2023 Freelance income report: Q3-Q4

Well with the chaos of 2023 behind me, I’m hoping to get back to making actual quarterly updates again in 2024.

I was looking back through old income report posts and had to laugh because I swear to GOD in almost all of them, I’m pregnant or I have a baby. So now it all makes sense why the last five years have been so up and down.

Obviously, this last half of the year was better than the first. But I’m finding myself having to build back up and it’s been a struggle. My articles ranged from short news articles at $200 to longer review pieces at $750. I wrote news articles on sleep studies, updated articles on aging-in-place and cord blood topics, reviewed a medical tablet and will be featured in a tech magazine, put together a gift guide, and wrote about sex, robotic surgery, eye disease, gout, heart health, and HIV.

The Good and the Bad

Officially coming back from maternity leave found me almost clientless. Is that a word? I’m a writer, I declare it a word. Some clients had cut their writers because of budgets, some folded, and one is refusing to pay their freelance writers (something I’m still protesting and following up on, so I’m hoping I eventually see payment) and that ship has sailed.

What worked in Q3 and Q4:

• Going outside my comfort zone…again. I took on 2 complicated articles for a sleep health trade publication I write for. The first I took on without hesitation because I wanted the challenge…and then realized how ridiculously hard it was going to be to get myself up to speed on the concepts and terminology. The second I went back and forth on before deciding to take it, and again, struggled to get myself up to speed. And the strange thing is, these articles have been challenging in a GOOD way. I hate myself while I’m trying to figure out how to write them, but then they publish I’m like, Oh man, that’s actually pretty good. I’m so smart.
• Time to market like crazy. Upon returning to work officially after maternity leave, I started contacting past editors and either connecting with them on Linkedin to say hi and check in, or emailing them asking for work. But I also sent out approximately 100 cold emails or LinkedIn messages to let them know about what I offer (duh, amazing writing). I got a few responses, but budgets are winding down and I need to follow up with people later in January.
• I appeared in two magazines. My articles have actually been in five different print magazines. Unfortunately, because I wasn’t good about specifically asking for those physical copies, I only have the one (Woman’s World). But one of my articles was included in the print edition of a sleep trade magazine, and the other will appear in HealthTech Magazine as a review of a medical-grade tablet.
• Fostering relationships with former editors. I’ve been working with some amazing editors lately. Ones that I could easily go out and have a beer with. I haven’t been feeling very successful with my income this year, but I’ve worked with some pretty great people. After coming back from maternity leave, I learned one of my favorite editors had left a company I was freelancing for, so I reached out to find out how he was doing. He ended up landing at an agency where he invited me to come on board to write articles for a major health system. I’m hoping this gig continues into the new year.
• I worked with 4 new clients. One came about from multiple check-ins after a virtual client connections session this summer through one of the professional organizations I belong to. I’m now writing short news articles on new sleep studies and the pay works out to be over my minimum of $100/hour. Another contacted me and asked if I would help with updating some existing content on their site. They’ve been great to work with and I’d love to continue working with them. Another gives me the added challenging of working on breaking into more healthcare technology writing. My editor there was a dream to work with and the pay was great. So here’s hoping those clients all become regulars.

What didn’t go so well:

• I basically lost almost all my clients. Okay I already talked about this above, but it sucks losing clients and sucks more when it’s multiple clients at once. But I’m optimistic more will come along.
• Being hard on myself. I’m so thankful to have a business I control. I’m so thankful I decide my hours, who I work with, and how much I make. Having a flexible job with no boss to answer to is amazing. It truly is. But not having those hard work hours makes actually working difficult when there are so many outside forces demanding my attention. I’m glad I took a maternity leave. But it was hard, either having so many health issues or so many doctor appointments going on that working felt impossible sometimes. And after such a successful year in 2022, it was hard to admit this year was going to be far less income-wise.
• Managing life with a baby underfoot. I know my therapist would want me to say I’m trying my best and that’s all I can do. I get that. But it’s been hard trying to work since coming back from leave with a newborn. Chris is amazing at giving time to work during the day. But the amount of things I need to do feels overwhelming. I need to create a website. I need to completely redo my resume (some clients want to see when applying for freelance gigs—stupid, but you want to have one at the ready when it’s requested), I need to market. I need to find new clients. All this while trying to work on the assignments that are coming in. Setting up interviews. Interviewing sources. Emailing back and forth about projects. Writing. Editing. Invoicing. Trying to stay organized. It’s a lot.

How’s Q1 looking?

As the months progressed, I started looking more at my income and realistically, what was going to probably happen, so I said okay, fine, try to hit $20,000. I ended up billing for $18,500. (My actual cash in hand that I received in my checking account was $17,150, but I find recording my income here as what I actually bill from month to month is easier).

As I said in my mid-year review post, I didn’t make an income goal for this year because things were so up in the air. The first three quarters of next year will be weird as well because I will basically work without daycare for Austin until September at minimum. Still, I’m not freaking pregnant anymore, nor will I ever be again, thank God, so in that way, I’m thinking of a goal I could sustain. Really, in all the freelance writing podcasts I listen to, I want to take their advice and make a realistic goal, and a stretch goal (roughly 10% higher than the realistic goal I’m told).

I’m setting my 2024 goal for $40,000 and a stretch goal of $60,000 which is WAY over the 10% recommendation, but this year could end up surprising me, and who knows? But a goal of $40,000 means making $10,000 per quarter, and $3,333 a month. With $60,000 that works out to $15,000 per quarter and $5,000 a month. Which was totally doable in 2022 and that was with me being pregnant in Q4. So we’ll see what happens. On to a new year.

See other freelance income reports here.