It's time for the year end wrap up again. In 2021, I earned $117,289.97. Wahoo! Since mid-2018, when I started to re-build my freelance business, my goal has been to bill $8,000 a month, coming to $96,000 a year. I averaged $9,774 a month. Good news all around.
Was 2020 or 2021 a better year? Depends on how you count (if you use money to determine success, which is not the only factor to consider, but let's use this metric anyway):
- By invoices paid, it's 2020. In 2020, I brought in $121,390.58.
- By invoices sent, it's 2021. In 2020, I billed $122,135.58. In 2021, I billed $124,883,97.
Here's the invoices paid breakdown:
Since I am bad with graphics, here's the breakdown in text form:
- Colleges and Universities: 33%
- Business to Business Publications: 18%
- Consumer Publications: 17%
- Research Institutes/Hospitals: 17%
- Association Publications: 11%
- Freelance Instruction: 3%
- Custom Content: 1%
Some notes:
- This is a significantly different chart than 2020 (though closer to 2019's). In 2020, most of my work came from consumer publications. This year, research institutions and hospitals made up a whopping 33% of my income, and consumer publications only 17%. This is largely because I quit my regular New York Times gig – which I don't regret. I didn't realize how much it had taken over other parts of my life until I stopped writing it). I shifted marketing energies towards other writing sectors, and it shows. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but also a sign that I relied on work where assignments came to me versus me coming up with new ideas. The creative portion of my writing life has largely been shut off during the pandemic. I am hoping to revive that in 2022, even as this $#*&#$ pandemic is still ongoing. Some of that will be through pitched work, and some through reviving a blog I started writing in 2007.
- Straight journalism still makes up most of my work, with consumer and business to business publications hitting a combined 51% of my income. And yes business to business journalism is still journalism, despite what some dummies on the internet tells me. It's just for a different audience.
- Remember this newsletter from April? Turns out something was really, physically, wrong with me to make me so tired. I'm sure you've heard this story before, but when I went to my doctor again saying "please, something is wrong, can we look into this again?" I was told to – surprise! – count calories and run more (yes, more than this). I still don't want to talk about the specifics, but know that I was really sick, and it took a new doctor and two specialists to figure it out. That I managed to hit the numbers I did this year feels like a minor miracle. It's no wonder I shifted to work I didn't have to pitch. I could work about 3/4 of my regular hours but still bill the same amount.
- My income was more up and down by the month in 2021, in part because one third of it was tied to universities and colleges. In August, I billed $15,550.63 based mostly on fall alumni magazine article assignments. It was the third highest billing month of my career. And then in December, I had my highest billing month of my career, invoicing for $19,361.47, with, a lot of that work was spring alumni magazine work (that also explains why I billed more in 2021 but earned less. It's just the timing of how things shook out). I also took of significant chunks of time – two weeks in April, five in September and October. It clumped my work more in months before and after. It's just how it worked out.
- The only other surprise was custom content made up 1% of my income – and that was one assignment, for $1,000. It's just not my bag.
I'm not sure if there are any other lessons that you can glean from my year, except that freelancing is as flexible as you need it to be. I didn't want to pitch stories anymore, so I marketed towards markets that handed topics out (I'll write about this in a future newsletter). I didn't like custom content, so I just stopped pursuing it. I wanted to write another ebook, so I did (which is where most of that 3% freelance instruction income came from). Sometimes it's just about getting by? I don't know. I'm still so very tired.
But I am excited for my new/old book reviewing project. I'll start sharing links to those reviews in the "what I'm reading" section of this newsletter. So, as always, stay tuned!
Until next time,
Jen A. Miller
jenamiller.com
runningalovestory.com
Notes from a Hired Pen Series
twitter.com/byjenamiller
instagram.com/jenamillerrunner
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