.

So, how much money can you make in this field?
With even minimal intelligence, ability and drive, I’d say $40-50K a year is absolutely feasible. If you’re halfway decent and a reasonably aggressive marketer, you can easily hit high five figures. Build a good reputation, start getting referrals, and the sky’s the limit. There are a healthy number of writers in the business grossing $100K+ a year, and a decent number going well beyond that. Part-time, $2000 a month is very do-able.

And that doesn’t even factor in the incredible freedom and flexibility you have in this field. I mean, for the most part, you get up and go to bed when you want to, take vacations when you want, don’t have to deal with rush-hour traffic, office politics and the like. It’s a pretty great thing. You can’t put a price tag on that.

So, besides corporations, what other types of companies hire commercial freelancers?
A lot of “middleman” entities, which means companies that are doing work for a corporation. Like graphic design firms, marketing companies, ad agencies, PR firms event production companies and others. These are great “bird dogs” clients, meaning they’re out there hunting work for themselves.

And because so few of them have the full-time writing staffs, they need to hire writers. So, they’ll find work for you while you’re out doing other things. Forging partnerships with graphic designers has been my #1 most profitable marketing strategy from Day One, bar none. In fact, it’s been such a fruitful avenue, that I even wrote a 70-page ebook about maximizing the potential of the approach.

And as mentioned earlier, don’t forget the many thousands of smaller companies (entities with revenues of roughly $5-200 million in revenues).

Does it take a mental adjustment to write for this field?
Writing, for the most part, is writing. If you know how to assemble information and build a case for something, that’s at the heart of a most commercial writing. The big difference of course, compared to, say, magazine writing, is the higher fees. That may seem like a wonderfully easy adjustment, but it can be tricky to shift your perception of your value on the open market.

What is your time worth? If your experience is with magazines, then you’re probably not used to thinking in terms of hourly rates. But that’s how you need to start thinking: “What’s my time worth?” And then use the answer to determine the project rates you’ll be charging clients (all of which I cover in TWFW). And in this world, your time is worth a minimum of $50 an hour and probably more if you have any decent clips.

If you don’t have much writing experience—which was basically my situation when I started—but you have a lot of experience in a particular industry, why not leverage that track record into a writing practice? After all, every single industry out there needs to create a TON of writing in the course of doing business. If you know a lot about, say, widgets, and if you’re a decent writer (even if you don’t have a lot of writing samples), that will go far in getting the attention of marketing folks in a particular industry. They’ll see someone who knows their industry, culture, vernacular, and that spells short learning curves, and very little “getting-up-to-speed” time.

Sure, you’ll still have to get into the rhythm of writing, and assembling the components of a piece in a logical flow, and do it on deadline, but if you’re a quick study and reasonably intelligent, it’s just not that tough an adjustment.

And in one sense, you’ll even have an advantage—a psychological one—over those who’ve written for magazines, content mills or other low-pay venues. Like my situation, I didn’t have to reprogram my thinking to get used to higher fees, which, as we’ve discussed, can be a tougher adjustment than you might imagine.

We’re talking about your self-concept of what you’re worth and it’s only human to sell ourselves short in that department. I had nothing to compare it to, so in my world, the $50 hourly rate I started out at—and for every hour worked—was just what the job paid, according to other writers I asked when I started. Of course, it’s gone up considerably since then, though, most struggling writers even today would be thrilled to make $50 an hour. In our world, that’s entry-level rates.

So, how much are you making now?
Depending on the client and the job, my hourly rate now is roughly $125-$150, or more. I say, “or more,” because often, you’ll end up in a situation where you’ve quoted a flat rate for a project and you end up finishing it in less time than you first calculated. So, you’ve effectively bumped up your hourly rate.

What do you like most about the business?
Well, the money’s great, but I have to say the freedom and flexibility. I’m a night owl and I can be one in this business, and not be subject to someone else’s idea of what the workday hours are. I often travel for a month at a time, and with our wired world, I can take my work anywhere.

And yes, in the wake of the pandemic, a lot of the world is now working remotely, but we were WAY ahead of that curve. In the previous edition (2010) of TWFW, I was already talking about how geography didn’t matter anymore for folks like us, meaning you can prospect for work anywhere, so you can live anywhere. Overwhelmingly, clients just don’t care where you are anymore. I still have plenty of clients in the Atlanta area, where I currently live, but, by and large, I’ve never met most of them!

What can people be doing now, while working at other jobs, to lay the groundwork?
Good question. People could be creating a portfolio of pieces, which I did through doing some pro bono projects. And I outline all sorts of strategies in TWFW for doing just that. Also, people should be tapping their network of any business contacts, getting a feel for what sort of work there might be out there. And especially in the industry where you have your experience, or even with your own company.

Is it true you were working at a dating service just before you started this business?
Yes, sad, but true, and I actually mention that in my book. I’d been in several different sales careers over the years, had been reasonably successful. And my last sales job before starting my writing business in 1994 was for a dating service. And I suppose, that more than anything, spurred me to do something more and bigger. And there’s a lesson in all that: even from very humble beginnings you can make a go of this business. I don’t care where you’re coming from or your circumstances: if you’re a decent writer and you want it badly enough, you’ll make it.

How does this new edition of The Well-Fed Writer differ from the 2010 edition?
Well, as mentioned up top, the new book includes the heavily updated content of BOTH original WFW titles—2000 and 2010. Check out this link for what’s different.

You’ve self-published all your books, haven’t you?
Yes, I have, and it’s been great. In fact, the first two books provided me with a full-time living for more than a decade. And all the how-to detail of how I pulled that off is in my award-winning 2014 release, The Well-Fed Self-Publisher: How to Turn One Book into a Full-Time Living (www.wellfedsp.com).