ok so here’s the TLDR:

metric	goal	result	percent to goal
pitches	62	66	106%
pieces filed	11	14	127%
conversion rate	NA	21%	NA
estimated payment	$1000	$1910	191%

is it obvious i’m in sales with this chart? i can’t help but see this world through a sales funnel lens i guess.

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we’ll see how long i keep this up but i’d like to try to recap how i did against my goals at the end of each month, and want a place where i can detail any big wins/losses/frustrations/learnings.

everyone probably sees this a bit differently but i’m going to report how many pieces i filed for the month, which is not necessarily how many pieces ran in the month. i’m also going to report how much i got paid for the month based on how many were filed for simplicity’s sake.

yes, i know that you shouldn’t really count your chickens before they hatch (ie before the money is in my bank account) but i’m going to air on the side of optimism that everything will get paid out.

so if i filed something in january that ends up running in february, it’ll count toward my monthly writing goal AND i’ll count the income i’ll get paid for it.

alrighty then, with those definitions in mind here’s how january went.

how many pieces did i write in january?

i filed 14 pieces in january, the most i’ve ever filed in a month. i had more bandwidth over the holidays to write and pitch which was great – while i had a number of assignments heading into january, i picked up the majority of the assignments throughout the month.

my goal is to file 11 pieces each month, which means i ended up 127% to goal for the month.

how much did i pitch in january?

i had grand ambitions to track all my pitches in an excel spreadsheet, but it just didn’t happen. so this number might not be entirely accurate, but it’s fairly directional. my subject lines for my pitches all start with PITCH: so i merely counted how many times that happened in january and searched for any ‘thank you for your submission’ emails for form pitches.

in total, i counted 66 pitches. my goal is to pitch 1-2 times a day and to try to work to figure out what my conversion rate is for pitches. to get a real conversion rate i’d need to break out what assignments i landed in january from things i pitched in january, but i’m going simple here and estimating my close rate simply using how many pitches vs how many pieces i filed.

that means for 66 pitches, i “closed” 14 pieces, which means my close rate was 21%. honestly that seems high to me considering how many no’s i go (or how many no responses i got), so maybe next month i’ll try to get more granular.

how much did i make in january?

again, i’m basing this off of how much money should eventually land in my bank account based on what i filed.

each outlet has a slightly different rate, but i should make approximately $1910 for the 14 pieces, or an average of $136 per piece. i still feel really in the dark about whether this is below, at, or above market average.

roses and thorns from january

my rose for january is how many pieces i published. it felt good, and i really liked the pieces i wrote this month.

i landed my first cover (for INDY Week, for my piece on Michael’s English Muffins), and a few of my pieces got picked up in the google news feed. no clue how that works, but feels like it’s worth noting. my other rose is getting a conditional ‘yes’ from a new outlet, pending i can land an interview with a particular source (so hopefully that doesn’t turn into a no)

my thorn this month is that i pitched a lot of new-to-me outlets and with the exception of the above didn’t get any bites. i want to write for more outlets than i am right now, so i know i just need to concentrate on sending quality pitches, which is what i’ll continue to focus on in february.

overall it was a great month – i’m heading into february light on assignments so we’ll see if i can back up what happened in january. i remind myself daily that this world is a lot like sales with a lot of ups and downs, and that the best thing to do is to remain consistent with my top of funnel activities (ie pitching).

see ya next month!