Diana Kelly Levey

The One Thing I Did That Improved My Freelance Business

A man working on a laptop

August 30, 2021

When you’re looking to improve your freelance business and earn a higher income freelancing, you’ll want to take steps to revamp how you run your business. Sometimes it takes months to determine what’s working and what isn’t-other times it takes years to learn freelance lessons (been there!). Personally, I find it hard to identify the one thing I did to earn a higher freelance income and become a six-figure freelancer.

Oftentimes, I think tracking my time showed me what I should be doing–and what I shouldn’t spend my time doing–in order to earn over $100,000 a year as a freelance writer. Time-tracking showed me where some clients were lower-paying and more time-consuming than others. I was able to identify where I should concentrate my efforts if I wanted to earn over $100 an hour freelancing.

Some days, I think doing more niche writing for content marketing clients and brands really helped improve my freelance writing business.

I wanted to know how other freelancers identified the places where they could tweak something and see an improvement in their freelance business. So I asked successful freelancers the one thing they did in recent years that helped their business. Here’s what some had to say.

Freelancers Share the Tactics They Rely on to Boost Their Businesses

How to earn a higher income in your freelance business and build long-term staying power as a freelancer.

“Diversifying. I started with copywriting but then got also into translating, article, and blog writing and most recently into surface design and art.”– Alix M. Campbell 

“I created a business name for it (The Unlearner’s Creative). From then on I’ve actually treated my writing as a business, which makes it easier when trying to figure out my rates because I’m not just doing this for fun anymore.” – Ennie Fakoya (My recommendation for freelance newbies? Grab my e-book of 100+ tips for beginners.)

“Having organized systems in place.” – Twyla Adkins, PMP, CAPM

“I am still new in the freelance business but one thing I did (and [am] still doing) in order to improve my freelance business was to take various lessons and short courses on how to become a professional freelancer.” – Adika Odilinye (Try my weekend jumpstart course to kick off your freelance career in just two days.)

“I put myself out there more in the local community. Having a steady online presence with an active blog help show professionalism.” – C. Hope Clark

“I maintained a good relationship with an HR Consultant. She gave me diverse rewriting work for many months.” – Daniel M. Hall

“I did a lot of extensive research.” – Willie Geker

“I increased social network activity. Putting myself out there more improved my freelance business.” – John Teehan

“I realized the value of my skills and experience. And, being disciplined — well, most of the time” – Ffion Llwyd-Jones

“Diversify my income. I have four writing income streams: (i) writing for clients; (ii) blogging/affiliate marketing; (iii) online course developer/teacher: (iv) self-publishing (fiction [romance] and non-fiction).” – Yuwanda Black

“Marketed upstream. I started that years back, and it’s paid off immensely.” – Lori Widmer

“Starting valuing my services to charge more appropriate fees and to say no to projects that didn’t work for me.” – Cathy Miller

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Diana can help with:

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Email Diana about opportunities: Diana(at)DianaKelly.com.