August 30, 2021
When you’re looking to improve your freelance business and earn a higher income freelancing, you’ll want to take steps to revamp how you run your business. Sometimes it takes months to determine what’s working and what isn’t-other times it takes years to learn freelance lessons (been there!). Personally, I find it hard to identify the one thing I did to earn a higher freelance income and become a six-figure freelancer.
Oftentimes, I think tracking my time showed me what I should be doing–and what I shouldn’t spend my time doing–in order to earn over $100,000 a year as a freelance writer. Time-tracking showed me where some clients were lower-paying and more time-consuming than others. I was able to identify where I should concentrate my efforts if I wanted to earn over $100 an hour freelancing.
Some days, I think doing more niche writing for content marketing clients and brands really helped improve my freelance writing business.
I wanted to know how other freelancers identified the places where they could tweak something and see an improvement in their freelance business. So I asked successful freelancers the one thing they did in recent years that helped their business. Here’s what some had to say.
How to earn a higher income in your freelance business and build long-term staying power as a freelancer.
“Diversifying. I started with copywriting but then got also into translating, article, and blog writing and most recently into surface design and art.”– Alix M. Campbell
“I created a business name for it (The Unlearner’s Creative). From then on I’ve actually treated my writing as a business, which makes it easier when trying to figure out my rates because I’m not just doing this for fun anymore.” – Ennie Fakoya (My recommendation for freelance newbies? Grab my e-book of 100+ tips for beginners.)
“Having organized systems in place.” – Twyla Adkins, PMP, CAPM
“I am still new in the freelance business but one thing I did (and [am] still doing) in order to improve my freelance business was to take various lessons and short courses on how to become a professional freelancer.” – Adika Odilinye (Try my weekend jumpstart course to kick off your freelance career in just two days.)
“I put myself out there more in the local community. Having a steady online presence with an active blog help show professionalism.” – C. Hope Clark
“I maintained a good relationship with an HR Consultant. She gave me diverse rewriting work for many months.” – Daniel M. Hall
“I did a lot of extensive research.” – Willie Geker
“I increased social network activity. Putting myself out there more improved my freelance business.” – John Teehan
“I realized the value of my skills and experience. And, being disciplined — well, most of the time” – Ffion Llwyd-Jones
“Diversify my income. I have four writing income streams: (i) writing for clients; (ii) blogging/affiliate marketing; (iii) online course developer/teacher: (iv) self-publishing (fiction [romance] and non-fiction).” – Yuwanda Black
“Marketed upstream. I started that years back, and it’s paid off immensely.” – Lori Widmer
“Starting valuing my services to charge more appropriate fees and to say no to projects that didn’t work for me.” – Cathy Miller
Tags: freelance, freelance rates, freelance writer, freelance writing, freelance writing advice, freelance writing tips, freelancer, six figure freelancing, six figure income, writing tips
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