How I Make $20,000-$30,000 Per Month as a Freelancer
When I was coming up as a new freelance writer five years ago, I loved the blog The Freelancer’s Year by Lindy Alexander. In it, this freelance writer broke down how much she makes each month, and from what sources, and what types of assignments. That helped me in a huge way to begin to understand market rates for different types of freelance writing assignments, and gave me the confidence to get started on my freelance journey.
It’s also nuts to look back on my early days of freelancing. When I was starting out, I thought it would be a miracle to just make my rent every month. Now, I’m so grateful to be able to do this for a living and thrive in a very ~ expensive ~ city like Los Angeles. (Gas just hit $5 here if you’re curious how life is going in a city with horrific public transportation.)
I’ve also been helping new freelancers get started, and want to make sure I’m bringing some transparency on pay rates and how I got here.
So, I thought I’d get a bit more into detail on how I set my rates and got to making $20,000-$30,000 months as a freelancer.
What it Takes to Get to $20,000 and $30,000 Months
First, a quick disclaimer: these numbers reflect revenue, not my take-home profit. Currently, I’m funding various projects and endeavors, so I have higher than normal expenses, and I also have help to get to this revenue each month. More on that in a bit.
A second disclaimer: it takes time and effort to build up your freelancing career and level up your skills. These numbers don’t happen overnight, and your trajectory depends on how much time you’re investing into growing your freelancing business. It takes a lot of initial energy to get things started, and then you’ll see things level out over time. I have a freelancing 101 guide with more resources on how to get started!
Third, a suggestion: join Facebook groups like Freelancing Females and ask other freelancers what they charge for fixed rates. In my experience, I found that charging hourly worked better for me (as I would always under-quote for flat rate assignments!) but if you choose to do more fixed rate projects be sure to add 20% to whatever you think you should be charging your client. Everything takes 3x as long as you think it will, trust me.
A Breakdown of an Average Month’s Projects
I freelance in the tech world, so I know my chosen industry pays a lot higher than most. However, “tech” encapsulates a lot of industries: I’ve worked for edtech startups, DeFi platforms, NFT projects, metaverse games, and more. I charge hourly with most projects (except for the packages mentioned above!) because I find that it works better so that I can be flexible as writing needs come up with my clients. For each new client I take on, I begin with an average of 5-15 hours per week at my rate of $350/hr, as of February 2022.
Here’s a general breakdown of what I make from different projects:
$15,000 - Startup Copywriting Package. Generally, I’ll sell one large package like this per month. I offer a variety of copywriting and branding services to those getting their startup off the ground. If I’m not working on a package like this, then I’m usually filling this time with a different ongoing long-term copywriting project.
$10,000 - Ongoing Copywriting Projects. A bulk of my freelance work comes from long-term clients. This can vary month-to-month, but I enjoy working with long-term clients because when I have a relationship with someone, I’m able to know exactly how to tailor my writing style to what they like. I’m also able to find additional ways to provide added value to clients, and help connect them with other skilled freelancers, or help on the brand/content strategy side of things as well as the copywriting side. All freelancers should aim to have at least 1-2 long-term clients in their rotation of projects.
$2,000-$7,000 - New Projects, One-Off Projects. And then come all the little random projects that come up in a month. This might be a rewrite of an about page, a landing page rewrite, or other small jobs. These jobs might be as small as $350, although I’m starting to restrict new jobs to a minimum of 5 hours at my rate of $350/hr. Some of these projects are testing the waters to see how I gel with a potential client (and if my work speaks to them!) and some of these are just true one-time projects. I only take on small projects if they’re interesting to me or in my niche.
Generally, I work around 15-20 hours per week at my rate of $350/hr. Sometimes I’ll work more if I have a package or long-term project to do, but I find that I like to restrict my billable hours each week so I can be available to all of my clients at a moment’s notice and keep the quality of work extremely high. That way, I’m well rested, creative, and staying well-read — which is more important than you think!
I’ve found that working 40+ billable hours per week is just not doable for me. I’ve got my own projects and other things I like to do in my free time, and this many hours is a recipe for burnout. Even 30+ hours a week is pushing it. I’m much happier at 15-20 hours per week with some stretch weeks of 25 hours if I have a lot of incoming work that I’m excited about.
That’s what’s so crazy to me about a traditional 9-5 model: the 40+ hour workweek doesn’t leave very much time for health and fitness, hobbies, and pursuing personal projects. And if you’ve been here long enough you know that I love hobbies, such as becoming a professional yoga teacher for fun back in 2020, or starting a whole goddamn live events company in LA right before the pandemic hit — RIP — not to mention bouldering to overcome my fear of heights and, well, you get it. Ya girl needs her hobby time.
This is why I also promote freelancing so hard. Day jobs could ~ never ~ give us the freedom freelancing has.
How to Set Your Hourly Rate
If you’re like me, you hate math. That’s why I choose to work at an hourly rate. It’s super easy for me to understand exactly how many hours I need to hit my financial goals for the month (especially when I’m frolicking in Europe for three months like I was last year) and I’m able to more accurately quote clients on projects with hourly estimates instead of rigid fixed rates. This is better for my clients as well, because we can start with a small bucket of hours to test out our working relationship before scaling up.
I started at around $25/hr, but quickly raised my rates to $50/hr while I was freelancing part-time for my first few years. I got to $90/hr before I started freelancing full-time, and that’s when I doubled down on honing my skills, putting in the hours, and refreshing all my brand materials. Now, I charge $350/hr because that accurately reflects my market demand (the people in the world who want to hire me at that rate) as well as my skills and experience. It’s a perfect hourly rate for the number of hours I want to work each week, also.
I have an hourly rate calculator here on my site if you need some help figuring out the base hourly rate you should start at to pay your bills.
A Note on Agency Models and Subcontractors
When I talk about freelancing, I also want you to know that most high-earning freelancers get help of some kind.
This help could look like a business partner who helps you with your marketing or lead generation, or a business manager that handles all your invoicing, contracts, etc. Or, this could be a virtual assistant who proofreads your work and helps with admin stuff. If you’re taking on complex projects, you might even try out an agency model and hire graphic designers or other teammates to accomplish a project together.
Other freelancers might create full-service agencies where they hire writers and designers and other creatives to do regular projects for clients. Basically? There’s a ton of options for how to grow your freelancing business into a small business over time if that’s in your plan.
However, a lot of craftsmen (myself included) like to try and keep things lean so they can focus on delivering great work to their clients.
I’ve found that working with subcontractors is often too expensive and too challenging for a bulk of my projects, but I do work with writer’s assistants if I have a very complex project that benefits from an extra set of eyes. Anytime I add a writer’s assistant or proofreader to a project, I do so to ensure the quality of work exceeds my client’s standard, and always have subcontractors sign contracts with NDA’s to protect client confidentiality. I also make sure adding help makes sense with the budget for the project.
On top of that, be sure to factor in taxes, legal, accounting, and any other business overhead. Luckily, online businesses are much cheaper than physical businesses, and since I work from home I don’t have an office expense. That is, unless you count all the times I worked remotely all over the world as an office expense… :)
I’m not going to go over my business personal expenses because I don’t think it will be helpful to you, unless you’re running a scripted podcast production company, a writing services company, and also dealing with medical and health/wellness expenses for healing your chronic illness. Suffice to say, my expenses are high right now but they’re getting lower each month as I get back to a baseline and get off these expensive drugs I’m on for my condition. (Down with big pharma, anyone?) I’ll do a whole post on budgeting and freelancer expenses and taxes at some point, I promise.
But if you’re not paying for an expensive illness (lol @ our American healthcare system) and you’re not traveling a whole bunch and funding creative projects and businesses, you can expect a high profit margin for your freelancing. You still need to put away money for retirement, your health savings account, and other benefits that you need to pay yourself to live comfortably, but I’ll save those reminders for another post. (In the meantime, get a great CPA!)
Take Active Income and Invest it Into Passive Income
You shouldn’t plan on working for the rest of your life, so turning your active income into passive income is the key.
First, you begin freelancing. You make enough for your monthly expenses and some avocado toast. Then, you start making enough to save and invest and get your benefits taken care of and fill up your emergency fund. And then? You’re ready to invest in cashflowing assets or create passive income sources.
You should have multiple streams of income so, as a freelancer, you can take a day or a week or a month off and not have to worry about money. Eventually, you should be able to retire and stop working completely and still have an income so that you can have financial security.
Passive income is key, and I’ll be doing more posts on this topic here soon. In the meantime, check out one of my favorite podcasts on the subject: Pat Flynn’s The Smart Passive Income podcast.
Get Started: Learn How I Made $200,000+ on the Freelancing Platform Upwork
When people ask how to get started, I direct them to my free freelancing 101 guide that has a directory of all my articles on here, my book Six-Figure Freelance Writer: A Holistic Guide on Finding Freedom in Freelancing, and my course on how I made $200,000+ on Upwork.
I’m about to be rolling out a ton of freelancer education resources, so be sure and subscribe to my newsletter to stay in touch.
Listen, I’m not special: I put in a ton of work and followed a framework that helped me become a successful freelancer. I want to help you, too — the future is freelance, and I don’t want you to miss out.
Questions? Let me know!
