Time to Set your Freelance Goals for 2013

Hi, readers, and happy new year! This is my favorite day of the year. To me, January 1 represents promise, potential, possibility. It's also when I set my goals for the year, and I suggest you do the same for your career. Because I'm working today (I have a story due tomorrow!), I'm reposting last year's January 1 post. The advice is just as good now as it was then! 

           Consider the Past           

           Before you look forward, you first must look back. At the end of each year, I review what types of writing work I performed, for whom, and how much money I made as a result. I also add up the amount I made fromselling reprints and from speaking engagements so I know how much I’m making from both activities, and I look for trends, both good and bad.

Another issue to explore is how you spent your time last year. Look at when projects were assigned and when you turned them in. Are you turning around your profiles quickly but spending too much time on shorter, lower-paying pieces? Are those heavily-researched business articles really worth spending so much energy on? Remember that it’s not how much you make for a particular project—it’s what your hourly rate turns out to be.

            Finally, how diversified were you this year? Were you working for only a handful of clients or for dozens? (The former may be unavoidable if much of your work is writing books, which take much longer than articles.) Did you have lots of short, lower-paying assignments or did you focus more on bigger projects or feature stories? Does your income come from a variety of sources or only a few?

Consider the Future

So, now you know where your money came from. The next question is how much you want to make this year—and what kind of work you want to perform to make it. Should you focus your efforts in a particular area or would you rather try something new? Are you feeling burned out and want to switch gears—and try writing fiction, for example, instead of essays? Consider too how much time you can dedicate to “projects of the heart” compared to the work that pays your bills.

After you’ve set an annual income goal, determine how you’ll get there. How many hours must you write to earn that income? If you’re freelancing fulltime, the answer may be as many as necessary. Having adaily financial goal can help keep you on track. If your goal is to make $30,000 a year from freelancing, that averages to $2,500 a month or $125 a day (with four weeks off during the year.) In other words, if you can average that amount of income 240 days a year, you can make $30,000 this year. Make sense? 

Strive for a Balance  

By setting monthly, weekly or daily financial targets, you’ll be on your way to achieving your overall financial goal this year. But remember that your writing career isn’t only about the money. Your goals may also include non-financial ones like spending more time writing fiction or developing a stronger voice. (One of my goals last year was to finish my latest novel, The Honesty Index, and get it into print. And I did! 

That's why I suggest you build writing time into your schedule for projects that don’t produce income (at least not yet) but are important to you for other reasons. Even though I write for a living, I give myself time to write for myself as well. After all, if you only focus on the bottom line and continually take work that bores or frustrates you, you’ll be likely to become bored and frustrated with your career as well. 

Instead, strive for a balance between the money you want to make and the work you want to do—and both you and your bank account will be better off in 2013. 

***I've got a great list of blog topics for this year, so stay tuned. If you have a question or subject you'd like me to address on the blog, tell me so in a comment below. And in the meantime, thanks to all who have bought Writer for Hire: 101 Secrets to Freelance Success. I'll have more book news soon, and I'll be conducting my annual freelance income survey again soon, so stay tuned! 

Why You Need Two Kinds of Goals--and How to Set Them

Last post, I talked about revisiting your year before you set your new annual goals. Once you know where you’ve been, you can start thinking about where you want to go.

Take time to consider what types of work you want to focus on, what kinds of markets and clients you want to pursue, and how you’ll spend your time—for example, how much time you’ll devote to querying new markets versus working on current assignments.

If you’re a relatively new writer who has never set a specific writing goal, make 2011 the year you start. When it comes to lifestyle behavior changes (think losing weight, exercising regularly, and quitting smoking), loads of research proves that people who set specific goals achieve greater success and are more likely to stick with their behavior changes than those who don’t set goals.

Setting goals forces you to take a closer look at your writing priorities, and get a handle on what’s really important to you. Writers who have heard me speak know that I divide goals into two types—overall, or “outcome” goals and production, or “performance” goals. Overall goals tend to be biggies—you know, like writing a novel, finding a publisher for your nonfiction book project, or finally ditching your day job to freelance fulltime.

The problem with outcome goals is that they don’t help you actually achieve your aim. That’s where performance, or production goals, come in. They’re the actionable goals that move you toward your overall or outcome goal. To be effective, they should be “SMART,” or Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Time-based.

For example, my income goal for the coming year is to make $60,000. That’s my overall goal. My performance goal is to make $250/day for 240 days/year, working an average of 15 hours/week. (This figure also fits with the average rate of $100/hour I try to maintain, and is realistic considering what I made in 2010 and the types of work I do.) Get it?

Think both big (your long-term aims) and small (e.g., meeting your daily nut)when you’re setting goals. After you’ve decided what they are, write them down, and track your progress in the coming weeks.

If one of your goals is more difficult to quantify than a simple income goal—say, getting more work published in national magazines—your performance goals might include researching a certain number of new markets each month, querying a certain number of editors each week, and sending follow-ups letters to editors who haven’t responded in a certain period of time.

Regardless, your goals should reflect your overall objectives as a freelancer. Don’t be afraid to tweak them throughout the year as your circumstances change. Smart goals give you a roadmap to follow, but you can always choose to take a different route to your destination.

Readers, if you’re up for it, share one or more of your goals here—and I may address them in future blog posts.

Finally, here comes a plug for my books. Want to make 2011 the year you double your income—or simply work more efficiently and make more as a freelancer? I've got books to help you do so.

• If you want to break into the lucrative field of ghostwriting/coauthoring, check out Goodbye Byline, Hello Big Bucks: The Writer’s Guide to Making Money Ghostwriting and Coauthoring Books.
• If you’re new to freelancing and want to make the most of your background and experience (and learn how to break into the most popular freelancing topics), check out Ready, Aim, Specialize! Create your own Writing Specialty and Make More Money.
• And if you want my classic book on successful freelancing that has helped both new and experienced writers get more green, check out Six-Figure Freelancing: The Writer’s Guide to Making More Money.

I promise if you read any (or all three) of my writing-related books and follow their advice, you’ll see a marked difference in your freelance success and your bottom line. If you've done so already, I'd love to hear about your experience here!

Commercial over. Happy 2011 a few days early, and happy freelancing to all of my readers.