TLDR: I made about $3,483 this last half of the year, over $12,500 total, and was published in parents.com twice, which was a place on my bucket list. 

I made a lofty goal at the end of last year to bring in $48,000. Everything was so up in the air with whether or not I would get pregnant on the final transfer in February 2019, so I decided to go worst case and assume I wouldn’t have a baby this year. I was so thankfully wrong and didn’t hit that goal by a landslide. I made $12,568 this year from writing articles for 20 different publications.

Wins

By far the biggest win these quarters was getting an article in Parents.com. It wasn’t long after my own scare in the ER with a miscarriage at 11 weeks that I wrote the article for them on how we’re handling miscarriages in the emergency room. It was emotional to write and I remember telling Chris more than once that I was looking forward to being done with it because it was bringing back a lot, especially hearing the stories from other women, women who had much more difficult experiences than I did. But it really resonated with a lot of people on their Facebook page, and last month, the Parents editor came back to me and asked if I wanted to do another one for them, this time on hospital nurseries closing in the United States. I got to interview Dr. Harvey Karp for it which was pretty cool. I tried not to gush too much on how much Happiest Baby on the Block worked for me when Olivia was a baby. The article is out for edits now, and I can’t wait to see it live.

I also got to interview Kikkan Randal, a five-time Olympian and gold medalist in cross-country skiing for an article for Romper.

I had my first article appear in mindbodygreen as well as on Medium’s parenting vertical.

Finally, while not tangible, I forced myself to go after higher paying sites, and write less or not at all for the lower paying ones. While I’m not above making $75 for a quick personal essay, I’ve learned to push myself out of my comfort zone and continue to ask for more money, and pitch to bigger publications.

Boos

What started out as an amazing opportunity with VICE, turned to be a bit of a letdown. I was working on a huge piece on egg freezing for a fairly large sum of money when it was killed by the editor. That’s writer-speak for the article being canceled. I got a kill-fee of 50% so I walked away with $325, but the article wasn’t going to appear in VICE. I now need to shop it around and hope I can find a home for it since there were multiple expert interviews involved.

I had a good amount of articles these last two quarters get shelved for the time being, or completely reconstructed as the editors wanted to take them in a different direction. I’ve had to push back on some of those because hey, a completely different direction is a completely different article and I wasn’t being paid more. Luckily, I’ve been paid for them, but there are still a few I’m doing edits for while I’m supposed to be on maternity leave.

The income reports

Here’s what each quarter has brought in for this income report:

Quarter 3:

Pitches sent: 20

Articles written: 17

Income total: $2,808

Quarter 4:

Pitches sent: 0

Articles written: 3

Income total: $675

What’s in store for 2020

Truthfully, I’m not sure. I made over $12,000 this year, but the majority of that income didn’t involve a baby. I’m not sure what my workload is going to look like next year, since while Olivia will still be in daycare, Emelia won’t be. It would be nice to make the same amount as I did this year. So we’ll see. How’s that for an answer?

My goal for 2020 is to break into the New York Times, HuffPost, or Washington Post. While I’ve been pitching them, and even hearing back from editors, I so far have yet to hear a yes. Here’s hoping that changes.