2024 Year In Review

Yeeep it’s that time again! For your reading pleasure, here’s a transparent look at how 2024 panned out for my business in my 8th year of freelancing.

Okay wow, where do I start. 2024 was a total log flume ride of a year — but not nearly as bad as the rollercoaster that was 2023. I worked with some unbelievably epic clients, had two quiet months, and then had my highest earning month ever. But I’ll get to that in a second.

Travel

David and I decided to take an extended break from nomad life for 2024. We left NZ in 2016 and have been bouncing around the world since then, so it was definitely time to stop for a while. Taking a break for a year or so has also given us time to focus on new directions for our freelance businesses, which is hard to do when you have to move countries every 90 days.

We spent the start of the year in Berlin, went back to Spain for 3 months, and then came back to Berlin again and rented an apartment while we wait for our artist visas to be approved.

As I write this, it has now been 6 months since we got the paperwork in motion with the Ausländerbehörde and we’re still waiting to hear back [sad trumpet sound]. German beauracracy at its finest!

Health

A huge bonus about having a home base is that I immediately bought a weight bench and 100kg of hand weights, so I can get some serious daily training in.

I’m not a fan of germs gyms, and it’s so much easier and faster to train at home. Our apartment is pretty small, or else I would have bought a walking pad for winter as well.

I’m short and a size small, and I also reeeeally love food, so I need to be constantly vigilant about keeping up some sort of fitness routine wherever I am in the world. I’m painfully aware that the mid-life weight gain thing is actually a thing (sob), and working at a laptop all day doesn’t help.

Anyway, I’m super happy with my body recompositioning progress after 6 months of consistent lifting and tracking macros. This is something I’ve never been able to fully achieve when I’m doing the nomad thing, so that has been a huge win for me this year.

Business

Okay – now for the good stuff!

Every freelancer I’ve spoken to this year has said the same thing – 2024 has been very up and down, again. But the interesting thing is that many of them have also had their highest earning year ever. I fell short of my highest earning year, but I did have my highest earning month.

Total client income for 2024

• Lowest month: $5,850
• Highest month: $39,495
• Total income: $191,875

For context, I typically work 4 days a week for 5 hours a day. This is my sweet spot for work-life balance.

In November I had a ton of new one-off projects appear, so I worked like crazy to make up for a slow October. November projects included case studies, landing pages, messaging frameworks, technology solution briefs, and emails.

In 2023 I prioritized writing content over copy, because my copywriting leads dried up, but I had some great content leads coming in.

2024 ended up being the complete opposite of this situation, where content leads dropped off and website leads started coming in again. So it’s a good thing I can do both…!

I referred out some solid projects to other copywriters this year: blogs, landing pages, websites, social ghostwriting, video scripts, and a whitepaper. It was still a little slower than previous years in terms of being able to refer on good projects, but I estimate my referral karma for this year to be about $50,000.

I also wrapped the year writing for some more dream clients including Google Cloud, Wiz, and Splunk.

So I’m pretty happy with how the year turned out overall. I had two pretty quiet months, but I spent that much-needed space on focused work and upskilling in my business (instead of going into complete panic mode).

But what about expenses?

My day-to-day business expenses for software etc. are minimal, but I enrolled in 9 months of business coaching which shot my total expenses through the roof.

I’m still a company of one. I don’t hire subcontractors or use a VA, and I don’t plan on creating an agency because I don’t need any more stress in my life!

But for 2025, if things go as planned, I do plan on partnering with other copywriting specialists who focus on ads, emails, and website copy.

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 hit my savings goal for the year again which is always a massive relief.

Business expenses for the year:

• Moxie subscription – for invoicing, proposals, contracts, client management, and project management
• WordPress hosting
• Webflow hosting
• ConvertKit subscription
• Google workspace account
• Health insurance
• Mastermind coaching
• A LOT of books

Mighty Freelancer Community for B2B SaaS Writers

The Mighty Freelancer Community is a year old! And it’s now free to join.

I love that there is a space specifically for SaaS writers to ask questions about pricing, rant about work stuff, and make meaningful connections with other writers in this industry. Freelancing can be a lonely business, so finding your people online is super important.

Etsy store

My tiny Etsy store brought in $1500 from the 6 crochet patterns I designed in 2023. That’s not a lot, but it runs on autopilot, so I don’t need to do anything at all. No marketing, no shipping, and no customer service. Bliss.

I have some new pattern ideas in mind, so that should bump up the income for next year.

I love that my store has helped people across 24 countries tear themselves away from the internet for a few hours to create something with their own hands. And I reeeeally love that they send me photos of their finished crochet creations – it makes me stupidly happy!

Goals for 2025

• Work 5 hours a day
• Work 4 days a week
• Hit sustainable $50k months from client work as a solo copywriter
• Keep my expenses down as much as possible
• Save as much $ as humanly possible
• Stay fit and healthy
• Keep the Mighty Freelancer SaaS writers’ community humming along, and continue to provide as much value as I can
• Work from Japan and Svalbard

“Focus” is my key theme for 2025, because I have some big-ass goals to hit this year.

With AI tools getting smarter by the day, and the freelancing world becoming increasingly competitive, the ability to focus on driving our businesses forward has never been so important.

Now is definitely not the time to get complacent about being self-employed.

We need to focus on refining our expertise, building authority in our specialty areas, and consistently delivering professional experiences for our clients. We need to be able cut through any distractions and prioritize projects that align exactly with where we want our businesses to go this year.

We also need to manage our time and finances effectively to avoid burnout and ensure we have a good savings cushion – while also keeping up the creativity and quality of our work.

This means using the “hell yeah or no” barometer to consciously say “no” to projects and clients who might be a good fit, but who would also get in the way of us achieving our bigger goals for 2025.

For example – if you want to raise your blog rates to an $850 minimum this year, so you can reach $10k months without imploding, you absolutely need to say “no” to those $500 and $700 blogs from now on.

My pro tip for 2025

For this year, my biggest tip for freelancers is to specialize in something. That’s not to say you can’t still do a variety of work behind the scenes, but if you’re publically known for doing one thing really well, your expertise becomes less interchangeable with 99% of other writers.

The more granular you can go, the better. You’ll get more client enquiries, more referrals, and it’s much easier to create content on social when you have a narrow focus to talk about.

If you do the groundwork of positioning yourself as a copywriter who specializes in writing [deliverables] for [industry], you essentially become irreplaceable in your niche.

Your end goal is that any prospect who contacts you won’t be able to find too many other options to hire a writer with your specific experience and expertise. This translates into you being able to charge premium pricing for your work — so you can earn more and work less.

Thanks for reading – and have an awesome 2025. You got this!