I was blown away by the response to my post about my $27K month. It’s always nerve-wracking to put a post like that out into the universe. I never want people to feel like I’m bragging. And I don’t want writers to feel bad about their income. But want to show what’s possible if that’s what you choose to do.

While I talk about money, I really don’t think that’s the true measure of success, and I have an upcoming post on this exact topic. I truly believe that success as a freelancer isn’t how much money you make, but instead having the ability to make the decisions that work for your family in terms of time and money at any given time.

That said I got a number of questions about my post. So I decided to write a follow-up post to address some of the most common ones.

Here some questions that I heard after my post on Monday:

How many pieces did you write?

I wrote 33 pieces in November. I had originally said 36 when asked in my Freelance Content Marketing Writer group on Facebook, but I’m bad at math. However, they were all straightforward and not a single one required an interview. Only five required pitching and it was super easy (a regular client for whom I write up three sentences on each topic and they accept all of them). The longest was 1200 words and several were in the 600-word range. Also, eight of the stories were blog posts rewritten from a whitepaper that was provided to me, so those were pretty quick to do.

All of them were blog posts. I usually have a wider diversity in projects, some emails, whitepapers, and case studies. But this month it was all blog posts. I wonder if that actually contributed to my high earnings because the process was the same for all of them and I was able to really get in a groove. Food for thought.

How did you manage that many different deliverables?

This question surprised me. Because I honestly didn’t think about it as being a lot of projects or hard to manage while I was doing it. I keep a very simple organization system. I put all my deadlines on my Outlook calendar as soon as they are assigned. And I have a Word doc To Do List where create a daily task list. At the end of the day, I start moving tasks I didn’t get done that can wait until the next day.

I think what made it easy to manage was that there were zero interviews. I think that this volume would have been hard if I was also finding sources, scheduling, and conducting interviews. Each project was literally open the document, research, and write. I could just sit down, get started and work until I finished.

Were any of the projects retainers?

Not a single one. Every piece was paid with a project fee and was individually assigned. I’ve actually only had one retainer in my career and that was over years ago. A lot of writers focus on landing retainers as the key to earning a key income. But I don’t think that they are the only way or even the right way for all writers. Yes, they can be great in the right situation and you should proactively offer retainers to clients where it makes sense. But you can be very successful by having clients that regularly assign you work, but without a specific retainer agreement. I plan on doing a post talking about retainers in early 2023 since this topic comes up pretty often.

Did you write all of the stories yourself?

Yep. Every single word. I don’t outsource any of my writing. But as I’ve shared many times, I do outsource non-writing tasks. I think it’s an important strategy for high-income earners because when you outsource tasks that cost less than your rate you are earning more and freeing up your time for the things that only you can do like writing.

Because I am a typo queen, I hire a proofreader who edits my writing before I sent it to my clients. I also have a virtual assistant who helps me with administrative tasks like social media and research. She helps me find new story ideas, sources, research, and statistics. My VA helped me by finding a few of the story ideas that I wrote in November as well as doing the initial research on some of the stories, meaning she found me a few stats and background sources to get me started.

I’m also a huge proponent of outsourcing household tasks as well. I hire a housecleaner, which helps gives me additional time to either work or relax. My husband is currently retired so he is handling the cooking and many household tasks, which further frees me up to focus on work.

Are you a fast writer?

Yes, I’m a pretty fast writer. But the reason I’m so fast is that I write primarily in a niche that I’ve worked in my entire career and I write on topics that I know very well. So I can crank out a 1000-word blog post in 2 to 3 hours or less, which wouldn’t be possible if I was writing about construction or health. I also carefully pick my clients and only take clients whose tone of voice is one that I can easily write, which means that it’s faster for me to write and I have fewer revisions.

What about revisions?

There were some from these projects, but not a ton. I probably spent a total of 2 hours on revisions for all 33 pieces that I wrote in November. But that’s also because they were short and straightforward. There will of course be more revisions for the whitepapers that I’m working on in December.

By working only with clients that I’m a fit for and dropping clients that I’m not a fit for, I don’t have a ton of revisions. I tend to keep clients for years as well, which also means fewer revisions. I also work very hard to proactively manage revisions by getting samples for new clients, doing outlines, and requiring that everyone who must sign off on a piece review the outline and the first draft. None of these pieces that I did in November required an outline because they were so straightforward and with existing clients. But I do create short outlines even for blog posts for new clients.

How did you get so much done?

Many years ago, I realized that my natural productivity rhythm works so that every so often I get in these hyper-focused periods where I am very productive and can get a crap ton of work done. I have learned that these periods tend to last about 3 weeks and during that time I am very productive and honestly, all I really want to do is work. It’s odd. And a bit weird, but I’ve learned that’s how my mind and body work.

When I hit these periods, I can get a seemingly superhuman amount of work done. So I’ve learned that when I get in this groove I should take as much work as I can and run with it. (Yes, this approach isn’t a fit for everyone.)

I got lucky and I got into this mode right at the beginning of November when the work picked up. And I stayed in it throughout November. True to form, I’m coming out of it right now and am feeling pretty unproductive, which is typically the way I work.

It isn’t how everyone works. But that’s the key – knowing yourself and your work style. And then making the decisions that work best for you.

How much did you work?

Probably about 40 hours a week, maybe one or two weeks it snuck up to 45 hours. I don’t know exactly because I really integrate my dog rescue and personal life into my writing work. I know some writers have a clear separation between work and personal, but I’ve found for me it’s best when I go back and forth between the three things in my life – work, dogs and family. I plan to write an entire blog post around this topic, but I wanted to share some details since this has been a common question about my $27K month.

Yesterday is a great example of how my days generally flow. I technically started work at 9AM yesterday and stopped at about 11PM, but I didn’t work anywhere near 14 hours. I spent 30 minutes hanging out with my husband eating a crepe brunch he made me in the morning. I also spent 5 hours doing dog rescue stuff several times throughout the day, taking dogs to vets and back to foster homes. Then in the late afternoon, I took 2 hours to hang out with my hubby and watch the World Cup soccer game before I finished up work in the evening after dinner. Oh, and I almost forgot about the 30 minutes I spent trying to help one college student of mine over text find temporary tattoos on Amazon that would arrive before the frat party on Friday for his costume and texting the other college kid pep talks and congrats through the day about finals. So I didn’t work 14 hours. I spent more like 6.5 hours on writing work and the rest on things that mattered to me. It’s rare that I actually spend more than 8 hours on work-related tasks in a single day. Since the kids went to college, I’ve found that I really like working in the evenings because I have no meetings and fewer emails to get in the way of my writing work. Plus then I have time in the day for the things I enjoy like hiking and saving weenie dogs.

I also like to work at least some on the weekends, especially Sunday afternoons or evenings. My husband golfs on the weekend and I find it easier to focus on longer-form writing without interruption of email and meetings. Even in my crazy November, I took one full day off each weekend. And took off four straight days at Thanksgiving and another three-day weekend in early November to go to parents’ weekend at my son’s school.

Why did you decide to rescue dachshunds? Why not another breed?

Yep, I know I’m switching subjects. But this was asked on my Giving Tuesday post and I’m never going to pass up a chance to talk about my rescue work. I’ve always loved animals and was involved in dog rescue at a high-kill shelter 20 years ago before my kids were born. When I got back into rescue as my kids got bigger, I decided to go into breed rescue. And my husband loves dachshunds. I knew that he would complain less about random dachshunds showing up in our living room than any other breed. And yes, that happens pretty often at our house and no one in my family blinks an eye when they come up to a dog they have never seen before. Other people tell me that’s not the way it works in most homes, but I’m blessed to have a very tolerant family.

How did you not realize that you were having a $27K month?

I don’t book out work for months at a time like many writers. I prefer last-minute projects and short deadlines. I honestly don’t typically book out for the following week until the end of the current week. I know that would send some writers into a tailspin and honestly, it does for me occasionally. But I’ve found it works best for me and the type of clients that I do best with. This only really works when you have a regular group of clients that assign you work regularly.

Do you want to have another $27K month anytime soon?

Not really. But it’s really nice knowing that I can and that the work is out there. I didn’t set out to have a crazy high month. But after my slow September and October, I didn’t want to turn work down, especially with new clients. So I kept saying yes. And then I had a ton of work, but I realized that instead of feeling overwhelmed that I was energized in my groove so I decided to get as much out of my productive period as I could.

December is already looking pretty busy considering I’m taking a week off before the holidays plus time over the holidays. Right now I’ve got $12,600 confirmed for December and am likely booking a $5K whitepaper today that will also be in December to put me $17,200, which is high for the amount of time I will be working. But my goal is to work my ass off the first part of the month and then have lots of cheese and chocolate in the second part.

Hopefully, that helps to answer some of the many questions my post brought up. If you have any other questions, please post them in the comments and I’ll address them here!