As a freelance writer, you have likely noticed that some of your writing and marketing activities bring outsized results, while other activities give you a very small return on the investment of your time and energy. There’s a reason for that…
80-20 Rule = The Pareto Principle
The 80/20 rule, also known as the Pareto principle, is based on data and observations by the Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto. It holds that, in many instances, 80% of an effect is created by 20% of causes.
Here are 4 examples applied to freelance writers:
- 80% of your writing income comes from 20% of your clients.
- 80% of your published writing comes from 20% of your ideas.
- 80% of your best writing comes from 20% of your writing time.
- 80% of total freelance writing income is earned by 20% of freelance writers.
Note that this is not an ironclad law: it’s a tendency. Sometimes the numbers can be skewed far beyond 80:20. It’s possible to find distributions up to 99:1 and beyond.
It’s Crucial for Time Management
The 80/20 rule applies to most areas of life and business. For example, let’s look at blogging — probably 99% of all blog traffic goes to 1% of the top blogs.
For your freelance writing, look at every aspect of what you do for the 20% that accounts for 80% or more of your productivity and income. Then make sure you focus on doing more and more of what’s in that 20%.
Apply the 80-20 Rule to Your Business
It’s especially important to apply the 80/20 rule to clients. Focus more on those few clients that give you a lot of work and pay you well.
For example, I’ve made the majority of my freelance income by writing test questions, lecture outlines and the like for college textbooks. I’ve done probably 90% of my over 300 projects for just two textbook publishers, and over the years, I’ve concentrated most of my marketing on these two companies.
Your Take
What’s your experience with the 80-20 in your freelance writing and the other activities of your life?
Two more.
If you don’t keep your clients on course, the last 20% of a project can consume 80% of your project time.
Also, if you don’t weed out difficult clients, 20% of them can consume 80% of your customer service time — without contributing anything to your bottom line.
Excellent Tom! Thanks for sharing these.
Thanks for this post. I never thought about it before but that 80/20 is right on. When it comes to my highest paying magazines, the articles that make me the most money are about geocaching. Something I never thought would become a niche for me, but that covers your #2 point. Yesterday I was at a geocaching potluck pie event and met a woman who runs a business doing geocaching team building for corporations. I asked for her business card and now I have a new angle to pitch to HR and corporate magazines. And I snagged a butter pecan tart while I was there so score all around!
Geocaching sounds interesting — as does that butter pecan tart!
I do some outdoors writing, and I do a lot of hiking, but I haven’t yet explored geocaching.
Excellent post, John. The 80/20 rule is widely used in the sales profession.
Tom, you couldn’t be more accurate in that assessment! I’ve spent far too many hours trying to get clients back on track, and in working with difficult clients. Not worth it.
Tom’s a sharp guy. Plus he’s been in this field for many, many years.
Great reminder John, thanks for posting. I agree with Tom, I spend far too much time on low paying, poor customers than high paying great customers. Establishing a niche over being a generalist is becoming more apparent. And I know the niche, I just have to update my profiles! But since that’s part of the 80% that generates the 20%, it’s time well spent.
It’s important to know when to leave a problem client and search out better ones. We all have to that from time to time.
Excellent post, John. The 80/20 rule is widely used in the sales profession.
You couldn’t have been better.
Thanks for such good info really helped me to know more about this