Have you been successfully freelancing as a content writer for some years and built a good reputation and skill set?
Have you received too many orders from your writing gigs on freelance marketplace or website?
But you can’t take any big orders from new clients because of having lots of clients, not for having enough time.
If one of these two questions or both questions answers yes for you, then it’s time to move to the next step to start a writing agency.
It sounds good and makes you excited to earn extra money, even opening a door for your passive income. But, it’s not a task as simple and straightforward as you seem.
So you should know all the detailed information about how to launch a writing agency before taking any concrete action and investing your time, money, and energy behind this.
Now, I’m sharing 4 steps to make up your mind for starting your entrepreneurship career as a successful freelancer. Even you will get a step-by-step guideline for your practical thinking and to take your logical action. Let’s catch up today with all those things.
Table of Contents
How to launch a writing agency? An excellent way to make passive income
First, you have to understand the difference between freelancing and running an agency. When you plan to run an agency, you must cope with many things you wouldn’t do as a freelance writer.
Some of the differences between running a writing agency and freelancing are
● When you are a freelancer, you have total control over yourself. As a result, you can choose with whom clients you will work and which buyers you will avoid.
But, when you will run a writing agency, you will face a limitation because you have many costs to meet at the end of the month. So your clients choosing freedom will be limited as an entrepreneur.
● You can make your schedule and manage your time according to your wish as a freelancer, but you can’t do all those things as an agency owner. In this case, you should maintain a schedule to collaborate with your team members and clients.
● Another critical thing is as a digital agency owner, you need more clients. Even you have to hire more team members as a proportion of your writing orders. That means you have to make a balance between two of these things to run your agency stable.
● Starting and owning a writing agency means you take more people’s responsibility than your survival and stable future. Your every decision will impact all your team members but you.
So you have to play a double role as a freelancer and an entrepreneur.
What is a creative writing agency?
Now, it’s the ideal time to know the definition of a creative writing agency before kick starts it. There are many definitions of a creative agency. Here, I have attached the most important three definitions.
● Legal definition
When you make any business relationship with any third party by signing contractual papers, it will be a legal agency definition. You must mention everything about the contract on the contract paper. For example, service type, service charge, any advance payment if given, working principles, deal completing day, etc.
● Traditional definition
When any business or an established organization offers any specific service for any person, it is the traditional definition of agency business.
● Modern definition
When a group of people work as a team and offer single or multiple services to the business owners at a cheaper rate or find solutions for many challenges and collaborate with any third-party organization, it is called a creative agency.
But the last definition promotes one of the biggest differences between doing freelance and running a creative writing agency: a writing agency is not a one-person performing business. It demands many people to play different roles.
I have given you three different definitions to understand your task if you are determined to start your writing agency.
What will be your day to day work as an agency owner
After knowing the freelance and agency difference and agency definition, let’s look at your daily work schedule as an agency owner.
As an agency owner, your day-to-day work will vary depending on the situation. For example
● Sometimes you have to make an excellent pitch to attract new clients to your agency.
● Sometimes you have to send a cold email to them.
● Sometimes you have to collaborate with your existing clients to get new orders from them.
● Sometimes you have to hire new writers for your team to meet the orders on time.
● Sometimes you have to keep a record of all your sales, expenditures, income, etc.
● Sometimes you have to collaborate with your team members to motivate them to get excellent work.
Those are the most considerable activities you have to perform if you start your agency business.
Here’s a step-by-step guideline on launching a writing agency that will give you a blueprint of your tasks and help you make up your mind. This guideline also allows you to learn more information about all the transitions of work. Let’s roll the ball.
Step – 1 Preliminary analysis
In the first step, you have to analyze some factors to get an overview. Is it worth starting your content writing agency or doing freelance writing as successfully as you are doing?
This primary analysis helps you to make the right decision. Otherwise, how much money you save from your hard work from freelancing will go in vain if you start your agency and fail. Let’s do some analysis.
Self-analysis
I am sure you are doing great as a freelance writer, but now do some brainstorming and answer some questions to know how you will serve as an entrepreneur.
1. Can you perform 12-16 hours of work initially as an entrepreneur for 6 days a week? Even sometimes, your business may demand weekends and holidays work. Are you determined to do this?
2. Do you have enough physical strength to handle the excessive workload and maintain all the pre-schedule?
3. Do you have the emotional strength to withstand the strains?
4. Are you prepared to temporarily low your standard of living until your business is firmly established?
5. Does your family support you in that case? (Because you need your family support to stay with your agency.)
6. Are you ready to lose your savings? (If it needs a long time to make a profit or in case your plan fails.)
7. Do you have your leadership skills and can get the job done by your team members?
8. Can your motivational skills motivate your team members while they will get bored to work?
From this self-analysis, you can know all the questions’ answers to go further to start your writing agency. If you have 2-3 negative answers out of these 8 questions, I suggest you take time to begin your agency or give it a second thought.
Market analysis
Then you have to analyze the market demand for your services. Maybe when you are working alone, you have received many projects from your existing clients.
Even because of too much work pressure you can’t take new projects from the new clients. But that doesn’t mean you will get a lot of orders to maintain a team. In that case, it will be a burden for you. So you have to be clear about it.
1. Who will be your targeted customers?
2. Do you understand their needs and desires?
3. What will be your target country?
4. Will you be offering the kind of services that they will buy?
5. Will your prices be competitive in quality and value?
6. Will your promotional program be effective?
7. Do you know how your agency compares with the existing agencies?
These 7 questions are very convenient and relative to turning your freelancing career into an entrepreneur. If you don’t know any of these questions answers, do your research to answer before keeping your footsteps to start your agency.
Service analysis
Now, you have completed the self-analysis and market analysis; if you are satisfied with the research, then start service analysis.
Many entrepreneurs start their agency without service analysis and will fail to run their agency. As a result, they will lose their writing track and go into depression. So if you don’t want this, then think about the below things.
1. Which of the services do you want to offer to your clients? For example, only content writing, content planning, Off-page SEO, on-page SEO, etc.
2. Which types of content writing services do you want to offer? For example, SEO content writing, copywriting, email template writing, video scriptwriting, ad writing, etc.
3. If you sell the service of SEO content writing, then what will be your niche?
4. How to offer your services to your clients?
If you know these service-related things, it will be easier for you to manage your agency and offer your clients the best services.
Financial analysis
You know entrepreneurship means you have to invest in your business. That’s why you have to analyze your financial sides before launching your writing business. If you observe around your side, most companies will fail because of not doing economic research before starting their businesses.
Here are a group of financial questions that you should analyze to understand better and predict your cost.
1. How much money do you have right now to invest in your company? (Consider your savings here, not any loan or credit balance)
2. Initially, how much money do you need to start your agency? (Consider your website building cost, home office setup cost, digital tools subscription cost, ad cost, team members hiring cost, etc.)
3. How much money will you need to stay in business if you don’t make a profit? (Here, consider all kinds of family survival costs at least for six months.)
This group of questions is for your investment analysis purpose. So when you have a clear idea about these questions, you can visualize your financial stability for at least six months. And I hope after running your agency in these six months, you will make a profit.
Now, it’s time to check out the second step of your writing agency, starting preparation.
Step 2 – Practical business planning with a solid foundation
Now, you have completed all your analytical work, and this analytical work already tells you what your decision should be. If you get a positive note to start your writing agency after all the things analysis, then deep dive into the second step.
● Planning your website
When you are freelancing, your portfolio is your working mirror. You can attract your buyers and clients through the portfolio. But when you plan to start your writing agency, you must buy a domain and hosting to create your website.
You have to hire a professional web developer to craft your website design, including an exclusive user experience. So keep a solid plan for all these things. The things you have to consider when you plan your website’s name and design
1. Your website name must be short, simple, and one or two words so that it will be easier for your clients to remember your website’s name.
2. Always try to buy the dot com domain because this dot com domain already has built an authority among the people and in the eye of Google. So when your website’s name has dot com, then you faceless challenge to attract clients.
3. Buy enough hosting to properly publish all kinds of your writing samples and other related things.
4. Try to design your website so that everybody can easily use it with some clicks.
5. Make a solid plan; how do you include your about us page, service page, contact page, etc. So that when you will execute your website, then you can attach them without investing much time.
Those are the most considerable parts when you are planning your writing agency website. So have a plan for those things.
● Planning your agency management department
Don’t you think that how would you manage your freelancing career; you can manage your agency in that way. Running a writing agency is almost different from doing freelancing, what I have discussed above. So you have to keep a clear idea about the management system of your agency. Such as
1. Which procedure will you follow to hire your team members? Or What will be the team members’ selection system?
2. If you cover multiple niches, how do you measure your team members’ skills to appoint them?
3. How will you want to appoint your team members? (Freelancers, full-time workers, or part-time workers. Those three employment systems have both positive and negative sides. At the starting stage of your agency, you should focus on part-time workers or freelance team members. That will help you to save your extra cost.)
4. If you appoint anyone full-time, how do you make your appointment agreement? (It’s essential to get work done by the team members. Otherwise, sometimes when they get a better opportunity, they will leave you at the middle stage of any project. Hiring new members will be hassling for that time. At last, these unprofessional things affect your agency a lot. So play from the safe side)
5. At first, how many team members should you hire to say to your clients that it’s an agency. (If you don’t employ any team members, you can’t take new projects, and if you hire team members but can’t manage enough orders, you have to pay your team members without getting any work from them. So you have to make a balance between these two things. I think that hiring a freelance writer is the best option.)
● Planning your financial department
Running an agency means you have many clients as well as many team members. So you have to keep a record of all of your client’s accounts receivable and team members’ accounts payable. So you can follow the below things.
If you can’t know how well you manage these two things, there is a high chance not to see profit though you have enough clients’ orders. So You should do excellent planning on
1. How will you get paid from your clients? (Per project, per hour, per K words, etc.)
2. When will you make your payment from your clients? (Per day, per week, per 15 days of a month or monthly)
3. How do you pay your team members? (Per K words, per content, per project, etc.)
4. When will you pay your team members? (Per week, per 15 days of a month, or monthly.)
5. What will be your per month agency cost? (Utility bills, internet bills, subscription bills, writing tools cost, etc.)
6. How do you maintain your accounts payable? (Relative answers can be maintaining a spreadsheet for your team with their name, rate and working time, project name, etc., to record their account payables.)
7. How do you maintain your accounts receivable? (Relative answer can be maintaining a spreadsheet for your clients with their name, rate, project order date, submission date, paying date to keep a record of their account receivables.)
When you know all the things, then all of the information will help you to understand how much you should earn to meet your break-even point to sustain your business. No matter if you can’t make a profit at the beginning point, that doesn’t mean you will run your agency at a loss.
Planning your organizational setup
When you are freelancing, then you only need a personal computer with an internet connection. But this setup won’t be enough for running an agency. That’s why you have to make a plan on some factors. For example
1. What will be very convenient for you; desktop or laptop? If you need to carry it with you, then the laptop is a better option, but if you prefer to work in a room, then a desktop is better.
2. How many computers do you need to run an agency? Because at the agency you have to communicate with many people. So there is no option to detach from your clients or team members because of troubling your PC.
3. Which speed internet connection will you need? Internet speed plays a significant role while you are doing online work. So you need a stable 24/7 internet connection.
4. What is the agency running relative things you will need? (Camera and microphone set up for skype meeting, soundproof environment not to disturb you while meeting with your clients or team members)
5. How do you prefer to decorate your home office? (As an agency owner, you will spend most of the time in your office room. So you have to decorate the office room in such a way that it will give you peace while working. Otherwise, your concentration will frequently break because of the uncomfortable chair, table, any other furniture, or the room’s peaceless environment.)
I think all of these things are very common to give a professional look to your home office. You may need many other things according to your preference and working structure.
Now, you have almost completed the second step of your writing agency. I can predict if you cover these two steps effectively, then you get enough confidence to move on to the agency’s next execution stage.
Step -3 Give an actual setup to your agency.
In this step, you have to execute your different plans to establish your agency. Until the completion of this step, you can’t see anything in reality to your business. So let’s know the steps to execute all the plannings.
● Contact a domain and hosting seller.
To buy your website domain and hosting, you should contact the domain and hosting sellers. There are a lot of options you will find when you search about these sellers in the market. “Namecheap” is the best option for you to buy domain and hosting.
If you want, you can purchase the domain and host separately, or if you wish, you can buy both of them as a combo package. When you buy a combo package, the seller will attach the domain and hosting to save your time and cost. So I prefer a combo package. What will be your choice in this case?
● Live your website
After buying a domain and hosting, now hire a web developer to develop your website. You should hire an expert web developer because it’s a complicated process, so be careful about it. Even you can set up an about us page, service page, and contact page from the developer, Then tell your web developer to “live” your website on Google.
● Include team member hiring page
Many freelance writers search for work by visiting many agencies by searching google. So if you want to hire them without publishing any team member hiring posts on social media, you have written all the hiring procedures, then interested freelancers will knock you to get hired.
● Publish some of your writing samples
If your website is empty and you live it, then it looks awkward. You should publish some samples of your writing to your website after making your site live on Google. Your clients will find your agency by searching in google.
And when they can easily access your samples and your writing will satisfy them, they will place an order. And by this way, you can manage as many orders as you need to upgrade your agency.
● Create and maintain a safety net of your business
Maintaining an online writing agency means you have to communicate with many people. Even all types of words of these communications are very important. That’s why you should keep them the secret to maintain safety because many hackers are always keeping active to hack different websites to take control.
Once they hack your website, they will know all of your essential information, and you can’t get access to them. They will then blackmail you and demand a large amount of money to back your website accessible to you.
Another thing is sometimes they will steal all of your online banking balance. Please don’t neglect to create a strong safety net for your website to keep it safe and secure.
Step – 4 Focus on networking as a marketing tool
Now, you have established your agency by sweating a lot and sacrificing many nights’ sweet sleep. If you don’t focus on marketing and networking, you don’t get enough response from your clients.
You should do effective marketing of your agency to inform your expected clients about your agency’s activities. Let’s know some basic steps of marketing and networking.
● Make a chain Network with the local agency.
Once upon a time, when everybody thought that the same product or service businesses are only competitors. But, now, the thinking is changing. Yes, they are competitors, no doubt, but that doesn’t mean you don’t maintain a good relationship with them.
As a new agency owner, it would be best to collaborate with established agency owners to know the practical experience. Even if you can convince them, there is a high chance to get an order from them because your price range is competitively low as a newcomer so that they can place your order.
As a result, you can work as a sub-agency with them. So you can gather practical strategies from them to make your agency bigger in the future. It’s work like B2B business.
Collaborate with writers
As your agency is new, if you initially hire a highly efficient writer, they will charge more. As a result, you can’t make a profit. Hiring a mid-level writer or fresher who has skills but doesn’t know how to polish their skills will be an excellent decision for you.
So try to collaborate with freshers and then train them to serve your purpose. For this, you can keep your eyes on all kinds of social media because the freshers sometimes publish “hire me” posts to social media. So you can get them quickly without spending any employment costs. It works like a B2C business.
● Increase your activity to all kinds of social media accounts
Social media marketing is effortless but helps you to attract and get big-budget clients.
How?
Try to publish your agency and writing-related posts every day on all your social media. Then wait. All of your posts must go to many people’s news feeds, so they read your post. If they need your agency-related work, then they will think about you to place their order.
But, here, you must maintain simple tricks. Never always publish sales posts. Even I will suggest you publish reader and content marketers engagement posts. If you can succeed in engaging content marketers in your position, you have half done your job.
Another important thing is writing your post about how you help content marketers enhance their sales to profit rather than try to sell your service. Always remember, if you sell your service, you will make a profit, then what are your clients’ benefits.
So try to make them understand that you will help them to reach their business goal. This tip works magically to attract high-paying clients to your agency.
Final verdict!
Yes, now you are coming to the last minute of this highly lengthy but effective discussion of launching a writing agency. Here, I am trying to give you a 4 steps guideline to provide you with a clear picture to visualize all the things before giving effort, investing money, time, and energy to start a business.
It is a very long discussion, so I suggest you keep a pen and paper in front of you and reread the content. Then find out the positive answered questions and negative answered questions from the writing.
Now, make up your mind based on the answers. If you do so, then the wrong decision-making chance will competitively reduce. The rest of the things are your decision.
Successful freelancing vs. agency startup? 🤔
Leave a Reply