Running The Numbers On 2009 Freelancing
A recent post by Allena Tapia made me think about the numbers that describe my freelance writing career in the past year. I think it’s important to conduct periodic reviews to assess the health of your writing business, so what did my assessment tell me?
The Bottom Line
One of the most important figures is how much money I made (money isn’t everything, but a girl needs to pay the bills). All I’m going to say is that I earned double what I earned in my first full year of freelancing and made a significant improvement over 2008 earnings. There were three reasons for this:
- First, I acquired a number of regular clients in late 2008 who provided a decent basic income in 2009. Some 45% of my income last year came from 13 regular clients. Seven of those provided regular gigs, while the other six provided work every couple of months.
- Second, I raised my rates slightly as I have done again this year. When you are employed you often get a cost of living increase. When you freelance you have to arrange that yourself.
- Third, I became more active in my local market and found a couple of clients were willing to pay the going rate for my services and were a joy to work with.
Of course, it wasn’t all gravy. There were a couple of clients who fell victim to the recession and stopped providing work. But in the main these were lower paying gigs so they didn’t affect the bottom line that much.
How My Writing Business Changed in 2009
I also made 3% of my income from blog advertising and affiliate product sales. It’s not a huge amount, but it gives me a base to build on. I have taken note of the products that have brought in income and will be focusing more on those this year.
The nature of my writing business has changed a lot in the past year as well. When I started I did lots of keyword rich articles and some rewrites. This year I have earned from journalism, blogging, reviews, writing press releases and other web content writing.
Finding Balance
I have also spent less time at my desk and more time on fitness while still managing to improve my earnings. This tells me that I am beginning to achieve the balance I have been chasing for a few years. For me, that’s just as important as being profitable.
So what do these figures tell me about how I should run my writing business this year? (I’m with Dana on the need to take action, rather than simply make resolutions.)
Making Changes For 2010
- First, I will spend more time ensuring that those high-paying clients are happy and and will think of additional services that will improve my offering to them.
- Second, I will search for one or two more high-paying clients to reduce my exposure to the major ones (one of my clients provides 22% of my income).
- Third, I have discovered which jobs really aren’t worth my while and will phase these out across the year.
- Fourth, I will increase blog promotion as my blog is now a viable source of income and create some new products which I think you will enjoy.
- Fifth, I will look for a couple more affiliate products that I can really promote wholeheartedly (I’ve already found one) to improve my passive income.
- Sixth, I will follow up with some of the clients who became dormant and see if they are interested in purchasing web content writing services at my current rate (they already know the quality of my work so it makes sense to do this). I’ve already started connecting with some of them on LinkedIn.
- Seventh, I will increase my local marketing efforts.
Doing this should improve both income and job satisfaction in 2010. Have you run the numbers on 2009? How will it change the way you run your writing business in the coming year?
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9 Responses to “Running The Numbers On 2009 Freelancing”
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Get Paid To Write Online by Sharon Hurley Hall is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. Copyright for posts written by guest authors remains with them.Useful info
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Ah,a girl after my own heart. It is extremely smart business to stop and assess. Cut what doesn’t work, keep what you think is working, and pour energy into what you know is working. And you keep stats from year to year so you know what is and isn’t working. This is also essential. You had me really impressed with just all that. But then you added in personal goals for balance and I darn near swooned. I advise all my clients to plan their days around work AND pleasure. This avoids burn out and ensures you have energy and creativity for all those exciting new projects and ideas.
Eliza ´s last blog ..CRM Software Review: Highrise
Thanks, Eliza. I’ve always kept a weather eye on how the business was doing, but I spent a few hours over the holidays putting last year’s figures into a spreadsheet and working out percentages. It’s not my favorite activity but it has to be done. Now I need to think of a way to let a couple of people down gently to clear the way for new stuff. Incidentally, the exercise has also made me add a column or two to my regular income tracking spreadsheet to make it easier to run those number next year.
I LIKE these posts! I like new an even newish freelancers to see where the dollars are coming from (one-timers? residuals) and etc. And, also, thanks for the link!
Me too, Allena, which was why I found your post so inspirational. Although I’ve not listed them here, I also have a list of one-off clients whom I can follow up to see if they need anything this year.
Congratulations on improving your earnings. I used Dragon NaturallySpeaking for years when I was having trouble with RSI, so I wouldn’t have any trouble promoting that one either. If you’re an ebook lover, you make 10% at Amazon promoting the Kindle (I don’t actually promote it but have had a few folks buy one through my other Amazon affiliate links, and it’s a nice little $25 per purchase).
Lindsay´s last blog ..The Goblin Brothers and the Sword Master’s Apprentice
Thanks for the suggestion, Lindsay. A Kindle promo would be a good fit for this blog. I don’t own one myself, but I’ve had so many good reports that it might be worth a try.
Sharon,
What an inspiring post. It sounds like you’re3 doing all of the right things the right way and at the right time. I think a lot of folks dive into freelance writing, give it six months and then when they’re not able to buy that Lexus they wanted, give up and blame the economy or something.
It takes a lot of work and can take years to be successful. I think yours is a blueprint for success.
Here’s to a great 2010!
George
George Angus´s last blog ..Ebooks VS Paper: It’s Not All Or Nothing, Folks
I hope your year’s equally successful, George. I know you’ve been making some changes yourself. I can’t remember who said ‘it takes years of hard work to be an overnight success’ but it’s true – and I think you have to keep evaluating and evolving.
When people use relative terms about income (since it is how most of keep score) it always confuses me, I am curious how your doing against a published average, lets say from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United_States. That says the average household income was $50,233.00 in 2007.
Are you doing better, significantly better or worse ?
Depending where you live this could also mean different things to different people. The median household income in Loudoun County, VA is $111,582 ( http://despardes.com/?tag=median-income ). So to make 60K in that neighborhood puts you at the poverty line
and… I enjoyed the post, congrats on the improvement year over year and good luck with your 2010
Cheers,
Paul
Paul MacPherson´s last blog ..American Cubans have sorely lost the PR war