Hi Reader,

Happy Friday!

I MOVED HOUSE 🎉🥳

It finally happened and I'm exhausted, run-down, and, by the time you're reading this, deep in a forest somewhere recovering.

But I did it. I'll always be grateful for the flexibility freelancing offers when it comes to managing huge things in our personal lives (and also incredibly grateful for the income it's given me so that I've been able to upsize in just 2 years). ​

Here’s what I’ve been up to this week (spoiler: it's not a lot):

👉 I wrote 1 piece for clients (Klaviyo)

👉 I created 3 new briefs for a client I'm content managing for

👉 I did lots of house things

⏱ Approx hours spent on client work this week: ~10

⏱ Approx hours spent on non-client work: ~2

💰 Total revenue this week: £1,150

Friday Freelance Tip​​ ✨ ​

The goal for every freelancer is to have a steady stream of work each month. Nobody wants to ride the feast and famine rollercoaster forever, right?

Believe it or not, in 10 whole years of freelancing, I’ve never had a month with 0 new enquiries. I don’t say this to brag, but to show that it’s possible with a bit of work. It’s tempting to kick back and relax when we’re busy; take our feet off the prospecting pedal and enjoy the fruits of our labour.

But what happens when those contracts come to an end? We’re left scrambling for new work and, most of the time, we end up starting again from scratch.

Remember we’re running businesses here and a large part of running a business is making sure you have enough work every month — a.k.a. keeping your pipeline full.

One of my biggest learning experiences as a freelancer was discovering that you can’t keep all your eggs in one basket, which is why I always recommend maintaining a healthy balance between active and passive marketing activities.

A quick recap here:

• Active marketing: putting yourself out there, like cold pitching, applying to job ads, and responding to callouts
• Passive marketing: posting on social media, SEO, and growing your email list

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Even if I’m the busiest I’ve ever been, I’ll still respond to job callouts if it’s a brand I really want to work with, or I’ll still send a cold pitch or two to a dream client. My goal isn’t just to “have a full roster”, it’s to “have a full roster of dream clients”, so sometimes it needs tweaking.

Without further ado, here are the avenues I get new enquiries through every month.

Networking and referrals

Referrals are the #1 way I get clients at the moment. I’m incredibly grateful to the other freelancers and past clients that recommend me because it not only shows that they like my work, but also that they trust me to deliver.

It’s taken a while to build up my network, but I try to do a little every month by:

• Getting involved in Slack channels
• Going to networking events and freelance meetups
• Chatting with other freelancers online/having virtual coffee chats

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​LinkedIn

I’m very active on LinkedIn at the moment. I post about 4-5 times a week and mostly share content about freelancing. NOW, you might think this is counterproductive — “Why don’t you create content for your actual clients??” and the answer is that it hasn’t been very effective for me.

I used to create content about content to attract clients, but it didn’t get much traction. Instead, building relationships with other freelancers on LinkedIn has increased my rate of referrals and helped me become a go-to freelancer. I still get enquiries from clients, but they rarely interact with my posts. Instead, they search “freelance writer” or whatever on LinkedIn and, because I’ve optimised my profile and show up regularly, I get quite a few views.

Perhaps the most important thing to note is that, more often than not, the clients who do reach out to me via LinkedIn have never interacted with one of my posts. So, either it’s a case of “you never know who’s watching” or “nobody reads your posts”. I’ll leave it up to you to decide.

My website

I’ve somehow managed to optimise my website so hard for the phrase “freelance SaaS writer” that I show up in the top 5 results. Boom. This captures a lot of brands that are in the initial stages of finding a freelancer. These enquiries aren’t always fruitful, but some do turn out to be lucrative.

The most baffling part of all is that I never update my website. I haven’t published a post on the blog in forever, so it must just be the fact that I was one of the first SaaS writers to optimise my site with that search phrase.

Warm pitching

While the above methods get me a steady stream of enquiries, the only way I get to choose who I want to build relationships with is by going out there and pitching.

I know a lot of people say you should build your online presence and wait for the clients to come to you, but who’s got time for that?! I don’t want to sit around hoping that brands will somehow stumble across my small corner of the internet and deem me good enough to work with.

One of the best parts about freelancing is we get to curate our roster so that we work with clients we REALLY WANT TO WORK WITH. And sometimes, you gotta put yourself out there to do that.

I still have a list of dream clients I want to work with and, every month, I’ll put the feelers out to see if they’re open to working with me.

If you’re curious about how I approach pitching in this way, get yourself signed up for Pitch & Prosper—I cover it all in there, including the templates I use to pitch.

This week, we have Milena Alexandrova — a fractional content manager & freelance writer.

Where are you based? Paris, France 🇫🇷

How long have you been freelancing? 7 years

What do you do? I’m a full-time B2B writer, primarily for SaaS brands. But I sometimes branch into other niches or even B2C.

Milena operates as a registered legal entity.

What was your 2023 revenue? €115K. It was my highest earning year.

How much did you take as an income? Last year, I operated as a sole proprietor. So my personal income was approx €75k.

How much did you pay in taxes?

Last year, my taxes were about 25% (social contributions + income tax). My tax bill goes up this year as I’ve registered as a company, and my taxes will be about 50%.

What are your business expenses?

My average monthly expenses are between €200 to €800. Last year, I’ve also spent about €8k on subcontractors.

Do you contribute to a pension?

Yes, I pay into a gov scheme and squirrel away as much income as I can into my personal savings and investments accounts.

Do you have any hot money-management tips?

I save at least 30% of my income. Ideally, I want to save 40% to 50% of my monthly income and put it in an investment account (ETF) or a standard savings account.

Whenever I take time off, I always make sure I'm able to make approximately the same amount of money for the month (not necessarily healthy, as it leads to the occasional super busy weeks, but it enables me to stress less about money).

As always, happy freelancing :)

Lizzie ✨

P.S. What steps can you take next?

Arm yourself with the resources, templates, and tutorials you need to find and pitch high-paying clients in 2024. Get £20 off the Pitch & Prosper program.

​Get Workflow Wizard, your handy library of freelancing templates, tutorials, and email scripts to help better your business.

Want to learn the exact process I use to write £1,000 posts for the likes of Shopify, Hotjar, CoSchedule, and Sprout Social? Access Create Better Content here.​​​

Follow me on Instagram and on Linkedin, where you can see the behind-the-scenes of my business.