Why You Might be Stuck at a Certain Income Level in Your Freelance Writing Business
Still at the same old amount of income year after year? Not changing up what writing projects you're working on, who you're working with, or what kinds of potential clients you target? It can take some analysis of your business, but there's also a few hidden reasons you can uncover to not only improve your income, but grow beyond what you thought was possible. We're talking about why you may be stuck with your income, how to overcome that revenue amount, and what other factors may be at play when it comes to making money in your freelance writing business.
________
Welcome into the Friday live stream. We are talking about why you might be stuck at a certain income level in your freelance writing business. And I'm going to be honest. This has been me many, many, many times. So I have been stuck at certain income levels all throughout my business and it sucks, but there are ways to get around it. And there were ways to improve your income, grow your income, and do a lot of cool stuff as a freelance writer. So, first we're going to do a pub date because it's Friday and that's, they look pretty cute today. So we're going to do a quick pup date, and then I have a bunch of notes that we are going to go through. So, all right, let's do our pup date. Oh, our prep date camera. Doesn't want to work. Hold on. We're going to fix this. You wait.
Sometimes all you have to do is a little
Unplugging and replugging.
Oh, that didn't work. There. It goes. There we go. There they are. Except lucky for me. They sat in two different
Awkward positions. So maybe we can just do this.
There we go. Maybe we can just do this and then we'll see those face when he sits up. There I go. Good job. You guys are doing great. And you look super funny. You just sit like a little
Frenchie. You're just, that's your Frenchie side is you just sit like
A, like a little dirt. There you go. Good job bear. You guys are doing great. Your guys
Are the stars of the live stream. You're like, can I get some orange burritos?
Bear. I wish you were just like a little bit not sitting in between the puppets. All right.
Oh, we got a greetings. The greetings popped in. All right. So let's talk about why you might be stuck at a certain income level and how we can kind of work through that. So a few things while we go into this topic. So what happens a lot of times with freelance writers is that you get stuck in the same income amount, year after year, because your mindset is off. You keep working with the same clients over and over again, who don't value work and don't, you know, you don't raise your rates with them. You end up missing out on the potential to grow your business because you're like so focused on working in your business. You're not paying attention to the, on your business part. Um, you're kind of missing out on the analysis parts, right? You're not actually looking at where the money's coming in.
You're just like, I need more money or you're just like, I keep going back to these same publications or the same clients year after year. And you know, and I'm pitching other publications, but those publications are paying you 200 bucks to go off and do this thing. And there's nothing wrong with doing $200, um, articles now. And again, there's nothing wrong with that. It's just a matter of if you're at the same income level all the time, you have to be about what you cut and what you keep. So we need to talk about basically how we're going to increase our income. How do we kind of get over those roadblocks and then how do we actually make more money? So if you have questions about this topic, you can just throw them in the chat while I talk. And, um, we're going to go over there a few really important points.
So if you find that every single year or your hovering at about the same number, right? Every single year, you're like at 40 K or every single year, you're at 60 K. And you're just, for some reason, can't keep getting past that number. So when's the last time you actually looked at your clients? What I find when I've talked to other freelance writers who are really stuck at a certain income level, is that they end up not paying attention to the actual functions of their business. They just keep looking at like, well, this per word rate is this right? This per word rate, um, works for me or this amount of money makes sense for the project, right? Like I'm getting paid $500 for a 700 word blog posts or whatever it is, but they're not actually looking at how many of those they're doing what that looks like within their business.
Like how many, like, are they, they're like, oh, this rate sounds good, but they're not looking at it over the 12 months. So maybe they're doing only six blog posts or their work is really spread out. Right. They ended up doing, um, you know, not making a certain amount from a client. So basically what that means is what I have found is kind of your butter zone is like five to $10,000 from a client per year. So the math that works out and I kind of did this beforehand, cause I'm not very good at like on the spot math. So I did some of it. Hey, Getty. Welcome in. Um, so here's the deal. If you make $250 a month from your client, that's $3,000 a year, right? Cause that's 2 54, times three is 3000. So think about that. Two 50 a month is $3,000 a year.
It's not really that much money. So you're like sweet. I got these, you know, I have this regular $250 a month gig. But when you look at it in the span of your business is a really small chunk of your income total, right? If you make 40,000 or 50,000 or 60,000 or even 70,000, that's a really small chunk of your money. So let's say if you're thinking about $10,000, right. $10,000 over the course of the year, right. That's less than a thousand dollars a month, right? It's like 800 or whatever that is. I forget. Um, or it's 900. I don't know. I, like I said, I'm not good with mental math. So if you make $500 a month from a client, that's $6,000, right. That's still not very much. If you make a thousand dollars a month from a client that's $12,000 a year, that's probably, that's kind of in our butter zone.
So if you end up getting a gig, that's paying you $2,500 for three months, let's say you do a three month contract with someone, right. You have 2,500 spread over three months. Well, that's really good right now we're at the 7,500 range. And we're like, sweet. That's like getting really close to this being in a $10,000 kind of nice butter zone for our client. Right? And as you grow your income and kind of talking about smaller incomes right now, but as you grow your income that will shift and change your average client. You're like, you know what? I want to make $50,000 per client, right? I want to have each client do this much. Or you're like, I want to average a $25,000 workshop, right? Let's say you're doing messaging or in positioning, or you're running a workshop for a company about how to do their marketing strategy.
And you're running them through content, different types of marketing, email, all that stuff. And you have like a week long workshop with them for 25 K. Um, that would be like, okay, cool. Like you may not end up doing that many workshops with the company. Let's say you end up doing maybe just two a year. That's still 50 grand. Right. That's really good. But your average per client changes. So that way, instead of it being like my client should be $10,000 a year based on the volume that I'm working with them, right? Like we're making a thousand dollars a month from that client. It's like, I get a tool I want to average 25 K for the package and I'm offering per client. So that means like maybe one package is 15 K and one package is 35 K. And somewhere in there we get to 25 or, um, you're offering different levels.
Like if they just want, you know, a certain package it's this much, it's like, uh, you don't actually do an in-person, um, teaching session. You do it online. Or, uh, you end up doing a lot of work for them in some other capacity. That's how it kind of shifts. So as you grow your business, you're going to shift the way on man. I always mess up my shirt and then you're going to shift the way that you look at these clients. But while you're trying to like hop over, um, a certain income level and I find this more with smaller level clients, like usually what happens when you're trying to hop over income levels. When you grow your business, like really far, those have a different set of problems. Like after you get past six figures, what I've noticed from other six-figure or freelance writers is that there are, it's not so much bulk and volume.
It's just like managing the amount of time and the amount of effort that you put in something and the amount of value that someone's getting out of it, it's, it's a different thing. And plus, if you're doing more workshops or you're doing more messaging positioning, you're doing more con like full on content strategy for their yearly planning, that kind of stuff is a different beast than saying like every month for 12 months, I'm going to do four blog posts or, um, yeah, four blog posts a month for $250, which is a thousand bucks. And that client is $12 a year, a lot of math today. So when you're looking at this, we need to look at this butter zone, right? If you can make at least $5,000 from a client and even from publication. So this was something that I had to be very clear on.
When I burned out in 2018, I was working for a lot of publications and I was doing a lot of small jobs. Like I would do $200 here, $400 here, a thousand dollars here. Um, then I would do like $600. Like it was just all over the place. And I wasn't actually looking at like, how much is each one of these publications assigning me? Like, is that number growing towards five to 10 K or onion now and paying attention to like, what's actually right in front of my face. Right? So when you're looking at this stuff, you have to see like how much is going in the bucket. So let's say you've got an assignment from them every single month, but the assignment isn't really it's like slowing the bucket right. Every month, it's just a $300 assignment. And you're like, man, like, why am I not reaching my income goals?
Or why am I not making more money? It's because you're not paying attention. You're just like, Hey, money's coming in. Like, what's going wrong. You have to look at how much is coming in, how much work and effort that takes to do that. So for me, in 2018, when I burned out, I spent a lot of time and effort on all of those, um, articles. I was doing a lot of interviews. Like I was doing 21 interviews a week. Um, for a long time months, I was doing tons of interviews every week. Um, because every single article I was writing had different amounts of interviewees that I needed. Like some only needed two and some needed like seven or 10, because it was like a listicle of different companies. So you had to interview every single company on that. Listicle right. Like there's 10 companies to watch and write, and then you have to get on 10 interviews.
So when you're not paying attention to all that stuff, it's really hard. And it's really well, it's really hard to grow your income, but it's also easy to miss because you're like, there's stuff coming at me. I'm trying to handle all this stuff. The interviews, the planning, the money, the getting the articles done, the interviews, the question Lobola and the photos. It's really hard to kind of be like, whoa, I need to do work on, on my business. Not so much in my business. So when you're looking at your past revenue numbers, you want to actually think about the quality of that client in terms of money, the quality of that client in terms of maybe byline or helpfulness to your portfolio, the quality of that client in terms of long-term capacity. So we don't want to just look at them in terms of like what we're getting this month.
We want to look at them like in terms of how much money is going in this bucket. So if you think about it this way, right, you don't actually need that. Many clients I've talked to so many freelance writers. And we, the number that I get oftentimes is three to seven clients. And most of the time, like for me, I have usually more than seven clients just because publications kind of float around. So my regular clients are like, not that many, like it's probably average is like three or four. Um, like my regular retainer clients. And then like all my other clients, like the other six or plus clients are like publications I've been working with for years or publications that come to me with projects to do, you know, that I really love working on and I'm okay working for less than five grand a year.
Cause I really love them. But those are still in my client. Well, they still come by and I still do assignments for them. But the bulk of my work is focusing on like those retainer clients, how much money am I getting in? So this whole story kind of started with the publication part. You need to look at how many publications you're working for, how that's actually working in terms of making money. Like if you're getting paid a thousand dollars a month for a column and you really love doing it, and that needs the 12 grand a year, that's a good thing, but we need to pay attention to like, am I getting paid small sums of money often? And that's not really adding up versus I need a few retainer clients that like, if I can, you know, if they need a project that's $2,500 a month for three months or $2,500 for three for six months or a thousand dollars for six months, write four blog posts a month, or, you know, you do a few reported articles or you, um, you get ahead on case studies for them and you do one a month for three months.
Those types of things are kind of where we need to go to grow our income and pay more attention to the quality pieces of our clients. So if you work a lot in publications, like I did, you got to pay attention to those things. You may have a lot of clients, but you may not be making a lot of money. If you have a switch to more retainer style clients, like you worked for more businesses. And I can tell you that a lot of the content that I work on is very similar to I publication content. I do interviews. Um, I do research like a lot of the stuff I do is very detail oriented and very publication style stuff. I just happen to do it for businesses. It's just, it's like a different beast, right? It's just a different outlet. So when you're thinking about that, you have to think about the actual fundamentals of what that client is bringing in.
So that also means that if you have a client that you are like, yeah, I kind of like working with them, but they only bring in, you know, like $2,000 a year or you're like, yeah, they bring in six K a year. But I know that I'm undercharging. I know that that I've been at this rate with them for three years and like, I need to raise my rates. Right. That's kind of a thing we should do annually. Just as a note, you should raise your rates every year. Right? You're getting better. You've learned a lot in the last 12 months, you have grown your skillset. You've worked with a lot of different types of people, lot of different types of publications and companies, you should raise your rates every year, um, to help you with that just as like a little side note. So to help you with that below there is my free pricing guide that will help you raise your rates.
Um, it will definitely help you see what's going on in the marketplace. I update it all the time. So anytime I get a new rate from a freelance writer saying, Hey, I've started working on this type of project. It's becoming more prevalent in my niche. Like you should add it. I add it. Anytime I find out that the rates end up like going up, like people are like, Nope, I'm not accept. Like even at the low end beginners, they're like, Nope, I'm not accepting this, this number anymore. I'm actually a hundred dollars more. I'm like sweet. That's raising the number. So if you, um, want to grab that it's linked below. It's also at Mandy ellis.com/pricing guide. So you can hop into to get that, but you should be raising your rates every year and you should be looking at the parts of the company or the publication where you're like, I'm getting paid less than I'm than this work is worth.
And I should be moving on to a client. So I can, you know, moving up to a better client who pays the rate, I think is fair for this work. That's something that a lot of people who get stuck at certain income levels, don't look at, I've noticed from coaching students and from talking to other freelance writers and core students that it's this thing where you're like, it's just money coming in. You have to pay attention to, is there a better opportunity for me? Is there a better opportunity for me to make more money from another client? Is there an opportunity for me to work for a higher level client that looks better in my portfolio? Is there a better opportunity for me to find a client that pays much more, right? Like they see more value in that I work, they have more ongoing work.
Um, and yeah, it's stuff that I would be really excited to work on. Those are things you have think about in terms of getting it, all of your money together in terms of how much the value like value of the client is in your business and whether or not you should draw. So that's another piece that a lot of people don't think about is that see the consistency in the work, they see that they've had this client for like two or three or five years. Sometimes it's only a year, but, um, they have this client for several years and they're just like, it's consistent income. I have a retainer. Yeah. But your retainer was based on the skills and knowledge you had a long time ago. Like if you've had this client at the same rate for years, they're getting a super bargain because you're, you know, their business really, really well.
Right. You've been at this business, like you're basically worked with them for so long that like you could work there full time and having zero transition period. Right? So you need to, the value that you're giving them the insight, like if they were to hire someone new, they'd have to start over. They'd have to start the runway of learning their product, learning how their business works, learning what their audience needs. And with you, they already have all that they'd been working with you. And that means you need to raise your rate. So there's two things here. So raising your rate could mean they'd be like, Nope, this is our budget. Like we like working at this rate and that's not going to work. And you either decide to stay at that rate. Um, or you decide to cut them and move on and you just kind of be like, Hey, do you know what?
That doesn't work for me anymore? I've loved working with you this far. Um, I, you know, I'll see if there's another writer I can recommend, but you know, this doesn't work anymore. Um, or the Google thing would be like, yeah, totally. Like we totally understand why you would, um, why you would ask for a rate increase and let me go figure out if we can increase it and then they increase it. And then that client becomes a higher level client cutting a client is not a bad thing. It's something that we do all the time. So I think that's something that when we're thinking about factors that play into the amount of money that we make, people forget that consistency doesn't always equal growth. Okay. When you're, when you have a consistent client, it doesn't mean that your income is really growing. If you're not raising your rates with them, if you're repeating the same work over and over again, if you get into this kind of like this, like not a writing slump, but you get into this place where you're like, yep.
I know I do the same thing every single month, over and over again. Um, you know, you kind of miss this opportunity to grow your income, grow your business, grow your knowledge in that industry. Um, grow your opportunity to do something cool. Like there's lots of writers who ended up getting really neat opportunities that they never would have had. Otherwise, if they hadn't kind of pushed the envelope a little bit, like they ended up doing speaking gigs or being on a panel or, um, ending up doing webinar transcripts or something cool that they were like, oh yeah, like I started working on their podcast and I love it. You know, you have to think about these opportunities for growth. You have to think about factors beyond just like consistency in your business. Consistency is nice, but it's not really that great. If you feel like there's a huge gap in the amount of money you could be making. So that's why we kind of get on this thing about cutting clients or just basically like cutting clients. That may sound a little rough. So just say like, it's not working for you anymore and it may not be working for you in terms of you trying to escape Alon. We've got an escapee. So hold on. We're going to do a quick pup date.
Okay. All right. Why don't you go ahead to escapee from your pocket? Eights. Let me pups. And here we go. Here we go. Good job guys. Good job. Good job. All right. So
Yeah, we have all kinds of weird stuff that happens on this livestream.
You guys can't even sit like close and bow. You just, you're sitting in between, I mean,
Two pet beds with your leg underneath one pep and your butt on the other one.
You go check it. You dropped it. Actually, I probably dropped it. Sorry, Charlotte.
I blamed you, but it's not your fault. You're beautiful
And wonderful. There you go. Good job guys. Okay, cool.
So here we go back back to this. So you need to think about how you will cut your clients and whether or not you actually should be raising your rates, which you should every year. But let's say you've worked for this company for so long. Like there are other startups or there are other bigger, uh, bigger brands that you could work for that would pay you more money. Right? You can go in and start at a rate. That's double what you have right now, because you've been working for this client for so long that the rate has just like increased tremendously. And you just didn't know because you were working for the same client this whole time. So remember consistency does not equal growth. So just because you have a consistent client, doesn't mean you're actually having the opportunity to grow your business, grow the money that you make.
So pay attention to that. There's other factors too. So we're going to switch gears just a little bit. So cutting clients is a necessary part of your business and it's not going to be something that we, we don't want to sweat it too much. So I know that sometimes it can be really hard. I had a really hard time with this when I started out as a freelancer, because I got attached to my clients. I was just like, no, but I'm helping them. And we're doing these cool projects, but you have to kind of pull back on the emotion a little bit and just remember that, like, you're not happy in your business, right? You're not happy. That's why you're stuck at a certain income level. That's being no one who makes a certain amount of money says like, oh, I'm stuck. And then they feel good about it, right?
If you feel good, like some people make 30 K a year part-time as a freelancer and they're totally fine with it. They don't feel stuck. They're like, this works for me. I'm happy. Right. But what we're talking about today is people who feel stuck at a certain income level. You don't feel stuck when you are like happy working at lower rates or, you know, that there's potential for more, or you should be moving on. Right. And it is scary, but we kind of have to move the emotion away from it, cutting clients. And just because you got kind of attached, doesn't mean that, you know, there's not a better opportunity out there for you. So I know it's scary and it can be worrisome and you like that client, but sometimes you have to let things go. The comfortable things go to actually grow. And this is something that has been, you know, a really hard lesson for me to learn in my business is sometimes you have to let things go. Sometimes you have to keep moving on and growing. And the, the place that you grow to, you know, really is a lot better than the place you work. So there's that you want one more treatment.
We're going to do another update. Can you back up you so funny?
I can't believe you sit like that. You just sit, like, I don't know if you guys can see, I don't think you can, but she just sits with her butt on just her butt is on
Thing. You go, buddy. Good job. Oh, there's nothing there, Google. Okay.
All right. So let's talk about some mindset things. Let's talk about some cool mindset things. So the other thing that happens when you're in your freelance writing business, and you are trying to change your income, or you get stuck at a certain income level, is that people don't change their mindset. They get stuck in this loop, right? They get stuck in the comfort part. They get stuck in, um, they get stuck in the hole of, of like certain publications, certain clients, and they get stuck with like, this is what I deserve. Or they're like, oh, other writers are making more, but like, I can't make that much. Or they find all of these roadblocks that pop up along the process that they, that kind of prevents them from moving forward. So think about what your roadblocks are in terms of mindset. And oftentimes there's a lot of smart people that always say like that people who don't earn as much as they want to, it comes down to their mindset, right.
It comes down to like how they feel about themselves, how they feel about their business, their, their opportunities for growth, um, how much they want to stick in their comfort zone and how much they want to choose to kind of get away from the plateau and move on. So think about that. I know for me, when I went through a lot of mindset stuff, um, it was just kind of like, I can't do it because like, I'm not as smart as other people, or I'm not as good of a writer or, um, I'm not very good at like changing things, right? Like I'm not very good at switching different clients and writing different things. Um, it's really scary to write for bigger businesses because they have bigger expectations, which was totally stealing because all of the bigger companies I've worked for, like, they're way easier than the smaller clients that are much, much pickier.
Um, and I got into all of these holes where I just like doubted my skills and abilities. I doubted that I could ever make more money. Um, I knew other people made six figures. Right. I knew other writers were making tons of money. Like I saw people make 250 grand, 300 grand a year. Um, sometimes they were focused on like solely copywriting. So they were doing a lot of sales pages, which, um, I do sales pages, but it's not a high volume of work I do often. Um, like some people that's all they do. So I knew other people were making money, but I was like, well, how do I get there? And, but I'm just here. And I can't, I can't figure it out. And it was a lot of, it was mindset of like, I felt comfortable with my clients. I felt like, uh, I didn't want to let any of them go, but I was also like not paying attention to all the possibilities out there or that I could get paid more.
Now that I actually had learned all this stuff from working with these clients for like a year. Um, and man, there's a lot of things that happen when you, when you unpack your mindset, right. That's why I kind of changed that pricing guide thing. I used to have my pricing, I'd say, charge what your worth. And I kind of realized that that was silly, like your worth. Isn't really tied to an amount of money, right? Like the amount you as a human are worth, isn't, shouldn't be tied to an amount of money, right? So it's about the work being worth something. And you are putting things into the work, right? You're putting things into the work, like your skills, your knowledge, your experience, your niche expertise. Um, the amount of times you've done that type of project, all this cool stuff. And that costs something that brings value to the client, right?
And sometimes we get stuck in this weird thing where we've worked with clients who don't value our work for so long that we don't see all of the little pockets, all the little sparkly pieces, all the little spicy things that we add to the project that actually give it a ton of value. Right. We work with clients that are just like, we need to pump out content or, um, they like your work a lot. And they don't realize that they're getting really quality work for a discount. Right? If they were to work with another writer at that rate, the work wouldn't be as good, right? Like you've done a lot of stuff to learn about their business and learn about their corks and what they do. And don't like in a piece. So all of that stuff means that you need to charge with the work is worth.
And the work is worth, like, not just what it brings in terms of value to the client, but also the value you bring to the table in terms of doing that work. And that was something that I missed for a long time with my mindset was like, I didn't see the value that I was bringing. I didn't see the value that it provided to the client. And especially when you're doing stuff like marketing things, right? Like if you're doing a sales page or web content or an ebook downloadable white paper, a case study, anything that brings or even blog posts, right. Anything that brings people in and gets them, subscribers gets them, sales grows their audience. That's their potential, like growing by like 10 X or infinity, right. They will use your case study for years sometimes. Right? You write a case study and let's say you charge them $3,000 for the case study.
That's a one-time fee for them to get tens of thousands. If not maybe millions of dollars in sales, like the value there is like crazy. Right? And then people sometimes get these clients that quibble over rates, they quibble over like, oh no, the case studies should be a thousand dollars or our budget is this. And like they're ending up getting so much money from that one piece of content. And I think that's kinda like a thing we have to deal with in our mindset is like, where's this going? Where's the content going? How's it going to be used? Um, how is this going to help them? How is my writing going to get them more sales or more opportunities for leads or more subscribers? There's a lot of different pieces there. We need to pay attention to that. And a lot of times, and writers who are stuck in a certain income level, don't pay attention to that.
Right. They end up paying attention to all these other things, right? The things that are like right here, right in front of your face, right? Like they're right there. All you can see, you're not paying attention to all the things out there. Right? All the potential things that are there. And I think when we think about the value of our content, the value that we bring to the table in terms of knowledge and experience and Nisha expertise and project expertise, all that stuff, I think that will really help, um, increase your pricing and also help you get over that income home. So last thing I know we're like a little bit late on time here, but last thing, if you have questions about any of this stuff, you can pop them in the chat. I'm happy to answer them. So, um, if you feel like this has been helpful so far, give it a thumbs up.
If you feel like you want to learn more about freelance writing and how to grow your income, make sure to subscribe. So the last thing we're going to go over is, um, Y you may have gotten stuck and then also like how we're going to move forward. So you may have gotten stuck on mindset. You may have gotten stuck on value. You may have gotten stuck with the consistency part, the, the comfort zone piece. Uh, you may have gotten stuck because you just don't see any more opportunities. You know, you've kind of insulated yourself to doing the same thing over and over again, and you're not experimenting anymore. Right? This is something I tell a lot of freelance writers is like, it took me a long time to grasp the idea that we should do things in our business as an experiment. We should try things.
It's okay to try things. And they don't work out like failing fast was a concept that took me years to figure out, like, I didn't realize I was actually doing it every three months. I would just like end up with like all these mistakes and messes and then I'd make some changes. And then the next again, every three months I would end up being like, what the hell is like, what is going on? I made all the mistakes and now I have to make more changes. And I would just do that over and over again. And then I realized like, that's the whole concept of failing fast is like, try stuff, make mistakes, iterate, make changes, try it, make like, figure it out. Okay. It's not working. Make changes, like keep doing that process. Right. You're trying something you're experimenting. And then you're like, oh, here's all the things that worked.
Let's keep going with that. Here's all the things that got messed up. Let's get rid of those. Or like, let's figure out how we can fix those and then try again. So this is something that I think a lot of freelance writers miss out on is this experiment piece, this piece where you think of your business as this really fun experiment. And yeah, we need to make money. We need to pay our bills and we need to pay for the tree doughs and the kibbles. And, um, all the snug accessories, you know, for these guys over here, who like Charlotte just doesn't want to participate. Now. She, she moved her head. Um, but we need to like make money. Right. But there's also different things we need to try because we don't really know what's going to stick and work out. Right. It took me a long time to figure that out, to get to the point where I was like, oh, sometimes we just try things or like really realizing that failure.
Isn't really permanent, deadly failure. It's something that needs to happen. So you can actually grow. And all the times that you fail, it's not a permanent thing. This was something that I talked to that are like, I talk with freelance writers and they're stuck in this area. They're not trying different things. They're not looking at other freelancers and trying to figure out how they did it or why they're doing it or what impact that's making on their business. They're just like, I'm doing this thing and it's not working. Like they're not analyzing it. And they're not thinking about what can I try to shake it up? What can I try to move beyond a certain, um, a certain income level? What can I do to move beyond this client level that isn't working for me, I need to move up to a higher revenue amount, right?
Maybe most of your clients are hanging around 10 million and that's just not, not cutting it. You need someone that's like in the 50 million range, because they have more projects. They have a bigger budget, they have more focus on their content strategy and you need to move up. Right. But you need to see all these things. So to move forward, pay attention to the experiment thing. And when you have like, you know, if you have consistent income, right, you're, you're hitting the same number every year. If you already have that consistent income, what do you have to lose? Right. Try different things. And it may work out better than you think. And I know for me, um, another thing that has really helped me in my business is like, every time I've taken a leap, even when I was scared. And even when I cried a lot and I was really anxious about it, every time I took a leap, it worked out way better than I thought.
I don't know how that works. I don't know why, but every time I was like, I'm just going to try it. I'm just gonna try it. I'm just going to take the leap. I'm going to do this thing. It worked out way better than I thought. Um, and it was just kind of this, like I hoped that it would work out. Right. I had a lot of hope that I was like, well, I hope this worked out. You know what? I just kind of like jump or, you know, and, uh, see how it goes. But try things like when you move forward with this stuff, you need to do some analysis. You need to do some experimentation. You need to work on things in your mindset. And you really need to think about how you can keep kind of iterating on your processes. When you get stuck at the same income level, you're not paying attention to all the things that are possible.
You're not paying attention to other writers that are saying, Hey, I tried this new technique and it's really working. And then everybody else is like, Hey, I just tried your thing. And it worked really well. And you're not paying attention that you're just like, it's done this way. I do this forever. I'm stuck at this income level. How do I get more money? Like, no, you can't get more money unless you kind of make some mistakes. You try some things. You go to a higher client level, you get out of the funk of working with this like consistent client that gives you the money. But it's not actually like feeding your writer soul, or it's not actually an opportunity for you to, to make more money. Right. They're like, Nope, our budget is this. Like we've budgeted this. And there is no more money, even though you've, you've grown in value over the time of working with them.
Right. So, um, any last thing. So any questions you can pop them in the chat. I feel like this has been helpful. Give it a thumbs up. If you feel like you want to learn more about how to make more money as a freelance writer or grow a freelance writing business that works for you, make sure to subscribe. Um, anything else let's see. So if you're thinking about lifestyle too, one last thing. If you're thinking about lifestyle, it really depends. Like, it really depends on what you want. I know if you're stuck at a certain income level, you're, don't have the lifestyle you want because you wouldn't feel stuck. Right? People who, um, end up making a certain amount of money and they feel good about it. They don't feel that stuckness don't feel like they're holding back their potential. They feel happy. They're like, no, this works unhappy at this income level.
I'm happy with all my clients. I'm good. Right? If you want to build a different lifestyle, you have to take these chances. You have to end up, get into a place where you feel comfortable going after bigger clients, or you feel comfortable changing project types, or you feel comfortable charging more, or you feel comfortable, you know, um, cutting clients and moving on, right? And you won't feel comfortable in the beginning. You won't, it sucks in the beginning. It sucks. And it's really hard and difficult. But as you go along, you start normalizing it. You're like, this is part of running a better business. This is part of getting out of the stuckness. This is part of growing my income. This is a part of growing my quality client base. This is part of maybe changing my schedule. So I have more time off instead of working all the time on all these small projects.
So you have to think about the lifestyle you want to build and what kind of chances you can take and experiments you can do and switches that you can make that would give you the kind of lifestyle that you want. And, um, I think that's really important to kind of evaluate those things. I think that there there's this kind of idea that there's like a magic formula that like, oh, if you just do this type of writing, you'll make more money. Or if you just do this, like just work in this niche, you'll make a ton of money. And it doesn't work. Right. Writers that all the time, they're like, oh, I heard that this type of thing makes a lot of money. I'll just do it. And then they hate it. And then they don't want to do it. Right. They're like the money isn't worth it because it's boring.
And I, and I don't like working with these clients and the topic is not my thing. And, um, the money isn't worth it at the end of the day. Cause all the stuff I'm working on, I hate it. Right? You have to pick the stuff that works for you and make your business run the way you want it to run. But also remember there's potential experimentation. There's other opportunities. And the value that you're giving your clients is like very exponential in terms of like creating the content like content is everywhere, right? Everyone's always trying to get attention, reading things, videos, podcasts, live streams, all this stuff they're trying to get attention and content creators are behind that. So the value that you get is, is, or the value that your clients get from your work is, is really exponential almost so cool. All right. So I hope that was helpful. We will do one last update just because we, oh, now she's back up on your habit. Holt. Can you back up on your probable?
You go back to your a whole Charlotte over there. There we go. Good job. You did it. You go buddy. Good job. Good job. You guys are doing great today. Well, you look uncomfortable, but apparently you're not because you just you're just like hanging out there doing fine. All right. Great.
So hope this was helpful. If you have questions, drop them below in the comments. I will definitely answer them. So I hope you guys have a great weekend. I will see you next Friday.
________
Trying to figure out how to price your work for what it’s worth? Check out my FREE Pricing Guide!
Need some fantastic contract and marketing templates to make your freelance writing biz run as effectively and efficiently as possible? See my Templates!
Want to stay in touch for weekly detailed advice plus updates on new freebies and courses? Join my email list!
Want to follow me for inspiration, tips, and to stay connected?
So psyched you’re joining me on this livestream adventure!
