Simple Scaling Strategy (For Writers)

I recently had the honor of providing book coaching for a successful serial entrepreneur who has started up more businesses than I have fingers. During the course of his project, he shared with me about how his favorite part of the entrepreneurship journey is scaling the business. For those like me who’ve never taken a business class, scaling doesn’t mean you weigh everything in the business — it means intentional growth.

It made me ask myself: How does a writer scale their writing business?

But then I discovered I already knew the answer because I’d done it without realizing I’d done it.

So that’s our topic today — I want to give you a simple framework/strategy/formula - whatever you want to call it — for how you can scale your writing business. Because if I’d realized what I was actually doing, then I could’ve been more intentional with it and more effective. The earlier on you figure out how you can scale, the more likely you are to succeed. This will probably be the most helpful for those just starting their professional writing journey, but I think it can apply to anyone.

It’s incredibly simple:

• FREE

• DISCOUNT

• SCALE

And that’s it.

But don’t worry, we’ll dig into what each of those means a bit.

Keep in mind sometimes you’ll have to say “no” to the wrong things so you can say “yes” to more of the right things.

So let’s start with FREE.

All that means is that in the beginning, you’re going to have to do some free work. Even if you’ve been getting paid to write for a while, if you’re switching over to a new medium or skill, you’re still going to have to do free work.

My first paid writing gigs were all freelance article writing. While this was fine to start out, it wasn’t really good for the long term. Supposedly there are people who make a living doing this — I even once met a guy who claimed he was making six figures a year doing copywriting jobs, but I think even that wasn’t quite the same as what I was doing at the time.

When I decided that I really wanted to help people publish and provide them with creative consulting, I first used myself as a guinea pig. I learned how to self-publish and I picked out some old stories and poetry that I had enough distance from that I could treat it like someone else’s work and be more objective with the editing.

Once I’d done that a couple of times, I offered to edit my coworker’s book for free. She was my first client and seeing her book go to #1 in her category on Amazon on its first day was the icing on the cake for a project that I felt incredibly proud of. But this gave me something to put into a portfolio to say, “Hey, I did this.”

Now let’s get into DISCOUNT.

The great thing about this stage is that you can start charging for what you do — just not the full rates that you might see others doing for the same service. And it’s important to even be upfront about that and say, “Hey, I know I’m still new to this, so that’s why my pricing is low. The discount is worth it for the experience and I’m going to do an amazing job for you because I really hope you’ll be able to give me a good review.”

After the free book I edited and coached on, I moved into the discount phase, charging $1700 to do all of the following on the book project:

• Ghostwriting about two-thirds of the book

• Editing

• Layout & Interior Design (fonts, margins, call out boxes for quotes, formatting, pictures, and other tedious aspects that take up a lot of time)

• Publishing to Amazon (including uploading, description, keywords, pricing, all that jazz)

Doing all this took around four or five months, so when you break that $1700 up over the time I spent working on the book, yeah, it’s not so impressive. But that’s because the discount phase is really more about getting paid something while also building up your portfolio more so that you can start attracting bigger and better clients, which brings us to…

SCALE.

The fun thing about scaling is that you’re never really done with it — you’re always looking for ways to grow your impact and revenue within your constraints. For me, it was a two pronged approach:

• I needed to grow in frequency of projects.

• I needed to grow in revenue.

As for frequency, I was fortunate enough to get hired for a contract with a well-known university’s writing program where they assisted graduate students in publishing books. The pay was not great, about $15 an hour, but that was worth it considering I was getting paid to do something I loved. While this only lasted for about four months, I worked on about eight books during that time, further building my portfolio and publishing experience.

For revenue, I realized I could start to charge a bit more for my services. My next several book clients would be in the $2000+ range, but I was still doing everything.

Sometimes as you scale your writing income, you realize that you actually need to scale back on the amount of work you’re doing. I realized that I was doing too much on projects, which was keeping me from being able to do more of what I really loved to do — book coaching and editing.

So as counterintuitive as it sounds, the most effective way to scale isn’t to do more things — it’s about doing more of the few things you’re really good at doing. We all have twenty-four hours in a day, so there are natural limits to what you can pile on to your plate. Instead, it makes more sense to make sure you’ve got the right plate and that you’re filling it up with something you want to consume over and over again.

And that’s the major pitfall at this phase — it’s easy to stay stuck in the Discount mindset of “money is money” and feeling like you can’t turn anything down work. I get it. I’ve been there. But in a previous post, I talked about the importance of taking the time to value your time, which fits in perfectly here because as time goes on, you can scale the value of your time. Maybe at first you’re making $25 an hour, then $40, then $50…and so on. This will help you filter out the jobs that don’t fit in with where the direction of your scaling.

I had to do this recently when a client wanted me to help rewrite a presentation for him. I had to turn it down because the project was going to take over 50 hours of my time — and I knew he wasn’t willing to pay the value of 50 hours of my time. Even if he had been, committing to the project would have been a disservice to the other clients I was working with as it would’ve greatly reduced the time I could commit to their projects for a couple weeks at least.

You can apply this framework to really any type of writing income.

So as you scale the value of your time, or project cost, or however you want to scale — make sure to keep in mind sometimes you’ll have to say “no” to the wrong things so you can say “yes” to more of the right things.

You can apply this framework to really any type of writing income. If screenwriting is your thing, you can write a script for free, then one for a discount, and then one for minimum industry standard as you prove your skills. Yes, it’s a lot of work, but it’s a simple process.

Even in copywriting, you can follow this pattern with one tweak: When you discount, you need to hone in on a handful of clients who have the potential to pay you with both more frequency and dollars. That way, after you do a couple discounted jobs for them, you can say, “Hey, this seems to be going well — why don’t we create a more formal arrangement to keep this up? I’ll need to start charging my standard rates but it’ll still be cheaper than you going out and finding someone new who doesn’t know your needs the way I do now.” That way, you’re not constantly chasing down new clients — you have steady, consistent client base who feed you regular work and who will become your greatest source of referrals.

This pattern can even be followed with ebook publishing: you publish your first book for free or near free to attract readers, publish the second at a discounted rate now that you have an audience built up, and then you can charge a more premium price for the next book after that. This is especially effective in a book series centered on a protagonist. My dad once knew an electrician who followed this pattern with his self-published detective series and after he got his fourth book into the world, he was living off of the monthly Amazon payments instead of doing electrical work.

You can even follow this framework if you provide a service related to writing, such as teaching a course or providing paid critiques. Start with a few free ones you can use as samples, offer up some discounted jobs to gain traction and start getting a bit of a return, and then scale your pricing upwards as you build a stronger reputation. If you teach, you can further scale by turning your lessons into downloadable ebooks, a monetized podcast, or even a video series available for purchase on sites like Udemy. You’ll just need to invest in the tools and team to make them high quality.

I wish I had a really cool acronym or nickname for this framework, but sometimes it’s best to just be straightforward. While I discovered this process semi-accidentally, I’m glad I did and figured it out in a way that I can share with others. So if you’re wracking your brain on where to start or wondering why you’re not getting any traction, your solution might simply be to follow the FREE, DISCOUNT, SCALE formula.

The reason I think so many writers don’t follow this simple strategy is impatience. They want to get paid NOW, they want recognition NOW. Well, join the club! Of course you want that — we all do. But you don’t get there by luck or overnight. But you can increase the chances of getting there by following this formula with whatever writing route you pursue. If nothing else, it will help you have more sense of direction and discipline in your writing business — and that is still progress.