There is no other way to say it – at least in my opinion – 2020 was overall a shitshow.

However, for many freelance content marketing writers, 2020 was one of their best years ever, income-wise. I also had my best year ever as a writer, earning $25K more than my previous highest year. (I will write a blog post in the next few weeks about what I learned.) 

65% of writers earned more in 2020 than 2019

Since I noticed the trend of increased incomes among my writer friends, I decided to do a survey in my Freelance Content Marketing Writer group on Facebook to see if it was a widespread trend. My hunch proved true: a majority of writers (65%) who took my survey, which was close to 200 freelance writers, earned more money in 2020 than in 2019. I was happily surprised to see that 35% of writers earned significantly more in 2020 than 2019.

While this was interesting and positive, I really wanted to know why a writer earned more this year than previous years. I hope to all goodness that we never have another year like 2020, but I do think that many things that we learned as an industry and as individual freelancers can be applied going forward to help grow our businesses. 

Surprisingly, only 20% of writers surveyed earned less than in 2019, which was much lower than I expected when the world fell apart in the spring. While that’s only a mild consolation if you fell in that category, I do think that there are actions that writers looking for a better 2021 income-wise can take, which I will share later in this post. I also know that writers who had a top earning year, like myself, have been trying to figure out how to keep the momentum going forward. 

Why writers earned more or less than 2019 in 2020

I also want to address the fact that 38% of writers said that one of the reasons that they earned more was because they worked more hours. From talking to writers, I think that people worked more hours because they were worried all the work would dry up at any time and also we had more free time to work this year because so many things were cancelled.

While I don’t think that’s necessarily the most sustainable way to increase your income, I do think that the biggest point is that the writers were able to find enough high paying work so that they had to choice of working more to earn more. So this speaks to their ease of finding more work, both overall and during a pandemic.

3 Key Factors in 2020 Writer Income 

As I looked through the survey results, I realized that there were three keys to why a writer earned more or less in 2020. Here are my insights:

1. Anchor clients were the cornerstone for many writers. 

Over 60% of the writers responding said that they earned more in 2020 because they gained new clients. Even more interesting to me is that 52% of writers who earned less said that the reason was that they lost an anchor client, which illustrates the importance that anchor clients have in our earnings. 

This totally backed up my experience as well. I got more work from an anchor client by asking for referrals to other projects on the platform. Since the overall percentage of my income (35%) was higher than I prefer, I will work on increasing the income from other clients to help decrease the number of eggs in that basket. But since it’s a client I have worked for since 2016, I am less concerned than I would if it were a newer client. 

Takeaway for 2021: Actively look for new clients with anchor clients and focus on turning current clients into anchor clients. If you lose an anchor client, use this roadmap for recovering. 

2. Your niche really mattered in 2020. 

I’ve always felt that having numerous, narrow and specialized niches were the key to earning a high income. And that was proven to be even more true this year than before. Some of it was luck: 41% of writers who earned more in 2020 responded that their income increased because of a higher demand for their niche, while 22% of those earning less noted that there was a decreased demand for their niche. However, I do think that looking to add a technology angle to one of your niches is a great way to increase your income and something that all writers should consider. 

But what niches are most profitable? Most writers who earned more than $100K this year responded that their niche was in healthcare, business, B2B tech, or personal finance. Only 3% of the writers earning $100K or more were in the lifestyle niche, which backs up my anecdotal opinion that lifestyle writers often earn less. However, this absolutely does not mean that you cannot earn a high income as a lifestyle writer. I often recommend writers simply add another niche that pays better and continue to write about the topics that they enjoy. Often lifestyle writers can find a tangential niche, such as hospitality technology or B2B food & beverage. 

I do think that the writers who had several different niches were able to react quickly as things changed and focus on their more in-demand niche. For example, a friend of mine primarily wrote in travel and hospitality tech before the pandemic, but she quickly began marketing herself as a technology writer since she had many clips that she could use for general B2B technology for her hospitality tech clients. I also saw other writers who had health as a secondary niche market themselves primarily as a health writer since health content was high in demand this year. 

Takeaway for 2021: Look at your current niches to determine how you can either narrow your niche to increase your prospects as well as look for new niches in your clips to add. Many writers view niches as a static thing, but high-income writers are always evolving and expanding their niches as the market changes. 

3. Pandemic challenges affected freelance income. 

Most, if not all, of us dealt with a lot of extra responsibilities and challenges this year. Not surprisingly for many writers, these challenges affected earnings. The survey found that 45% of writers who earned less in 2020 worked fewer hours than previous years. Since I struggled with focus myself, I was not surprised to see that 30% of writers felt that lack of motivation hurt their income. I’ve found it exceptionally challenging to be productive with my entire family being home during the workday instead of having 7 hours of quiet time every day. 

Takeaway for 2021: Proactively look for ways to reduce your stress and increase your productivity within your current situation. Since many of our challenges are likely going to stay with us at least for a few months, I think that this will likely affect 2021 income as well. I’ve begun working more in the evenings and weekends when my family is gone or occupied, while taking more time off during the day to spend with my family. 

If you are looking to increase your income in 2021, consider signing up for my upcoming training class Make More Money as a Freelance Content Marketing Writer, which focuses on many strategies, including defining your niches and finding anchor clients. There are currently only 15 spots left and the prices increases from $199 to $249 on Friday, January 8. 

While the insights above are not new revelations to me or anyone who reads my blog regularly, I think that 2020 really highlighted the importance of taking a strategic approach to growing your business. Later this week I will share how much your fellow writers actually earned in 2020 and how they found new clients, which I think is very insightful as well. 

What do you think was the biggest key (positive and negative) to your 2021 earnings?