Report 1. December 12, 2008.
First “Successful” Week as a Freelance Writer
I made $590 this week doing freelance writing work online.
I consider that a raging success. My goal is to pull in $600/week regularly; this is the first time I’ve gotten close. I’ve been working at this steadily since January of 2008, and I’ve made some good money, but not this much in one week. It’s been much further between, I’ve made lots of mistakes, wasted time, and am still building up clients. I still spend a lot of time scouring job boards, searching online for new sites, submitting, applying, querying… (lather, rinse, repeat). I want to get enough regular clients lined up to meet my weekly salary goal without having to scramble on the job boards and fight another 1000 hungry writers for the promising positions. That’s every freelance writers dream, I guess, and more competition can make success more difficult.
Or it can make you more creative.
Statistics
Hours worked: 18
Hourly pay rate: $32.70/hour
Articles/Posts written: 41
Avg. Article length: 350 – 500 words, with 3 closer to 1000 words
Article pay rate: $14.40/article average
Clients: 4 (with bulk of work from 2 clients)
Client 1: Interesting topics in my expertise, but short, repetitive format and shallow research gets tedious.
Client 2: More specialized, and greater freedom to develop my own content, but lower pay rate and a few more details to attend to in the formatting/publishing process.
Client 3: Ad revenue only; a nice site, but smaller. I’m not expecting much here, but the requirement is minimal (1-2 articles per week, whatever I want to write on the topic), I enjoy the work, and it’s nice to add to my resume/clips.
Client 4: A blog I’m building up; possible future revenue, but nothing to speak of right now.
I’m not going to name my clients (some have non-disclosure agreements, etc.) though if you do a little digging on my professional website you can probably figure out who’s who.
One of my main clients this week was simply a large article database; the other main client was simply a smaller, more specialized article database. I had many articles, in topics I know, to write for the first client, so the work went quickly (overall) and I was able to produce enough to make a good hourly rate. That doesn’t always happen here.
For the second database, I was finishing up a series and producing 2-3 articles a day in order to do so before the deadline. The pay per article is a little less, but there is also an ad revenue aspect in place that I don’t have with the first client. So I decided, for the type and the content, it’s a worthwhile gig with the possibility of continued future earnings.
Problems
I’m still dependent on two sources of income which are non-guaranteed, bulk work at best. If the articles in my topics aren’t there, I’m stuck. If I have to write articles on topics I don’t really know, which requires more research, my pay rate goes down drastically.
Goals
Secure weekly blog/columnist positions for better per article rates. (I’d really like to get to $20/$30 per article/post instead of $10/$15. And if anyone mentions writing for $2 or $3 per article… No. Not worth it. I can spend my time being frugal at home and selling my basement stuff online and save/more money than I can writing $2 articles.)
Build up individual website-based businesses. I have four in progress right now (this site is one of them).
Look into additional ad-revenue based writing possibilities. Thus far my experience with ad-rev share is that I end up making about $1/hour. I’m uncertain, though, if this is the general experience or if I just failed to promote, write regularly, hit the right keywords, etc. However, if I spent the additional time promoting, writing, researching keywords, then my payrate would have ended up being about $0.25/hour. Maybe the ad revenue would have increased enough to justify the additional time, but my conclusion on ad-rev, blogging positions is this: it’s a long-term investment, not an immediate source of income. And at this point, I’m not sure if the long-term investment gives a return that’s worth it.
Secure some offline, print columnist/writing positions. Not sure how to go about getting my foot in the door on this one. I’m talking local/regional publications, small circulars, local businesses that need flyers, brochures, other content. I’m not interested in entering the ultra-competitive national magazine market; it’s another matter of lots of time trying with little guarantee of result. I need steady work for steady pay.
“Discipline does not mean suppression and control, nor is it adjustment to a pattern or ideology. It means the mind sees “what is” and learns from “what is.” – J. Krishnamurti
Reading
Ready for Anything: 52 Productivity Principles for Work and Lifeby David Allen
Herbs (RD Home Handbooks) edited by Lesley Bremness
The Sugar Queen by Sarah Addison Allen
Productive Changes
Dropped some ridiculous blogging jobs that had resulted in about $25 total for about 5 months of work (4-6 hours/week).
Quit reading so many blogs.
Began scheduling specific articles to complete on specific days.
Began tracking hours worked and money made on a daily basis. (Also tracked miles walked but that’s really off topic.)
Changed my working hours to a regular afternoon “shift.”
Checked job boards and applied daily, but quickly.
If I can do it, you can too!