As the hellacious year of 2020 came to a close, I realized that, like many writers in my Freelance Content Marketing Writer group on Facebook, I had my highest earning year ever – $163K. I was happily surprised after having one of my lower earning years in a long time in 2019. And I’m not sharing this to brag, but to hopefully inspire other writers to know what’s possible. 

But it wasn’t all great. I got fired from two projects that I wasn’t a fit for (lesson – I should have stepped back or not taken the clients) and I had another client that I struggled with delivering what they wanted all year until I asked to be taken off the project. I share this because I think being honest about the good and bad helps other writers understand both what is possible and that we aren’t the only ones when we struggle. 

Over the holidays I spent some time thinking about why I earned more in 2020 so that I can hopefully continue the trend in 2021. 

I stayed in close contact with clients. Right as the pandemic hit, I wrote a post about touching base with your clients and many writers told me that following that advice landed them work – from a few thousand to $10K. I followed my own advice – which isn’t always my strength – and continued that practice throughout the year, checking in with regular clients every few weeks to let them know I had availability. Looking back, I realized that at least $3K to $5K of my income each month came from assignments I landed with regular clients after these check-in emails. 

I used to think that, if a client wanted me to work on a project, they knew how to find me and would reach out. I think that especially during our current pandemic times that if you pop up in their inbox when they have a project on their to-do list, they often assign it to you because you just saved them the work and time of thinking of a writer, emailing them, and waiting for a response. I’ve found this technique to be very successful with certain clients, so I plan to continue doing this in 2021. I already landed at least $5K this month from check-in emails from regular clients. 

I focused on my strengths and admitted my weaknesses. Well, at least I tried to. I think this one will be a work in progress for my entire life. But I am hoping that I have finally learned my lesson that I simply suck at writing B2C content. But I’m pretty sure that the lesson will only stick with me a few years then I will convince myself that I can write B2C again. But for now, I’m still stinging from what I refer to as the “Tractor” incident, where I took a gig writing about tractors for farmers and landscapers. And yes, in similar fashion to the previous fish and firepit incidents, I flamed out dramatically. And the editor even accidently sent a note to me that was meant for another editor where she complained about me and said she wasn’t going to use me again – OUCH. 

But aside from that embarrassing project, I did a much better job of only taking clients where I thought I could turn into a favorite freelancer. Before I took on a new client, I really thought about if they matched the type of client where I did my best work and made a conscious decision to work with them or pass. I also feel I set myself up well for 2021 in this regard by asking to be taken off a retainer client that I made $24K from in 2020 that wasn’t a match for my strengths – the project started off as a business writing project, but due to COVID, it evolved into a heath writing project, which isn’t my superpower. While well-paying, the project caused me extreme stress because it simply wasn’t a match for my strengths and weaknesses. 

I also realized that I was continually getting compliments from my interviews from clients. Until this year, I hadn’t realized that was one of my strengths. So I have begun looking for new projects with interviews – which I had typically avoided due to the time suck. While I know that many writers hate Zoom interviews, I realized that I was able to connect with sources, who are often SMEs at the company or customers, much better over Zoom and I began requesting Zoom interviews. 

I asked for feedback. Last year I wrote about how I asked for feedback from a client who had gone dark. As I predicted, I ended up earning about $17K from the client in 2020 that would never have happened if I hadn’t swallowed my pride and reached out to them. And I already earned $2500 from that client in January alone. That one single email earned me close to $20K already. 

I joined a mastermind group. Right when the pandemic hit, one of my writer friends invited me to a small mastermind group of other high income writers that I had all met in person many times at conferences. We’ve been meeting on Zoom once a week and it’s been a lifesaver. I get input from my friends on challenges, have a safe space to vent and we share job leads with each other. Beyond the mastermind, I got referrals from a number of writer friends and I shared leads as I found them as well. When I looked at where I got my clients this year, as with past years, most of my work came from referrals either from writers or clients. 

I worked more hours. Yes, I am sure that some of the reason that I earned more this year is that I worked more hours. But I was also a lot less productive during the day due to the stress and having my entire family home all the time. I used to have 35 hours a week alone in the house to work. Now I might get 30 minutes to 2 hours the entire week, if I’m lucky. So I’m not sure if working more hours really made that much difference in my income or if it was just making up for lost productivity. I honestly think it only made a small bit of difference in my income, to be honest. 

Because my kids are not going to be home much longer and I had unexpected time with my teenagers, I took time with them when it was available and often we ate breakfast and lunch together as a family. I also took time off during the week to go hiking when the weather was nice. So while it felt like I worked even more than I did because I usually worked nights and weekends, I actually used my flexibility as a freelancer really well in 2020 to do the things that matter to me. 

I was flexible. I’ve always preferred projects and clients with short deadlines, but this past year took it all to a new level. With the world constantly changing, the last minute requests were constant. And whenever possible, I took the short deadline projects and I worked many weekends for my clients. I was also understanding when projects got pushed or cancelled. However, if I couldn’t do something, which was rare in 2020 because I literally had very little else to do, I simply told the client.  I learned that, because I was willing to be flexible, my clients remembered my patience and willingness to help so they would turn to me for other projects. 

I expanded into email writing. One of my regular clients last year asked me to write some emails, which I had not done before. In the past, copywriting hasn’t been my strength and I had failed on several projects, but I was very familiar with their products and audience, so I decided to give it a go. And my emails saw a higher click-thru rate than past emails, so I realized I was good at it. I began marketing myself for email writing and landed a new client that I already earned $6k in email writing projects in 2021. 

It was a good lesson for me on the fine line between staying with your strengths, but being willing to go outside your comfort zone to try new things. For me, I’ve realized the secret is to try a new niche, type of writing, or type of client, but be willing to ask to be taken off the project or not take similar projects in the future if it’s not a good fit. My downfall is stubbornness that makes me want to keep trying until I succeed, causing lower income and stress. My vow for 2021 is to continue to try new types of clients and projects once or maybe twice, but be willing to ask to be removed from a project when it’s clear that it’s revealing my weaknesses.  

I asked for referrals. I did a really good job of asking for referrals in 2020 with my clients and it really paid off. I have an agency I’ve worked with for almost five years now and last spring I emailed all of the editors that I’ve worked with at the agency to let them know I was available more for work as well as reminding them of my niches. One of the editors put me on a project that ended up earning me $21K for the year and another editor put me on a different project where I did over $11K of work, meaning a single email landed me $32K of work. Check out this post on how to ask for referrals. 

Yes, I encourage writers to talk about money. But I honestly think that isn’t the most important goal of freelancing. It’s to build and grow a business that you love. And even with all the madness that 2020 brought, I feel that my greatest success in 2020 wasn’t my income. But instead that I genuinely enjoyed my work, worked with very nice people, and continued to grow a business that focuses on my strengths, personality and goals. 

If you had your best year in 2020, what do you think were the keys to your success?