A lot of people have asked us how they can support The Friendly Freelancer. If you like what we’re doing, the best way to support us at the moment is to tell your friends about us. We don’t have a marketing – or other – budget, and we get most of our new readers through word-of-mouth recommendations. See you in two weeks!
Let me begin my first newsletter of 2020 with a confession: I made way less money freelancing in 2019 than in previous years.
I discovered this when I totalled all my 2019 invoices about a year ago and realised that I earned 22% less in 2019 than in 2018. I had steadily been making around the same figure year after year, but the Excel-columns showed me that almost a fifth of my income evaporated in 2019.
Instead of making more money as I accrued experience and clients, I was somehow managing to make less. 🤦🏽♀️
I felt really, really stupid that I hadn’t realised that things weren’t going well sooner. Because I was only tracking whether clients were paying my invoices and not how much I was invoicing, I only realised the extent of the damage when there was no longer any possibility to repair it.
So, during an early-January meetup with Selma, I decided that 2020 would be different. In 2020, I would set an income goal for the first time. I decided how much money I wanted to make overall and set a corresponding monthly income goal.
Granted, it felt like a ridiculous thing to do. As if I had any control over my finances. As if I could earn this figure merely because I had decided I wanted to. It seemed fanciful at best and delusional at worst.
During the first two months, my monthly income goal was a net source of stress and other dark feelings. I wasn’t even getting close to reaching my goal and I thought about abandoning the whole thing and going back to my happy, la-la days.
What spurred me into action was seeing the discrepancy between my sad January and February income and my target monthly goal. More money needed to come into the bank, that much was clear. I couldn’t just wait for assignments to come my way, like I had previously done. If I wanted that money, I’d have to go and get it.
So in March (yes, at the exact time the pandemic broke out) I emailed a few old clients – something I’d never done before – and told them I was available for assignments. I’ve explained in a previous newsletter what the outcome of those emails was.
When the work from these clients dried up and I realised that I would probably again fail to reach my monthly income goal during the summer, I reached out to a new company. That’s turned into a regular and well-paid gig.
In the end, I exceeded my annual income goal with 17%. The fact that I did so was admittedly the product of a lot of factors (cosmic timing, patience, my professional network, smart choices early on in my career etc.), but my income-setting exercise was definitely one of them. Why? Because the power of setting an income goal is that it creates intentionality.
Instead of yessing every gig that came my way, my income goal forced me to say “no” to some projects when the maths didn’t add up and to actively go looking for well-paid assignments. When I set a price for a project, my monthly income goal was always at the back of my mind and pressured me into asking for more money than I otherwise would have. Instead of treating my freelancing as a hobby that happens to also pay my bills, I’ve started treating it like a business. A business that needs to hit certain targets to survive and grow.
Because the absolute freedom that comes with freelancing can also be a trap. With no external pressure and no end-of-year reviews, your freelancing career can become something that happens to you. I’m incredibly happy with where I am in my career at the moment, but it would be such a lie to say getting here was the result of some five-year plan.
So that’s perhaps my goal for this year – to be more intentional about where I want to go, the kind of work I want to do and the kinds of clients I want to work for. I’m the only captain on this ship, so surely I should decide where it goes next? 👩🏽✈️
Have you set any creative or financial freelance goals for yourself? Spread the knowledge with other freelancers and tell us about your experience with goal-setting by emailing us at freelancerthefriendly@gmail.com
See you in two weeks!
Linda
What I’m listening to, watching, reading this week:
This episode of the Alonement podcast about working by yourself. Host Francesca Spector interviewed Rebecca Seal about the book she’s written about how to work alone without losing your mind. Always a relevant topic for freelancers but especially so at the moment.
This newsletter was written by Linda A. Thompson, a Belgian freelance journalist who writes about the legal industry and social injustice. She’s written for Bloomberg Law, Law.com, Deutsche Welle, OZY, International Politics & Society, USA Today, Underpinned, IJNet and Equal Times.
You’ll hear from Selma Franssen in two weeks. Selma is a Dutch freelance journalist living in Brussels. She is the author of Vriendschap in tijden van eenzaamheidand has written for Charlie Magazine, OneWorld, De Morgen, De Standaard, The New Statesman, Bustle, Knack, VPRO, and Newsweek.