I had no idea how many mistakes I had made over the years until I started writing about them. When I was writing about my past content marketing writing mistakes last week, I realized that I had made more mistakes than I had room for in one post so I decided to share some more of my flubs.

Here are five more mistakes that I have made over the past few years.

1. Sending an LOI to a generic email address. If I couldn’t find a individual email address, I used to send my letter of introduction through a companies or agencies generic email address. However, one day I realized that I had NEVER gotten a response though an info@company.com email. I have learned the hard way that is better to send out fewer LOIs and spend the time finding a contact email than using a generic email.
2. Not following up. It pains me to think of all the potential clients that I have lost over the years by not following up. There have been at least five times that I have gotten a client when I followed up on my letter of introduction. Now, I always follow up at least once on every LOI and will follow up a few more times if the editor gives me a positive response, but says that they don’t currently need freelancers.
3. Staying with Low-paying Clients. I hate breaking up with clients. Even when they are paying terribly, and my rates have grown past their budget. The thought of letting a client go keeps me up at night and gives me a stomach ache. I tend to have long-term clients and end up building relationships with most of them. But I have learned that when a client is paying too low, I start becoming resentful which results in me not doing my best work. Now, before that happens, I will send an email explaining that my business goals have changed and that I will be happy to refer them to another writer.
4.  Not Calculating the Rate I will Earn Per Hour. The first time someone offered me $1 per word I started jumping around the house like a golden retriever puppy. I was thrilled that I was making “big time money.” But I quickly learned that the project was exceptionally time consuming, involved countless interviews and many revision cycles. I ended up earning a very poor hourly rate on the project even though my rate was $1 per word, which is often viewed as the gold standard. I learned to estimate how long a project will take me before giving an estimate and then determine a project rate using my desired hourly rate a baseline.
5. Losing Touch with Former Clients. It’s a fact of life that editors and brands are more likely to hire a writer that they already know. It’s also a fact of life that editors and content strategists often change jobs. The first few years that I freelanced, when an editor left a publication, I simply made a relationship with the editor. But now I make an effort to stay in contact with the editor at the new job and have had success getting new clients that way.

Have you made any of these mistakes? Any more that you would like to add to the list?