How I make a full time income as a Freelancer
Let’s talk about money for a minute.
It’s a bit uncomfortable, isn’t it?
I know, me too. But we aren’t doing anyone any favors by not talking about it.
I feel like for years, money has seemed to be this elusive thing, tied to my job and the level that I was at professionally. But at the same time, I had no idea how much I should be making or how much I COULD be making because you want to know the real truth? Businesses don’t want their employees talking about how much they make.
Your parents probably didn’t really talk about money with you either. For a long time, it was considered taboo to talk about money. It was an off limits subject for many of us in our families. Financial literacy was something you had to seek out on your own.
But guess what? Times are changing.
It’s becoming more and more common to discuss money and it should be discussed! We all need to be able to talk about it so that we can have healthy discussions around our money, how to earn it, how to spend it, and how to save it. No one is going to take care of us in our retirement, so we need to be the one to educate ourselves and to plan for these things.
Ok, stepping off my soapbox. What does any of that have to do with freelancing? Well, a lot.
Chances are, you aren’t making enough money in your current job. If you’ve been there more than a couple of years, you definitely aren’t making enough.
Wanna know how I know this? Because we aren’t taught to ask for more and because of that, companies aren’t just going to give it to you! They care more about their bottom line than they do paying you what you deserve.
Ok, there may be a few exceptions to this rule, but not many.
Here’s a little story for you. I worked for a creative retailer for over 8 years. We were an 8 million a year company and I worked on their marketing team. When I started, I didn’t have any experience in marketing but my boss saw my potential and gave me a chance. Not a lot of training, but a chance. I had to learn as I went. And learn I did.
Over my years working there, I was in charge of many projects that grossed this company hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue each year. This was money that would not have happened without me.
Additionally, I took on tons of responsibility, was trusted to handle large revenue grossing projects, and represent the company at events all over the country.
Towards the end of my time there I started feeling underappreciated. I realized that in my time there, I hadn’t seen consistent raises, nor had I asked for them. I was still making low 5 figures in this role, even though I had made the company a lot of money. I decided to do some market research for people doing the same scope of work in my area. Guess what I found? I was being underpaid by AT LEAST 10-15k per year.
Talk about an eye opening experience.
I know you might be thinking - money isn’t everything.
That’s absolutely true. But everyone has bills to pay and savings to build, and if you are being underpaid, this can impact those things.
So I went to my boss and asked for a meeting. I came into the meeting prepared to discuss all of the value that I had brought to the company over the years and explained that I wanted to grow with the company. I asked for a raise in a respectful way, but also confident that I had shown my value and that investing in me as an employee had proven to be good for them.
You know what my boss told me?
She told me that she would pay me the number I was asking for when I have proven to her that I was worth it.
I was blown away. For a company that I had given my blood, sweat and tears to for 8 years to dismiss my contributions like that was a huge blow. And it reminded me of something.
It wasn’t my company. They could do whatever they wanted. And clearly using this tactic to keep me questioning my abilities was their way of avoiding paying me a fair market value for the work I was doing.
So I left. It took me a few more months to get the courage, but I did. And you know what? I went right ahead and I found myself another job that payed me 10k more.
So what is the lesson here?
Well, it certainly isn’t put your blood, sweat and tears in and simply expect to be taken care of.
For me, it was knowing my worth. Standing firm in what I believed I was worth, and moving on when necessary.
I spent 8 years at this company. Do I regret it? No. Absolutely not. I learned a ton. I gained skills I wouldn’t have otherwise, and I found the courage to know my value in the marketplace.
So now, how does that translate to freelancing?
After I left my last job, I knew I was going to become a freelancer. So I took stock of my skills, looked at the market range for those skills in the freelance world, and figured out how much I wanted to be making.
For reference, here is a general range for what freelancers in the VA and marketing space are making these days:
General Virtual Assistance work: $20-25/hour
Entry level Social Media Coordination: $25-35/hour
Specialists (ie. email marketing, Pinterest, SEO, video/podcast editing, etc.): $35-$50/hour.
Strategy/Management: $50/hour and up.
You read that right. This is the industry standard right now.
If you have basic office skills, you can easily make 40k/year as a Virtual Assistant.
But, if you take the time to become a specialist in something, if you have a variety of skills that you can market, or if you have some high-level strategy and business experience, you can easily make 6 figures doing this.
Let’s break it down.
If you are curious about my rates, you can check out my current offers on my website for the client work that I do. I don’t hide it. These are my rates. People who want to work with me pay these rates.
I charge $1500 for a basic monthly marketing management retainer. This includes strategy & implementation and I spend about 10-15 hours per month on each of those clients.
Hypothetically, if I have 4 clients that I do that for every month, my monthly income is $6000.
This is almost double what I made in my last corporate role doing basically the same thing.
Why is it that I can charge more? Well, here’s the thing. I work with small businesses. These businesses can’t necessarily afford to pay a full time person to do what I do. So they pay a freelancer $1500-2k per month to create their marketing content for them. This gets them exactly what they need, for less than hiring a full time employee. It saves them money in the long run.
What you make per month entirely depends on you. If you want to make 50k per year, then you need to make around $4200 per month. Lets round that up to $5k to account for taxes and such.
So to get to that $5k mark, here’s what your client roster could potentially look like:
Client A: Monthly retainer - $1000 - you create their social media content and schedule it for them. You handle all of their social account engagement. This takes you a total of about 12 hours at the start of the month + about 2-3 hours per week. (Ballpark numbers)
Client B: Monthly Retainer - $1500 - You create all of their social media content and schedule it for them. No engagement. You also write 2 newsletters for them per month and schedule those to go out to their mailing list, plus write 2 blog posts per month. This takes you approximately 20 hours per month.
Clients C & D: Monthly retainers - $750 each - You create & schedule all social media content for the month. No engagement. Each takes you about 10-12 hours per month.
Clients E & D: Monthly Retainers - $400-500 - You do a monthly retainer package of 10 hours for each client and schedule to give them about 2.5 hours each week doing whatever tasks they need. These can vary from week to week.
This puts you in around the 5k/ month mark with 6 clients at varying levels of work.
This is a very do-able and normal looking client load. Even if you factor in a lot of extra administrative time for yourself and go over these hourly estimates, you are still not even working 40 hours per week.
AND, the best part is, all of your income isn’t coming from one place. If you lose a client one month, you won’t be up a creek. You just need to find a replacement, and tighten your belt a little until you do. The chances you’ll lose all of your clients in one month is highly unlikely.
As you can see, making a good income as a freelancer is very doable.
I will say, to get these clients, you do have to know what you are doing. You first have to put together an attractive professional portfolio. You have write a bomb client pitch and proposal. AND you have to ace the discovery call. Doing all of these things is a lot easier with the right guidance.
In order to launch my successful freelance business, I knew I needed some help from someone who knew how to do this the right way. I knew I had skills to offer, but I didn’t know how to run the business. I took Micala Quinn’s Overwhelmed to Overbooked course and it literally changed my life.
My business scaled to replace and exceed my corporate salary in less than a year. I know it wouldn’t have happened that fast without it.
I took a chance on Overwhelmed to Overbooked because I knew I was worth more than I was making, and I knew I wanted the freedom to set my own hours and choose what kinds of clients I wanted to work with. I’ve never been more happy and fulfilled in my business, and I want that for you too.
Learn more about Overwhelmed to Overbooked here.
And, for more freelance related content, check out the rest of the blog posts in this series:
*Affiliate disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links for Overwhelmed to Overbooked. I have taken this course and it has helped me build a successful freelance business. I only recommend products that I have used and absolutely stand behind.
