Here’s their super stealthy secret: they use customized templates to automate time-consuming business procedures. 

They avoid the time-sucks and headaches that typically capture freelance writers in hours-long black holes of confusion, and instead improve their repeatable processes with templates. 

Don’t fall into the trap of custom crafting every little thing that goes out of your inbox. Have a set of templates that you can tailor to your personality, and help you work efficiently, improve your client experience, and eliminate the fluff from your business.

Freelance writing templates to automate your biz 

After almost a decade of freelancing, I’ve battle-tested these contracts and templates to make sure they not only cover your marketing efforts, but set you up for success with the proper contract outlines.

Here are six different freelance writing templates you need, why it’s important to have them in your arsenal and how to use them to automate and customize your business.

1. LOI templates for businesses and trade magazines

When you’re writing LOIs (Letters of Introduction) to market your writing services to businesses or trade magazines, the process can get repetitive and time-consuming, especially if you’re reaching out to multiple potential clients within the same niche.

As you write these short letters, it’s easy to lose hours coming up with different ways to say essentially these same things to hundreds of different people: 

• Asking if they need writing help
• Introducing yourself
• Explaining relevant niches and clients you’ve worked with
• Headlines for story ideas you have (trade magazines)  

When you create a template to work from, then customize it per niche and per trade magazine type, you form a repeatable system to get more marketing done in less time. Instead of starting from scratch each time you step up to the marketing plate, you’ve got 90-ish percent of the work finished, and simply need to add a few sprinkles of customization before you press send. 

With an LOI template, you can send tailored messages quickly through email, LinkedIn InMails, DMs or connection invites. And here’s some more behind-the-scenes info: If you start with one template, it’s easy to create dozens of templates for all the niches, trade magazine genres or other marketing needs you have.

Then, when you need to get some marketing done, you can pull from a personalized deck to send the right message to the right prospect in a few minutes to automate the process. And because you’re able to reach more potential clients faster by putting more irons in the fire, you can grow your client base and make more money.

2. LinkedIn marketing templates

Like LOI templates, LinkedIn marketing templates are designed to help you send marketing and networking messages that sound like you, but in more efficient (and less tedious) ways. From connection requests to InMails to referrals to pitches, these templates cover the gamut of activities within LinkedIn and help you reduce your time on the platform, but make more overall impact. 

This toolkit allows you to prospect, grow your network, ask for referrals, follow up with warm leads, connect with other writers and communicate like a LinkedIn pro…without losing a ton of time that you need to spend on paid work. You’ll speed up client acquisition by growing the amount of marketing you send out, and cut down on potential client back-and-forth by altering your templates over time to include the info you’re asked about most upfront. 

One of the best platforms for freelance writers, LinkedIn offers so many opportunities to connect with clients and grow your business. And when you’ve got templates that you can design your personality into, sending out LOIs and pitches for marketing, replying to messages, and popping over connection and referral requests becomes an almost-automatic operation.

You’re able to plug-and-play with a basic framework, where you change a few specific details for customization, then send warm messages that come across as professional, but with a touch of you that sets your communication apart. By simply changing a few variables, you’re able to work more in a copy-paste fashion than spending hours crafting dozens of messages and taking time away from working on your paid client projects.

3. Proposal template

Nothing accelerates the client onboarding experience and provides value more than having a quality proposal template. When you’ve got the structure, adding in specifics like the below for each new client proposal is a breeze:

• Design elements like relevant photos and colors
• Intro messages
• Project goals and scope of work
• Validation via testimonials and a list of past clients
• Project cost
• Next steps for the potential client to take

In the getting-to-know-you period, sending over a polished proposal that looks, sounds and feels like the experience of working with you grabs your client’s attention. And if you use a template, although it feels like a fully custom experience on the receiving end, the creation side is mostly minimal. You can craft several templates that are customized per niche to cut down even more on time, and onboard your client without a lot of turbulence.

With a templated proposal, onboarding is simplified, and because you put in the time upfront to create an outline that’s easy to tailor, you only have to spend a short amount of time refreshing it for each new potential client.

4. Business and magazine contract templates

Because businesses and magazines have different needs, it’s important to have two different freelance writing contract templates.

However, both work toward the same goal: outlining the process of working together in clear, direct terms and providing a layout that you can use over and over again in your freelance writing business. With the right two templates, you’ve already got a sequence of information (and maybe some legalese), that only needs a few updates like project scope, contract duration, upfront payment amount, due dates, and potentially, payment terms and rights.

As a freelance writer, having contract templates helps you keep your agreements consistent and clear, but also keeps you safe. When you have a direct document to continually work from, every clause or additional term you add as your business grows lives on and builds a more secure contract. When you don’t have a template, it’s easy to recreate the wheel for every contract, forget specific clauses and terms (I know, I’ve done it), make mistakes, and create inconsistencies among clients.

But when you’ve customized a specific agreement, you can send it to clients faster for signature, get your upfront payment quicker, and onboard your client without an enormous amount of effort. Plus, you’re able to move from proposal to contract to payment in a much more streamlined way.

5. NDA template

With an NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreement) template in your arsenal, if you’re sent a client’s NDA that’s not a fit for you during your onboarding process, you can quickly send yours over. Whether it’s the whole agreement, a few clauses or a lengthy contract duration, instead of agreeing to terms that aren’t writer friendly, you simply send your customized template for consideration.

Since some NDAs ask you to keep information or processes under wraps forever, having your own framework at-the-ready that spells out a year or two of silence on their secrets avoids having to scramble. When you don’t have a backup plan, especially one that’s custom-created for freelance writers, you may end up using an NDA that hinders more than it helps.

Additionally, with an NDA in your back pocket, you minimize time spent on finding and drafting new ones frequently, and save potential onboarding headaches and mishaps. A few minutes of typing and you’ve got a template that you can send when you need to and essentially automate the NDA formation and signing process.

6. VA and independent contractor contract template

When you want to hire outside help for your business, having a contract template to work with helps smooth out and automate onboarding. Whether it’s a VA (Virtual Assistant), SEO consultant, or graphic designer, or you’re creating an agency-style business with contracted writers, you want to have a template to customize to your exact work needs.

Unlike a business or magazine, this agreement may cover more than project scope, payment terms, rights and indemnification. And having an agreement on-hand to swiftly add someone into your business helps you move up and scale without the stress and extra time spent.

With a pre-built framework that’s freelance writer-friendly, the agreement is more malleable for the different types of contractors you may hire in your business, and like your marketing templates, can morph into several different contract templates for your specific work needs. It’s like having a step-by-step option where you only need to customize project scope and rights, send the document, and get back to more important tasks.

As you grow and scale, you may need to add a clause or two if your business becomes ultra complex. But having a contract template for a VA or independent contractor that you can almost set-and-forget and clearly maps out how you’ll work together, makes the process of hiring help rapidly much less complicated and more straightforward.

Photo by Elly Fairytale from Pexels

Getting sweaty palms over freelance writing contracts is one of the biggest struggles I see writers have; from newbies all the way up to seasoned content marketers. But drilling down and understanding what these complex clauses mean, why they’re becoming more frequent in our contracts, and what steps to take if your potential client pushes back on your changes can give you a lot of confidence when it comes to signing on the bottom line. 

Over the last decade or so, I’ve seen simple, one-page contracts morph into pages-long, detailed documents with new clauses, explanations, loopholes and confusing verbiage. Yet, it doesn’t have to be that way and there’s plenty that freelance writers and contractors can do to achieve writer-friendly contracts.

7 freelance contract clauses you should understand

In this post, I’ll review several crucial freelance writing contract clauses you should understand, and offer steps on how to get agreements that work best for your business and your client.

Here’s what to look for in your freelance contract.

1. Scope of work

What it is: This outlines what the project details are including the type of content you’re writing, the word count, agreed upon deadlines and your revision policy.

Why you need to know this now: It seems simple enough, but sometimes clients change your scope of work before they sign the contract without telling you; making the project bigger than what you originally quoted or agreed to. Double check for changes to your scope of work, and if it grew, note the change with your potential client and charge accordingly.

What to do if the client pushes back: If your potential client doesn’t like the increased fee, discuss whether or not it makes sense to go back to the original scope of work, explain why the fee increased, or see if there’s an alternate route of a second project to break up the cost. Also, make sure to include this sentence in all your future contracts: “Changes to this scope of work will lead to additional fees.” 

2. Rights (Businesses, magazines and work for hire)

What it is: This section describes who owns the content copyright, whether that’s a business, publication, larger entity or you.

Why you need to know this now: Recently, I’ve seen contracts from potential clients get much more rights-grabby, with a large uptick in Work For Hire agreements. Especially with the changes in technology, many companies are trying to hold onto not only current rights to all platforms and tech, but future rights in case a new form of media comes along that they want to take advantage of and promote the content you created there. But rights differ between writing for businesses and magazines. 

For me, that means this is the clause I use with corporate clients: 

“Until completion of the scope of work, Freelancer retains all copyrights of works developed in whole or in part by Freelancer in connection with the scope of work described in this agreement. Upon payment, the copyright will be transferred to Client and will be the exclusive property of Client. Client grants Freelancer the right to display the finished product in her portfolio and on her website.”

And this is my clause for magazines: 

“Until completion of the scope of work, Freelancer retains all copyrights of works developed in whole or in part by Freelancer in connection with the scope of work described in this agreement. Upon payment, Client receives First North American Serial Rights plus a 30-day exclusivity publishing period. Client grants Freelancer the right to display finished articles in her portfolio and on her website.”

With businesses, you’ll transfer all rights to them since re-printing their content is a nonexistent revenue stream for freelance writers. The key here is that they don’t own the rights until they’ve paid for the work. They don’t pay, you own the rights and can use that if you have to take action.

With magazines, we’re walking a different rights rope. Usually, you’ll get emailed an all-rights contract (AKA Work For Hire) where you’ll submit your finished piece and transfer all current and future copyright to that publication. When you sign a Work For Hire Agreement, you’re agreeing to create the content, give up claim to it when you turn it in, and have the copyright owned wholly by your client who paid you for the work. 

This isn’t your only option, though, since with magazine articles there’s still a chance you can re-sell the article to another publication and get paid again… if you retain the rights.

Ask if they have another contract with more writer-friendly terms, if it’s possible to get First North American Serial Rights (FNASR), or if you can change the rights clause to an exclusivity period of 30, 60, or 90 days. That way, you can still retain the rights, but they’re able to run the first print of the story and be first to market.

What to do if the client pushes back: Don’t panic! Pushback on rights is totally normal, especially for publications (P.S. big magazines often have several different contract templates so don’t be worried about asking for their other contract). And it’s not the end of the world to sign a Work For Hire contract; it’s pretty common nowadays.

With so much content being created, I’ve noticed the re-sell magazine market is low so it can make sense to sign the rights away. What you want to pay attention to is if your article has the potential to re-sell well. If so, try your best to secure FNASR, an exclusivity period, or more writer-friendly terms than your client getting all rights now and forever for everything currently and potentially created.

For businesses, much of the issue is making the work publicly available on your website or portfolio. Ask if you can send the sample out to show your work to potential clients as long as you don’t publish it on your website; most of the time, they say yes. 

3. Indemnification and dispute resolution

What it is: The indemnification clause outlines who’s responsible for legal fees and expenses in the event that someone sues the business or publication over your content, interviewee quotes or media project. And dispute resolution explains how you and your client will solve any issues (disputes).

Why you need to know this now: More contracts that have popped into my inbox recently have come with stricter indemnification clauses. The super complex language involved means you need to know how to protect your assets from legal harm, and ensure you know what it means when you sign a contract with this type of clause. If you indemnify your client, you’re on the hook for anything legal that pops up about your work. But with mutual indemnification and verbiage that explains you’ll work together on any complaints, everyone is playing together against any legal situation. 

For me, I use mutual indemnification in this clause: 

“Any legal action or proceeding relating to this agreement shall be brought exclusively to relevant courts and each party consents to the jurisdiction thereof. The prevailing party in any litigation related to this agreement shall be entitled to an award of its attorney’s fees and costs. In the event any complaint or claim relating to the copy is made by any third party at any time, Client shall fully indemnify Freelancer and hold Freelancer harmless with regard to all costs, expenses, damage and losses (including reasonable attorney’s fees) arising from that complaint or claim, and will fully cooperate with Freelancer in responding to and defending against such complaint or claim. Additionally, Freelancer shall fully indemnify Client and hold Client harmless with regard to all costs, expenses, damage and losses (including reasonable attorney’s fees) arising from that complaint or claim, and will fully cooperate with Client in responding to and defending against such complaint or claim.”

For dispute resolution, I like this one: 

“The parties will attempt to resolve any dispute out of or relating to this Agreement through friendly negotiations amongst the Parties. If the matter is not resolved by negotiation, the parties will resolve the dispute using the below Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) procedure. Any controversies or disputes arising out of or relating to this Agreement will be submitted to mediation in accordance with any statutory rules of mediation. If mediation is not successful in resolving the entire dispute or is unavailable, any outstanding issues will be submitted to final and binding arbitration under the rules of the American Arbitration Association. The arbitrator’s award will be final, and judgment may be entered upon it by any court having proper jurisdiction. This Agreement shall be governed by, and construed in accordance with, the laws of the State of THE STATE YOU LIVE IN.”

What to do if the client pushes back: Your first step is to ask your potential client to remove the indemnification clause, but if you get a no, submit the mutual indemnification clause above (legal departments are usually onboard with this option). If the client wants to keep the original indemnification or dispute resolution clauses, you’ll have to decide whether or not you want to work with them. Typically, if it’s a dream client you really want to work with, and you have business insurance or created an LLC, you have some legal protection and it may be ok to sign. 

4. Payment terms

What it is: This maps out how and when you get paid, your freelance writing rates, if you give refunds, if you get a kill fee, circumstances for late or rush fees, agreement termination and how that works with payment and length of contract.

Why you need to know this now: Over my years of freelancing, I’ve had payment terms from pay on publication (months and months after submitting the work) to a 48-hour turnaround. It varies a lot, and especially with COVID, I’ve seen clients rolling out longer payment terms. 

I like NET 14 (getting paid 14 days after submitting my invoice). But many businesses align freelance writer terms with how they pay other contractors (anywhere from NET 30 to NET 90 or longer), and publications can have wonderful NET terms, or pay on publication terms, which means you don’t get paid until the piece goes live or is printed. You also want to make sure that additional fees, refunds or termination are covered as well. 

For business clients, I use this clause: 

“Changes to this scope of work will lead to additional fees, and changes to deadlines with less than a 7-day turnaround may incur up to a 50 percent rush fee. Client agrees to pay Freelancer the amount of USD $XXX for writing services provided. Virtual or phone meetings beyond 1, 60-minute meeting, or 2, 30-minute meetings are billed at $XXX per hour. Payment will be invoiced via MY PAYMENT PLATFORM and made via ACH (direct deposit), company check or Stripe. Payment terms are NET 14 DAYS. Overdue payments will accrue 2 percent monthly interest, and no refunds are given. In the case of early termination of this contract, Client and Freelancer agree to give 15 days notice of termination, and Client agrees to pay Freelancer in full for work completed.”

For magazines, I typically take their payment terms unless the publication isn’t planning on running the piece any time within the next six or so months. Pay on publication can be quite lengthy, but if you get NET 30 or NET 45, you’re in good shape.

What to do if the client pushes back: If your business client has super long contractor payment terms, you can always ask if they’ll make an adjustment to your contract, but if they say no, you’ll have to weigh whether or not you can wait that long for payment. 

Publications are more cut-and-dry. You can ask about pay on submission terms, or changing the NET terms, or payment date, but usually their details are set. However, you can always ask if there’s any wiggle room in their budget to up the rate (which may make it easier to handle longer payment terms), or see if you can get paid quicker through ACH (direct deposit) rather than a mailed check. 

5. Non-compete clause

What it is: Non-compete clauses explain that you’re not able to work for your client’s competitors. Any business or publication they consider competition is now, essentially, outlawed from your client list. 

Why you need to know this now: Due to the fact that these clauses (just like rights) have been creeping into more contracts, it’s critical to know how to deal with them; see this helpful presentation from the FTC about restraint of trade and antitrust laws.

Because they restrain the freelance writer’s ability to grow their business, and therefore make more money, they’re technically illegal in this context as restraint of trade. And usually, these clauses end up in those one-size-fits-all buckets that larger companies send to all contractors of all professions. But, you don’t have to keep these in your contract no matter how often you see them; you can ask the company or magazine to remove it. 

It may look like this: 

“Contributor will not, until 30 days after publication of the issue in which the work first appears, write or publish, or cooperate in the publication of in any form, an article or other communication or submit to an interview on the same or similar subject as the work unless Contributor has received writer consent by Client.”

Or this:

“Contributor will not, until the applicable exclusivity period herein expires, write or publish in any form, an article or other communication on the same or similar subject as the work unless Contributor has received written consent by Client.”

Potentially this:

“Author promises and agrees to not author or assist with the authoring of any works on the same subject matter as the Assignment for publication in print, online or any form of media for one year from the Publisher’s first publication of the Assignment without written consent of the Publisher.”

Or even this:

“Contractor acknowledges that they are expected to read, understand and adhere to the Contractor Code of Conduct. Below includes a list of potential conflicts or possible violations of the Code that Contractor is aware of at this time. I understand that at any time, when I become aware of a conflict or potential violation of this Code, I will inform Client immediately for a resolution.”

What to do if the client pushes back: If your client won’t remove the non-compete completely, and you really want to work with them, ask them to list their top three competitors and you can agree not to work with those companies. If that doesn’t work for them, or you don’t want to have any non-competes in your contract, walk away. You also have the option of noting FTC regulations that restraint of trade is illegal and see if they’ll remove the clause then.

6. NDAs and confidentiality

What it is: NDAs (Non-Disclosure Agreements) or Confidentiality clauses are included to form a legally-binding confidential relationship between you and your client. When you sign a contract with this clause, you’re agreeing that any sensitive information, trade secrets or intellectual property (IP) will not be shared with anyone else. 

Why you need to know this now: Are you a freelance writer who often works with tech companies, start-ups with creative solutions or giant companies with specific, in house-only processes? These companies may want you to sign an NDA to ensure their proprietary solutions aren’t sent over to their competition. With more emerging tech and cutting-edge innovations, you may see these clauses grow, and it’s important to know your options.

No, you don’t have to sign an NDA that lasts forever, or even five or 10 years. Try for one year, or potentially two, and see if your client will work with that; it’s always worth it to go for the least amount of time possible.

What to do if the client pushes back: Most times, as long as the NDA is within a reasonable amount of time, say one year, I sign it. If the client has a longer period of several years, or even forever, I ask if we can shorten the timespan to a year or two. If they won’t budge, it may not be worth it to work with that client or sign a long-term NDA and worry about legal issues down the road. 

7. Insurance

What it is: When we talk about insurance in contracts, we’re talking about E&O (Errors and Omissions, or Professional Liability) Insurance and General Liability Insurance. Essentially, these policies help protect you if your content runs into legal trouble and gets you or your client sued.

E&O protect you against legal claims of negligence, errors, omissions, misrepresentation, inaccurate advice, libel and slander as well as undelivered services, accusations of negligence and missed deadlines. General Liability protects you or your company from copyright infringement, reputational harm, and injury and property damage claims.

Why you need to know this now: A few years ago, a potential client I totally wanted to work with asked if I had E&O and General Liability Insurance. Nope, I don’t… but I could get it. Since then, I’ve had other contracts of mine, and freelance writer friends, include clauses mentioning these two types of policies.

With plagiarism checkers and the wealth of Internet content, protecting yourself against copyright infringement, reputational harm, defamation, libel or slander, is always a good idea. Plus, if you have insurance and a new client asks, you’re already set to go instead of scrambling like I was trying to get policies secured ASAP.

What to do if the client pushes back: If you’d rather not pay around $1,000 to $2,000 per year for these insurance policies, ask that this clause is removed from your contract. However, to me, it’s better for your business overall to have protection ahead of time so you’re not caught in a bind.

Saying no, red flags and contract negotiations

Any time you run up against a clause that doesn’t work for your freelance writing business, you can always ask for the client to remove it. And, a surprising amount of the time, they’ll work with you on negotiating a fair compromise.

If it turns out the potential client is throwing up red flags, like they treat you like an employee and not a freelancer, the contract has terms that obviously don’t apply to you, or they get upset when you ask for realistic, fair changes, you don’t have to work with that client. No contract is worth losing your business or reputation over. 

And if you see too much legalese, offer to send your contract that’s clearer and more concise. I always try to make the terms as easy to understand as possible because this is a partnership where we work with our clients, not for them. Our contracts, then, should be mutually beneficial and as simple as possible, without any fluff.

Don’t lose sleep or stress over contracts. Find the clients who pay you well, treat you like a partner, give you fair terms, and understand why you’re negotiating for writer-friendly terms that work for you. 

Photo via fizkes / Shutterstock