2018 Freelance Income Report: Q1

One of my goals for this year was to ramp up my freelance writing. I wanted to double what I made last year, which was $4,925. Therefore, the goal for this year was initially to make $9,850 and that equates to about $820 a month. However, immersing myself in reaching out to new publications, I realized I can make more than I initially thought. I decided to go big and shoot for a 2018 goal of $14, 400. Which in regards to my previous job as a nurse was pitifully small, compared to the $62,000 I was making at my last job.

But the amount of work, you guys. Freelancing is hard. So much harder than I would have thought. I thought I would create a post on this, talking about my job as a freelancer for those of you interested in what I do on a day to day basis. Mind you, I have officially been doing this for only 3 months, but I’ve been a contributing writer for mom.me for the last four years, so it’s mostly the same concept in regards to pitching ideas to an editor, hope they get approved, writing the article, and getting paid. But seeking out new publications is where my time lies a lot of the time.

I had a slow start to my monthly income goal of $1200, but here is the breakdown from the last three months:

Quarter 1 breakdown:

January: $500, pitches sent: 15

February: $835, pitches sent: 20

March: $1,635, pitches sent: 23

In March, I sold articles to Romper, Motherly, Momtastic, Ravishly, CafeMom, YourTango, and Tonic. It was awesome seeing my contributor page on so many new sites. There’s something incredibly fulfilling about seeing my name around the Internet (in a good way) that even nursing never did for me. So obviously, I did really well this month. But I was working a ton. I was caring for Olivia during the week until 5:00 when Chris came home. She wasn’t napping well, so most of my writing was done in the evenings and when I took her to my gym’s childcare. It can be done, but something needed to change.

As much as I didn’t really want to spend the money, I decided that putting her in daycare two days a week was the best option for me. Yes, we would be spending around $500 a month (unless I can find something cheaper), but I could still bring in $800-1000+ a month. And since I will have 16 uninterrupted hours a week all at once…

I figure it’s a small price to pay. My goal is to get as much work done (crafting pitches to send during the rest of the week, and writing, editing, formatting and submitting articles) during that time and then I can use my writing time after that to blog (huzzah!). THEN I can hopefully spend her naps cleaning or working on other projects that have been neglected.

This income is, and will be going to, our FET fund. I think that’s what finally lit the fire under me. It’s definitely been a big motivator.

So, as I say anytime I’ve been away from this space, I miss it. I hope once I hit on the daycare I want, things can settle down. I’m looking forward to it.