The One-Word Solution to Managing Everything

Freelancing isn’t only about writing. Not by a long shot. It’s at least half about managing things, from clients and deadlines to schedules and the all-important bottom line.

Right this minute, I am employed by four clients. Sometimes I’ll have as few as three, which is the minimum I need to feel secure about my income should I lose one. Occasionally, I’ll work for as many as five at a time. That’s the maximum I’m confident I can keep satisfied by exceeding their expectations.

The Art of Client Juggling

One of my clients has contracted for a dozen 600-word articles a week. That project runs like clockwork, as I write two articles a day, six days out of seven, and get paid the same amount weekly. We’ve been at it for a little over a year and a half without a hiccup (knock on wood!).

AlfaBlue, my client here, has me writing blogs at a fixed rate. I also serve in a supervisory position for illustrators and other writers working on four web sites at an hourly rate, with a maximum number of hours set per week.

My third client makes assignments sporadically. He typically wants me to drop everything and get something written within 24 hours, for which he pays a lump sum in advance, like a retainer. Of course, I charge a lot more for that type of work, which thankfully comes only about once every couple of weeks.

I also have one client for whom I am ghostwriting a book. It’s a very long-term assignment, easily pushed to the back burner when other deadlines are looming. I always like to have one such project to fill gaps in the schedule. I charge by the hour for this at a very low rate, paid monthly.

The fifth slot is vacant right now, but I am holding it for a local politician who wants me to help on his campaign in a few months. It will involve advertising and direct mail plus all sorts of collateral materials from door-hangers to handouts and even a few speeches.

Bringing Order to Would-Be Chaos

I like to think that I’m pretty well-organized. But frankly, it would be impossible for me to juggle all of the activities associated with four or five clients without some help. The solution I’ve found is to use a “spreadsheet.”

Specifically, I use Microsoft Excel. I set up a grid, with a double column for every project. The first column for each client is where I enter the number of articles, hours or words contracted. The second column contains a formula for what I’ll be paid, i.e., the first column value times the rate I charge for that work.

The rows represent days. I fill in the anticipated workload for each client, day by day in blocks of two weeks. Then, I color-code each entry: yellow for deadlines, green for when the work is finished and pink for time off, which needs to be scheduled, too,

I also have some metrics I’ve built into the grid to show my average earnings per day and the amount of work remaining for each project. At a glance I can see exactly what’s coming up and how well I’ve been doing. The spreadsheet keeps me on track, and I’ll readily admit that I couldn’t get all my work done or make a living without it.

So other than MS Word, which I use for word-processing, Excel is the program I rely on the most. But I do know of one other single-word way to handle absolutely everything related to freelancing and time management, and that will be the subject of my next Diary entry.