Before the pandemic, my freelance business felt very solid to me. I had worked hard for 13 years to build relationships, clips and expertise. While I went through typical periods with slower amounts of work (especially January and summer), my business felt like a house built on a cement foundation. I had to work smart and continually market, but my days of hustling were pretty much in the past. 

Then the pandemic hit. And several clients hit the pause button. Others cut back some regular work. With the editorial calendars getting shorter, I felt like my income was down, even when it wasn’t. But to get that work, it took a lot more marketing and checking in with clients. Most of all I was worried about next week and next month, which hurt my focus and productivity. My house on cement now felt like a house of cards. And it felt like, every few weeks, I almost had to start my business over. 

I’ve gained comfort from talking to other freelancers and learning that what I’m experiencing seems to be pretty normal right now. Though my income is ahead of where I was last year at this time, I’ve had to work harder (not necessarily even longer – although there was a lot of that in April  – but more focused and strategic). Since we are all trying to learn what works best during these craziest of times, I decided to do a survey about the first half of 2020 on my Freelance Content Marketing Writer group on Facebook.  

I learned a lot of great information from the survey and you shared great advice. Over the next two weeks, I will share three posts with the results. Today I’m going to share the results from three questions to help us see if writers are making more compared to last year as well as why or why not. 

#1 How did your income in the first six months of 2020 income compare to the first six months of 2019?

These responses were great news to me and happily a bit surprising. More than half of the respondents – 59% – earned more in the first half of 2020 compared to the first half of 2019, with 38% earning significantly more.

I know that may not feel comforting to those 29% that earned less in 2020 and I hope those of you in this category don’t feel discouraged. If you are a writer whose income has gone down this first half, know that you are not alone at all. And it doesn’t mean you are lesser writer or even at marketing.

What it means is that there is work out there, but you just haven’t found the clients with work right now that are a fit for you. Back in May, I wrote a post about the importance of casting a wide net, meaning that you need to reach out to lots of different people, both clients and writer friends, to find clients who need freelance help right now. As I predicted, the work is somewhat uneven right now so its simply a matter of finding the clients hiring right now and that takes a wide net, meaning a lot of marketing.

#2 If your income was lower, check all contributing factors.

I found these answers to be very interesting. The reasons were really pretty widespread, showing that the pandemic had lots of effects and that earning less was likely the result of many different things happening. When clients pause, stop assigning new projects and you aren’t landing new clients, then it’s not just one setback, but it’s coming from all angles. The good news is that there are a lot of small things that you can do to try to make July and hopefully the second part of 2020 better. 

Because I’ve always felt that niche was a large part of a writer’s financial stress, I was not surprised that more than one-third of the writers who responded reported that their niche being affected by the pandemic lowered their income. I’m going to devote an upcoming post to writers whose niches have been severely affected by the niche with ideas on how to pivot.  

#3 If your income was the same or higher, check all factors that contributed:

These answers were pretty much what I expected, but found it interesting that landing new clients was the highest response, meaning that many writers landed brand new clients during the past six months. I also was happy to see that more than half of the writers had higher paying projects this year, even during the pandemic, compared to last year. Another interesting point is that more than half of the writers earning more reported that current clients gave them more work during the pandemic – and you’ll see in an upcoming post that this work didn’t just fall into their laps. Spoiler – reaching out to past clients (check out this post from March, which is still very applicable) was the most successful.

The niche responses were about what I expected – with one-third of the writers earning more being in tech. And yes, I should have included healthcare in that response as well. Almost all of the 44% of writers who wrote in a niche put in health. I’ll blame it on pandemic brain.  

#4 If your income was the same or more, did you have clients that paused or assigned less work?

It’s easy to assume that the writers who made more in the first half of 2020 got lucky and none of their regular clients cut back on work. But the survey showed that 84% of writers earning more in 2020 got less work from clients than expected during 2020 and only 12% of these writers got the same amount of work. This means that the writers who earned more went out and found additional work to make up the difference. 

Advice from Other Freelancers 

You gave great advice to other freelancers in the survey and I will share some quotes in each of the blog posts about the survey. 

Here are a few words of wisdom shared by the respondents in the survey – all of the advice was anonymous: 

• I think a significant piece of this is a mindset thing. Companies have fast-changing needs, and landing work may mean shorter turnaround times, being flexible on rates, or doing a little more (for example, one client asked me to write social content to go with promoting a piece – happy to do it; it takes 15 minutes and doesn’t materially affect the profits on a $1000 piece). But that said, writers and strategists are in demand. Remember that. 

• Keep the lines of communication open with your clients. I had to put a couple of clients on pause as I wrapped my arms around having kids home, school from home, and working. I was honest with my clients, many of whom understood the overwhelm I was feeling because they were feeling it too.

• Give yourself pep talks and favorite treats after being rejected or ignored by clients and potential clients. Remind yourself that others writers with success stories are probably way more likely to post/share than writers with struggles. You most likely aren’t the only one.

• Be realistic with your expectations. Be kind to yourself when you don’t meet your goals. Acknowledge your non-financial forms of reward/compensation, such as the freedom to be there for family when needed. Stay top-of-mind for clients whose frozen budgets mean they can’t assign work now but might be able to later. 

The good news is that there is work out there and many writers are doing well. And if you aren’t one of them, then it means that with some changes in your approach and marketing that you can likely join the ranks of the other. And yes, the next blog post is going to share specific results from the survey to show you exactly what is working. 

What are your thoughts after seeing the survey results? Anything that surprises you? Anything that you expected?