I always love when freelancers or bloggers share their income reports. The transparency and raw insight is so refreshing.

And although it’s a little nerve-racking to put it out there, I figured I would be transparent about my very own freelance writing income for this month since Oct was my first official month of freelance writing.

As of yesterday, I made…

drumroll please…

$1,385 on my freelance side hustle

This is in addition to my corporate job and the product of working after the kids go to bed, on weekends and on my days “off.” (If you want it bad enough, you’ll find the time!)

So, now that you have the numbers,

Let me show you how I got there:

1. I hustled my butt off in September. The efforts that you put in the month before show up in dividends the month after. You can get the exact pitch tracker I use for keeping track of all of them here.
2. I sent cold pitches and I applied for Problogger and  projects.
3. I tended to my social media profiles, optimizing them for my freelance writing business. Just by updating my Twitter profile alone, I landed one of my sweetest gigs in which the client found me (and I have a full article about how I did it coming out soon, keep watch!)
4. I stayed active in my entrepreneur Facebook groups and did a little bit of free work there to get some lucrative testimonials.
5. I was firm on pricing. I was offered many more jobs than I actually took because I refused $0.04/word offers and $20 blog post offers. With my credentials and experience, I wouldn’t settle for those “content mill” prices.

So, that’s sort of an overview of all the work that went into getting the income streams going this month. There is soooo much more I could say about pitching and pricing and networking, but for the purposes of this article, I’ll leave it at that. Feel free to comment with questions if there’s more you want to know.

So, what have I been working on?

• Exercise copy for a new major fitness app
• Coffee table book about New Mexico
• Copy about snowboard equipment
• Small business blogs for a website design business

I love the work I’ve been commissioned with. I’ve been learning so much and writing about my passions, so things are aligning just the way I believe they were meant to.

I can’t wait to delve more and more into my health and fitness, travel and mental health niches.

The fun part?

To reward myself for all the hard work, I went on a little bit of a shopping spree on Amazon. I found the pineapple chamomile tea I can’t find anywhere anymore. I bought some more writing books, one about writing white papers and the best freelance writing resource ever. I bought two barre workout videos to improve my teaching craft. And I bought a new journaling Bible that was soooo “me” that I can’t wait to dig in to. There might have been a few other things, but they escape me right now;)

What’s next?

I put in quite a few pitches in October alongside the work I did. I’ve already turned a few offers down, but I hope that a few more amazing opportunities come out of the work I put into October.

I’m also working on a swap offer for writing in return for some web design, so there could be some website changes coming. It’s exciting to think about where this all leads.

Not bad for my first month, eh?

If you’d like, I’ll keep you posted! Let me know in the comments.

Do you like seeing freelance income reports like this? What parts of the freelance journey would you like to know more about?