A couple of weeks ago, I received an email from Erwin van ‘t Hof and Sanne Poot. He is doing a PhD on freelance journalism; she is a freelance journalist and podcast host. On their podcast #freelanceleven, or #freelancelife, they discuss the world of freelancing by using one academic paper van ‘t Hof is reading for his dissertation as a jumping off point for each episode. They invited me on as a guest to talk about the struggles and contradictions that are part of working as a freelancer.
Let’s do it, I immediately thought, because I always love to talk to other freelancers. It was a great conversation, with two people who have experienced the tribulations of freelancing first-hand. So I opened up, the way I sometimes also do in this newsletter.
And yet you won’t find a link to the podcast episode on my website or my Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn page. The same is true for this newsletter more generally – when Linda and I started writing it, I shared the link a few times and then stopped.
It’s not that I’m not proud of this newsletter, quite the opposite. I don’t actively promote The Friendly Freelancer because I prefer for my clients not to read about my grievances, irritations and doubts. That is especially true for my journalism clients. The journalism industry attracts a lot of people, even though labour conditions have been going downhill for years. The odds that things will improve are low, and the Dutch-language media industry in Belgium is small, meaning that you don’t want to ruffle your clients’ feathers.
I write down my frustrations, hit publish and then hope that they’ll be read by as few people as possible. I realise that that is weird: Linda and I launched this newsletter because we wanted to change something for freelancers and that requires us to reach a lot of people.
That difficult balance was the focus of my conversation with Erwin van ‘t Hof and Sanne Poot. Erwin chose Digitising freelance media labor: A class of workers negotiates entrepreneurialism and activism as a conversation starter for the episode, a paper in which 21 freelancers discuss how they combine being an entrepreneur with advocating for better labour conditions.
Podcast host Sanne Poot also wrestled with this balancing act. “I keep thinking it’s strange that journalists write about precarious situations in other industries, but experience shame when the conversation turns to our own rates and work pressure,” she wrote in an article about our podcast conversation. “It’s a shame that freelancers fear they’ll lose assignments if they stand up for themselves, but it’s also very logical. I for instance noticed this when I tried to start a conversation with a group of freelancers who all used to work for a previous client of mine. Just creating a WhatsApp group already felt nerve-racking for a few of them. There’s also a lot of competition and little security. But if we don’t sound the alarm when we need to, we’re really cutting ourselves short as a professional group.”
But how does one sound the alarm? I fell short of an answer during the podcast episode. You can try not to see other freelancers as competitors, and aim to share as much tips and tricks as you can to try to gain the system. You’ll make your own life as a freelancer easier and that of a few others, but this won’t result in any deep, structural changes.
Freelancers who are in a position to be able to raise issues with clients can also try to effect change that way. Educate clients about things like promptly responding to emails, paying invoices on time, clearly communicating the scope of assignments, and what liveable rates look like. Point these kinds of things out to clients and you’ll do yourself a service as well as any freelancer who’ll work with that client in the future. It doesn’t have to be a negative type thing either. You can also let your clients know that you’re pleased with how they treat you, in the hopes that they’ll keep the good behaviour up.
Finally, we can continue sharing our experiences as freelancers amongst ourselves. Because as Sanne Poot writes: “I think that by sharing experiences we can at least make sure that this battle we’re fighting isn’t a lonely battle.”
You can listen to the full podcast episode (in Dutch) by visiting Villamedia’s website.
Reader request: for an upcoming newsletter, we’re looking for freelancers who have set email office hours, i.e. you only answer your emails on particular days. If this is you, please get in touch with us at freelancerthefriendly@gmail.com