How to Create $10k Months as a Freelance Writer
There are SO MANY ways to slice and dice a $10k month (even your first $10k month!) as a freelance writer. I used to be completely confused how freelance writers were able able to hit this milestone when their businesses were complete opposites, ran differently, focused on different niches, and they worked on different types of writing projects.
For this week's livestream, we're going over how freelance writers reach a $10k month, how you can continually hit $10k months, why a variety of clients and projects can be a huge bonus, and what steps to take after you hit this amazing milestone.
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How to Create $10k Months as a Freelance Writer
We are talking about how to make $10,000 a month as a freelance writer. When I first started out, I didn't think this was possible. I didn't even know people could do this. And as I went along and I learned that there were six figure freelancers out there making more than 10 grand a month and having like a hundred K quarters and stuff.
Uh that's when I was like, oh, that's what I want. I want to do that. You know? And so for me, when I started figuring out how to have 10 K months and I had regular 10 K months, you know, and you have like those 40 K quarters, how I like the whale. Um, I think that that's something that we need to talk about more as freelance writers is like, how do you actually do.
How does it make sense? How do you make the money? How do you slice and dice it? And when I was kind of coming up with all of my freelance stuff, right. I was learning how to do everything. I realized that a lot of the writers I looked up to who made six figures all had very different businesses. So some of them were in all of these technicians that I found really boring.
Like, I, it was just stuff that like, they would tell me about it. And I'm like, oh my gosh, I'm going to fall asleep. Like, what is this? And then others of them were like, oh yeah, I just write in trap. Like, all I do is write travel articles and I make six figures. I'm like, how the fuck do you do that? Um, Hey, BMF, welcome.
I'm glad you're here. Hey, Beza welcome. Glad you're here. So, um, just as always, like, if I'm going through anything and you have questions, always feel free to pop them in the chat. And if you're watching this as a replay, like you're watching this stream some other time, uh, always feel free to comment. If you have any strategies or techniques or ways that you made 10 K a month or questions about making 10 K a month, you can always drop them in the comments below.
I always answer every. We're so glad that you guys are hanging out. So let's get started. Let's just go through it.
1) How Freelance Writers Reach $10,000 Per Month
So here's the deal. How can you actually make 10 K a month? So this is something that I think a lot of freelance writers, um, make mistakes on is they think that this just like happens. They think like someday someone wakes up and they're just sitting on a pile of 10 K a month.
They're like, I've made all these projects. It's magic now it's practice. Uh, so the deal is that a lot of this stuff has to do with marketing, right? So this is something I tell my core students all the time, my coaching students, we talk about this all the time. I love the little waves. I think that's so, so cute.
And that got started by Vicki Vicki. You don't normally comes in here and has the wave, so I'm glad we continued it on. Hey, Carol. Welcome in. So the deal is that a lot of this has to do with marketing. If you are not looking three to six months ahead with your marketing, that's a problem. A lot of the freelance writers that I coach and a lot of the freelance writers that I end up having in my.
Um, we go through this a bunch. They're like, oh yeah, I have work. I have worked this week and next week, or I have worked this month. What about, and I'm like, what about next month or three months from now? Or the last quarter of the year? Or like how, you know, how are you measuring this? The problem is to get those 10 K months, you have to be planning ahead.
And here's why, if you don't plan ahead and you don't look three to six months ahead with your marketing, with your work, with your money, then you have to start taking all these little jobs. Oh my gosh. Ah, June doesn't, I don't have enough money to take a job, take a job. And I've had to do this before this happens.
And it's because you don't look far enough ahead or because you're distracted doing a ton of other things. Whatever. So the deal is that you have to look farther ahead. Once you start grabbing all of these little, you know, instead of grabbing like the big prize, winning pumpkin, you know, and getting a 10 K a month, you end up being like, I need an apple and just like a little pair and one strawberry and one blueberry.
And you kind of like mash all these things together and then you end up panicking, right? You don't making a 10 K a month is about planning ahead. It's about looking at the things that are coming in and having this schedule space to then take on bigger projects. It's about being able to see, okay, this is how much is coming in over the next three to six months.
This is how I'm doing my marketing. This is how I'm planning everything ahead. And then when you have the space to take those bigger projects to reach a 10 K month, right, then you can do that because you're not scrambling. And your schedule isn't filled up with all these smaller things. That's one of the biggest mistakes I see is when you reach these 10 K months, it's not that you are, oh, Hey guys.
Hey, Hey, Virginia. Welcome. And we're glad to hear, I see all this stuff like popping up as I'm chatting. So yeah. Always feel free to welcome everybody. I always like how you guys in, you know, talk to each other. I think that's a nice part about this live stream is we all get to hang out. So you have to plan ahead.
And the mistake is that freelance writers are like, the runway is so short that you don't have the potential to get a 10 K month because you think that you're like, oh, I need to write, you know, 50 blog posts a month, or I need to do like 75 of this thing, or I need to do like 20 reported articles or I need to do all of this stuff.
Right. But the problem is that's not how it works. Like yes, you can reach a 10 K a month by doing a thousand of one thing you definitely can. So that's one way, right? One way to make a 10 K month is that you're like, all right, I'm going to write 500, like my blog posts, you know, I'm going to write, um, 400 to 500 word blog posts at $500 or.
Um, 800 to a thousand word blog posts at night, 800 or $900. And you do, you know, 10 to 12 of those, whatever I grumpy. I hear you making noise. Um, Hey Vicky. Yeah, Vicky's the original original waiver. Uh, the problem is here is that there is an exhaustion point where you can't keep going with those 10 K months.
Like the people that I know that we're doing a ton of work to reach 10 K months, like they eventually either burned out or they quit freelance writing, or they eventually tried to start re fixing their business like a lot. They had to like redo their business. Hi, grumpy. I hear you making noise, being a SAS factory.
I'm trying to tell people how to make money and you're over there. Make it a whole, think about it. Can you back up, back up? Well, well, that's close enough, buddy. All right, Minnie. Good girl. You're kind of far away. You're hard to reach today. Usually you're closer to. Probably, but as usual, no, this is for her.
This is for setup. This is where her, there you go. Well, you can be over here. There you go, buddy. You can be over there. There you go, mate. All right. So the problem is that when you start doing this work harder business, when you do this over and over again, where you end up writing bajillions of pieces of content, that's not sustainable.
That's not a way to make a longterm six-figure amount as a freelance writer that just leads to burnout. It leads to a bunch of other problems. It's a big pain in the butt. So the deal is that you can do that if you want. But most of the time that comes from like over-scheduling yourself, or it comes from this place of like, oh, I just do a lot to make more.
And this was the idea I had. I was like, oh, if I just take on more, I'll make more money. Instead of being like, I should pay attention to the projects that I need to do. Like more case studies, more white papers, more downloadables more bigger projects where someone says, I need these five D like these five deliverables or these, you know, four pieces of content.
And it's a much bigger project than being like, okay, this month, it's this, and this month it's this. And I have to write a lot and work a lot to get there. Like, that's just not, it's a recipe for a lot of mistakes, so you have to think more forward. But yeah. Welcome BMF. We're glad you're here at BMF. If you want to share your real name, that's totally cool.
If you want us to call you BMF. That's cool too. We're glad you're here. Uh, it's fun to hear. Um, and we always have pub dates. We always have pup dates, which are fun. And Charlotte makes noises a lot of the time and you might be able to hear them cause she's like, I love our Treehouse. Um, okay. So back to the point, the point is that when we're doing the marketing, we have to think further out, you have to think three to six months out.
And I have made this mistake. It happens all the time. People make this mistake, but in order to reach consistent 10 K months or get a 30 K quarter or a 40 K or 50 K or a hundred K quarter, you have to be thinking much further out and you have to be filling that marketing pipeline and you can't be drilling away on busy work.
That just is not sustainable. You can't make it through a year writing like 50 articles a month. Like I just don't, I don't think that's healthy. And I don't know anyone who did that consistently for more than, I don't know, a couple months, like who wrote a ton of content for a few months, because it's just exhausting.
It's exhausting, your brain and your ma like mentally, physically, emotionally. It's exhausting, your creativity. Then you start kind of like mushing in different styles and tones between your clients and it's a disaster. So think further out and focus on bigger projects. You need to focus on people when you get on a call with them who say we have extra stuff going on.
Like we have other projects, like, they're not just saying like, yeah, we just need a few blog posts or yeah, we need to do this. And I think also the landscape changes too, right? Like, um, Hmm. I don't know, like five or seven years ago, writing a ton of blog posts was like the thing everyone was like, this is how we get SEO.
And traffic is we just write a ton of blog posts and that's not really the case. Now people are creating more content that is longer research has interviews. Like it's not just like you write a blog post in an hour and like move along with your life. Oh, which is a question we have today, which we're going to get over.
The deal is that now people are realizing they need different. I can hear you, but I don't, I don't want to deal with your ground way right now. So the problem is that content is changing. People are realizing that video is really growing. People are realizing that video scripts and webinars have grown a lot over the pandemic.
People are realizing that podcasting and case studies and longer form content is performing better because that's what audiences want. Yes. SEO is important. Yes. It's important to drive traffic and do all that stuff. But at the end of the day, your content is what keeps people around. It's not that it's magically SEO.
It's the content itself that keeps people tuning it. And why do people subscribe to podcasts or live streams? It's because the content itself is really important and really useful for them. Right. And if I was just worrying about SEO, SEO can keep driving people there, but you don't actually convert anything.
The way that content is kind of put together, the landscape of content is different. I can hear you. Yeah. I can hear you over here. Making the voices, making noise. It's not right out. Can you lay down? Thank you. Could you lay down and, and be a nice little, a giant leaf? I think I missed something. Okay.
Anyways, sorry. We're a little all over the place today. Uh, the deal is that the content landscape has changed and a lot of that has to do with like all the stuff that has happened over the last few years. Uh, and the way that people consume content, right? Like there's, there's tic talk and then there's reels and then there's shorts, right?
YouTube shorts, Instagram reels, then there's live streams and more people have, have access to the internet and have access to video and camera. Phones than ever before. Right? So when we're kind of looking at these 10 K months, we have to remember that these bigger types of content that are more on the scene.
Now those costs more money, right? Those bring more value to your clients, which means that you should be charging more, which means instead of sitting on the hamster wheel and running around and doing the same content over and over again, it's like, you need these bigger projects that span longer periods of time that are actually different deliverables.
And that are things that audiences are actually interested in. And how do we get that? We have to ask on our potential client call. So in addition to your marketing, in addition to looking further ahead, in addition to getting away from this hamster wheel of like 8,000 blog posts a month, you have to ask people, that's it, you don't know their business until you ask, so you have to get on a call with them, right?
So like you send your LOI, which is your letter of interest. Um, oh, which I have templates for here. So if I always talked about this, uh, if you are looking to do your marketing better, right? Like these are all the templates I use right now. This is how I run my six-figure business. If you go to Mandy ellis.com/bundle, you can get all of my templates for how I do marketing on LinkedIn, how I do marketing through email, um, how I do my contracts, all of that good stuff.
So you go to Mandy ellis.com/bundle. You can check that out. And as you kind of go through these calls, oh my goodness. What a sax? Nope. Not today. Not today. Riddle TJX, little sweet cheeks. She just wants to be a satisfactory. No, you can't be a satisfactory. So as you go through these calls, right, you send your LOI is your letters of introduction, and you're doing your LinkedIn marketing.
You're growing your network. You're doing your email stuff. When you get on your potential client calls, you have to ask them right about like, what is in your pipeline? What other products. And content items deliverables. Do you have on the horizon? Then we want to partner with those people. And this is something I talk about in my masterclass, my free masterclass that I only have twice a year.
It's not coming back till August, September, somewhere in there. So anyways, the whole point is that when we're asking this, like, what do you see, right? Where are you going? We are aligning with other people who are in the same direction. That's the point. We're not aligned with people who want to just churn out content.
Well, like over and over again, we're aligning with people who are like, our audience needs this. So our content plans are ABC. And we're doing that because of Def to get XYZ results. Like they can map that out for you super easy. Those are the people you align with. That's how you start getting closer to 10 K months.
Those are the people that say, Hey, let's we have 10 different types of things we need to get done, but let's try a case study with you or let's try a. Um, a white paper or a guide with you, and then we'll make, you know, we'll figure out if we're a fit and then we'll sign a bigger contract. Or sometimes they just sign a contract because you have a bunch of niche expertise, or you are someone who has a ton of samples that they really like.
And they're like, yes, we have these five things. We love your work. We want to sign this big thing with you. So we have to pay attention to those things. And you have to ask, you have to ask, if you don't ask, you're not going to know. And you can't know anything about an internal business from the outside.
Like, this is something that I talk about with my students and. Um, a lot of times with like other freelancers is they're like, well, how do you know, how do you know that? Like, this is what they're doing. I don't, I don't, I don't know. You don't know either. No one knows unless you work at that company, the deal is you have to ask in order to receive information.
That's why we like getting on calls with people is because then we can ask them, like, what's going on over there. Can you tell me about your content goals? Can you tell me about your plans? Then we actually have an idea of where we're going. Right? We have an idea of like, should we align with this business or are they just pumping out content for the sake of content?
If they can explain what their goals are, right. Then we kind of can get on the same bus and drive the same direction, and then we can have bigger projects. Then we can plan for their head. Then we don't have to worry as much about all these like little, you know, picking up little things along the way.
That's a distractor for having really bad. So that's the first step is like, how do we actually reach that? We need bigger projects. We need a bigger runway for our marketing. We needed three to six months thinker time. Um, and we need to keep our marketing pipeline going. We need to keep marketing and we need to ask questions.
You need to ask your potential clients, like what is going on over there? Tell me what's up. And this isn't like to poke or prod them or make them feel shame because they don't have goals. It's like, are we on the same? Like, are we playing the same game? Right? Like, are we playing, are we both paying blaze baseball?
Or are you playing like cricket? And I'm playing baseball? Or like, am I paying, playing American football? And you're playing like soccer or like European football, like what's going on. We have to be on the same page because those are the engagements that work out the best. Those are the engagements where someone gives you a glowing testimonial because it's like, you've already aligned before you signed a contract before you sent anything over to them.
That's really important. The other way that we want to talk about. Reaching 10 K months is figuring out, oh, hello is figuring out the types of things that your niche needs. So for example, my niches often don't do white papers. That's not a thing I do often case studies, yes. Reported articles, um, uh, SME, like subject matter expert type interview posts.
Uh, um, downloadables like any types of guides or infographics or, um, things that you need to show that the thing actually works. Right? That's what my clients do. A lot of the time white papers are pretty rare, but I know that cause I've worked in my niche. This is something you need to know to get to these 10 K months is like, you don't have to have a ton of niche experience, but you need to understand what types of things pop up.
If you go look at 25, 50 or a hundred deals. Hospitality tech companies. What types of content are they creating? Write that down. You need to offer that. Okay. And that's the important part is like you could offer everything under the sun. Right. But there are specific things that you either don't like, or that aren't that common in your niche.
Right. And those are the things that we need to kind of hone in on is like, what do they need? I'm going to offer those things. So we're already in pre alignment. Right? They read my LinkedIn, they read my website before they ever reach out. They see that we're on the same. We're playing the same game, like case studies, case studies, white papers, white papers, whatever it is in order to know like what's going on.
Right. Like there's some niches like grumpy. There's some, I don't know if you guys can see her over here. Oh, you can't, she's sitting over here, like looking at me like a sad. So there are some niches where they have taken on webinars at an astounding rate, they are looking for webinars, scripts. They are looking for people to create webinar slides.
They're looking for people to then create a blog posts and case studies or whatever from the webinar reported articles. So there's a lot of things we have to know. And these types of projects are like, all right, cool. How much would I charge for these things? What are the most lucrative or useful projects in my niches, then I'm going to offer those and look for that work.
I'm not going to keep doing my comfort zone thing of being like every and every writer. I know your comfort zone is blog posts. I know it, my comfort zone is reported articles. I will be totally honest. I am like addicted to report and articles. I love talking to people. I love, um, interviewing them. I love hearing things they're excited about.
I love it. That's my. I know a lot of writers on majority are addicted to blog posts. That's your comfort zone is you're like, oh, they're just asking for a blog post. I can do that. But when they ask for something more complicated, they're like, we have a webinar that we need this to. Everybody has a meltdown.
Everybody has a meltdown over it. Listen, if you can write a blog post, you can figure these things out. It's not that complicated. And most of the time you're going to get a lot of information from that client. If you don't ask them a bunch of questions and then if it blows up in your face, me too, that's happened to me a bunch of times where I've taken on work and I'm like, this is going to be great.
I'm going to figure it out. And it blows up in my face. That's part of the process that's part of getting to 10 K a month is you have to make these mistakes. You have to learn your niche. You have to learn how to do these different projects and you have to get out of your comfort zone. So when you're kind of looking over these things, that's when you want to figure out what you're offering, right.
Reaching 10 K is about offering the right things to people. And this is something that I have come up. Um, I don't know, in the last little while, maybe the last like year or so, I used to be very against packages because I always got these inquiries that were all different. Like everybody wanted a different slice and dice of different types of content, but recently I've been having this more regular type of engagement.
That's two thought leadership posts, two reported or research articles, um, a case study and a downloadable. So the downloadable could be a guide or an infographic or, um, some kind of how to thing. It could be anything that someone would download to build subscribers. So as you kind of like go through these things, that's what I've noticed.
A lot of people want thought leadership. A lot of people want some kind of reported content or subject matter expert interview or research stuff where they say, here's this crazy thing we're talking about, but it's backed up by research. People want a case study because then they can prove their thing works and real people use it and they want something to build subscribers.
Right. Or the downloadable of some kind, this is something that I started offering and being like, this is just what I keep getting asked for. So I might as well just say, when someone says, well, what kind of content makes sense? I'm like, this is what everyone else is asking for. This is what makes sense.
And it allows you to test different things, right? You get kind of a smattering of content. You get to try some reported and researched articles. You get to try some thought leadership. You can post them different places, you get a case study. And those things we all know can live for, like forever. They can live forever almost, but they, you know, typically it's like they live for several years.
Like I would say a nice estimate is probably like two to five years. Like, like I've had case studies that are five years old, that still exists on websites. So I wish I were a giant leaf so that you could float through life without a care in the world. Um, so let's uh, where was I going with that? The whole point of this is that you have to know what's kind of going on.
You have to see what types of things you keep getting asked for and build on that. And then that can help with a 10 K a month. So if I'm charging for something like I'm charging 10 K for two thought leadership posts, two research slash reported articles, a case study, and a downloadable, let's say that whole project is 10 K right then that kind of stuff.
I could do that in one month. All of that work can be done in one month. Um, if it's, if you can't, you know, if you're still kind of learning how to work a little quicker, that's fine. Make that two months, at least, you know, let's say you made a 10 K a month cause you got a 10 K project. So the deal is that we have to kind of learn these things over time and we kind of have to adjust and learn what are clients asking for?
How would I price that? And maybe you come up with a 10 K past. And then you just say, here's my 10 K package. Are you interested? And then you set up your payment terms. Right? My payment terms, um, the ones that I like are 50% upfront, 50%, 30 days later, because usually most of the time with my clients, like most of the work is done by 30 days later.
Like a lot of times, like when I do these kinds of packaging things, uh, the case study, the downloadable, all that stuff. Like most of the time that stuff is almost done by then. Um, so I like 50% up front, 50%, 30 days later. And oops. Um, so yeah, so think about that stuff. So let's talk about continuing to hit 10 K.
2) How Can Freelance Writers Continually Hit $10k Months
So this is all, no, I didn't put my numbers up. Okay. This is number two. We're going to put up number two and then we're going to do our update. Oh my gosh. Charlotte, you look like a tiny gremlin. All right. Charlotte show everybody and you high five. Good job. Other ones. Good job. Alright. Very good. Jolly.
You're the best I try to be. High-five. I don't mind. Good job. You go by. All right. Sometimes you got to give Barry, you know, Barry doesn't know as many tricks and also he's 15 and a half. So I think, you know, we're kind of going, gonna give him a break, right? Charlotte, can you go fix this one over there?
Did you catch it? Oh no, you didn't. I'm trying to write job athlete. Show us the athlete of the family. Charlotte, you look adorable today. I like how your jowls are dice and silvery. And I like your little snowdrift mark on your nose and your funny little radar year, Barry, you look distinguished today. I like how you have your sunken treasure with part of your head being sewn because you're old.
Alright, here you go, buddy. Alright. Good job. You guys look adorable. Everybody loves you all right. Back to our thing. So number two, here is we're going to talk about how do we continually hit 10 K a month? And I'm guessing that you might know what I'm going to say. You have to do your marketing and you have to pay attention to what's going on with your clients and your business, right.
Hitting 10 K months is about having enough vision to look way ahead of time. You're not in this. Like, that's something that I hear often where people comment, like people leave comments on LinkedIn on my social posts or whatever, or send me a DM. And they're like, oh, well, I'm okay. You know, for the next few weeks or month or whatever.
And I'm like, well, what about next quarter? They're like, oh, I don't know. Like, that's what we're doing. We have in order to get to these higher up income levels, you have to have a further out vision in order to have consistent 10 K months. You have to be connecting. These clients with longer projects with bigger projects and that cycle can take longer, right?
It could be easier and quicker to get a lot more blog post clients. Right. But as we kind of go along and we do our marketing, we have stuff coming in. Let's say we have a 10 K month. Cool. And my expenses are much lower than that. So I can put that into savings. And now, since I've continued my marketing, right, I can wait for a bigger fish.
I don't have to just take, like I said, all those little things, right. I don't have to take all those things to fill the gaps. I now have a much longer runway because I've kept marketing because I've put out things, um, because I have more income coming in to wait for these bigger projects, right. To kind of, um, have someone get back to me with more work going on.
Right? So these 10 K months are a lot about being more diligent about how you see your business in the long run. And this is something I think freelance writers make mistakes on. They don't look at their business in the long run. They, they look at their yearly goals. They make yearly goals in December, and then they don't look at them until next December.
You have to continue to look at them. You kind of have to track how things are going. You have to keep marketing. Now. You don't have to always mark it at what I like, which is 50 to 75 LOAs a month when you're kind of getting the train go in. I do my more marketing quarterly. So right now I'm doing a bunch of marketing.
I always kind of do it like the first month of the oops, the quarter. So I started in April. I'm still doing more now. Um, but that's kind of the flow is like, it changes over time, but you have to like when you're kind of building up to 10 K months, you got to do that 50 to 75 Lys a month. Once you get more money coming in, what you have more longer term clients, you can cut that down and you can wait for bigger fish.
And as you go along in your business, you learn who are your big fish? And this was another thing that I think is, um, helping you continually hit 10 K months. I hear you. I hear you grumbling. I do. I hear you. Can you lay down? You popped right back up. Thank you going down, lay down the whole way. Thank you.
So this is the thing is when you don't learn, which parts of the niche work for you, that's a problem. So saying things like I write in SAS, almost everything is SAS, right? Software. As a service SAS, you could be SAS that's in mortgages, real estate, health, fitness, um, insurance, travel food. Um, um, if I already said mortgages, you could be in, uh, accounting.
You could be an HR. You could be in biotech. There is SAS that covers everything. So you need to figure out what works for you. And I'll give you a good example of mine. I love restaurants. I love writing about them. I love the business of restaurants. I like all of the stuff, right? Like, so I write about restaurants in the fancy way where.
You talk about restaurants that are up and coming and restaurants doing cool stuff. And then I write about restaurants in the fancy way, which is like how to run your actual restaurant business better when your margins are very small. Right? So when I started out, I was like, I'll just write for restaurants.
I will write blog posts for them. No, that's not gonna work. So the deal is that you have to figure out the niche stuff. So when I was writing for restaurants, when I was trying to write for restaurants, that was the part of the food niche. That, excuse me, that didn't work for me. Vicky is our leader.
Vicky's the leaf leader. That's my biggie. You can be the leaf leader, um, or the vesicle. It can be the leaf leader. Um, so you had to figure out which parts of the niche makes sense for you. So if what made sense for me was hospitality. That is part of food. It is part of restaurants, but that to me, I had the most opportunities to work with clients.
I could call that SAS. I could call it FinTech. There's whole, all these different things that overlap with hospitality tech. And then once I realized that it wasn't restaurants themselves, right. It was the things that restaurants use, which could be hospitality, tech. It could be any of the things that restaurants use.
Right. Cause there's a lot more restaurant customers for those things. Right? So like platforms POS is that they have, um, they're different types of ways that they do payroll, the different ways that they run their business, how they, you know, like QuickBooks or HR or whatever, there's all these tools that they use.
And that's where the money of working with clients is the restaurants themselves. Aren't really creating that much content. Right. They're not really, um, putting things out there doing different types of marketing. So it took me a while to realize which part of the food niche, which part of restaurants, which part of hospitality, tech, which part of SAS and FinTech I liked.
I, um, the other example that I'll give you is like FinTech. I write about FinTech, but only specific parts of FinTech. I write about FinTech in the, in the real estate part of FinTech mortgages. I write about it through prop tech. I write about it through hospitality tech, and I write about it sometimes through travel.
Like every once in a while, like a long time ago, I wrote about travel rewards cards. Um, and that's like, I won't write about other parts of FinTech that have to do with like really in depth accounting, which is one of my friends. Does I have a student who does a lot of like very deep FinTech stuff where I was like, I have no idea what that is.
And she's like, I love this. This is interesting. And I'm like, okay, you have to know where that is. Once you know where that is, then you can figure out a repetition that happens. You're like, I noticed that most of my patients. Our series B startups in this niche. Okay. Now I just make a list of all those people and market to them.
Then you have better success. Then you have more 10 K months. You have to pay attention to these patterns. I love the waves. You guys are funny. Um, so you had to pay attention to these trends. You have to pay attention to these things that happen in your niches, in the things you're working in. Right? Cause if I kind of like just barreled ahead and was like, no one, no one in restaurants wants to work with me that, you know, this isn't working, I should quit.
Like I had to figure out the path. So the, the way to make these 10 K months repetitive is you have to figure out the path that makes sense for you and the people who continue to make content like the types of companies in your niches that will continually make, um, case studies and bigger types of projects and downloadables, and more articles, like more in-depth articles where you can charge more where it's not just like a blog post that.
You know, random stuff. I hear you. I hear you being grumpy. I hear you. You're over there. Staging a revolt against me while I'm trying to help people make money. And you're over here. Like I, one more traits, please. It's okay, Charlotte, I love you anyways. You're the cutest and you know what? This is kind of like training you.
Cause like every time you make a noise, I come over here and I give you, I give you a snack, but what are we going to do? I like the pup dates. And I like having you guys here, Virginia. I'm glad that this has been helpful. I'm going to pop your comment up really quick. She said, this is really helpful. Nanny, good.
Virginia was one of my students. So we've talked about some of this stuff before, right. But I think it's always nice to get a reinforcer. I think it's always nice to be like, oh right, we should do that. So the deal is that you have to know where you're going to go. So I realized hospitality, tech, certain parts of.
Certain parts of SAS and certain parts of prop tech and real estate made the most sense for me. And I noticed, huh, my best clients have these four things in common, right? They make this amount of revenue. They're they're startups. They usually are series B. They are usually doing this. And they're usually that find all those people.
Then they usually are all have the same characteristics. Plus if you have these clients, they can refer you out to other clients that are in your niche. Poof, now you have more work. So the regular newness of continuing 10 K months is you have to pay attention to the patterns. You got to keep doing the marketing.
Like you have to do it because then you get to be choosy. There's this idea that I think a lot of freelance writers, uh, like join into, for some reason that someday they're going to do all this marketing and everyone's going to get back to them and want to work. That never happens. Like it never happens.
It's it would be extremely rare that you sent like a hundred Lys and 90 people get back to you or 10 people get back to you. Like all at the same time, immediately, all at the same time. Now of course, a lot of people can get back to you, but it's usually not at the same time. Don't worry about that. Your job is to do the marketing.
So you can be choosy about who you work with. Everybody that answers your LOI is not always the best fit client for you too. Right? So you send all these, otherwise you want the option to choose the best projects to get to these 10 K months to make more money or to have a better flexible schedule.
Sometimes people want to have 10 K months every other month, right? Like they don't need to make 120 K they need to make 60 K. So then they work one month and they take a month off and they work one month and take a month off. But that comes from consistent marketing all the time. So don't worry about who gets back to you like the quantity of people who get back.
That's not an issue. Your issue is being choosy. The way to be choosy is to do more marketing and connect with people and have calls and then pick the people who are the best fit for you. Yay. Laurie Sierra welcome. And Lori, she says great reminders where the need is. Yeah. You need to go where people are like actually creating these big projects and creating more content.
3) How a Variety of Clients and Projects Create a Huge Bonus
Right. All right. Peeps, let's go to number three, actually. We're going to, yeah. So we're going to go to three. All right. People let's see. And we have a question today, so we're going to get to that as well, which is actually I think a good question for this one. So let's talk about clients and projects. So one of the ways that you can get to 10 K a month is that you have a variety of types of clients and types of projects.
So that means that you are working on a bunch of different dates, right? I already kind of hashed this out, but it's basically like you have case studies, downloadables eBooks guides. Reported articles, thought leadership pieces, uh, infographics, like all of these things, it's not just straight blog posts.
So having a mix of types of work, especially work where some of it is really high paid and some of it is just regular paid. Uh, that really helps a lot. And having different types of clients, like I always kind of recommend that you need like three to five niches. And this is because now that you have this variety of stuff, there are plenty of places to find clients.
There are plenty of people who need a lot of work done, and there are lots of opportunities for you to grow your business. So as you're kind of going along, having this variety of clients and variety of projects that you offer and that you do really helps you basically have more fish to catch, right?
You have more options to slice and dice your 10 K and it gives you, instead of being like, I only do this, or I only do that and I do it every month. Right. Instead of doing that. You can have different ways that you can build your business. And this was something that I was learning in the beginning, right.
I was talking about how all these writers have very different businesses, yet they all made 10 K a month. And I was like, how do you do that? It's because they learn where the need is. Right? And then they also understand that having a variety of clients or having a variety of types of niches or having a variety of types of writing that they offer is really important to reaching 10 K.
So the cool thing is that this also keeps us interested. I don't know if you're a writer like me, but I like to have my finger in a lot of pies. Like I like to be doing a lot of different types of projects. I find it really boring to like, do the same thing over and over again. That's just feels very tedious to me and not useful.
Um, and it bothers me. So I like to have a variety of projects and have a variety of clients and it, it keeps it interesting. So if you're like me, this is a bonus where like you actually make more money from doing that. I hear you. Do you want to come see. Nope. You just want to growl at me and bother everybody here.
Oh, you want to sit on Berry? Well, I guess you can sit on Barry if you want. So this variety of clients is going to actually bonus itself, right? Basically you go back to your rabbit hole, the vector have a whole vector, have a hole. The job, this variety of clients and projects is then going to help you make more money.
That's the aftereffect of having different types of clients in different niches and different projects. All right, there you go. So that kind of stuff is really useful. Plus, I feel like it makes the job more fun and interesting, and it gives you more avenues. And I mean, it could turn out that you're like, I'm trying this out as an experimental niche and it turns out to be your best paying niche and you love it.
4) What Steps Freelance Writers Must Take After Hitting $10k Per Month
Cool. Now we did it. All right. Let's go to four because that one is kind of like a little bit of just a recap of what we've already covered. So let's go to four. So point number four. What do you do after you hit 10 K a month? What steps do you take after you hit your first 10 K month or after you start getting regular 10 K months wash hands.
I dunno what the wash hands is. Cause I have dogs spit on my hands. Um, yeah. So the deal is that when you hit this milestone, you need to celebrate it. This is something that a lot of writers don't do. They don't take the time to actually celebrate the wins in their business. They don't incorporate that into their personality that they're like, Hey, I did it.
I did like, I got to this milestone. You have to do that. If you don't end up doing that, you end up continuing this like negative self-talk and you're like, oh, well it was a fluke. I'll never do it again. Or, oh, well I'm not as good as so-and-so because I've only had one 10 K month. Like you get into comparison and imposter syndrome and all that dirty stuff.
You have to celebrate this stuff. You have to take a moment to pause. Like, even if you don't have, you know, even if you're living on a budget, maybe take yourself out. Uh, like, you know, a non-expensive little fun dinner, or like buy a, something that's not super expensive from yourself or for yourself, or do something to celebrate it.
Like, you don't have to do food or buying things, but you could like have like a little party have friends over or, um, I don't know, buy a toy for your dogs. Right? There's a lot of things that you can do, um, on a budget to celebrate it, but you need to celebrate it because if you don't, then you just overlook it and then you get back into this habit of like, I'll never get there again.
And then it keeps you very small. Keeps you very, um, thinking very like during that scarcity landscape, there's never going to be more work or clients I'll never get there again. You have to celebrate it and remind yourself like, Hey. So that's the first thing. The next thing is when you're kind of hitting this milestone regularly, that comes from the planning part and being selective.
So the planning part is the marketing then, because you're marketing. Now you have more clients to choose from. Then you can be more selective about those projects, and then you can pick only the longer and bigger, like bigger projects that you want. And then it kind of spans out longer periods of time.
Right? So like a lot of the projects that I take are like three month projects. There are things that take a while. So I know for the next three months that I have income coming in, or I know that based on my payment schedule that the payment will, the project will be paid up by month two. If the project takes until one, three.
Right? So like a lot of times the content does get done, like before the second payment, most of the time, sometimes it takes till the third month. Sometimes it's regular stuff. Like every month you do, you deliver these things. There's different stuff, different types of projects. Once you kind of get this longer runway, then it's not this panic of picking new clients.
It's not this like, feeling of like, oh my gosh, I have to get more stuff. It's like, now you have a longer runway. You're like, I already know I'm covered until Q2 or Q3 or Q4 or whatever. Then you can kind of expand it. Then you're like, all right, now I'll do some marketing. And this is how I got into my quarterly stuff.
How I started doing quarterly marketing. Cause I like I'm know I'm covered. I don't have to do a big chunk of marketing until this. And I know if I do a big chunk of marketing here, here, and here that I'll end up getting enough stuff to keep going. Excuse me. So when you're kind of hitting these milestones, then you get more opportunities to take bigger projects, then that kind of builds on itself.
And then it's a lot easier because the more big projects you have, the less work you have to do, right then you don't have to work as much. You don't have to market as much. You have a much bigger. So as you're kind of looking through these things, one of the things I think really helps is just to remind yourself that it's not a fluke, that you got to attend K month, remind yourself that it can happen again and remind yourself that it's a process.
So you have to keep doing these processes until it naturally kind of folds onto itself, right? Like you have two projects or three projects in the work. So you have already made 30 K and you're like, okay, cool. Like now I can plan further ahead. Or now I have a 5k project and a 15 K project. Now I can plan this for our head, but it's all about keeping it in perspective of like, you are continually building, you don't have to build this furiously as the beginning.
Right? Because now that you have a little more money, you can be a little slower, a little more selective, but you still have to be building the business. Like you have to be participating in that. And even as someone like, you know, I told you, I like I in my business, my sixth year. And even before I hit six figures, there's always marketing.
You always have to keep the business running and it's not boring. Like it's, it starts being this fun activity where you're like, oh, who's going to answer now. Or you're like, that company sounds really exciting. I hope they get back to me. Right. It's not like, oh my God, I need work and money. You're like, Ooh, this sounds fun.
I hope they talk to me. You know, that kind of stuff. Then you get to, um, you get to this place with your marketing where like doing it every month, like you do 20 LOAs a month and it takes you like an hour to do it because you're already in the practice of building your list of people to reach out to qualifying, right?
Like who are those people? Right? Are they, um, this type of company? What are those attributes then you market to them, right. It's all kind of like easier to do it kind of relaxes the process. Um, but it allows you to be more selective because you're continuing to build the marketing. So afterwards the regular illness has to do with what's coming in.
Right. And then there's other stuff I hear you. I hear you making. I hear you
really down. You lay down though and not bark at me. So a lot of that success of continual 10 came months has to do with being diligent about all those things. All of the stuff I mentioned, the marketing, the being selective about clients, figuring out who your best options are in terms of clients like who the people are that you should double down on more, uh, noticing attributes in your clients, um, and being, you know, um, smart about the people that you connect with and the types of clients you take in.
Okay. I think that's all I wanted to say. And we have a good question. So if you have any questions on this topic, you can always pop them in the chat. It feels like this has been helpful. Give it a thumbs up. If you want to learn more about building a hiring freelance writing business, subscribe. If you're watching this as a replay or watching this later on, and you're not here live, you can always add a comment below, like I'm interested to hear, like, have you had a 10 K.
How did you get to that 10 K a month? What types of work do you do? Like what types of content projects and then what types of niches you're in. I'm always interested in hearing that. All right. So let's get to our question. So we had an anonymous question submitted. Oh my gosh. I forgot how big it was.
Okay. Well, I'm going to read it and then I will tell you everybody what it is. So live stream question. I'm curious if you could talk about mindset shifts and techniques that help you improve your writing speed without sacrificing quality. I've seen people talk about writing blog posts in as little as an hour, but as someone writing science-based articles, this feels impossible to me.
I also seem to have a belief that create to create high quality work. I have to extensively research it meaning days and days of laboring over details. Yet this is putting limits on my earning potential while I know research is incredibly important. I'm thinking there must be a way to streamline the creation and research process so that it can move faster without losing.
So this question is a really good one because we just went over this in my course, one of my core students asked this very same question. So there's going to be a few things we're going to talk about. I've got a Lulu here. Who's being a Lulu noisemaker. Can you high-five oh, that was like a hat. There we go.
Other one. Good job. You go, buddy. All right, Charlie. Okay. So this question, I'm just going to pop it up here so I can read it. Um, okay. So the deal is that. There are techniques and mindset shifts that we can talk about about writing speed and quality. But the first thing that I want to say here is there is a very big difference between science-based articles and research articles and reported articles and a blog post that you can get done in an hour.
I could write a blog post in an hour if I really wanted to on a basic subject. That's the problem is you're not actually getting paid very well for blog posts. I see you. I know your assessment tasks for blog posts that you can get done really quickly. And most of those people that I have seen that are writing those posts, they're not heavily researched posts.
There are things that you can just get up and be like, I've written about this topic so many times that I could do it in my sleep, right? Like I could tell you trends that are going on in PropTech in my sleep and just write it out without doing any extra research, because I've done it so many times. So the first thing here with this question, And the question asked her, I'm letting you know, there is a big difference between a blog post that is not super research and it's like five pink colors to choose for your office.
Like, okay. There's a big difference there. I think the other important thing here is something that I think, oftentimes I swear if you are under the queue, why do you do this to me? Why do you have to go under the camera and stretch and move around and hit stuff? You just, you just love it. You're just like, how could I be a pain today?
Oh my gosh. Okay. So here's the deal. I am not a fast writer. I have never been a fast writer. I think the most articles I've ever written in a month is 20. And I even don't like doing that. I think five to 10 is probably more reasonable. And if I can get away with four, I'm more happy with that. So like one a week.
So here's. I don't think speed equals quality. And I don't think there's something wrong with you because it takes you longer to write a science-based backed article, um, where you have to do research and a ton of stuff. Like that's just not a thing. So the deal is that people can write quick. Some writers are fast.
I am not one of those people. That's okay. There's nothing wrong with that. Um, the fact that someone writes quicker doesn't mean their work is better either. So the deal here is that there are ways to write quicker and we'll go over those in a second, but I want to make sure that I kind of mush in your mind here that speed doesn't equal quality and that there is a big difference in having to do research and having to put things together.
Then rather than someone putting together something an hour, like that's way different. Like if I was, um, like if I had visited a place and then I started. Um, writing about that place, right? Like it's all fresh in my mind. Yeah. I could probably get that done in an hour, but it's it's I I've had this question before.
I don't, a lot of people were like, how do I get faster to make more money? You're missing the point. You're starting with the wrong premise. Being faster just means you're going to lead to burnout. It doesn't mean that you're going to make a ton more money. There are fast writers who make more money, but their life is organized differently.
Right. They only write for four hours a day and then they take the rest of the day off. A lot of times I get this question from people who are like, I'm too slow in order to make more money. I need to write faster. That's the wrong premise. The premise is I need to find better quality clients who want better quality work and align with those people and work on a reasonable schedule.
So there's that. All right. So let's talk about. The research thing and let's talk about limits and techniques. So one of the techniques that I talked about with my students this week was this, um, time limit. I am an over researcher too. It's one of my fun writing things that I do that I just, I love doing it.
Um, I love research. I think it's really interesting. So I set a time limit when I feel like I'm researching, like it's too much, you have a time limit. You only have this amount of time to get it done and that's it. So you either have to work faster to get as more research done, or you just accept that you have done what you have done.
And that's it. Now, most of the times I find that. I over-researched because I'm like worried that I don't know the topic enough, or I'm going to miss something or I'm going to make a mistake. Well, I'm a human, no human knows everything about every topic it's not possible. So even if you write this article and you make a mistake, that's what happens most of the time.
If you're doing a ton of research, you should be able to hit the main three to five points. Like you come across in your research that people repeat this same three to five things over and over again. So that part, the overarching principles you shouldn't miss, but everyone's excuse me, every once in a while, you'll make a mistake that happens.
So set a timer. And I know for me that this is my schedule one day is for research or like that part of that day is for research. The next day is writing. The next day is editing. It doesn't always take the whole day. Right. But it could like sometimes my research takes me two hours and sometimes my research takes me a long time.
But typically for an article that I'm writing, unless it's like a feature, if I'm writing like a big magazine feature feature that can take multiple days, but I know that that's that type of work. But if it's a regular 800 to a thousand word article one day is for research. The next day is for writing.
The next day is for editing. And usually it's like researches, whatever it is. I don't know, two to eight hours, depending on how much research I have to do the writing is for two to four hours, two to six hours, depending on complexity, probably more like two to four. And then editing is like one hour to four hours, depending on how much work.
So the deal is that you need to figure out these things that I've talked about before is like, how do you do your best work? Can you stop working at me? Thank you. How you do your best work when you do your best work? Like what type of day, and why was your best work, your best work and work backwards from that you need to figure out how do you research?
Like what types of places do you trust to keep going back to, to do your research for that niche? Right. Like I know there are specific places that I go to to get my research done for specific niches, because they always have useful stuff. Um, what time of day did I write my best work? Why was it my best work did have great quotes.
Did it, um, was my editor really happy with the format? Was the tone and style really good? Like why was it my best work? Then you work back from that. So the way you work quicker, as you understand the foundations of why your work was. Then make a plan for that. Like you make a strategy. So I know that in order for me to do great work, I, most of the time need a three-day process.
I know that now, like I need a one day research one day writing one day editing. Cause I need to sleep to like erase things from my mind. So I can look at my work with clearer, like with clearer vision and turn in good work. The other thing is that sometimes things are going to take longer than you think that's part of it.
But I think when you're doing this, um, like time thing, when you do too much research, right? You're like insecure about like how much research you're doing. You're worried you're gonna miss something set a time limit. If you set a time limit and say, all right, I have to do all of my research in the next two days.
You're either going to work really fast to do a ton of research, or you're going to realize that you don't need as much research as you think. So the deal when you're kind of writing in this, and I think this is someone, um, I don't remember exactly, but if you're kind of newer to freelance. Part of the process is learning your niche.
Part of the process is becoming this not encyclopedia, but you have a lot of knowledge from writing these articles over and over again. And then you don't have to research as much because you start learning all of these things. And you're like, I don't need to double-check that. I already know it. I've, double-checked it 75 times already.
And you start learning that you only need to do X amount of research for this type of post. So for me, it took me years and hopefully it won't take you that long, but I didn't have processes. Like I didn't figure out how to do everything. I just was like doing it all the time. So once I figured out a process, everything kind of made sense.
So you'll eventually see, like, I know that doing, I need to look for basically this, right? Like you start saying, I know for an 800 to a thousand word piece, I can fit two to four studies. So I need to find the best two to four studies I can in the next 48 hours and move on with. Or if I don't understand a topic, I need to read enough articles that I can explain it simply because that's how you do it.
Like you have to understand the complex stuff and then explain it simply, right. You and you have only so much time to do that. Right. That's the best you can do within the time constraints. And you'll try better next time. Right? So the research part, you'll learn for an 800 to a thousand word piece that you only need this stuff, or you'll learn that you can only have two to three main points.
And once you've kind of gathered that, huh, I've read 10 articles or I've read 10 pieces of research and they all kind of hit these two to three main points. Poof, that's it like we're done. Now. You will learn that kind of ebb and flow over time. I think that's part of learning to be a better writer. I don't think that really has to do is like speeding yourself up by force.
The speed comes naturally when you've done it a bunch of times and the writers that I knew. Who are fast writers or the writers who work. Part-time like they work 20 hours a week, but they make crazy money and they write really fast it's because a lot of their work is like this repetitive stuff where they're like, I've written this a thousand times.
Here you go. Like, it's not something where they're interviewing a ton of people or they're pulling a bunch of research or they're doing a lot of stuff, right. Their stuff is more repetitive, like, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And that's not the type of work I want to be doing. I don't want to do like 10,000 blog posts a month and just like, bang it out.
Like that's not my thing. Um, if it is your thing, then that would be a speed thing. Where over time you just have written about this so many times that it's easier to, to move along. But based on the question, right, you're talking about, oh, science, the article is very different than a basic blog post. I can tell you right now that research is really important and the length of it is important.
And remember that you are. Packing as much as you can into a very short word count and that's hard to do so when you have a bunch of research or you have interviews and you have to pack it into 800 to a thousand words, you only get so much space, right? You're not writing a book. That's something that I have to tell myself to stop researching.
You're not writing a book. You're only getting a page of a book to write this topic, that's it? Uh, and that kind of cuts down on research time. But like I said, the biggest difference I've noticed from people who write fast, like who are fast writers is their work is often not heavy research. Uh, lots of interviews, like really intensive.
Like it has to be right. Science-y stuff. It's just like basic regular advice or it's things they've written a thousand times and they don't have to submit more than two sources or, you know, like stuff that is easy to kind of do. So the. Okay. So techniques are, you have to figure out how, like, how did you create your best work, the process?
When did you do it? What time of day? Um, and why was it your best work that will help? That's a technique. The mindset shift is that fast, doesn't equal quality, fast as different on different levels. Comparing yourself to other people who are doing totally different work than you is not like relevant. So don't even bother.
Um, and I can tell you as someone who's not fast, that this doesn't matter. Like the, to me, the goal of being fast and making more money is like, just leads to burnout. Like people don't don't want to do that. Like, I don't think that's most writers want to write the same thing over and over and over again for like 10 years.
I just don't think that's fun. So there's that. And then the other thing that you were talking about. Um, it is limiting your earning potential because it, for me, I don't know if this is the same for you as the question ask her, but I become like obsessive about it. I'm like, I need every piece or else I'm going to miss, or I need to do this thing or need that.
And, um, this hurts your earning potential because you're like, so sucked into the weeds. You're like stuck in this little bubble and you forget that there's other work you have to do. There's other things that need to be done. So the limits that you put on your own research time helps the deadlines that you have with your clients really help because they're it it's done.
It's done. You've submitted it. You've done the best you can. That's the. You know, the boat thing. I talk about the boat thing. I'm going to tell you again. So I, this is what helps me a lot with this type of work and worrying about speed and everything else is I have my little origami paper boat, right?
It's intricately designed. It's all folded and I'm standing on a beach. I can, I know exactly what it looks like. I'm standing on a beach and I take my little paper boats, like the size of a softball, and I go put it out in the ocean and I'm like, good luck buddy. And that origami paper boat is like the representation of the article or the case study or whatever it is that I'm submitting to my client because it's an ocean of uncertainty.
You never know what they're going to say. Um, you're not sure how it's going to go, but you have to release the fact that you're like, I did the best I could under the circumstances. I know I did a lot of research. I know I was diligent. I know I was careful. I worked. I know that I may have missed something, but then I'm a human being.
I know that I am working really hard to make good quality work for these people. I know that I'm working really hard to make sure the audience gets all the information they need. And then you have to release it. You have to be like, I know I did the best I could under the circumstances. That's it. That's, that's kind of that's the whole deal is like you did the best you could under the circumstances.
And two years from now, your best under the circumstances will be way better because you have a lot more practice and you have more assignments under your belt, but you have to have this feeling of that. You have done the best you could, and you have to have peace in that because if you live for other people telling you, you did a good job, that's just like the most poisoned apple.
You can be a part of like, if you spend your whole life waiting with bated breath, every single time you submit something to your client being like, oh my God, are they going to like it? And I did that for years and years and years. That's how I came up with the paper boat thing. No, thank you. I can go lay down on my toes.
Thank you. So if you wait for other people to tell you did good, you will never feel good about your work. I did that for years and years and years, I didn't feel good about my work. Then, um, then I came up with the paper boat thing where I was like, I have to have this feeling that, um, I did the best I could, that I was intentional and strong in my research.
Whoops. I dropped one, hold on, go. And that, I tried to do my best for my client. And sometimes what ends up happening is you have a client that's just not a fit for you. And they come back and they're like, your work is garbage. What is this? And you're like, oh crap. But when you have the little paperwork on the boat and you've released your expectations and you're like, I feel good about it.
You know, it doesn't really matter what other people say. You're like, okay, well either this person's not a fit or I really did a bad job. Sometimes you will do a bad job that. Uh, but you at least have the expectation with yourself that you feel good about your stuff like you are at. You're not seeking the approval of everybody else.
Okay. So all that said, there are ways to move faster without losing quality, but you need to understand where you're coming from in terms of the types of articles you're doing and comparing it to someone who's like writing a science, like writing a research article where you have to have stuff that supports your point.
Right. It's kind of like going to court. You're like, I'm presenting my case for this article. Here is the data that backs up what I'm saying. If someone just comes in and says, here's five pink colors for your office, like you don't need any data to back up them choosing like Marigold for, for your office.
Right. Um, there's a lot of stuff. So don't compare that. And there is a lot of times. That insecurity over it, propels over researching. So just remember that you're never going to, you're not writing a book, you get one paper's thin slice of a book, which is the article. That's all you get. And what you need is the strongest pieces of evidence that prove your point.
There's lots of it out there. There's lots of research, lots of evidence. Pick the ones that make the most sense move on with your life. This is something that helps with the time limit, where you're like, all right, I have four pieces. That's gotta be it. Um, this helps with you getting a process in place for actually doing the research and starting to learn that for my niche.
I like to check these four sites first, then I'll go dig around for other stuff. Um, and it also learns, like, it also teaches you. Um, and you learn like, how do I do my best writing? Like under what circumstances? How did I put this together? How did I organize my notes? How did I write it? How did I. Figure out who was credible and who wasn't, how did I do this?
When was I doing it? Was I doing it at 4:00 AM or 4:00 PM? Um, was I doing it with like candle light or was I eating a snack or, you know, whatever. And then it's like, why was this? Why was some of my work, my best work? You know, why was you have to kind of analyze these things and that gives you your process?
Um, I think that's all the question. It's a long question. So I, the mindset part, I think is that don't compare yourself to other people, do your own stuff, ignore everybody else, figure out your own process, do the best you can. The techniques are like you have to figure out a process, stop worrying about everybody else.
Who's moving faster. Um, I just, from my own, um, from my own experience, I was always the slowpoke like I probably still am. I was always the slowpoke everyone else seemed to be getting their work done so much faster than. But yet some of those people quit freelance writing. Some of those people hated their work.
Some of those people didn't turn in good quality work, even though they were moving quickly. Some of those people went and worked for a company. Like there's all these different things that happen. The speed at which you write does not predict how much money you will make over your lifetime as a freelance writer, or if you will stay a freelance writer or if you'll choose to do something else, like, I just don't think that's a factor to pay attention to as like a predictor of quality.
I think that there are ways to get faster. And I think you do naturally get faster over time. Like I said, like the story I tell all the time, it was my very first reported article took me a month. Now the most I've ever done in a month is 20 and that's over many, many years that it took me to get to that point.
Right. So, um, don't compare your journey in that to anybody else, because if I was comparing my. One of the things I did early on was I would compare that one month. I was like, man, it took me a whole month to do this reporting article. Oh my gosh. I would compare that to people who are like, I'm a freelance writer and I wrote, you know, 10, 20 articles this month.
And I'm like, how did you do that? And they're like, oh, well of course you do this, this and this I'm like, how did you feel that, that out? Well, it turns out that they had been working at a magazine for five years before that. And I'm like, oh, well, you already had experience doing that. Like, you know, there's a lot of things where people become freelance writers from different fields.
So just the fact that it's never freelance writer to freelance writer, everyone has different experiences. Thank you for your, thank you for your call. Can you go, can you go lay down instead of stepping on my foot? Um, so that's the thing is freelance writer to freelance writer, doesn't it doesn't equate like everybody comes with different amounts of experience.
Some people like I had someone who sent me an email and it has been in publishing for 30 years. Then being in publishing for 30 years and then moving over to freelance writing, they have a lot more experience than someone who's just out of college, creating their first report article. Right? Very different playing fields.
That person who writes really quickly, might've been someone who like was working at an online publication and they had to submit 20 story ideas a day or something crazy. And now for them to get their work done, it's really quick. Everybody has their own little quirks. Um, the last thing I want to say is, I think you should pick out the things that make you shine is speed's not your thing.
Move on. That's what I did. Like that was what really helped me. I was like, all right, I'm not fast, but I know my work is good. All right. I know comparing my work to the magazines that I look up to, or the article. Um, case studies are the people like the other stuff that I look up to, I know my work is, is of good quality.
Let's focus on that instead of time. I know that I researched very well. That's something that's interesting to me and I do a good job. Let's focus on that. I'm really good at asking questions, which I'm pretty sure is obvious to my students, who I ask them questions all the time. Um, or I answered their questions.
I like questions. I'm good at interviews. Let's focus on that. I'm good at taking complicated stuff and making it easy to understand. Let's focus on that. I'm really good at giving a brand personality and style. I'm really good. When someone says we don't really know what our brand personality and style should be.
I'm really good at helping them figure that out. And I'm really good at following directions and doing the tone and style that I am asked most of the time. Sometimes I make mistakes. I'm a regular person. It happens, but. I would focus on the things that really make you shine as a writer, rather than focusing on speed.
Because I think that that's a downfall. I think that's something, a mistake in our industry. I think a mistake in our industry is oftentimes other freelance writers talk about making more money by being faster. I think that's, you're starting with the wrong premise. Faster is not the key to making more money and it's not the key to long-term success.
And it's not the key to like all these things. Like there's so many other factors that go into it beyond speed. That's not the end all be all. Um, I think to create quality content, everybody has their own stuff and that's more important. The quality, the things that you're good at working with clients who understand the value of your content, providing valuable content that is always more important than speed.
So I just think across the industry, like your focus should always be quality of content for the client and who the reader is, who the audience is for that content. That's the content that converts no one cares. If it took you an hour or 18 hours to get it done. If the thing is converting like crazy and that the audience loves it and the client loves it, that's it.
Okay. Thanks for letting me go on my diatribe. Um, that was a really good question. I'm glad we talked about it. I'm glad we talked about 10 K months. If you're watching this on the replay, let me know if you've ever had a 10 K month or let me know how you kind of slice and dice it or any other questions you have.
You can pop that in the comments. If you feel like this has been helpful, give it a thumbs up. If you feel like you want to learn more about building a high-earning freelance writing business subscribe. Thank you guys for hanging out. It was really fun. I know we had a couple of grumbles in here. They're both like harassing me over here right now.
Can you go back to your hub? A hole? Can you go back to your household? No. Okay. Well, I guess we're just going to do with us now because you guys are moved here.
All right. So we're here every Friday at noon central time. And, um, we go over all things, freelance writing. We have some cool updates and you can always ask a question and we can always answer them. But, um, yeah, this has been fun. I'm glad we talked about this and I'm glad we had that question. I think that's a really important question that a lot of writers struggle with.
So I'm glad that that was, um, that was submitted. All right. So I will see everybody next Friday. I hope you have a great weekend and I hope you enjoyed the pup dates and good luck with all your $10K months bye.
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