So I decided this morning to take a look at the entries I had made for July 2017. I know it was a busy month for me but I had no clue how busy that actually was. I’ll share the results with you in a moment so you can actually see the kind of volume I deal with and can complete in the timeframe I am given. Most of my writing jobs come with a seven day window. Some are less.
In other words, a client will send me their job specs outlining the topic the article or articles are to be about and some related details. The work is usually expected to be complete and delivered back to the client in a week. Some jobs take me that long and others can be done within a day. It depends on the topic and the amount of research I have to do before I begin writing.
I also have several different sources that the writing for comes from. On the top of the list are two marketing firms I am a staff writer for. One is based in the United States and I write about sewers, plumbing, real estate and insurance for this – my biggest – client. The other marketing firm I write for is in Vancouver and topics are related to BC-based businesses mostly.
The next source of writing work for me is my regular client base. I have several clients I get work from throughout an average month. In July I saw jobs from four of these clients. Three of them are in Australia and one is in the United States. The Aussie jobs were related to website development, commercial janitorial services and health. The US job was on private detectives.
The third place I have been pulling writing jobs from is through an online freelance hiring platform. These are generally one-time jobs so I view these as casual clients. So far, about four of them are becoming regular clients coming to me for weekly writing tasks. In July I completed 29 different casual writing jobs which would be a record for me from this specific source.
What I like most about the casual client base is that these are people from all over the world looking for online content writers. Last month my casual clients were from Russia, Australia, Canada, United States, France, Denmark, Malaysia, Israel, New Zealand, Poland, Germany and United Kingdom. The topic list for these clients covers a vast spectrum of subjects.
They included such things as Forex, Bitcoins, Yorkie dogs, erotic massage, Vikings, smartphones, video games and several others. I think what attracts me most to these clients is that the writing jobs are always unique and mostly about things I either know nothing or little about which makes the research part that much more interesting for me.
So, how much did I actually write in July? According to my records I completed a total of 88 articles. As each article runs at an average word count of 500 (and a few were in the 1,000 to 1,500 word range) I calculate that to come out to a total of approximately 44,000 words written last month for my freelance clients. This does not include personal projects of my own, either.
I have been asked a few times about what my freelance career is like and whether or not I’m busy with enough work. I have tried to explain that 100-percent of my business is online so I do not depend on the local economy to keep my business operational. Now that I’ve done some number crunching for you, you have a better idea of the volume of work that can actually be.