Clerical Officer

3) Chasing reviews

Freelance copywriter is almost never the bottleneck in a copywriting job. In copywriting 99.99% of the work, the bottleneck is the review process. Most clients need to wait long to be examined. In fact, about a third of the client must be requested at least once before they will return to you with their changes. It’s not uncommon to write a business day to take a full month to reach sign-off - or more. Some clients will put the copy on the backburner for the review month ago (just another reason to ask for a deposit before beginning work)! As a result, freelance advertising copywriters and website copywriters spend a lot of time chasing reviews. Make sure you factor the delay and the chasing time into quotation marks as best you can. And record the client is always the old-old, so you can be prepared when discussing deadlines on the job.

4) Project Scheduling & Tracking

No matter whether you are working on projects big or small, project scheduling and tracking is important. You must know the exact status of all jobs in the process (tracking), and you also have to be very aware of what’s coming up and how you will manage it (planning). If you do so immediately, you should use the tracking and planning tools several times a day. In fact, they should be hub of your business. TIP: A good way to track a copywriting project is to use a job (and contact) tracking data. Make my own using a database Microsoft Access. Visit http://www.divinewrite.com/downloads/contacts jobs.mdb and download 208KB working copy for FREE. You need Microsoft Access 2000 to run it. I’m no database expert, so it does not become a work of art. He will surely get you started though. (TIP: If using a database, press Ctrl +; to enter today’s date.)

5) Accounting

Publishing invoices, process payments (and part payments), chasing overseas charges, recording fees, account management, in addition to putting tax … All require more time. Do not be fooled into thinking you can handle the account manually (or with Microsoft Excel). Even if you only have a few clients, you must really like an account package MYOB or Quicken (both offer small business versions). You will understand why the first time you do your GST reports or annual taxes. In fact, you will understand why every time you need to chase down outstanding invoices

6) Visiting clients

Although the modern miracle of email allows freelance copywriter get through about 95% of their work without ever leaving the office, this is sometimes still a good idea to do something that ‘old-fashioned’ way - especially if you expect to work with them quite a bit. Greet each other and put faces with names. And remember, everything about the meeting reflects on you and your business. As with your proposal, think about WHAT you say, HOW you say it, how you now. Always set the meeting with more notice, confirm the day before the meeting, must be timely, a summary of the meeting, and give a call to action. (Try to do the last two, both at the end of the meeting and via email after the meeting.)