4 Reasons Freelance Writers Need to Track Their Time with Income Reports

Freelancers don’t have the luxury of waged jobs. At my old 9–5, I put in 40 hours a week and received a stable salary. If I had a productive week and worked 55 hours, I earned the same amount. If I focused on emails and had no client calls, it didn’t affect my income at all.

As a full-time freelance writer, my income is much more variable. Especially since you should have more than one income stream (I have 7 now), it’s paramount to track your time to understand how you’re managing your clients, yourself, and your own freelance career.

I use a free tool, Clockify, to track my time. My goal was to have a better idea of where my time went, how much it was worth, and where I should invest more of it. My findings revealed a lot more than that.

These were my key takeaways:

• I spent around 60 hours working last month, averaging ~15h/week.
• My biggest time investment was on YouTube, which also paid the least. ($13/hour)
• I need to figure out a better system for activities that have two outcomes — e.g. I frequently write blog posts live, and today I file those under YouTube, though they also earn money when they’re published on my blog.
• I am my own biggest client in terms of both time and income.
• On average, I earned $111.87 per hour.

Here’s the breakdown:

Let’s dig into the results.

1. You'll find out who your best client is.

For under twelve hours, I made well over $3000, with a rate of $276.01/hour. It’s worth noting that my blog pays on a royalty scheme — many of my top earners for the month of November weren’t actually written in November, but rather earlier. However, right now, this is the best way to track the metric for the long term.

A bigger issue is that I may be misattributing time. I spend roughly 2 hours a week doing “Write With Me Live” events, where I draft and publish a blog post live on my YouTube channel. Right now, I file those under the “YouTube” project, but it’s fair to say that time is also spent writing on Medium. It also earns revenue both on YouTube and Medium. One solution is to split the time evenly: 50% attributed to writing, and 50% to YouTube.

Either way, it’s great to be able to say I spend about 12 hours a month writing Medium posts. People ask me this all the time and I honestly had no clue.

2. You'll learn what rates you should be charging.

I have several projects I catalog as my own projects: maintaining my website, sending out my newsletter, updating my “About Zulie Rane” page on Medium, and so on. Many of these take time but don’t earn any money directly. My hope is that as I continue those, they’ll contribute to increasing earnings indirectly.

For instance, my “About Zulie Rane” page sends folks to my online shop on my website for consulting and editing, both of which earn me money. It’s also sent some freelance clients my way. It’s hard to directly attribute that to time spent on my own projects, but I know there’s a relationship.

As time goes on, I may be able to plot increases in time investment with increases in overall freelance earnings. But right now, it means it looks like my own hourly rate is pretty low — only $85.12 an hour.

Meanwhile, my clients pay me a much better rate, averaging $177.42 per hour across all three clients, even accounting for prospecting for new clients as well as meetings, answering emails, and other time expenditures that don’t have a direct financial outcome.

3. It lets you figure out what is and isn't worth your time.

While YouTube’s hourly rate for me is honestly abysmal (just over $13/hour) it’s also the most fun. I love answering questions, I love creating and posting videos, and more than anything I love doing my live events. It’s unbelievable fun. Despite being my lowest earner, I’d never consider it a better investment of my time to give it up and write instead.

It also doesn’t have a cap. If I continue posting videos as consistently as I did in November, I have every hope that I’ll earn more money over time. My ultimate goal is to earn $1000/month on YouTube by this time next year — by monitoring this, along with how long I spend on creating these YouTube videos, I’ll be able to say with more accuracy what the best decision is, whether for my own happiness or my income.

4. It proves that a freelance writer’s life is actually a lot of fun.

What I didn’t catalog on my income report was the amount of time I spent just living my best life. Just in the month of November, I baked 4 batches of cookies, read 7 books from the library, walked the dog an untold number of times, called my husband nearly every day, played hours of video games, and chilled out with my cats whenever I felt like it.

Because my time was my own, I was never really worried that there was something else I should or could be doing. I knew what my workload was, I knew my schedule, and I knew what my priorities should be.

Yesterday had a bad start, so I decided I could generously give myself the rest of the day off reading a book. It was my reminder that while my income is a great deal more insecure now, there are real benefits to it.

Tracking my time as a freelance writer was one of the best moves I’ve made for my freelance writing career. It helps me know how I’m spending my time, what pursuits are worthwhile, and balance my obligations and commitments. It also lets me know what my time is worth so far, which helps me when I pitch new clients.

In summary, the best way to keep track of your goals, monitor your time and frankly revel in the freedom of being a freelancer is simply by monitoring your time in and money out.

This story originally appeared on Medium.