I have one private client that has me on autopay. Every Monday the money is deposited into my account...no worries. It took nearly five years and a leap of faith to find this particular client and I would love two more just like him. LOL
Other private clients I work with two or three times a month. I still bid on a few projects and have clients from the past contact me every once in a while.
When things would get slow in the past, I'd pull up my contact list and send out an email offering 10% off my normal rates on packages of 10 or 20 articles to clients I enjoyed working with--this was usually very successful--in the past.
The cons of working with private clients is that there is a bit of a leap of faith involved. You have to trust that they will pay you for the finished product (I do half and half but still it requires some degree of faith) and that you do need to invest some time into finding new clients every once in a while. I'm very fortunate at the moment that I'm not struggling to find new clients. I hope it lasts.
The pros of content providers is that they are great in a pinch, there is almost always work available, and you don't have to go looking for new work once you are accepted. The cons are that content provider sites, in my experience, are a bit more rigid in their requirements (it happens when you are dealing with multiple writers who do not necessarily have direct contact with clients) and I spend more time fitting things into a format and less time being creative and writing. In other words, I don't like the writing (or the end result) when I work for most of the content provider sites. I prefer the creativity I'm able to tap into when I'm not worried about actionable words and pleasing random editors. That's the other benefit of a private client. You only have one client to please per project and if you've really nailed down the requirements before you begin it's easier than writing an article and crossing your fingers that it will please the random editor that draws your lot.
I'm glad to have the ability to depend on content provider sites in a crunch but MUCH prefer writing for private clients. The money is better, the stress is lower, and with the exception of a handful in five years time, they are much easier to please than content provider sites.
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