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Here’s what I did to increase my freelance writing income in a year and how you can do the same.

Mar 11, 2024 12 min readFlow

Ali Luke

Freelance Writer

Are you a freelancer looking to grow your income? It can be tough to know where to start. Perhaps you’ve fallen into comfortable freelancing routines with clients you’ve been working with for months or years. 

That kind of stability is great … but it can also keep you trapped. Maybe you’ve stopped questioning your assumptions about how long writing an article will take, for instance, or you haven’t raised your rates in ages because you’re worried about losing a client.

I’m going to take you through the strategies I used to increase my freelance income from one year to the next. This isn’t a story about “how to 10x your income” or “how I went from rags to riches overnight,” … but instead, I hope, a more realistic and achievable look at how to significantly increase your own freelancing (or small business) income. 

Let’s start with the end in mind: these strategies led me to go from approximately $39,200 USD [£30,744] to approximately $70,500 USD [£55,266] in a single year. That’s a 79 percent increase. I did this around a normal, everyday life, with a spouse, kids, hobbies, and many other things I didn’t want to compromise.

Here’s what I did … and how you can do the same, whether you’re just getting started or you’ve been freelancing for years.

Step 1. Set Clear, Specific Income Goals

I’ve been freelancing for over 16 years now, and I’m embarrassed to admit that for far too many years, I didn’t have a particular income goal in mind. I was covering all my bills, and in general, I was happy to simply make the same amount I’d been making in my day job when I was in my early 20s.

Much later, I realized this is a common problem for freelancers and solopreneurs when I came across this piece by Naomi Dunford of Ittybiz. She explained:

If you can’t seem to break a certain number (and especially if that number is suspiciously close to your old day job salary), you’ve got an upper limit problem.

How to Do It

Figure out what you made last year (last calendar year or previous tax year, whatever makes sense for you). Then, set a higher goal for the coming year. Aim for something challenging but realistic: maybe a 25 percent or 50 percent increase, or even 100 percent more, if you’re going to be able to work more hours.

Let’s say you made $30,000 last year. You could aim for $45,000 this year. It’s a significant increase, but far from an impossible one.

Note: Personally, I set income goals for the calendar year, but for the purposes of this post, I’ve given my income increase here based on tax years (for me in the UK, that’s April 6, 2021–April 5, 2022, vs. April 6, 2022–April 5, 2023) as that’s how my detailed records work out.

Step 2. Know What WON’T Work for You

In my business, I could potentially make more money by subcontracting: plenty of freelancers do, and this is how Kat Boogaard achieved some incredibly impressive figures as a freelance writer, scaling her business to make over $300,000.

But for me, right now, I like the simplicity of being a one-person business. My husband works away some of the time and has much less flexibility than me: I really like being able to plan my work around just me, taking time off for our kids as needed. 

There are plenty of ways I could increase my freelance writing income … but those aren’t trade-offs I’m willing to make at this point in my life. Back before I had kids, for instance, I was happy to work on weekends; now, I avoid evening and weekend work.

How to Do It

Decide what your own “lines in the sand” are with your freelancing. Perhaps you want to keep weekends (or at least one weekend day) completely free from work. Maybe there are certain types of freelancing work you won’t take on – I know freelancers who won’t write pieces about guns, say, or tobacco. 

There are plenty of ways to make more money within the boundaries that are healthy for your business and for you as a person. 

Step 3. Break Down Your Annual Income Goal Into Smaller Chunks

Once you’ve got your income goal, you’ll need to break it down into smaller chunks so that you can figure out if you’re on track or not at any given time.

When I first started doing this, I used to split up my goal purely mathematically. If I wanted to make, say, £40,000 in a year and wanted to work 40 weeks (kids are in school for 38 weeks of the year in the UK), then that would mean earning £1,000 per week. But it soon became clear that not all weeks would be exactly the same.

Now, I tend to break down my goal by quarter, then month, then week. So, for instance, in the first quarter of 2024, I knew I’d have less freelancing work than usual, so I set a lower goal for Q1 vs Q2.