2023 Year In Review

Yeeep it’s that time again! For your viewing pleasure, here’s a transparent look at how 2023 panned out for my business in my 7th year of freelancing.

Like most other freelancers, 2023 was a wonky year for me. I closed some of my biggest ever clients, but I also went through a patch with no new leads, no copywriting projects, and work being cancelled left right and center.

It was a good lesson in why it’s super important to have solid systems in place to start cold pitching for new clients if you need to for any reason, plus a healthy savings account so you’re not panicking about everything.

Travel

David and I are now travelling with a lot of music studio gear, so things were a bit less adventurous this year.

We spent most of the year in Berlin, which is one of my absolute favourite places to work from. It’s a serious tech hub, and has a creative buzz everywhere, which makes it a perfect place to come up with fresh ideas.

Morocco

Essaouira
Marrakesh
Fez
Chefchaouen
Tangier

Spain

Madrid
Granada
Valencia

Germany

Berlin
Leipzig
Dresden
Flecken Zechlin

Travel costs were higher for me in 2023. Most of Morocco in winter is freezing, and they don’t heat their accommodation that well, so we had to make sure we booked fancier places which had good reviews about the heating situation. Despite that, most of the pricey places we stayed in were still pretty cold.

Berlin is obviously on the high side for accommodation, but I haven’t visited for 6 years, so it was time. Also there’s snow! And super cute Christmas markets! And gluhwein! It’s so magical here in winter.

Travel fail of the year

I’m looking at you, Valencia!

I just about tapped out from heatstroke because our Airbnb had no aircon, and we arrived in town on the hottest day in recorded history. 46 Celsius is not a temperature where you can even exist comfortably, let alone trying to get work done. After 2 weeks of struggling along with floor fans and wet towels, we had to abandon the place we booked for 3 months and find another apartment that had aircon in it.

Health

Again, I hoped this would be a year with zero health problems. And again, I was sh*t out of luck. I felt permanently cold in Morocco, and I had back-to-back viruses for 2 months at the start of the year – topped off by some questionable back street dental work in Marrakesh to get a cap replaced.

The end of the year wasn’t much better. Between Xmas and New Years I was totally wiped out by some random virus which made me sleep, sweat, and ache for a week. It was super gross. But I was thankfully feeling well enough to get outside and experience the utter chaos that is Berlin on New Years Eve.

After not having any sort of routine health check for about 10 years, I treated myself to an “everything checkup” for my 48th birthday in Valencia. Apparently I am in great shape for my age (woohoo!), except for slightly high cholesterol levels (boohoo).

My diet is vegetarian and pretty boring, so the doctor suggested that my excessive, ravenous cheese habit is probably to blame for this. Worst. News. Ever.

Note: if you’re traveling this year, I absolutely recommend you have health insurance. I’m insured through Safety Wing, which is designed specifically for nomads.

Business

Okay – now for the good stuff!

Where do I even start with how this year has been. Pretty much everyone I know has had a weird, unstable time in 2023.

Rolling tech layoffs, generative AI exploding and now available to everyone, writers getting laid off because “Chat GPT can do it cheaper”, companies pausing and cancelling projects because they’re struggling and uncertain what the economy is doing….etc. etc.

But while I thought I was having a really crap financial year, it turns out I made a lot more than last year, despite the first 3 months being pretty quiet, losing my anchor retainer client at the end of October, and only working 3-4 days a week.

Total client income for 2023

Lowest month: $4,626
Highest month: $24,870
Total income: $158,878

This year I prioritized content over copy, simply because copywriting leads dropped off early in the year, but content enquiries still kept coming in – and they were decent leads between $650 and $2,000 an article.

I referred out several promising projects to other writers this year, as they weren’t a good fit for me. But obviously referrals were a little thinner on the ground in 2023. I estimate my referral karma for this year to be about $70,000 for website projects, content retainers, and whitepaper bundles. So I like to think I made this year a little less crappy for few other writers out there.

I also wrapped the year working for not one, but 3 dream clients, who are some of the biggest names in the tech industry.

So despite the wonky work year, I’m pretty stoked about everything overall. I just needed to stop panicking so much, and zoom out on the year as a whole to reflect on everything properly.

But what about expenses?

Expenses were much higher than in 2022. I took 8 weeks of mindset coaching, plus a 12 week mastermind to get the community and mentoring side of my business up and running in a sustainable and organized way.

I’ve been running solo businesses for 18 years now, but the mentoring thing is totally new ground for me, so I needed a good butt-kicking to get out of my own head and kick all my “what ifs” to the kerb.

I’m still a company of one. I don’t hire subcontractors or use a VA, but I will think seriously about doing both of those things next year.

I run my business as small and lean as humanly possible, so I can save and invest as much as possible, and I managed to exceed my savings goal by $8k this year, so I was happy with that tiny win.

Main business expenses for the year:

Moxie subscription – for invoicing, proposals, contracts, client management, and project management
WordPress hosting
Brain FM subscription
ConvertKit subscription
Google mail account
Travel insurance
Slack
Coaching
Sony noise cancelling headphones to replace the ones that were stolen in Morocco
Soma Lyra-8 synthesizer (I have no idea how I can write this off as a business expense, but I’m gonna try!)

New business things for 2023

Microconf

If you’re offered the chance to speak at Microconf, you don’t say no. Even if you’re a very nervous public speaker and an unshamed introvert. Microconf Remote is a small event with a big name, so it took me weeks of psyching up to prepare for it. I’m pretty sure I delivered… just in a really awkward way.

I honestly have no idea how people can casually talk to their screen for 30 minutes straight with no breaks? I definitely can’t. And I’m not apologizing for the eleventy million sips of water I took while I was speaking either. Anyway, that was my big step outside of my comfort zone for the year.

If you’re reading this article, you might have found it by reading my newsletter. That was project #1 for the year, which I kicked off in January. So I’ve been writing these for a year now!

I skipped a few due to a) being lazy and b) not having much to say, so my total came in at 38 weekly newsletters, with around 2,000 subscribers.

Slack Community for B2B SaaS Writers

I’ve wanted to create a community for a long time – simply because I haven’t been able to find a good one to join myself. So I launched the Mighty Freelancer Community in November.

This is a group for B2B SaaS content writers and copywriters to connect, with a goal of helping people find faster, better ways to close their idea clients, earn more, and manage clients, projects, and time more efficiently.

But most of all – it’s to help people find each other. Because freelancing can be lonely and chaotic, and sometimes you just need some peer guidance, or a pep talk from fellow writers to keep your momentum and spirits up.

Being part of a positive, helpful network of like-minded writers totally changed my business when I started out. So it’s a subject that’s close to my heart.

There’s a monthly subscription fee which I put in place to cover extra costs associated with setup, and also to ensure that the people who join are all working copywriters, so they can create better connections.

I’ve put a soft cap of 35 people in place, and there are currently 22 in the group. I’ve had a few great chats to community-building experts who warned me that this type of community might be difficult to sustain because of the tiny size – but I like the fact that it’s a more intimate group so I can give more 1:1 help to anyone who needs it, and everyone can chat to each other without feeling lost in the noise.

As a bonus, I’m building out membership trainings on the exact ways I find high-paying clients, plus simple methods to streamline your outreach process, vet clients before you pitch, and help you close higher paying clients on sales calls.

There’s also a growing library of expert Q&A recordings on things like:

* How to structure and sell profitable VIP days and subscription services
* How to effectively pitch agencies
* How to get traction on LinkedIn, stay consistent, and post engaging content in your own voice

You can learn more about the community here. If you’re curious – you can jump in for a month to check it out for yourself. It isn’t a hostage situation – and we’d love to meet you! 🙂

Mentoring

I was feeling pretty uninspired by 7 years of constant client work, and needed some way to find my joy again.

Often our joy can be found in helping others find their joy, so I started offering 1:1 coaching calls to other freelancers who were feeling stuck. And I loved this process! Which is a really odd thing for me to say as a quiet introvert…

I had such awesome feedback from the calls that I decided I wanted to take things a step further. Which is NOT, I repeat, NOT going to involve selling a standalone course.

As a recovering course addict, I have to say that most courses totally suck. The average completion rate for courses is 5%, the average success rate is even lower. There’s always a whole bunch of irrelevant stuff, they’re pretty boring, and once you buy a course, you’re totally on your own, so you lose momentum and then forget about it entirely. Until the next interesting course shows up…

I’m an hugely outcome-driven person. If I spend my hard-earned money, I actually want to see some results from it . And my best results have always been from hybrid courses which are a blend of mentoring (aka. butt-kicking), and training lessons.

So I wanted to reflect this in my own work, and create an outcome-driven mentoring system to help other freelance writers fast track their business this year.

This is in the pilot phase, so if you’re curious you can drop me an email at hello @ mightyfreelancer.com to learn more.

Side income streams

Affiliate blogs

I turned off all of my niche blogs this year. I loved building these as a side income stream, and they were doing really well, but Google has pretty much killed the niche blogging industry with its recent updates. And it’s going to get even tougher once their SGE update is rolled out in full.

Blogs were a really fun experiment, but the glory days of earning a ton of money from blogging, I think, are over.

Etsy

If I can find a way to monetize my relaxation time, I WILL DO IT.

I really don’t know why I didn’t think of this years ago, but better late than never. See – I’m secretly pretty handy with a crochet hook. Thanks to growing up with my grandma I can also knit, latch-hook, tapestry, embroider, patchwork, and design and sew my own clothes.

So I developed a few cute, original crochet patterns and published them on Etsy. And….I was totally surprised that people started buying them?

I’ve made 102 sales so far from 6 patterns, and every pattern I’ve designed has sold.

Even though Etsy has a stupid amount of fees, and it can take days to work up a new pattern and test it – the weekly passive income now covers my coffee and croissants each week which is pretty cool. And making things from scratch with my hands has also helped me find more of a creative balance in my life that I’ve been missing for a long time.

Digital products

Again, another thing I should have done years ago (eye roll).

I launched my Killer Content Brief which has sold pretty well, despite me not really talking about it. And I have a bunch of seriously useful templates that I’ll be working on over the holidays to get launched asap, which I’m pretty excited about.

Goals for 2024

Work 4 to 5 hours a day
Work 3-4 days a week
Earn $250,000 – from a blend of client work, coaching, and side income streams
Keep costs down as much as possible
Stay fit and healthy (is there a country that doesn’t sell cheese?)
Grow the mentorship side of my business
Keep the Slack community humming along, and continue to provide as much value as I can

“Be useful” is my key theme for this year. I’m finding it incredibly uplifting to be able to share my business systems and freelance knowledge with other people, and actually be able see them put it into action and have it work for them.

I get genuinely, overwhelmingly excited when I see other people growing and succeeding. Because I know how f***ing hard that is as a freelancer. And we’re all on this crazy rollercoaster together.

For this year, my biggest tip for other freelancers is to always zoom out and look at your business and achievements in context, with a wider lens.

Review your income quarterly instead of monthly. Some months look crap in terms of income, but this is often because payments are delayed, or you might get a big deposit for a project this month, but the next payment isn’t due for 6 weeks, leaving you with a crappy-looking month in the middle.

Set 90-day goals, and then evaluate them as a whole over the year. Write a short review at the end of each quarter. These steps will give you a whole different perspective on what you’ve done during the year, versus stressing about the day-to-day details of your business.

Travel

Health