Note: If you’ve had success with cold outreach either through email or LinkedIn, be sure to fill out my survey. [SURVEY CLOSED] I need more responses so I can have a good sample size, so please share with your network as well. I can’t share what works if I don’t have data from writers like yourself.

Yes, this monthly income post doesn’t have a flashy earnings number in the headline. And the reason is that I didn’t earn a ton during either month, which puts me behind on my goals for the year.

But that’s okay. It’s more than okay. I took time off in May and June to travel and handle family issues. Having the flexibility to be there for the people and dogs in my life is my “why” for freelancing. I don’t regret a single hour I spent not working the last two months.

That said, after three lower-than-usual production months, even with good reasons, I realized a few weeks ago that I need to kick it up a notch. But I quickly realized my timing is off – very off. It’s summer now and budgets are down. So landing work and new clients is slow. Usually all it takes to get my pipeline full is reaching out to current clients and past clients. But that hasn’t worked this time.

So for the first time in years, I’m starting cold outreach, which I’m viewing as a long game that will hopefully start landing me work in the fall. I sent out 20 LOIs last week and plan to do more this week. And yes, I’m going to blog about what happens. I do think that cold outreach is one of the least effective ways to get work, but it does work over a period of months or even longer.

As you read through my income breakdown, keep in mind that I took off two solid weeks in May and several days in June. During July, I am doing writer coaching as a donation for my dog rescue, and I got a much bigger response than I expected. In June, I conducted 40 coaching sessions and have 30 more scheduled for July, which takes a fair amount of time, especially when you take into account the prep time and the energy required for an introvert to do these.

May Breakdown

Agency A
Project 1
$590 blog post

This project has been one of my anchor clients for years and offers a great hourly rate. This was a short post, taking me two hours, which gives me close to a $300-an-hour rate. Sadly, this is the project that recently cut back.

Agency B
Project 1
$600 

This is a good example of trying something and knowing it’s not a fit. The minute I looked at this project and saw the very detailed template, I should have emailed the editor. But I didn’t. I always struggle with super-detailed templates and directions. They’re just not my strength, and I am always going to miss the details. Then it takes me a ton of time because it’s so hard for me, and then I get a ton of revisions. I had decided that I wasn’t going to take any more of these projects, but the editor didn’t offer any – so I think we both felt the same way. And I’ve learned that’s totally okay – not all projects are going to be a fit for all writers. That doesn’t mean that I suck, and it doesn’t mean the client sucks.

Agency C
Project 1
$1,686 E-book

This is another project than many writers would have passed up because it was 80 cents a word. However, I ended up making $281 an hour on it. Because the client provided me a very in-depth outline and had very minimal revisions and it was a topic I’ve been writing about for years, it only took me six hours total, meaning an hourly rate of $281. The client found me via LinkedIn, but unfortunately, my main contact was laid off after this project, so I’m not expecting to get more work. But you never know.

Agency D
Project 1
$2,800 E-book

I did this one in about a week, which was a blast for me! It required no interviews and took me about 15 hours, since I had to write the brief and the topic was a product that was new to me. My hourly rate was $233. I loved that I got this at the last minute, because I couldn’t procrastinate.

Direct Company A
$600 blog post

Because I was provided a webinar as the source, this was pretty straightforward and only took me two hours. I got this client last year as a referral from another writer. I’d like to do more work with them, but they’ve recently undergone layoffs and restructuring. I just added them to my list to follow up with this week to see if they need help with any other projects.

Direct Company B
$750

This post is for an industry-leading association, IEEE, which makes the posts fabulous clips. While posts for this client can be a bit time-consuming – this one took me seven hours – I find them to be worthwhile because of the connections with industry experts and the opportunity to write on leading-edge technology. I landed this client a few years ago and have been working sporadically for them since 2020. My main contact left, so I was happy to get more work and hope it continues.

Total earnings for May  — $7,026 (for just nine working days!)

 

June Breakdown

Agency A
Project 1
$1,000 for 2 blog posts

I worked with this agency in May, and they came back with more work in June. This is a project that on the surface looks lower paying, and many writers would likely overlook it, but it has a good hourly rate. It’s editing drafts written by engineers. Each post took me about 2.5 hours, giving me an hourly rate of $200. These posts also don’t require a lot of brain power, which helps with my productivity and stress. My editor said that there should be more of these coming up, and I plan to take as many as they will give me.

Agency B
Project 1
$2,000 White paper

I worked with this client some last year, and they popped back up this year. I landed them through an ASJA Client Connection meeting last year and expect they will continue being a long-term client. I really like the support they give writers, and they are open to my making suggestions. I probably should have charged more, but I really wanted the clip in this niche, sustainability technology.

Agency C
Project 1
$1,500 750-word ghostwritten article

I earned $2 a word on this, which is probably the highest that I’ve earned. I probably spent about 10 hours on it due to the content and the ghostwriting as well as the preparation, so it worked out to an hourly rate of $150. But I really enjoyed working on the project and hope to get more of these articles. The client, which is a very large media company, found me on LinkedIn.

Agency D
Project 1
$850 blog post

This is the project that I do a few articles for every month. It took me four hours this month since it was a bit more technical than usual, meaning I earned a little over $200 an hour on it.

Agency E
$750 for 1,000-word post

Another regular project that I really enjoy – it requires two interviews, but I get to pick the topic. Because I’m trying to add a sustainability technology niche, I pitched a story that worked for that niche so I can hopefully land more work. This took me about five hours since the topic was newer to me.

Direct Company 1
Project 1
$800 report

This is a client that I’ve worked with off and on for the past 18 months but haven’t worked with in a while. I missed working with the client and was glad to be back working on it. This one took longer than expected due to the number of links and research required, taking me about eight hours. I hope to get more work with the client since they are easy to work with and I enjoy the topic.

Direct Company 2
$800 ghostwritten blog

This was a brand-new client I loved working with! Right now he only wants to do a few posts a year, but I’m hoping to get more work. He had read my blog and past work and then decided I was perfect – he even waited for me to get back from my vacation. We hit it off immediately during the introduction call.

Total earnings for June  — $7,770 (This is low for me but I did 46 half-hour coaching calls in the month of June, which is a lot of time and raised a lot of money for my rescue!)

My current total for this year for income that I earned from writing is $72,106. My income for other work, such as my books and training (not counting the coaching fundraiser) is about $24K, so while I feel slow and behind, I’m actually not. That said I really would like to break $200K on only writing income this year again, but it’s probably not going to happen without counting other income and that’s okay.

The Good and the Bad

These past two months were really unusual but it really goes to show how freelancing allows us to be flexible and do other things in our lives that would be much more difficult if we had “regular jobs.”

What worked this month:

Totally shutting down for vacation. In May, I took two solid weeks off work and totally shut down my business. I didn’t take any work or even drum up business to have when I came back. And I only checked email every few days. It was awesome. And one of my favorite vacations ever. I spent such an amazing time with my college kids that I will remember forever. I turned down work that came in during the trip or right before I left, which was totally the right move. I also took a few days off in June to go to a golf tournament my husband was playing in, which was super fun as well.

Offering coaching sessions as a fundraiser. Funds at my dog rescue have been low, so I decided to offer coaching in exchange for a donation to the rescue, for which I’m vice president. And the response was overwhelming – I expected 10 sign-ups and I got 60 in a few hours. I’ve done about 46 calls so far and I’ve really enjoyed meeting more writers. I raised over $6,000 for the rescue, plus I got the chance to talk to a lot of writers, which gives me new insight I can use for the training courses I’m launching in the next few weeks as well as for my blog. It was time-consuming, but I’m very glad that I did it and plan to offer coaching again.

Marketing myself for last-minute work. I love last-minute work and in the past year have made a point of letting clients know that I’m almost always down for last-minute projects, even a few days’ turnaround. And in June and July, I’ve already gotten several current clients giving me more work because they know I love last-minute stuff.

Letting professional contacts and friends know what I do. I’ve always shared what I do with people in my personal and professional networks. And it’s paid off a few times over the years. One of my new clients for June is the husband of a friend I used to hang out with when our kids were little. He is now director at a company and hired me to do ghostwriting for their executives, which has turned out to be a great fit.

What didn’t work:

Waiting too long to do cold outreach marketing. I should have started marketing back in April, when I first started to see a slowdown. But I was focused on my family and assumed that the slowdown was due to my wanting to take more time off. It’s a good reminder that I need to be doing a better job of consistently working on cold outreach.

My computer broke. My computer finally died, so I had to get a new one set up, which always takes a lot more time than I expect. And it takes me a few weeks to get my groove back with the new keyboard and getting everything set up how I like it.

Incorrectly scheduling my coaching calls. One of my issues in June was that I scheduled one 30-minute coaching call per hour. But I ended up spending five hours on five calls, which took most of my day. Finally, I was in tears and had my friend Stephanie look at my calendar, and she helped me fix the scheduling so I was more productive and less exhausted. Another great reason to have a writer’s network – they can help you solve problems that you are too close to and can’t see.

My anchor client cutting back work. While this isn’t something that I could have changed, one of my anchor clients is significantly cutting back work for Q3, which stinks. I am hoping that this is only temporary and that the work will come back.

Letting my work fill up my available time. I have an amazing talent of making work take forever to get done when I’m slow. I need to do a better job of being productive. But this is something I’ve always battled, letting my time fill up with whatever work I have.

How’s July looking?

Right now July is slow. I’ve got an e-book for Google that I landed right before the holiday, plus another project I landed with Franklin Covey that should start next week. But overall, July looks slow. So I’m going to focus on getting my training classes launched, writing some blog posts and working on marketing.

How’s your summer going? What are you finding that is working to land new clients?