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Tracking Freelance Earnings: December Income Report From Nicole Dieker
How was your 2015 freelancing year? Did you land a new client? Hit a financial goal? Write something you were truly proud of?

For those of you who have been following me all year, it’s time to take a look at my numbers and what I consider my biggest freelancing accomplishments. It’s also time to start planning my 2016 freelancing goals, including my goals for this column!

Here are December’s numbers:

Completed pieces: 55

Work billed: $4,328

Earnings received: $7,492.26

I wrote a little over 40,000 words in December, completing 55 pieces with an average per-piece earning of $79. My highest earning piece was $944.

A lot of publications take time off over the holiday season, and I was able to plan a full week away from work — which also meant my December earnings were lower than my $5,000 monthly income goal. I didn’t mind, though, because my year-end earnings received totaled $63,571.12 — $3,500 more than my $60,000 goal.

In other words: I beat the freelance income goal I set for 2015.

How I achieved my goal

If you’ve been following my Tracking Freelance Earnings columns since the beginning, you might remember that in my first column, I listed my 2014 freelance earnings as $43,059.02.

In 2015, I increased my freelance earnings by $20,000. That’s the kind of raise you rarely get in a so-called “real job!”

How’d I do it? It comes down to two basic components:

I set the goal

Freelancing is different from other types of jobs because it doesn’t have specific boundaries. I can take on as many or as few pieces as I want — my only limit is the number of hours per day I am willing and able to work!

So, when I decided at the beginning of 2015 that I wanted to earn $5,000 a month from my writing, I made a commitment to myself — and to you — that I would actively work to take on enough pieces to hit that goal. If I lost an income source (and I did), I would find another one. If I didn’t have enough work to fill out the month, I’d start hustling for more.

It’s important to note I didn’t hit my $5,000 goal every month. Setting a goal doesn’t guarantee it will happen. Sometimes your regular clients won’t have the budget to assign you an extra piece, and sometimes the pitch you send out will get turned down. (If every pitch you send out gets turned down, make sure to read my other Write Life column, Pitch Fix.)

But since I was working to earn at least $5,000, that meant some months I earned $4,000 and some months I earned $6,000. It averaged out to a successful freelancing year, even though I didn’t always hit my monthly goal.

I had the freelancing background to achieve the goal

I had two years of full-time freelancing experience before I set my 2015 income goal. I didn’t go from $0 to $60,000; I went from $35,000 to $43,000 to $63,000. If I hadn’t already had two years of building my skills and growing my network, I wouldn’t have been able to achieve this goal.

I also picked a monthly income goal close to what I was already earning; by the end of 2014 I was regularly earning around $4,500 per month, so I decided to see if I could bump that up to $5,000.

This goal was a stretch for me, but it was also a realistic stretch. If you want to set your own income goal for 2016, it’s important to choose a realistic stretch goal of your own, such as:
- Taking your highest monthly earnings from 2015 and trying to match those earnings every month in 2016
- Finding one new higher-paying client every three months
- Sending out one new pitch per week
Whatever 2016 goal you choose, make sure it’s just achievable enough that it doesn’t feel impossible. Then stretch yourself to make it happen. As you work towards your goal, you’ll probably start meeting other writers, editors and clients who can help you achieve it even faster. That’s what happened to me.

My biggest freelancing accomplishments

Hitting my freelance income goal was a huge accomplishment for me this year, but it’s not the only thing I’m proud of. Here are some of my 2015 highlights:
- Writing the comedy piece “The Economics of Neko Atsume” at The Billfold, which received enormous positive response when I published it in June and gets a steady stream of new readers every day
- Taking on additional writing and editorial responsibilities at The Billfold and being part of the team as The Billfold partnered with Medium
- Writing “10 Mistakes That’ll Ruin Your Freelancing Career,” one of the three most popular pieces of 2015 at The Freelancer
- Launching Pitch Fix at The Write Life
- Providing financial advice to high school students at SparkLife
- Funding the first draft of my novel The Biographies of Ordinary People through Patreon
- Landing my first $1-per-word client
- Earning enough money to move out of a studio apartment (with no kitchen) and into a one-bedroom
- Successfully renegotiating many of my freelance rates for 2016
I’m still working to improve my writing and connect with my audiences, but I’m happy with the work I’ve done this year.

Goals for 2016

This year, I’d like to maintain my $60,000 freelancing income. It would be nice if I grew my income, and I wouldn’t be surprised if I hit $65K this year, but I don’t expect another $20,000 jump.

Instead, I want to focus on working reasonable hours. I’ve written before about the struggle to keep my workweek around 40 hours, and I want to make it a priority in 2016. Now that I feel like I’m earning enough, I can start to put the rest of my life back in balance.

I also want to continue to build connections and new client relationships. A freelance career is an ever-changing thing, which means I always need to be working towards finding that next big job. If I want to keep my earnings constant and work fewer hours, I also need to land higher-paying assignments. That’s how it works.

Finally, I want to build this column into a collaboration. I’m going to continue sharing my monthly income with you, but we’ve had a whole year of hearing about me. What about you?

I’d love to interview some of you about your monthly earnings, as well as your freelance goals and what you do to achieve them. If you’re interested in being part of a future Tracking Freelance Earnings column, email me at dieker.nicole@gmail.com.

Here’s to a new year!

Did you achieve your 2015 freelancing goals? Write something you’re especially proud of? Share your accomplishments in the comments!
January 19, 2016
Tracking Freelance Earnings: November Income Report From Nicole Dieker

When was the last time you approached a client about increasing your freelance rates?

We’re almost at the end of the year, which means it is time to start sending out those rate negotiation emails and seeing if you can increase your income in 2016.

But before we get to that, here are November’s earning numbers:

Completed Pieces: 71

Work Billed: $6,561.63

Earnings Received: $5,136.00

This month, I more than made up for October’s low earnings, billing $1,561 more than my monthly income goal of $5,000. I wrote roughly 46,700 words in November, with an average per-piece earning of $92.42. My highest earning piece was $1,023, and my lowest earning piece was $35.

Examining my financial situation

I’m in an interesting position as a freelancer, because at this point I earn as much writing one piece for my highest-paying client as I earn writing a week’s worth of pieces for my lower-paying clients. To put it more bluntly: I can spend 40 hours writing 15 pieces to earn $1,000, or I can spend four hours writing one piece and earn $1,000.

I know clients willing to pay $1,000 per piece are rare — if it were that easy to secure those clients, everyone would have them — but it’s making me think about the value of my work and how I can shift more of my client relationships to the higher end of the pay scale.

After all, if my work is worth $1,000, sticking with my lowest-paying clients is actually costing me money over time. I like all my clients, which makes it difficult to want to move on from them. A good relationship is often just as valuable as a paycheck, but I know that if I’m going to earn more money in 2016, I have to find clients willing to pay more.

Part of this process will include securing new clients. This month, however, I’m going to use my current client relationships to negotiate as many rate increases as possible.

Three ways to approach rate negotiations

Every client relationship is different, which means my rate negotiations have to be tailored to the individual client. With that in mind, here are the three strategies I’m using to start the negotiation conversation:

1. Email clients with a suggested 2016 rate

The easiest way to start the rate negotiation process is to email a client to suggest an increased rate.

“Easy” in this case is relative; first, you have to decide what you want that rate to be, knowing that the client may push back with a slightly lower number. Second, you have to justify the rate increase — is it because you have transitioned into a regular contributor role? Is it because your pieces consistently achieve high rates of engagement and social sharing? — and lastly, you have to figure out when to make the ask. (The day before a holiday weekend, for example, is probably not the best time to send this email.)

But once you have all those pieces in order, it is pretty easy to write an email that begins “I want to start a conversation about 2016 plans and rate adjustments,” and lay out what you think is appropriate and why. This strategy successfully worked for The Write Life, and we quickly completed the rate negotiation process to everyone’s satisfaction.

2. Link a rate increase to a scope increase

One of my clients announced a change in publication strategy that will require writers to do more research and prep work before drafting pieces. That’s a perfect context in which to suggest a rate increase. I’m going to write one of these new pieces this week, and keep track of the additional work involved. Then I’ll be able to send the client an email quantifying the time and scope increase and suggest a new rate.

3. Ask the client if their publication offers a pathway for growth

In some cases, I am one of many freelancers working for a single large client. Using the “email a suggested rate increase” is difficult in this situation for two reasons: first, because my editor might not have the ability to directly adjust my payment; and second, because when you are one of 30-plus freelancers, it becomes much more difficult to quantify how your pieces bring the most engagement or the greatest value to the organization.

I did an interview with Katie Lane of Work Made for Hire for The Freelancer on how to deal with these types of negotiation scenarios. She suggests contacting your editor to say that you enjoy working for them and you’d like to continue the relationship, and “you’d like to know how [the client] makes adjustments to compensation or how they make compensation decisions.”

So that’s how I’ll approach these clients. I’ll know pretty quickly whether there is any opportunity for rate increases, or whether I’ll have to plan to phase these clients out in the future as I continue to grow my client portfolio.

Then I’ll have to start looking for more of those $1,000-per-piece clients — but that’s a project for next month.

How do you approach rate negotiations? Have you used any of these three strategies?

December 8, 2015
Tracking Freelance Earnings: October Income Report From Nicole Dieker

If you don’t make a monthly freelancing goal, what steps do you take to keep yourself on target? This month, I didn’t hit my $5,000 income goal — but I’m working on changing things for November.

Here are October’s numbers:

Completed Pieces: 81

Work Billed: $4,985.36

Earnings Received: $5,521.62

I wrote roughly 44,500 words in October, with an average per-piece earning of $61.55. My highest earning piece was $849, and my lowest earning piece was $20.

I also came close to hitting my $5,000 monthly income goal. Seriously, I’m only $15 off! The fact that I was just shy of $5K — not to mention that I earned nearly $7K last month — means I’m not beating myself up over this.

Still, it’s worth looking at what happened.

How my projected income dropped by $1,000

For most of the month, I thought I would earn more than $5,000. But one of my clients asked that I hold off completing a piece until November, and another client accidentally assigned the same piece to two writers (thankfully, this client let me know before I started writing the piece).

My income line dropped by $1,000 overnight, without me doing anything “wrong.”

A year ago, losing two pieces might have cut $150 off my bottom line. Now, it’s a more significant income drop. The more successful I get, the bigger my risks become. Having one client cancel a piece or getting a request to hold on a draft for a month can mean losing 20 percent of my monthly income.

It’s also important to note that earning less money in October means receiving less money in November. I need to be prepared to only receive $4,500 in freelance payments this month, which means having a little less discretionary income than usual.

It’s time to start trading up

So I didn’t get a few assignments that I thought I would. This hasn’t happened before, but I bet it’ll happen again. This means I need to come up with a solution to this problem.

Can I prevent a client from canceling a piece? No.

Can I prevent a client from asking me to hold off on writing a piece? No.

What’s the actual solution here? I need to get more high-paying clients.

As you saw above, I earn $849 for some pieces and $20 for others. I’m always happy to earn that $20, especially if it’s for a piece that takes me 20 minutes to write, but I sat down with my freelance spreadsheet and started figuring out how much more money I could earn if I traded out that $20 piece for a $75 piece. Or if I traded a $75 piece for a $250 piece.

Those numbers jump significantly, if you do that kind of math. More importantly, the value of an individual client assignment becomes less critical. In other words: The more high-paying clients I land, the less risk I absorb if something happens to one of those high-paying clients.

This means I need to spend the last two months of the year trading up.

I’ve already sent out a referral request, asking one of my high-paying clients to introduce me to a new client that I’d like to land. I also need to start the end-of-year negotiation process with my current clients, to talk about rate increases for 2016.

In both cases, the onus is on me to explain exactly how I provide value and why I’m worth the referral or rate increase. You can’t just ask; you also have to show the client how they benefit from your request.

I also need to pitch more. I started pitching bigger markets this past month, and one of the pitches landed, so I’m hoping I can grow that into a regular relationship. I also have a list of additional clients to pitch before the end of the year.

I know that the $1-a-word clients are going to be few and far between, so I’m not expecting to turn every client into a $800-per-piece client. But it would be great to trade a few of those $20 pieces for $200 pieces.

As always, I’ll let you know what happens.

What do you do when you don’t meet a freelancing goal? Do you agree that more success equals more risk?

How do you know when it’s time to start trading up for higher-paying pieces?

November 10, 2015
Tracking Freelance Earnings: September Income Report From Nicole Dieker

Do you have a plan for what you’ll do when your next big project ends? Doing a little bit of advance work in preparation for a project’s end or a client’s departure will help ensure that losing a gig doesn’t also mean losing money.

I closed out a big project this month — one that provided almost 25 percent of my monthly income. Because I had planned ahead, I was able to ride out the income drop and secure new work to take the project’s place.

Before we get into that, here are September’s numbers:

Completed Pieces: 71

Work Billed: $6,983.35

Earnings Received: $6,137.81

I wrote a little over 50,000 words in September, with an average per-piece earning of $98.36. My highest earning piece was $1,002, and my lowest earning piece was $35.

I really, really wanted to beat $7,000 this month. I kept hoping I could fit in one more piece to push me over the $7K mark, but it didn’t happen.

Planning for a project’s end

This month, I wrote the last column in my Ask A Freelancer series. I delivered weekly freelancing advice at The Freelancer for just over a year, and the project brought in just under 25 percent of my monthly income.

I began preparing for the end of Ask A Freelancer in July. So far, all of the columns I’ve written have lasted for about a year, and although my editors had not yet said anything about Ask A Freelancer ending, I suspected it would close out sometime in its second year. That meant I needed a plan to keep from losing 25 percent of my income overnight.

I could have structured the plan as “find one new big client who is willing to pay me an equivalent amount,” but that seemed difficult and overwhelming.

Instead, I thought of it this way: If Ask A Freelancer ends, I will need to write one new piece every week. (One piece that pays roughly what I would have earned for Ask A Freelancer, of course.)

Next, I made a list of all the clients I could contact and ask for one new piece. As soon as my editors and I started talking about closing out Ask A Freelancer, I began to reach out to my list of clients to ask them for additional work. Some of the clients said no, but enough said yes that I was able to fill in the income gap.

I also received a few new job offers after we formally announced the end of Ask A Freelancer. It was pretty clear that some editors saw, “This is the last Ask A Freelancer column” and thought, “I wonder if Nicole has more time available to write for us?”

On a related note: Look forward to my new column, Pitch Fix, coming to The Write Life this month.

It was also a good time for me to start pitching new clients, and I chose to focus on major magazines. I’ve done print magazine work before, but getting my byline in a popular, recognized publication would be a significant step up in my career. I’ll let you know what happens.

Thinking ahead to 2016

We are officially in the last quarter of 2015, which means I’m doing a lot of thinking about next year.

Nobody can predict the future, but here’s what I anticipate will happen in 2016:

1. This November, I’ll begin to reach out to my current clients and ask about the possibility of renegotiating rates. Some clients will be open to a rate increase, and some will tell me it isn’t in their budget. Still, it’s important to ask — and it will help me bring in a little more money for 2016.

2. At some point, probably before the summer, I might end up losing a client. This’ll be due to budget adjustments or — worst-case scenario — a publication shutting down. I need to start preparing for another 25 percent income drop, because it will happen eventually.

3. Also likely before the summer, I’ll land my next big client. Either the client will reach out to me directly, I’ll cold-pitch the client, or I’ll ask one of my current clients to refer me.

I’ll need to work on pitching and asking for referrals, because I can’t sit around waiting to be asked.

4. My novel The Biographies of Ordinary People will continue to gain readers and subscribers via Patreon. Right now my subscribers are growing slowly but steadily; if I want more rapid growth, I’ll have to figure out how to promote my novel.

So far my best promotion strategy is social media, and at this point my social network is well aware of the project. I need to think of additional ways to share this project with people, such as writing guest posts for other writing sites.

5. Now that I’m earning enough to save 10 percent of my income, I also need to start thinking about long-term investments. Do I fund an IRA, a Roth IRA or a SEP IRA? It might be worth talking to my CPA or another financial advisor.

One thing’s for sure: I’m still going to be discussing money and freelancing with as many people as possible, because sharing this information helps us all get smarter about our own businesses.

Do you have a plan for what you’ll do if one of your big projects comes to an end? What do you predict will happen to your freelancing career in 2016?

October 13, 2015
Tracking Freelance Earnings: August Income Report From Nicole Dieker

How often do you ask for what you want from clients, whether it’s an extra assignment or a rate increase?

This month, asking for extra work helped take my income to $6,500, my highest ever.

Here’s the roundup for August. This month, it’s impressive:

Completed Pieces: 70

Work Billed: $6,513.00

Earnings Received: $6,649.30

I wrote just over 54,000 words, with an average per-piece earning of $93.

That’s significantly higher than July’s per-piece earning of $69, and a lot of it came from the two highest-paying pieces I wrote this month: one that brought in $1,039, and one that paid $953.

That second piece, the $953 one, was the one I asked for.

Ask and ye shall receive

Remember how last month I worried that I wasn’t going to earn much over $5,000?

I was planning to take a week to visit my sister and her husband and be a featured guest at Intervention, and — as I wrote in this very space a month ago — “Traveling always means taking an income hit, even if you work on the plane.”

But I asked myself: what if it didn’t have to be that way? What if I asked my best-paying client for a second assignment, to cover the income gap that came from taking a few days off? The worst possible scenario would be a polite “No, we have enough pieces for this month,” so I asked — and my client said yes.

It’s great for two reasons. First, it added $953 to my monthly income total, and second, it set a precedent. Now my client and I both know that I can complete two pieces in a month, which means I am going to pitch two pieces this month. Next month, I might pitch three.

Sometimes I forget that I can ask my clients if they want more work from me. This month, I’m glad I remembered.

The power of the pageview bonus

The $953 piece took me from $5,000 to $6,000 last month.

What pushed me over $6,500? A $500 bonus for an article on The Penny Hoarder about getting paid for junk mail. This article received more than 250,000 pageviews, which meant I earned an extra $500. This is the second time I’ve received a bonus on this piece, which I wrote in January 2015. I’m delighted that it still resonates with so many readers.

I love pageview bonuses, because I get paid without having to do any extra work. I always do my part to increase pageviews by sharing my articles on social media (and responding to Facebook comments and Twitter replies), but that doesn’t feel like “extra” work. I’m not able to track my own pageviews with this client, so I don’t know when I am getting close to a bonus, but I am always glad when I get one.

This type of pageview bonus is also great for me because it comes on top of a competitive base pay. Some publications prefer to offer low base pay and structure more of their compensation through bonuses. I prefer high base pay and the occasional bonus — after all, I can’t really control how many people view my articles!

One of my other clients gives writers bonuses for being active in the comments section, which I also appreciate. Any time a client offers me a low-effort way to make a little extra money, I know that client values its writers and the work we do.

Crowdfunding still doesn’t beat client work

Last month, I announced that I’m writing a novel titled The Biographies of Ordinary People and crowdfunding the process through Patreon.

I’ve been posting two chapters of my novel every week, and have received a lot of amazing feedback from readers, including a reader who tweeted, “This is maybe the most beautiful book I’ve read in a long time — thanks!”

However, the crowdfunding initiative has not grown to the point where I can consider dropping — or even seriously cutting back on — any of my current freelancing clients.

As of this writing, my Patreon brings me $350 per month in crowdsourced pledges. That’s more than many of Patreon’s featured writers bring in, so I feel like my project is successful, but it’s not enough to make a significant difference in my freelancing life aside from the fact that I’m developing a community of readers who are invested in this novel.

That community of readers makes the whole Patreon project worth it. But crowdfunding still doesn’t beat client work financially, at least not for me. I like knowing roughly how much income I’ll earn every month, and I also like knowing I can increase my client income just by asking.

When was the last time you asked a regular client for extra work? Did they say yes?

September 8, 2015
Tracking Freelance Earnings: July Income Report From Nicole Dieker

Hi! If you’re new to this column: I track my freelance income every month and share it with all of you. This is my third year of public income tracking, and my first year sharing my income with The Write Life.

Do you ever think about your writing legacy? What you want to give the world, in addition to all of your paid freelancing assignments?

This month, I took a look at my goals and started using Patreon to help me achieve a personal writing dream.

But first, the monthly roundup:

Completed Pieces: 72

Work Billed: $5,034.50

Earnings Received: $5,239.17

Last month, I got a big new client and earned $5,808. This month wasn’t quite as profitable as the last. I earned $800 less than I did in June, writing 53,600 words with an average per-piece earning of $69.

The one big gain that carried over from June was my new dollar-a-word client. This meant that although July’s lowest-paying piece was still $35, the highest-paying piece was $882.

I also have a confession to make: in June, I reported writing 50 pieces, because that was the number that appeared at the bottom of my freelancing spreadsheet (which I describe in more detail in April’s income report). When I add new work to my freelancing spreadsheet, I hit “insert row” and, usually, the sum function in the cell below adds this row to its tally. However, there was an error in the function and several rows weren’t included in the sum. The actual June writing count is 76 pieces.

I have now added “double-check all spreadsheet sum functions” to my end-of-month processes. I have a lot of these types of checks written for myself to help me improve my work, from “double-check all name spellings” to “AP style update: write out state names.” I often put a sticky note right on my laptop, if I make the same error repeatedly.

What about you? Do you have a system for tracking your mistakes and preventing them in the future?

Freelancing is not a roller coaster that only goes up

In John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars, Augustus Waters quips, “I’m on a roller coaster that only goes up.” The joke, of course, is that no roller coaster (or life) only goes up; at some point, you have to go down again.

Freelancing is the same way. You have to be prepared for down months, even if your freelance career has an overall upward trajectory.

One of the reasons I earned less in July was because I took a week “off” to travel to Los Angeles and San Diego and put on a show with some of my friends. I read short fiction, there was music and I got to do a live interview with Bobak Ferdowsi (aka NASA’s “Mohawk Guy”).

I put the word “off” in quotes because I continued to complete freelance work as I traveled, but I focused my efforts on shorter posts that did not require a lot of research and could be completed in an hour. And yes, that showed up in my earnings. Traveling always means taking an income hit, even if you work on the plane.

I’m going to take some more time “off” in August, to be a guest at a convention called Intervention that focuses on online creativity and collaboration. This is the sixth year I’ve been an Intervention guest, and every year I grow my career by attending the convention — and, I hope, help other people grow theirs.

Attending this event also means that I only expect to earn a little over $5,000 in August. Even though I’ll be turning in freelance pieces as I travel, I know I’ll lose money because of this trip. I’ve already had to turn down one assignment because I knew I couldn’t complete it while attending the convention. That won’t affect my relationship with this client — I’ve never had a client react negatively to my turning down an assignment — but it will affect my bottom line.

However, experiences like Intervention tend to open up opportunities I could never get by staying home. I was introduced to Boing Boing founder Mark Frauenfelder at Intervention 2013, for example, and began writing for Boing Boing soon afterwards. That type of connection is worth much more than any single freelance writing assignment.

Borrowing from the roller-coaster metaphor again: I am happy to take occasional income hits if it means getting to meet new editors or interview NASA engineers in front of a packed audience. The income line may go down, but the opportunities give my career the momentum it needs to climb the next hill.

Working fewer hours, but keeping Overflow Night

In March, I tracked my freelance hours for all of you and discovered that I had a 50-hour workweek.

In July, I tracked my hours again; this time, I had a 40-hour workweek. This has been pretty consistent for the past month, and I am very happy to get my evenings back.

What’s changed? Well, last month I wrote about tweaking my routine to get up — and out of my pajamas — earlier. Waking up earlier makes me more efficient throughout the day, and it also helps me end my workday earlier.

I bet you night owls are shaking your heads right now, so let me just say this: it isn’t about when you wake up. It’s about figuring out what schedule works for you, and removing the roadblocks from your workday.

In my case, I needed to remove the huge roadblock of staying in my pajamas until 1 or 2 p.m. and then stopping my workflow to take care of the business of showering and getting dressed. Now, I get to use that time for writing.

Lastly, just so you don’t think I am a magic freelancer who always quits working at 5:30 p.m.: I still have the occasional “Overflow Night” where I sit down with all of my unfinished tasks and power through until 10 or 11 p.m. It’s inescapable, no matter how efficient I am. How about you?

Thinking about my writing legacy, and starting a Patreon

I’ve been thinking a lot about my writing legacy — that is, the body of work I hope to complete over the course of my career.

Since I write primarily for online news sites and blogs, nearly everything I write is designed to be read and digested quickly. According to my Contently profile, I’ve written over 900 stories for 32 different publications — and only a small percentage of those stories are still read today.

So I decided to write a bigger story. At the end of July, I launched a Patreon to fund the writing of my novel The Biographies of Ordinary People.

This is a novel I’ve been thinking about and drafting for years. You can read the first three chapters, and I’m making the entire novel available for free online as I write it. The crowdfunding part helps pay for the cost of writing the novel, since every hour I spend on the book is an hour I can’t spend on freelance client work, and to see if there’s an audience to support this story.

After all, writing is about sharing stories with a supportive and interested audience, whether you’re writing books or blog posts. I hope that people connect with this novel, and that it becomes something I can include as part of my long-term body of written work.

What about you? At the end of your career, what do you hope to have completed? Are you taking steps to get there? I look forward to reading your thoughts and stories in the comments.

What are your long-term writing goals? What do you do when you have a down month, and how do you keep moving forward? How do you identify — and fix — mistakes and roadblocks?

August 11, 2015
Tracking Freelance Earnings: June Income Report From Nicole Dieker

Hi! If you’re new to this column: I track my freelance income every month and share it with all of you. This is my third year of public income tracking, and my first year sharing my income with The Write Life.

You probably have a daily work routine, right? Get up, make coffee, check email, that sort of thing? Are you satisfied with your routine, or do you find parts of it frustrating?

This month I got rid of a really frustrating part of my freelancing routine, and found this change helped me work fewer hours.

But before we get to that, here’s the monthly roundup:

Completed Pieces: 54

Work Billed: $5,808.25

Earnings Received: $6,413.35

In June, I wrote fewer pieces for more money. I only wrote 54 pieces this month, compared to last month’s 80. I also wrote 40,704 words, compared to last month’s 57,000. And I billed $5,808, compared to last month’s $5,336.

Here’s some even better news: My average per-piece earning climbed to $108 (from last month’s $67), and while my lowest-paid piece is still $35, my highest-paid piece is $751.

Wait, you might be asking yourself. How did your highest per-piece rate go from $300 to $751?

Well, I got a new client.

But, you might continue, didn’t you say that you weren’t taking on any new clients unless they were offering a dream job?

Yes. It is a dream job. I’m writing for a major company and getting paid $1 a word, so I’m pretty pumped.

How’d I get this dream job? Via a recommendation from another freelancer, of course. The best jobs have nearly always come this way.

The best part about taking on this new client was that I didn’t have to let any of my regular clients go. Right now I like everyone on my client list, and so I made space for this new client by pulling back on new pitches and one-off pieces.

This was also one of my goals for June, and it worked; everything I wrote was for a client with whom I had an established relationship. I expect this to continue through July, and don’t anticipate sending out any new pitches or taking on new clients. But, as we’ve just seen, it’s hard to predict what might happen.

Writing fewer pieces and working fewer hours

The other way I made room for my new client was by taking on fewer pieces from existing clients. Two of my clients put out a big list of potential article topics every Monday, and writers can claim as many or as few as they want — have you worked for clients like those? — and so I’ve taken on fewer of those articles.

This, in turn, has helped me pull back on my work hours. I still get the occasional day when a difficult assignment pushes my work into the late evening, but I feel like my freelance workload is a lot lighter than it used to be — especially if you compare it to that monster week I wrote about for The Freelancer, where I spent most nights working until 9, 10 or 11 p.m.

In March, I tracked my hours and discovered I was averaging a 50-hour workweek and spending about 25 of those hours writing. (I also wrote 90 pieces in March, so I was doing a lot more work back then.) It would be interesting to track my hours again and see how they’ve changed, so that’s something I’ll do for July.

Building a routine (that gets me out of my pajamas)

The other big change I made in June has to do with my personal routine. I live in Seattle, which means I work on Pacific Time, but a lot of my clients work on Eastern Time. Because of that, I often felt compelled to wake up and start working right away, without changing out of my pajamas. After all, if my 9 a.m. was a client’s noon, I wanted to make sure I caught up.

But that also meant that I often stayed in my pajamas until 1 or 2 p.m., when my Eastern Time clients began winding down their workdays and I felt like I could take a little break. Some people really like working in their pajamas, but I don’t, especially when it gets into the afternoon — I feel sweaty and gross, and all I want to do is take a shower.

So I decided to change my routine. I would set my alarm for 8 a.m. instead of 8:30, and start my official workday at 9:30 a.m. instead of 9:00. That gave me 90 minutes to wake up, do yoga, shower, get dressed and eat breakfast. Then, I’d be ready to start work at 9:30 without wondering when I’d find time to do all of that important stuff.

Did my Eastern Time clients notice that I was getting in touch with them a half hour later than usual? Nope. I do scan my email as soon as I wake up — don’t we all? — so I have occasionally responded to an urgent message at 8 a.m., but otherwise, putting off my workday by a half hour has made the whole day better.

And no, I haven’t had to make up that half hour at the end of the day either. This new routine has given me a momentum that carries me through my entire day and helps me finish my assignments more quickly. Today, I’ll end my workday at 6 p.m., making it an eight-hour workday plus a 30-minute break for lunch. That’s an ideal schedule for a busy freelancer.

How about you? Have you tested out new routines until you found one that improved your workday? I’d love to hear about all of your freelance routines in the comments.

Share your freelance routines: Are you a pajamas-wearer? A coffee-drinker? Do you check your email as soon as your alarm rings? Do you take lunch breaks?

July 13, 2015
Tracking Freelance Earnings: May Income Report From Nicole Dieker
Hi! If you’re new to this column: I track my freelance income every month and share it with all of you. This is my third year of public income tracking, and my first year sharing my income with The Write Life.

How often do you stop and take stock of how far you’ve come as a freelancer, and where you’re headed?

Last month, I focused on taking stock… and now I’m thinking about where I need to go in the future. Having a good handle on how much I’m earning goes a long way toward helping me make those decisions, so let’s have a look at my income for May.

This month, I met my $5,000/month income goal — whoohoo! — but only received $3,300 in client payments. I also found myself with a snowballing workload. In both cases, I’m planning to solve the problem with a renewed focus on regular contributor gigs and reassessment of how many one-off client assignments I should take on.

First, let’s take a look at the data: In May, I wrote 57,000 words and had an average per-piece earning of $67. My highest-paid piece was $300, and my lowest-earning piece was $35.

Completed Pieces: 80

Work Billed: $5,336.25

Earnings Received: $3,383.05

Wow. Although I continued to hit my goal of earning $5,000 a month, only $3,000 got deposited into my bank account. A lot of the work I completed in the past two months won’t get paid until June, and even though I’m expecting a big payday by the end of this month, I still feel a little strapped for cash right now.

I don’t know how your freelance payments usually arrive, but my regular clients tend to pay either on the 15th or the 30th of the month. When I write a one-off piece for a client, it pays around 30 days after the article is published, but there can sometimes be a three-month lag between final draft submission and article publication.

So that means you occasionally get months like this May, where you only get paid for a portion of what you bill. The money will still land in my bank account — I’ve only had one instance in my entire freelance career where a client hasn’t paid for the work, and in that case I was able to sell the piece to someone else — but it might take a few months to arrive.

A new regular contributor gig

On the positive side, I added a new regular contributor gig to my roster in May, for JoCo Cruise. This is the geek-themed music and comedy cruise I wrote about in my February income report when I described how I rearranged my entire workload to go on vacation.

I’ve been on that cruise four times, so when the cruise team invited me to blog for their website, I was thrilled. More than thrilled. There may have been some jumping up and down involved.

Last month one of our commenters asked about how much writing I do “for love” and how much writing I do “for money,” and with this client, I get paid to write about something I love.

These are the best gigs of all, but they’re also sometimes the hardest; when I’m emotionally invested in a subject, I’m more likely to second-guess myself or overthink my work because I’m so determined to find the perfect way of communicating my emotions. It’s much easier to whip off a quick piece about a goat farm essay contest, and I’d like to think that the ideal freelance career would have a balance between these shorter, easier jobs and the more emotionally involved ones.

The client snowball effect

The Matthew Effect applies as much to freelancing as anything else; if you’re a highly visible freelancer, clients contact you to offer gigs, and if you’re not a highly visible freelancer, you have to contact potential clients and ask for work.

This means that the more freelance work I complete, the more clients contact me to offer new jobs. It also means that I’m now at client saturation, and have started referring new clients to other talented freelancers I know.

If you’re at the point where you’re getting more client requests than you can handle, don’t just say no; say “no, but I can recommend another freelancer.” That way, you help spread the wealth, and you never know who might recommend you in return. This is how freelancers get jobs that aren’t publicly visible on job boards. Networking is a huge part of the freelancing business.

Because I’m at capacity, one of my big projects for June is to figure out how to reduce my workload. I have a lot of contributor gigs and plenty of one-off assignments for new clients, and my workday just gets longer and longer. In March, reducing my workload wasn’t a priority. This month, it is my top priority.

How am I going to cut back? Well, I’m not going to cut any of my regular contributor gigs, since those are both the most rewarding and also provide the closest thing I get to guaranteed recurring income. Instead, I’m going to be a lot pickier about my one-off assignments.

These assignments tend to take up an excessive amount of my workload, often because each one-off piece comes with a brand new editorial team and a new set of expectations to learn. (Don’t underestimate the value of working with the same editor for over a year. Things go so much faster that way.)

One-off assignments also, as I noted above, tend to have a several-month lag time between final draft and payment.

So for June, I have to tell myself: no one-off assignments for new clients unless it’s a dream job.

How will I know if it’s a dream job? If the idea of taking on this assignment makes me jump up and down, I’m in. If not, I’ll refer the client to another talented freelancer.

What would you consider a freelancing dream job? Also, do you feel like there’s a difference between the writing you do “for love” and the writing you do “for money?”

Want to learn how Nicole has come this far in her freelance career? Check out her past income reports for The Write Life:
June 8, 2015
Tracking Freelance Earnings: April Income Report From Nicole Dieker

Hi! If you’re new to this column: I’m tracking my freelance income every month and sharing it with all of you. This is my third year of public income tracking, and my first year sharing my income with The Write Life.

April was tax month, which meant I did a lot of taking stock: of my earnings, of the amount I need to set aside for freelance taxes and of the spreadsheet system I use to track my daily workload. So in this installment of Tracking Freelance Earnings, we’re all going to take stock together.

First, an overview: In April, I wrote 58,000 words and had an average per-piece earning of $64. My highest-paid piece was $300, and my lowest-earning piece was $35.

Completed Pieces: 86

Work Billed: $5,514.50

Earnings Received: $5,178.79

I’m still meeting my goal of earning $5,000 a month, and it already looks like I’m going to hit that goal for May, too.

How do I know how much I’m going to earn in May? Well, right now I earn about $3,800 a month from regular contributor assignments. These are sites like The Billfold, The Penny Hoarder and SparkLife, where I write a steady, predictable amount of pieces every week, which means recurring, consistent income.

As I recently wrote for my Ask A Freelancer column — also a regular contributor gig — turning freelance assignments into regular contributor gigs is one of the best ways to build freelancer security. (Here’s a post The Write Life published recently about how to do that.) Yes, when you’re freelancing you have to accept that clients will come and go, but even if one of my regular clients disappears, I still have several other contributor gigs that will bring predictable income into my bank account.

With that in mind, earning $5,000 a month requires pitching $1,200 worth of work. At this point, I have a lot of “occasional contributor” relationships with sites like Unbounce and Boing Boing, so my first attempt at filling that income gap is sending them ideas for posts. Pitching a client you already know is often more likely to be successful than cold-pitching a new client. I wrote about that in this month’s Scratch Magazine, if you’d like to read more about my thoughts on pitching — but I’m also happy to answer your pitch questions in the comments, so send ‘em in!

I should be very clear: even though I’ve worked with these clients before, they still don’t always accept the pitches I send! That means I have to constantly look for the best ideas that might be appropriate for each of these publications. I also sent a successful cold pitch this month, and began the process of building a new client relationship.

First quarter 2015 and freelance estimated taxes

The first quarter of 2015 ended on March 31, so let’s take a look at how I did:

Actual earnings received between January 1 and March 31 totaled $12,419.77. That’s a little less than the $15,000 I’d need to stay on target to earn $60,000 this year, but I am slowly catching up as more freelance payments come in. If I continue to earn like I’ve been for the last two months, my $60K pre-tax income goal is achievable.

That “pre-tax” designation is important. This year, my CPA suggested I set aside 20 percent of my income for freelance estimated taxes. (Other freelancers suggest setting aside 25 or even 30 percent, but keep in mind that I live in Washington State, which does not have a state income tax. Talk to your CPA about what might be right for you.)

Interestingly, I’m already behind on those payments. My CPA suggested I pay $2,100 for the first quarter estimated taxes due on April 15, but 20 percent of $12,419.77 is $2,484. It’s great that I’m earning more than my CPA predicted, of course, but this probably means I’ll need to pay more estimated taxes later this year to make up for additional earnings.

Now that I’ve paid my first quarter estimated tax burden, I’m proactively preparing for the next round of estimated taxes in June by sending 20 percent of every freelance paycheck I receive directly into a sub-savings account labeled “freelance taxes.” If you don’t save it in advance, it might not be there when you need it!

My freelance tracking spreadsheet

When you complete 86 pieces a month, you need a good tracking system to make sure every client gets everything they need on time. My freelance tracking spreadsheet is an essential part of making sure I write everything, pitch everyone and keep track of whether or not I’ve been paid.

Here’s how the spreadsheet works. Instead of explaining it, I’m going to drop in a visual:

Click to see a larger version

(I’ve blacked out the “earned” column because, while I’m happy to talk about my income in the aggregate, it’s less appropriate to share what I earn from specific clients for individual pieces.)

Every day, I take a quick look at what needs to be completed before the day ends, both in terms of writing and administrative work. I can also easily see which pieces I’ve invoiced for, which still need invoices and which ones have been paid.

This freelance spreadsheet keeps me on track, and it also helps me plan out both my writing and administrative workload far in advance. Today, for example, a client asked if I could complete an extra job, and I was able to look at my schedule and see that the next two weeks were already fully booked with work.

It’s important to note that this spreadsheet is only as good as the person who fills it in; once, for example, I forgot to invoice for a piece, and didn’t notice there was an “x” missing in the column until a few months later. (I successfully submitted a late invoice and got paid.) It’s amazing what your eyes will skip over — earlier this year, for example, I put some wrong numbers into the “earned” column and thought I had earned a more than I actually did! I was later able to correct the error.

It takes constant vigilance to keep up with freelance administrative work, and as we learned last month, this work requires one to two hours of every workday. However, it’s an essential part of making sure I can earn that $3,800 of contributor work and pitch the $1,200 in new work that I need to earn $5,000 every month.

How do you keep track of freelance administrative tasks like deadlines and invoices? Do you use a spreadsheet, or do you prefer a software program like FreshBooks or Harvest?

This post contains affiliate links. That means if you purchase through our links, you’re supporting The Write Life — and we thank you for that!

May 11, 2015
Tracking Freelance Earnings: March Income Report From Nicole Dieker
Hi! If you’re new to this column: I’m tracking my freelance income every month and sharing it with all of you.

This is my third year of public income tracking, and my first year sharing my income with The Write Life.

It’s time to look at March’s numbers:

Completed Pieces: 90

Work Billed: $5,128.00

Earnings Received: $5,539.41

March’s income is just over my $5,000/month goal, and is significantly higher than what I was earning at this time last year. In March 2014, I billed $3,583.39 for 119 pieces. Now, I’m earning a lot more for a smaller workload.

Here are a few more quick stats for you: I wrote just over 65,000 words this month, and my average earnings per piece comes to $56.98. My highest per-piece earning is still $300, and my lowest is still $50.

Tracking my hours during the workday

This month, my earnings received were higher than my earnings billed, due in part to all the long hours I put in at the beginning of the year so I could take a vacation. In March, I earned over $5,000 without the extra work or the long hours, thanks to that new client I picked up at the end of January.

How many hours do I work every day? In general, I work from about 9 a.m. to about 7 p.m., which gives me a 50-hour workweek. I often stop in the early afternoon on Friday, but make up the hours on Sunday night writing pieces that’ll run at the beginning of the next week.

A 50-hour workweek sounds like a lot, so I decided to spend one week in March time-tracking my hours to see how I was actually spending my time. I used Toggl, which I recommend. Here’s what I learned:

On an average workday, I spend between four and five hours writing. On Monday, March 16, for example, it took me four hours and 45 minutes to write five pieces totaling 3,600 words.

I also spend between one and two hours doing administrative work. This includes emails, checking in with editors, sending invoices and scheduling my upcoming workload. I expected to learn that I was spending much more time “doing email” because it feels like email is never-ending, but it turns out to be only a small part of my workday.

I spend two hours every day reading the Internet. In fact, the first hour of my workday — before I write anything, and before I tackle any but the most important emails — is spent reading other websites and catching up on the latest news and ideas. I read a wide variety of sites, from Business Insider to The Atlantic to The Toast and Buzzfeed. I consider this work essential to my career as a writer, because it keeps me informed and teaches me what other publications and readers find interesting.

Social media work is sprinkled throughout the workday, and I did not track it separately. In many ways, having a quick conversation with someone on Twitter or Facebook is analogous to having a quick chat with a person who stopped by your desk. I often do a quick social media pass between tasks, in that I’ll finish writing a piece and then check Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr before starting the next item on my to-do list.

With a 30-minute break for lunch, it’s easy to see how this can add up to a nine or 10-hour workday. Do I want to make my workdays shorter? Sure, but it isn’t a priority right now. I feel comfortable managing the work that I have, and very happy that I am increasing my earnings.

Creating a savings plan for estimated taxes

April is a big tax month for freelancers, since year-end taxes and first quarter estimated taxes are both due on April 15. Last month, I learned that significantly increasing my earnings over the past year — remember, I was only billing $3,500 last March — meant owing a lot more in 2014 taxes than my accountant (CPA) and I had previously estimated. $5,443 more, to be exact.

So I asked my CPA what I could do to make better estimations for 2015. Following his recommendations, I’ve decided to set aside a flat 20 percent of my earnings for taxes. This means that if my earnings continue to grow, I’ll be able to adjust my estimated tax payments accordingly and won’t get stuck with another big tax bill at the end of the year.

I live in Washington State, which means I do not pay state income tax, and it also means that my 20 percent savings plan may be a little different from what you’ll need to save for your own estimated taxes. Talk to your own CPA to find out what’s right for you, and ask your CPA how you can plan ahead for income variations throughout the year.

It looks like April will be pretty similar to March, work-wise. I have a slate of great clients and a bunch of work already scheduled — and I’ve definitely hit the goal I set at the beginning of this year of earning at least $5,000 per month. So now I’m wondering: How long should I ride this wave before setting myself a new goal?

How many hours a day do you spend writing? And how much money do you set aside as a freelancer for your estimated taxes?

Want to learn how Nicole has come this far in her freelance career? Check out her past income reports for The Write Life:
- February Income Report
- January Income Report
- December Introduction to Nicole’s Earnings Reports
April 13, 2015