A career in B2B writing can take a lot of different forms. In this excerpt from the B2B Writing Foundations course, we’ll explore basic pros and cons of working for yourself as a freelance B2B writer, working in-house on behalf of one brand, and working on several different brands as an in-house agency writer.
No option is better or worse than another, and many writers opt to switch between the three as they move through different life phases.
What’s the difference between freelancing, working in-house with a brand, and working in-house with an agency?
As you navigate your B2B writing career, you’ll need to make a decision about the way you want to work. The variations and combinations are endless, but most B2B writers have three career options:
- Work in-house for a B2B brand
- Work in-house for an agency that serves many B2B brands
- Work as a freelancer for a B2B brand, an agency, or a combination of multiple clients
No option is better or worse than another. They each simply offer their own unique pros and cons. You also may find that experience in one B2B writing career helps you with another.
For example, many successful B2B writers found it valuable to work for a B2B brand or agency for a few years in order to gain the experience they needed to launch their own freelance writing company. And just as many B2B writers ran a successful freelance writing company in order to prepare themselves to take a senior role with a B2B brand or agency!
The best B2B writing career for you will depend on what is most important to you at this phase in your career.
Does the steady paycheck and ability to focus only on writing make the politics and relatively lower salary of a full-time role with a brand or agency? Or is your passion for running your own business overcome your anxiety of running the accounting, marketing, and business development side of things?
The answer may change over time. And that’s why it’s so important to make sure you’re developing your skills and network as a writer – because you never know what might be the next step in your career!
Here are three main factors of working as a B2B writer and how they are similar or different depending on which kind of career you choose.
Clients as an In-House, Agency, or Freelance Writer
No matter what B2B writing career you opt for, you will have a client, boss, or customer. Here’s what that relationship looks like for each different kind of career:
… As an in-house B2B writer
As an in-house writer, your boss is likely the marketing manager, Chief Marketing Officer, or project manager, and, ultimately, the CEO or founder.
You only have one brand to focus on, which means one brand style guide and one set of customer personas. This allows you to do really good, deep work for your brand and, ideally, show some excellent results over time.
But being able to focus on one brand may eventually feel like being stuck with one brand. And stuck with one group of people to execute the marketing plan with. This can lead to obstacles in your B2B writing career like navigating internal politics, being held accountable for long-term results, and working to protect your job when there’s turnover in leadership every 5-10 years.
The type of work you do as an in-house B2B writer can fall on a wide range at the discretion of your marketing manager.
You might be implementing a strategy that requires you to write a white paper, three blog articles, and a webinar. Or you might just be writing weekly blog articles for a total of 52 the whole year. It will depend on your company’s content marketing goals as well as the advice you bring to the table as a B2B writer. Alternatively, in a large enough company, you may be able to secure a very specialized role, such as email marketing writer or white paper writer.
… As an agency B2B writer
Similar to an in-house B2B writer, as an agency B2B writer, your boss is likely a marketing manager, Chief Marketing Officer, or project manager, and, ultimately, the CEO or founder.
However, you’ll work with many different brands depending on how the agency is set up. If it’s an established agency that does account marketing, you might be assigned to a client for 3-4 years at a time. Or, you might work with different clients that come through the agency for a particular project every 8-12 weeks.
There are two ways to work for an agency. One is as an in-house agency writer, where you work for XYZ Agency as a full-time employee and are assigned to different clients or projects for the long haul. Another is as a freelance agency writer, where you work for XYZ Agency as a contractor. You’re offered specific projects with specific timelines, and you get paid what you negotiate on a freelance basis.
The type of work you do as an agency B2B writer will almost definitely be widely varied, as agencies specifically look for versatile writers to work with. You can certainly niche in one kind of writing, like webinars, and be assigned to all of the projects within the company, but it’s far more likely that you’d be assigned to one client account and expected to write all of the content formats for that client.
… As freelance B2B writer
As a freelancer, your boss is you and your individual clients. This is good news because it means that you have a lot of flexibility in how much work you take on and who you’re working for. But the downside is that you have to take on the administrative and sales role of finding and onboarding new clients.
You may secure a few clients that keep you on for years, or you may take on projects that last a short period of time and leave you looking for new work every few months. Negotiating new rates, time off, and testimonials…. That’s all on you, too.
The type of work you do as freelance writer is the most flexible of all the career options. You can organize your career by niche and be a jack-of-all trades for content formats, or you can niche in a content format and be a jack-of-all-trades for several niches.
For example, you might niche in healthcare and write white papers, articles, case studies, and research reports. Or you might niche in research reports and offer those services to companies in healthcare, manufacturing, and pharmaceuticals.
You also have flexibility around how much time you spend in each niche. As a freelancer, you can decide to try out a new project with a new client and then never do another project like that again. Or you can try a new project, love it, and pivot all of your new work to projects like that.
Income Levels as an In-House, Agency, or Freelance Writer
One of the biggest draws of B2B writing is the ability to charge competitive rates for your writing skills. Because B2B writers make money for brands by creating compelling advertising, content marketing, and sales copy, they’re often compensated more than other kinds of writing like creative writing and traditional publishing.
Every B2B writer’s career faces different advantages and obstacles, but here’s a general overview of what you might expect to be different about how you’re paid in the three different B2B writing careers.
… As an in-house B2B writer
There’s a wide range of salaries for in-house B2B writers based on the niche and your level of experience, but you could confidently find an entry-level role for B2B writing around $50,000 USD and a senior role in the field around $75,000-90,000 USD. You’re paid as a full-time employee with a monthly or bi-weekly salary and benefits.
… As an agency B2B writer
There’s also a wide range for salaries in the agency space, but you could confidently find an entry-level full-time role for B2B writing around $55,000 USD and a senior role in the field around $90,000-100,000 USD. You’re paid as a full-time employee with a monthly or bi-weekly salary and benefits.
… As freelance B2B writer
Finally, there’s the widest range of all kinds of B2B writing, freelance writing. This is the widest range because pricing is an art that evolves throughout your career. The minimum you can make is zero dollars, by not working. But the maximum you can make is literally millions of dollars over the course of your career. In our experience, we see writers going through three stages of income-earning:
- Charging low rates and experimenting with client projects, barely making a minimum wage
- Taking the freelance career seriously and charging a living wage, usually matching previous full-time earnings within the first year or two
- Fully embracing the role of freelancer and entrepreneur, creating a network of support, learning to charge project prices, niching in a field, and creeping into the $100,000 USD yearly income range
How long you work through each phase of income earning will depend on you and your situation: how confident you are in your ability to emulate the success of others, how much you love your work and feel motivated to be self-employed, and how quickly you adapt to projects and clients that pay well.
Stress Levels as an In-House, Agency, or Freelance Writer
No one career path is any less stressful than another, unless there are particular things about the career that happen to be stressful to you. That is, each path as more than its fair share of sources of stress.
Here’s a brief summary of those stress factors as you consider which role might be the best fit for your work style:
No one career path is any less stressful than another, unless there are particular things about the career that happen to be stressful to you. That is, each path as more than its fair share of sources of stress.
Here’s a brief summary of those stress factors as you consider which role might be the best fit for your work style:
… As an in-house B2B writer
When you work as an in-house B2B writer, you can experience stress from the internal politics of your workplace. Not only are you tied to the same group of people within your department, but you also have to invest energy in maintaining relationships with other departments like sales, customer service, etc.
Relative to the other B2B writing career paths, you bear more responsibility for the performance of your work, as your team will monitor metrics like sales and leads. In some situations, you and your marketing manager may be held responsible for the brand’s overall performance and it could affect your job stability when there are leadership transitions.
… As an agency B2B writer
Many of the same stressors exist for agency B2B writers as in-house writers as far as internal politics and maintaining strong relationships. But in the agency world, there’s an understanding that work and decisions move at a much faster pace that most other places. You’re often at the whim of a client’s availability or preference, which means changing directions or cancelling projects and moving on to other projects with very short notice.
As an in-house writer, you’ll need to go with the flow and get joy from day-to-day accomplishments because if you tie your satisfaction to your expectations for getting big projects done over the long term, you may be stressed and disappointed frequently.
… As freelance B2B writer
Overwhelmingly, the main source of stress for freelance B2B writers is from financial insecurity. Not because you aren’t earning money, necessarily, but because that money may come in inconsistently, varying by several thousand dollars per month.
(Note: The only way to eliminate this stress factor is to quickly build a cushion of 3-6 months of revenue so that you can pay yourself consistently even while waiting for a project to finish or a client payment to come in).
The second biggest source of stress for freelance B2B writers is the need to take care of all of the administrative and sales work that would be done for you if you worked in-house for a brand or agency. That is, you often have to manage your own project management, scheduling, billing, lead generation, website maintenance, and just about anything involved in running a business.
(Note: This is why charging a low hourly rate like $15-50 an hour will not create a sustainable business. You are now a business owner with overhead costs to your time, so your billing needs to account for that.)
Getting Started as an In-House, Agency, or Freelance Writer
The best way to decide which B2B writer career path is best for you is to try them all. That’s easier said than done, however! Especially if you’re just starting out with a sense that you could do this, but you haven’t actually done it yet.
For many aspiring B2B writers, the most convenient approach is to start as a freelancer and either love it and stick with it or pivot that experience into a full-time role with a brand or agency.
Here’s what that path might look like…
- Create a simple portfolio website for your writing work using any website platform or even a social platform like Contently or Pinterest
- Write 3-4 clips to feature on your portfolio as PDF downloads, even if they have not been published anywhere online
- Seek out 1-2 “starter clients” in an area of your interest or on a job board like Problogger or Upwork (Note: Job boards are effective ways to quickly gain experience and confidence, but you’ll want to move away from them as quickly as possible if you want to grow your income)
- Leverage your experience with starter clients into higher paying work through warm and cold emailing, LinkedIn prospecting, and referrals
Assess your satisfaction with your work and your niche to see if there are companies or agencies that you’d enjoy working for full-time