5 HARD LESSONS I LEARNED ABOUT INCREASING INCOME
In this post, we're going to cut the fluff and get right to the big facts.
Let’s be honest for a second. If you are already freelance writing:
How much are you making an hour doing it?
Is the money you’re earning from writing worth your time?
Ultimately, if you’re only making a few bucks an hour, the way you're doing it right now may not be the most lucrative use of your free time. I've been there. Don’t hustle just for hustling sake. In fact, I'm part of the growing tribe of people who hate the word hustle.
How come I’m spittin’ all this wisdom?
Glad you ask, my friend.
I’ve busted my bum before learning hard lessons and refocusing my freelance business. I jumped into "hustling" with no business sense. I learned pretty quickly that to earn real money, you have to choose your concentration wisely and you need to go all in.
Otherwise, your business can turn into a glorified hobby.
And if it’s a hobby, you may as well invest that spare time in other things.
After earning peanuts initially from freelance writing, I discovered how to position myself as a specialist with a certain set of skills I could offer that commanded good money.
In this post, I put together four money lessons I learned in the last four years of growing my freelance writing business.
Get comfortable.
LESSON #1: STICK TO WHAT YOU KNOW
Narrow your freelance service focus.
If you can’t explain every random thing you do in a few sentences, go back to the drawing board. You’ll confuse yourself and potential customers. This isn’t great because you want your customers to be able to explain what you do to others so you can get referrals.
Do freelance tasks that focus on your main strength.
Jobs that are outside of your comfort zone take you longer to do and decrease how much money you make per hour.
For example, several years ago, I landed a $100 freelance gig writing on a topic weekly that wasn’t my expertise at the time. It took me at least 10 hours to research and complete the work so I made about $10 per hour.
No bueno. The client and I decided I wasn't a good fit for the job. Hey, it happens.
Then I got another $175 gig writing weekly about things like credit scores, budgeting, and saving which are topics I like and know about. I've run a personal finance blog for years and am now a Certified Financial Education Instructor.
It took about 3 hours for me to do; $50 per hour sounds a lot better. Agreed?
REMEMBER, THE FASTER YOU CAN DO SOMETHING, THE HIGHER YOUR HOURLY RATE.
I also tried virtual assisting on top of freelance writing for a while. I'm not good at email management and other assisting tasks. It made no sense. Focus on what you do best.
LESSON #2. DON’T SET YOUR PRICES BASED ON SOMEONE ELSE
I learned this invaluable lesson from a book I read called Get Rich, Lucky Bitch.
(No trolling, that’s a real book). I can’t even put into words how much I recommend it to any woman who wants to clear money mindset challenges. It teaches you how to overcome money blocks holding you back from earning the type of money you deserve.
One of the biggest lessons I learned from this book is to never charge for your service or product based on someone else without considering other factors like your time, the value, your clientele, and the market. Why?
Other people you compare yourself to may not be charging enough! Everyone has their own money blocks and fears (especially women) about how much they’re worth. If you let someone who’s devaluing themselves dictate your pricing, you’ll devalue your own work.
Consider industry averages, but never limit yourself.
One thing to note is it may take you longer to find clients or customers that will pay a premium price for your services or products, but avoid the low hanging fruit.
The low hanging fruit is the customers who'll run you ragged, but pay you pennies for your time. Hold out for the right clients that will offer you good money for your effort. Keep a day job while you're getting your freelance life together so you can be choosy with the clients you take on, and you're not desperate for a dollar.
LESSON #3. ALWAYS THINK SCALABLE
Scalability and pricing go hand in hand. What does scalable mean?
A scalable biz can expand as your client base increases. Service-based businesses (like writing) are harder to scale because you’re the personpower behind it.
At some point, you’ll hit a workload limit which is the max amount of hours you can work without going insane. Hitting your workload limit means you also hit an income plateau.
Let’s say you want to be a freelance proofreader on the side and you have four available hours tops each week that you can devote to one-on-one work.
You plan to charge $60 per hour, so your workload limit and side income plateau would be $240 per week. ($60 per hour, $240 for four hours each week.)
If you want to make more than $240 per week, you would need to think of ways to scale your business. The first obvious answer would be to raise your rates. You could maybe hire an assistant to take on more clients.
Pricing and scaling are things you want to think about early on to avoid reaching a workload limit and realizing that you’re not bringing in as much extra income as you’d like from writing activities.
LESSON #4. CHOOSE CLIENTS THAT’LL PUSH YOUR BRAND
At first, I was a dog walker, virtual assistant, web designer, gossip site blogger, personal finance blogger, and ghostwriter to name a few job titles.
Remember what I said about specializing? Yea I didn’t do that at first. I would do anything in the remote working space that people asked me to do.
I didn’t consider how each job would help me market myself in the future.
Let’s take the ghostwriting scenario. I used to be a ghostwriter for several clients, and now I only do it for a select few people who I enjoy working for and I admire. A lot of ghostwriting may not further your brand or help you get future work because you’re not able to use the writing in your portfolio and you don’t get a byline.
It’s important to think about how every business transaction will impact your chances of getting other jobs you want down the line.
SO THINK: HOW IS YOUR CURRENT EFFORT GOING TO IMPACT FUTURE EFFORT?
For another example, say you do technical writing, but you want to write more creatively.
Should you continue booking and filling up your portfolio with technical writing projects? Or should you devote that time to finding gigs that will put you on a different trajectory?
Some more questions to answer when deciding which work to take on:
Is the work you do (or plan to do) helping you build a client referral network that you’re proud of?
Are the services you’re selling right now fitting into the bigger picture?
Are you excited to show off what you’re currently working on?
If you need to go back and regroup, do it.
The good thing about freelancing on the side first is that you can pivot as much as you want while you have a full-time job.
It lets you skip out on easy money and fine-tune the service you offer. This will help you earn much more real money in the long run.