​Actually, July 2019 was anything but an endless string of words. That’s because I did take a few days off of ghostwriting mid-month. I didn’t really stop writing for more than five days but I stopped taking orders for a few days longer. That gave me a chance to catch up on outstanding writing jobs and to do other things for a change. It also gave me time to examine what writing products are getting the most activity and I used that to review my pricing schedule.
 
The Numbers – What I Charge
 
By now you should know that I have two primary sources of writing contracts. I have clients who deal with me directly and I have clients who hire me through an online freelance platform called Fiverr. On Fiverr I have changed my rates a few times. This month I made another increase but focused that per word rate change to the most active of the packages I promote on Fiverr. I have six different ‘offers’ and they are based on word count ranging from 500 and 1,000 words up to 2,500 and 3,000 words. So I upped the price on the three packages that are my best sellers and when I started accepting orders again, those rates were in place.
 
The Numbers – July 2019 Stats
 
Because I took a few days off, all of my typical numbers took a slight dip. For example, my total word count for the month was 52,050. That compares to 78,500 for last month and 46,175 for May 2019. The total number of jobs I completed this month was 34 and I wrote a total of 74 articles. That is down from 46 jobs and 103 articles in June 2019 and up from 24 jobs/64 articles from May 2019. There were two interesting things from this month and they included an increase in contracts following the mid-month price increase and a 50/50 split on job sources. I had 17 jobs from direct clients and 17 from Fiverr.
 
Another New Country
 
As I stated last month, I promote that I have clients in 40+ countries in the world. This month saw the majority of my jobs come from Canada for a change. Other top countries were Australia, the United States and United Kingdom. I also received work this month from clients in China, Sweden and Kenya. A new country to add to the list is Costa Rica. As for actual content, I completely rewrote all the website content for a Vancouver company, wrote blogs on chocolate, monsters, dental care, dehumidifiers, SEO and female hair removal products to name a few.
 
Other Sales
 
My eBooks continue to sell and in July 2019 I had a total of 5 copies sold of my most popular title, “The Foodie Guide To Farming Insects For Protein.” There seems to be a great deal of interest in that particular eBook and always has been since it was first published. I’m not too sure what August will bring but I know I will continue to be busy. I currently have 10 jobs in the queue as I write this and 8 seems to be the norm lately and I would imagine that will continue to be the case in the next month. I am still working on focusing my writing to take place just Mondays to Thursdays and some weeks that works. Having to finish a couple of jobs early Friday is no big deal at this time.

​The month of June 2019 was one of my busier months so far this year. I was writing a lot of volume per day for many of them hitting 6,000 word days on more than one occasion. I also had so many jobs come my way during the month that I ended up writing on more than one Friday to catch up. I had been trying to keep my ghostwriting activity restricted to Monday through Thursday weekly thinking that would keep me focused on the four days a week I wrote. It actually worked well but additional jobs that came early in the month forced me to add another writing day.
 
The Numbers
 
There is no doubt that June 2019 was much heavier than previous months. In fact, compared to May 2019 I had completed almost twice as many jobs. Here are the actual totals: June 2019 46 jobs which amounted to 103 different articles. May 2019 was 24 jobs and 64 articles and April 2019 was 35 jobs and 96 articles. As for total word count stats June 2019 finished at 78,500. That compares to 46,175 words written in May 2019 and 68,175 words written in April 2019.
 
An Interesting Split
 
One thing I noticed during the month was where the work was coming from. While I get a lot – usually the majority – of my ghostwriting orders from my listing on Fiverr, I saw a serious shift in this over the past month. I was pretty sure that my Fiverr numbers were not as high compared to the writing jobs I was getting from regular clients who work with me directly. Normally I see a split in the 75/25 range with Fiverr being the higher of the two sources. In June 2019 the split was as follows: 25 jobs were from direct sources and 21 were from Fiverr. Roughly a 52/48 split.
 
Another New Country
 
When I promote myself I typically indicate that I have clients in 40+ countries. It is fact, but I have to be honest. I quit counting once I passed 40 so I may have closer to 50+ at this point. Regardless, I did get one job during this month from Greece. That was the first one to come from there since I started ghostwriting in January 2014. Other countries writing jobs came to me in June 2019 were from the United Kingdom, Australia, United States, Canada, Russia and New Zealand. Most of the articles I wrote were for clients in the US, UK, Australia and Canada.
 
Looking Towards Next Month
 
I will be taking a short break from writing sometime in July 2019. I just want a few days during the week to get some other chores taken care of. There were a couple of orders in the past month that had a true time crunch on them so I ended up punching out a higher volume than normal on some of my writing days. I can do that a few times a week but not for a long term as I find I do just get tired and a bit sluggish. So, in order to prevent that from having a negative impact on my writing, I’m going to try to take a short writing break every couple or three months to stay fresh.

​I expected May 2019 to be a slightly ‘off’ month simply because I didn’t get back to writing until a few days into the beginning of the month. I was out of town for a week at the end of last month and that seminar extended into the first part of this month. As a result, I put a hold on all of my freelance work until a few days after I got back home. However, I still had quite a volume of work regardless.
 
The Totals From May 2019
 
I completed at total of 24 different jobs this month – down from 35 in April 2019. The total number of articles I finished in those jobs was 64, compared to 96 last month. Also my total word count for May was down, which made sense. I counted 46,175 words compared to 68,175 from April. What I did notice this month was that some of my jobs are getting bigger. Instead of a number of smaller 1,000 word orders I am seeing 2,500 and 3,000 word orders more frequently. If this trend continues, I would expect the job count to drop in June but the word count to increase.
 
Other Stuff From The Month
 
Near the end of May 2019 I got to spend some time working on the ‘Big Mac’ computer. It was the one I used frequently in the newspaper office for various tasks. Although it does not see much action these days in my home office, I do enjoy when I fire it up and get to do some graphic work on it. The job this time around was a complete column of newspaper ads for vendors in the Oliver Indoor Flea Market. This was a renewal of a previous ad campaign and I supplied the pre-built ads because I could. It’s also good practice for me to keep those skills intact.
 
There is actually a funny story to go along with that. The morning I turned the Mac on I was pretty certain I could shortcut my way through the ad creation stage by recycling a couple of the previous ads I had on file. The problem was that I couldn’t locate that file. I also couldn’t exactly remember how to move a text box to where I wanted it or how to export a photo into a picture box. I use QuarkXpress, in case you are wondering. Anyway, the answers suddenly came to me and I was on my way. I never did find all the old files so I just built 95% of it from scratch and by the time I remembered what to do, it didn’t take me long at all.
 
Writing Promotional Emails
 
This is something new for me. A client of mine has requested I write ‘funny’ emails to help promote a business. It’s not the first time I’ve done this but it is the first time I’ve been contracted to supply content for use in an ongoing email marketing program. I completely understand the concept and the effectiveness of the direct email approach so I think that has something to do with my interest in the project. I’m just not so sure at this time if I’ll use that as a potential extra service to branch out and provide in addition to my normal ghostwriting services.
 
EBook Activity
 
My collection of eBook titles continues to get attention at Amazon. I have seven different eBooks there and although I tend to sell them in spurts, May 2019 was an interesting month for pages read. The way Amazon works is that you can purchase an eBook or you can go to the lending library and read one. I earn a commission from each copy sold as well as each page read. This month my pages read commission is going to be slightly higher than it was in April 2019. In fact, I’ve noticed a trend where my eBooks are getting read a bit more than sold and that is perfectly alright by me.