Career Mentoring for Freelancers
Whether you’re a somewhat established professional writer or editor, or you’re a newbie looking for your first client, it likely hasn’t taken you very long to realize that making a name for yourself in this increasingly competitive field can be a massive undertaking. What many new freelancers may fail to realize in their first few months is that effectively selling your services can often be more challenging and time-consuming than the actual services you provide, especially if you have a limited background in marketing or communications.
The sad truth is that you may be a highly skilled writer or editor, and a perfect match for the prospective client, but if the pitch that you’re using isn’t fully up to par, it could be significantly hurting your chances of creating a steady income of paid work. Furthermore, because the pool of entry-level writing and editorial jobs is much shallower since the widespread use of generative AI tools, it can often mean that you only have so many chances of appealing to the same prospective client before they decide to go with someone else.
We’ve recognized this difficult transition firsthand, and as a result, we’re rolling out mentoring services to help elevate new writers and editors get started in their new careers, in an authentic, flexible, low-cost format.
How Does it Work?
There are numerous so-called freelance writer or freelance editor “workshops” or “courses” offered by “gurus” or “marketing professionals” that aren’t always genuine in their approach. In many of these formats, the new freelancer pays a significant amount of their budget to be sold an endless stream of courses that offer no real assistance in elevating their careers or opportunities for advancement. Many times, the freelancer may have specific questions on how to get started, or may ask for help reviewing their websites, profiles, or approach, and find that the input they receive is vague or unhelpful. Many times, this is intentionally done to keep the freelancer in a position where they make little progress in their career so that they remain reliant on the instructor to sell them more courses or workshops.
Our approach is much different. With UnTapped’s career mentoring, we provide one-on-one sessions with experienced professional writers and editors who are actively working in the field and have familiarity with the industry as it stands today and the challenges that freelancers are currently facing. There are also no courses or workshops, and the service is delivered in a two-part format:
1. We set up a call (whether over the phone or a video chat), and provide complete and transparent guidance and answers to the questions you have about the industry, your marketing strategy, how to find clients, or anything else you have on your mind.
2. We offer you the opportunity to send us your portfolios, cold email approaches, resumes, etc., for a complete review, and offer assistance with your revisions.
How Much Does It Cost?
Because we understand that most new freelancers have very small budgets to work with, we intentionally keep the cost of career mentoring services at an absolute minimum to provide as much opportunity for advancement as possible. We are also flexible with specific mentoring services, based on your unique needs, and do not charge for the services that you don’t need.
We charge $60 per hour for calls; however, if you only need a half hour, we reduce the cost accordingly ($30 versus $60). Then, from there, we charge $0.05 per word for revising cold emails, portfolios, resumes, etc., or $.12 per word for a complete rewrite. Ultimately, this usually comes out to an average range of $30 to $200, depending on the specific services you require.
What Will It Cover?
Anything you like. Need someone to review your cold email to try to determine why it’s going unanswered? We can take a look and make specific suggestions on how to improve or rewrite it entirely to align with the elements that our freelancers actively use to get clients. Need help locating where clients are actively looking for freelance writers and editors? We can provide you with a list of platforms where we’ve found viable work in the last six months. Just need someone to bounce marketing ideas off? We can schedule a call! Whatever we can offer that will help you be successful, we are more than willing to provide.
How Can I Get Started?
Call, text, or send us an email, letting us know where you’re having difficulty, and we’ll work with you to brush up on your strategy! We look forward to hearing from you!