Photo from Pixabay
Okay, from now on I’ll quit calling myself a freelancer because technically I’m not self-employed and I pay taxes, charot. What I have are merely sidelines. And here’s a report on how well (or not) I fared last year.
In summary, I made around ₱94,000 or roughly $1,800.
I only started monitoring income from my sidelines early last year. That was the time we were struggling to save for our wedding, so I had to list down all of my income streams and how much I could possibly get from them. Here’s a chart:
Every time I get paid, I’ll add a record of it in a Google sheet. Eventually the table grew and I was able to watch my income soar and dip. It’s pretty motivating. I’m clearly not earning a lot, but I’m freaking earning something and that’s awesome. Coming from a millennial who has illusions of being financially challenged, being able to count your money is comforting.
June was my biggest year. I sold my prize from a blogging contest and got a regular writing job.
October was a low month as I was terribly busy adjusting to married life.
November was the time I reached my Google Adsense threshold so that held up the numbers.
The goal is to be able to earn at least ₱10,000 a month. AND HOPEFULLY include Merch by Amazon in my income stream!
From the line graph you can see that there’s no steady trend to my income. The opportunities I get are random and the only long-term client I have is the one who feeds me writing tasks, which doesn’t really give much. And lately I noticed they hired a couple more writers soooooo there’s my competition in getting more tasks. Sadlyffff.
Anyway. I’ll strive to make a better graph this year haha.
What do I do?
Here’s a donut chart to explain the type of work I do on the sides.
I have a portfolio over at www.yanbirog.com in case you want to see what I design specifically. Last year I made mostly logos and wedding invites.
I don’t really go all out marketing my blog. I just accept whatever sponsored post opportunities I receive. Recently, I’ve started accepting guest posts too. I figured that the more terrible the writing, the higher the pay. So as much as I want to return some articles for proofreading, if it’s gonna cause a delay in payment, I’ll just do the dirty work myself. Yep, I’m that sell-out you guys hate! Lol.
I only have 1 client for writing and I intend to apply to some more, just to get a steady request of 1 article a day. But damn the requirements for SEO/content writers are so frkn intimidating. I’ve capped myself to 500 words per article but most of the listings require 1000 words per day! I don’t think my brain can handle that. Hopefully I find a more manageable job description!
Looking forward to this year!