What does a day in the life of a Solo Writer look like? For me, the day mostly revolves around managing my roster of clients and making sure I'm on top of the deliverables for each one. Here's how that roster breaks down:
The 2 clients with daily deliverables are X accounts I run that need daily memes & shitposts. It's hard to draft those ahead of time, because the shitposts usually need to related to the news of the day. So I typically have to balance my weekly projects out with updating those two X accounts throughout each day. Time Blocking I typically view my time in 30 minute sprints. Today, my first block was reserved for doing memes and replies for one of the daily accounts I run. Then I had a 30 minute call with a writer I'm going to hire for some contract work (met him through the Solo Writers slack group; if you're not in that group but want to be, just reply to this email). Next I worked for 30 minutes on the other daily meme account I run for a client. Once I'm up to to date on the daily deliverables, I'll usually work on one of the weekly deliverables. I can pace myself at one weekly project per day, leaving an extra day available if I need it for catching up. Splitting the Day The last month or so, I've switched to a new method for splitting the day: Writing in the morning, and calls & planning in the afternoon. I do most of my writing (my most important work) from 8:30am or so until 11:30am. That way, I've gotten all my "real" work done before noon, and don't need to feel rushed to finish important deliverables at the end of the day. I've only been scheduling calls in the afternoon the last few weeks, which has worked out very well. I can feel more present for my calls when I know that I already finished my work for the day and can just focus on my calls with clients, prospects, and potential partners. The call I mentioned that I did this morning was an exception since the morning was the only time that it made sense for us to connect. After my calls, I'll circle back to my daily meme accounts for a bit. At the end of the day, when I have the least amount of creative energy left, I'll usually do any business tasks like invoicing, banking, sending payments, or other admin work. And the night time is reserved for thinking up genius bangers like this one:
|
Hey everyone, May 2024 was a great month as a Solo Writer. I worked with 7 clients and earned $23,000 in revenue (I'll get to expenses in a bit). Here's how my client mix broke down: Client 1 - $7k Client 2 - $5k Client 3 - $4k Client 4 - $2k Client 5 - $2.5k Client 6 - $1.5k Client 7 - $1k Only two of these clients were new this month. The average age of these client relationships is about 6 months. What will I change for next month? Consolidation. As I've mentioned before, the high-paying...
The more I've done client work, the more I've noticed that one thing stops my creativity and hurts my business: Having to spend time as a project manager. This is a huge challenge for Solo Writers who offer ghostwriting services. Clients want someone who's creative and good at writing, but there's a lot more work that goes into a client engagement. In a lot of my client engagements, at least 50% of the work is managing the client's expectations and managing the project. That's a lot of work...
Here are the numbers for my Solo Writing Agency in January: $20,573 in revenue $1,506 in expenses (Largest expenses: $500 for a contract writer, $451 payment processing fees, and $150 for software) 9 total clients. Largest is $3k, smallest is $1,200. Most of them are ~$2k per month. Biggest challenges: Most clients are on a custom package, so the deliverables and process for each client is a bit different. Goals for February: Take on new clients at higher price points ($3k minimum), test out...