the year in freelancing.

I quit my job in 2021, but agreed to stay until mid-February, so my year of freelancing was technically only 10.5 months. My specific reasons for leaving were detailed in a very long article about Indigenous identity theft, which you should definitely read, but once I decided to leave that particular employer I realized I didn’t want to work anywhere else, either. At this point in my “career” I have been in enough workplaces to know that one inevitably encounters the same issues everywhere they go: bumbling leadership, maddening compulsory software, toxic vibes, systemic racism that is somehow made worse by token efforts to “champion diversity”, too much air conditioning, too many pointless meetings. I was burned out on a specific job but also the tedium of Having A Job. Instead I decided to do something I had been thinking about doing for several years, and try not having one instead.

Below is an overly detailed breakdown of how I spent my time this year. But first, some important caveats:

Four things that made it possible for me to quit my job and freelance while living in one of the most expensive cities on the planet:

1. In January, my husband started a full-time, salaried job after being self-employed for seven years. I had already decided to freelance by this point, but the new job soothed my anxieties, with its promise of dental coverage and being able to pay our daycare bill every month.
2. We live with my parents, which also meant I was not living with the same anxieties as many Vancouverites, who at any moment might receive a giant rent increase or renoviction notice because our city’s housing market is totally fucked. My landlords are not about to evict me, and they haven’t raised our extremely below-market rent in four years (no one point that out to them, please). You guys can roast me about this if you want, it’s the least I deserve as a housing nepo baby.
3. I’ve been freelancing for about ten years, off and on, so I had pre-existing relationships with editors and publications and plenty of bylines. This made the transition very easy, because a lot of editors I’d worked with previously just started assigning me more work once they knew I was available.
4. I’ve also been copywriting for ten years, which is a reliable complementary income stream. Compared to journalism, copywriting clients tend to pay better and faster. I tapered off my copywriting in the last quarter of 2022, and am not planning to do it regularly in 2023, except for friends and fun projects.

Not all of these are necessities; in my early 20s, I freelanced full-time for a year while living alone, with far less experience and far fewer connections than I have now. But my tolerance for risk is lower now that I am 35 and have a cat who exclusively eats very expensive prescription kibble.

A summary of my work in 2022, and how I compiled it:

My “system” for keeping track of my freelance work is a colour-coded Google Sheet, which I update every time I pitch, accept or complete an assignment. I thought about switching to Asana or Monday, something with overtones of Serious Professionalism, but the spreadsheet works well for me.

In summarizing the year in freelancing, I’ve included all the work that I was assigned and invoiced in 2022; some of these payments are still outstanding, because a really cool thing about journalism is that it regularly takes two months to get paid. (In 2021 it took one outlet eight months to pay me, but this year the longest I waited was about three months. I did not freelance for the eight-month outlet in 2022.)

I was thinking of breaking down my income by month, but it got too complicated, because the month I invoiced or was paid was often different from the month when I did all the work for a piece, or when it was assigned. Maybe next year I’ll figure out how to track this.

Onto the good stuff:

Total number of assignments in 2022: 79

“Assignment” here is a discrete unit of work; if I was assigned a series of pieces by an outlet, I counted them separately rather than as one assignment.

For copywriting and editing clients I sometimes billed by project stage, which might include a few separate pieces of work (three newsletters, or packaging copy and web copy), but because my tracking system is organized around deadlines and invoicing, I counted all the work in a single stage as one assignment. 78 of these assignments came to fruition; I had one story killed this year, which was a first for me.

I’m rarely working on one thing at a time. Most weeks, I’m moving between three or four different assignments, and I usually have another three or four on the horizon that I haven’t started yet.

As noted above, it’s hard to break down the work month-by-month, because the timelines of my assignments were so varied. I got the most assignments in April (15) and the fewest in November (3).

Here’s an overview of the kinds of assignments I did in 2022:

I freelanced for 11 editorial and news outlets in 2022. Six of these were new to me, though I had previously worked with two editors at previous publications. (In my experience, this is the easiest way to start writing for a new outlet.)

Surprisingly, I only pitched 12 of these assignments; 53 were assigned to me by editors. Three of those assignments resulted from half-formed ideas that I tweeted, which received enough engagement that an editor reached out to assign me a related story. The lesson here: wasting time on Twitter is good, actually!

14 projects fell into a third category, neither pitched nor assigned, that I guess we can call “working with friends”— this is work that fell in my lap because of a personal connection.

I had four pitches rejected in 2022. All of these were nice rejections; I have heard a lot of horror stories, but every editor who turned me down was very kind about it. The reasons included: already covered by a previous story (x2), not timely enough, and too niche.

Total income from freelancing in 2022: $55,304

I know some freelancers set themselves a target weekly or monthly rate, but I didn’t really have a goal for 2022 beyond covering my share of our household expenses and being able to afford my weekly snack habit. That said, I did think about how much an assignment paid before accepting it. When I first started freelancing, I prioritized getting experience and bylines over fees, which is easier to justify when you have a full-time job.

The number above doesn’t include GST. It’s all in Canadian dollars; I freelance for US clients, who pay in US dollars, but I keep track of my revenue in Canadian currency.

Here’s how much I was paid by type of work:

• $17,234 in copywriting work. This was mostly blog posts and promotional copy, all in the tech/start-up space, which is where the money is.
• $4,997 in editing. What did I edit? Reports, educational materials, a really wonderful package of Indigenous parenting stories, a deck of oracle cards… hire me to edit things, I enjoy it.
• $4,785 in online editorial, which refers to anything published exclusively online— whether that was for a digital-only publication like Romper, or a publication like The Walrus or Chatelaine that also publishes work in print (just not this particular work).
• $17,040 in magazine work. This is anything that appeared in print, though most of my magazine work is also online.
• $7,025 in news (print and online). This refers to online and print news outlets; I published with IndigiNews, The Tyee, and the Vancouver Sun this year.
• $4,223 in the “other” category, which encompasses two projects that included content strategy, writing, and editing (confusing to break down), and one paid speaking gig.

Rates & fees

If I were a more strategic person I would pay closer attention to how much time I spend on various assignments, and allocate my efforts to more high-paying work. But I’m not that organized, so I operate from a general understanding of effort versus reward, taking into account that the kind of writing I like to do is not always the most lucrative. If I wanted to maximize my earnings, I would spend all my time writing copy for real estate developers. I actually think I would be really good at coming up with those prosaic little blurbs used to market luxury condo developments.

That said, I have become more discerning. Last year, I wrote a 600-word piece that ran online, for which I was paid $75. I probably wouldn’t do that again. I’ll accept a lower rate for an essay or an interview, because those take less time than a reported piece or a profile.

Anyway, here are some details about how much I got paid:

• Highest-paid assignment: $6,000 for a magazine feature
• Lowest-paid assignment: $150 for a newspaper book review
• Median rate: $500 per assignment
• Journalism rates: When I write for magazines, I typically get paid $1/word. Online editorial and news outlets pay less; usually I get paid between $0.25-$0.50/word. The rates are similar for US outlets, but then I get a 25% bonus from the currency conversion.
• Copywriting rates: $0.50/word or between $65-$85/hour, depending on who the client is.

It’s worth considering that while magazine features are the most highly-paid assignments I get, they’re also the most work by far— if I were to break down how much I earn per hour, it would be… very low. Similarly, getting paid $0.50/word to copywrite a blog post translates to more hourly revenue than the $1/word I get paid for a magazine feature, because blog posts are much more efficient to write, particularly when you consider the painstaking editing that goes into a magazine story. I’m not complaining here; that effort and care translates into better writing, and the most labour-intensive stories I wrote this year are also the ones I’m proudest of.

My professional kryptonite is the book review, which is by far the most unprofitable form of professional writing I regularly engage in. There is no efficient way to write a book review because you have to read an entire book. I’m no longer writing $150 reviews, but I’m glad I did that for a couple years, because I was able to leverage that experience into getting higher-paid book assignments at other outlets. It’s never going to be my most lucrative income stream, but I love writing reviews and talking to authors.

Some final notes around my work-life balance.

I didn’t track my hours in 2022. Some days I worked a normal amount — around seven hours — and every once in awhile I did my old grind, working another four hours or so after my daughter went to bed, if I had a looming deadline or I was having trouble finding my way into a story. Some days I did almost nothing, because I was tired or sick or just wanted to lie on the couch and watch TV. (I love TV.) But I aimed for an average of four “productive” hours a day, where I was writing, interviewing, editing, or doing some other kind of paid work.

I’ve also picked up more of the domestic labour, because I’ve chosen to work fewer hours and cover a smaller share of the expenses. When my daughter is sick, I’m the one who stays home with her and takes her to the doctor; I run errands and do laundry during the day; I schedule vaccine appointments and fill out paperwork and wait on hold with the passport office for hours. This is work too, just as much as my writing work, and I give myself time during the day to do it. I could fill each day with eight hours of writing and squeeze those tasks into the evenings and weekends, which is what I used to do, and what many people have to do out of necessity. It’s a privilege that I don’t. I’m very grateful for that.

Overall, 2022 was a really good year. I did a lot of work I’m really proud of (you can find it all on my website), I became a better writer, I didn’t wake up every morning filled with job-related existential dread. In 2023, I’m hoping to do more of the kinds of writing that I found incredibly rewarding this year: focusing on stories for and about my Indigenous community, reporting on public health and the climate crisis, diving deep into niche topics and exceptional books, and writing tender little missives about parenthood. (If you’re an editor who wants to work together, email me!) The best thing I can say about this year of freelancing is that I would do it all again.

If you’re a current or aspiring freelancer, my DMs are always open. You can also leave a comment on this post & I’ll try my best to answer.