Going Exclusive With A Writing Client

Over the decade-long course of my writing career to date, I’ve always been freelance. However, the nature of my client relationships has changed multiple times.

As a new writer, most of my time was spent hunting for new clients and projects. However, one early client that needed a lot of copy quickly found value in my writing that led to an ongoing monthly retainer. I wrote a set number of blog posts and articles for them in exchange for a flat fee every month. Occasionally, I would get extra work from them as well as my other clients that would add to my writing income.

Over the next 18 months my role kept expanding as we found new ways to work together. Late in 2009, the client approached me about taking over day-to-day responsibilities of two print newsletters they published as a test (two other editors they had tried over the previous few months hadn’t worked out).

Long story short, we were a good fit. A couple months later the client reached out to ask me to write for them full time. Considering I was now writing full time after being laid off from my IT job, the bulk of my income already came from this client whom I enjoyed working with, and I was now being offered significantly more money with the income stability I hadn’t had since being laid off, I jumped at the chance.

The Writer’s Life May Not Be What You Originally Thought

Only a year earlier, I had been shocked when one of my early copywriting mentors, Pam Foster, told me she had accepted a full-time writing position with a company.

It didn’t matter that it was a great fit for her, writing on a topic she loved (pet health)… or that it paid very well… or even that she still had tremendous schedule flexibility. It simply didn’t fit the vision I had built of what the writer’s life meant: sitting on the beach, writing on your laptop as you sip a cold drink. Certainly not tied down to a single client or employer, which I originally felt “beneath me” to even consider if I were to be a “successful writer.”

First of all, let me share that I’ve worked on the beach several times since. It’s not all it’s cracked up to be. Especially if you’re like me and prefer to actually be in the water with your kids, not head down working while your family frolics around you. I still enjoy a trip to the beach – but I usually put the work away before I go now so I can focus on being present with my family and actually enjoy the sun, sand, and waves with them.

Second, writing is work. Yes, writing can be fun. Hours can fly by like minutes when you get deep into a project you’re enjoying. But let’s not lose sight of the fact that your life as a writer still requires you to buckle up and write. Edit. Rewrite. And then get that writing into the world. It’s the same whether you’re picking up new single-project client every week, working on a handful of retainers every month, or choose to contract into an exclusive relationship with a client.

I’ve tried all three… and I’ve found that each was the right fit for me at different points in my writing career.

Negotiating the Transition

My client and I negotiated back and forth for two months while I remained on retainer before I agreed to an exclusive relationship with them.

Discussing an exclusive freelance agreement with a client is similar to negotiating for a full-time job. But there are some key differences as an exclusive freelancer compared to becoming an employee:

1) You are responsible for all of your own taxes (in the U.S. you’re still a 1099 freelancer, not a W-2 employee).

2) You set your own working hours and location to work from (though you may need to be available for calls and/or meetings).

3) You will cover all of your own business expenses and benefits not negotiated in advance with your client (such as health insurance and paid time off).

4) You should determine the scope of work you’ll perform for your client for an agreed upon compensation, including any bonuses, before starting.

Some writers consider working exclusive with a client to be “a job without the benefits.” And they’re right. You have all your eggs in that one client’s basket. If they choose to stop working with you, there goes all of your income.

So why take the risk? And are there ways to mitigate the risk?

Why Going Exclusive Could Be the Fast Track to Your True Writers’ Life

I’ll be honest, income stability was a major motivator not only for taking on retainer clients but also going exclusive. I felt I negotiated good terms for both a base monthly rate and performance-based bonus opportunities considering my skill level and experience at the time.

But monetary reasons are far from the only factors to consider with an exclusive relationship.

As I discovered, the right client will invest in you – even as a freelancer – because there’s strong mutual value in your growth.

Once I went exclusive with my client, they began to invest in my writing education. They paid for my travel (several times) to attend the American Writers and Artists, Inc. Copywriting Bootcamp in Florida, as well as numerous writing and marketing courses.

But it was the one-on-one mentorship I received direct from my client’s founder that proved most valuable in the relationship. I learned not only how to be a better writer, but also by working closely with the entire client team, how the various parts of their business worked together and how to improve my vital role in that team. You don’t learn that from books.

It was the right fit for me at the time. But not for always.

Backing Out of an Exclusive Arrangement

After nearly three years working exclusively with that client, I began to feel an urge to write more in another area of interest not within their niche. I also felt I had an opportunity to make significantly more money by expanding into that other niche which was red hot at the time. And there were some other “bucket list” goals as a writer I wanted to accomplish that needed more time than I had available.

Additionally, this was a chance to address work-creep that had occurred, where I was taking on more work than I felt I had agreed to at the beginning of the exclusive agreement without any additional pay (tip: carefully define work scope in all client agreements).

Instead of ending the exclusive agreement, I simply negotiated back down to a retainer agreement that only used about half my time every month. And I was more careful to define my writing responsibilities that time.

As a result, I remained a vital part of my client’s team, but was able to offload many responsibilities and simply keep the core projects I wanted to keep. Anything else was extra one-off paid projects again, just like any other client.

This diminished role fit me perfectly at that stage in my writing business, enabling me to expand my scope of writing for other clients I wanted to work with as well as personal projects. It also drove income growth at that point in my business.

Going Exclusive… Almost

After some years writing in my new niche, I found it cooling off and started looking for a way to introduce more income stability again. However, I didn’t want to return completely to an exclusive arrangement where I couldn’t work on other income streams.

I found the answer in a hybrid near-exclusive agreement with the same key client I had already been working with for several years… as a total freelancer, on retainer, in an exclusive relationship and back to retainer again.

The advantage here was a strong working relationship with the client. That’s always going to be your best advantage in negotiating terms with any client – having a great working relationship already. That’s why, as I explained in my first article of this series, you want to build your relationship step-by-step, not simply go straight to retainer or an exclusive arrangement in most circumstances.

Here’s what worked for me: I would continue my role at the client handling all their print publications along with other duties. I’d also be available for other projects for them as time allowed while maintaining a roughly 40-hour workweek for them. In other words, it allowed for unforeseen work expansion, but I was protected by an agreement not to overload me this time.

I specifically negotiated that in my “spare” time, basically, outside of the agreed-upon amount of weekly hours I’d invest in the client’s projects, I could still pursue my own personal projects. This allowed me to continue pursuing multiple streams of income while enjoying the stability of a full-time, great writing income and complete flexibility on working whenever and wherever I chose. As long as the work gets done on time, my client doesn’t care when or where I do it from.

As you see, my vision of my personal writer’s life has continually evolved to fit my family’s needs and desires over the years. Yours should, too. Don’t get hung up on someone else’s dream. Find your own dream, set your own goals to achieve it, and don’t be afraid to modify that dream as life continues to move on.

If you’d like to explore working on retainer or pursuing an exclusive relationship with a client, be sure to check out my next article, where I’ll cover some of the nitty-gritty details to watch for as you negotiate.