My Month as a Solo Writer - My Real Revenue & Expense Numbers
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 better processes for incorporating contract writers into my process, and launch a new specialized service with more streamlined deliverables (more to come on this later)
The smallest clients are one-off projects (example: client wanted help writing 5 blog posts), so I really only have 5 clients whose X accounts I run completely.
All of these clients are inbound leads from my X account. I've done little work to expand my customer acquisition efforts beyond that, but there's more work to be done in my fulfillment processes before I worry about expanding my client base.
I am working on having a team of contract writers with various specialties who can help me out with specific clients. I'd still be very involved with each client, but each writer would take on a chunk of the writing and help free up my time. Right now, the largest bottleneck in my business is clearing enough quality, focused time to write for each client. A good writing session for a client can take 2-3 hours. It's hard for one person to write well for more than two clients in a day given the focused time it takes to write unique content for a client. You can see how a solo writer can quickly get maxed out around 10 clients without some contract writers in place to help share the workload.
This past week, I was able to meet with all three of those contract writers in NYC (coincidentally, they all live there). I'm excited to see what we can accomplish together.
In February and March, I'll be trying out these various writers and new processes to help me get the client work done. I'll keep you updated on the process of that.
Feel free to reply to this email with any suggestions for me or questions!
Charlie
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Solo Writers
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