2024 Freelance income report: Q2

Things picked up quickly in April and suddenly, I had made more in a month than I did in the last three months combined.

Five of the 7 clients I worked with in April were new clients. Actually, one of those was an old client who I recently started writing articles for again. It’s like things just picked up and suddenly I found myself busy. Very busy, especially with working while tag-teaming caring for a baby all day.

I wrote articles ranging from breast cancer to artificial sweeteners to mattress reviews to fertility to breastfeeding to walk-in tubs to cancer. Most of my income was from good old-fashioned article writing, but I did do some medical review for a client which involved fact-checking articles for accuracy. I also did some article updates for a few clients. I even did a little pitching for a publication I started working with in March. I’m mainly a content marketing writer these days, but still like to divide some of my time with journalism. The articles ranged from $200 a piece to $2,100.

The Good and the Bad

Work picked up quickly at the start of Q2 and through June, I was off to the races, busy all day (and some evenings and weekends) with client work.

What worked in Q2:

• Interviewing a ton of people. So many of the articles I wrote involved expert interviews. I’m used to doing these, but it seems there’s been an increase in clients wanting expert quotes in their articles. I did just over 50 interviews in the last three months. Many of these were conducted over email, but still. That’s a lot of interviews.
• Blowing my goal out of the water. For my stretch goal of $60,000 I needed to make $5,000 a month. I surpassed that each month in Q2.
• My marketing efforts paid off. I went from hardly any work and marketing myself like crazy, to all these clients wanting to work with me. Some clients came from my marketing emails I cold-sent to companies, and some came from LinkedIn where editors at companies put out a call that they needed freelance writers and they happened to choose me. One of my favorite client calls was when the content editor told me she was looking for a freelance writer and I happened to land in her inbox at the right time.
• I worked with some amazing editors. Not every client is going to be a good fit, but I was so lucky to work with some really fantastic editors. It always makes life easier working with nice people.

What didn’t go so well:

• Working nights and weekends. I found myself working a lot of evenings and weekends. I hate doing this. I don’t even blog anymore because I just can’t handle being on my laptop after the kids go to bed. But there are times that it was unavoidable and I was on deadline and needed to work at night. I tried to cut myself off at 9:00 pm so my eyes wouldn’t be too overstimulated to sleep at night. Working weekends is always hard when the rest of my family is having fun and I have to be in my office.
• Time-management. This one goes with the one up top. My time-management could definitely be better. In fact, I had a conversation with my therapist and she agrees I have undiagnosed ADHD. Which explains perfectly how I can’t seem to get my act together and NOT work on articles at the last minute.
• Feelings of guilt. We found out the baby starts daycare at the start of the school year. Which makes me sad, but also? He’s getting bored. I can tell he’s just bored during the day and Chris and I try our best to entertain him as much as we can, but it’s tough. I’ve been feeling guilty that he needs more attention and it’s just hard to give that to him with how busy I’ve been.

Total income: $26,288

How’s Q3 looking?

I have $1,500 invoiced for the first week of July, so I’m thinking things are going to continue to go great. I’m so thankful for the work I’ve been given and the relationships that have developed over the last months.

My goal was $40,000 but I’m going to focus on even surpassing my stretch goal of $60,000. I’m halfway there and on track to easily make it.

See other freelance income reports here.