Freelance PR Market High in Confidence – The PR Cavalry Survey
The PR Cavalry
Our survey of the Freelance PR market which has been reported in PR Week reveals high confidence and high rewards amongst freelancers.
Almost half (46 per cent) of respondents have a fee income of over £60,000 with 11 percent earning more than £100,000
Over half (53 per cent) of respondents reported fee income rising in the previous 12 months, with 30 per cent reporting fees up by over 15 per cent. Only 18 per cent reported fee income falling.
Optimism is high too with 52 per cent predicting their income will rise compared to 18 per cent predicting a fall in fees.
Late payment continues to be a headache with almost half of freelancers having to chase payments that were overdue by a month at least once in the previous year. 15 per cent of respondents reported having to chase late payments more than six times in the year.
Freelancers are efficient, 44 per cent report having less than 10 spare billable hours in the month.
They are also plugged in to the top of the business, with 48 per cent saying that the first person to see draft material is a main board director. Only three per cent send drafts to middle or junior or manager for review.
Commitment to skills is low. Well over half of respondents do no or only one day’s professional development a month and almost half (47 per cent) are not members of any professional body.
The kinds of work that freelancers do or rather don’t do is revealing. Nearly one in five (17 per cent) say they do no campaign reporting or evaluation at all for clients in a typical month and worryingly 23 per cent say that spend time no time researching their clients’ market.
The best part of being a freelancer, perhaps unsurprisingly is having a variety of clients and over half (53 per cent) typically have four or more clients. The next most important factor in pursuing a freelance career is not having a line manager.
By far the worst part of being a freelancer is clients with unrealistic budgets followed by late payment.
“Freelancers are a confident breed, both in their skills and in their future incomes” says founder of The PR Cavalry Nigel Sarbutts.
“You need to confidence to cope with the uncertainty of freelance practice, but as we see from the budgets our clients are putting into freelance assignments which are often in high five figures, that confidence is justified”
The PR Cavalry carried out the survey online with 211 respondents.
A full break down of the results is available on request by emailing hello@prcavalry.com
