the monthly TLDR (annual TLDR at the end):

metric	goal	result	percent to goal
pitches	60	54	90%
pieces filed	11	13	118%
conversion rate	18%	24%	+6%
estimated payment	$1000	$2430	243%

another month in the books. each month brings its own challenges and its own rewards. mixing things up this month by starting with my roses and thorns:

roses:

• my first piece in Travel & Leisure went live! this was one of the new outlets i wrote about last month. my parents bought a place near brevard, nc a few years ago and have been talking about the blue ghost fireflies ever since, which prompted this idea. still stunned to have gotten a yes from t&l- definitely feels like a ‘pinch me’ moment!
• i posted about a rejection from the NY Times on linkedin, and somehow the post generated close to 60,000 impressions. i have no clue how this happened but it felt cool?
• i’ve officially made more this year freelancing than i did last year! i freelanced for 9 months of last year so to beat what i made in five months feels pretty dang good.

thorns:

• i got my first hate mail, for a piece i wrote on business insider about grocery shopping. maybe this is a rose? that someone felt so strongly about what i wrote that they tracked down my email to blast me? i know my writing won’t please everyone all the time but it still stung.
• my worst fear came true – i submitted a piece for a new outlet and it wasn’t what the editor was looking for. she was very kind about it and offered some great guidance so i’m redoing it. i’m taking it as a learning opportunity and am thankful for an editor who’s willing to provide feedback, but dang it, i hate missing the mark. (update: she said my second draft was 1000x better and barring a few line edits it’s ready to go!)

how many pieces did i write in may?

i filed 13 pieces in may, tying my april numbers. 13 feels like a decent sweet spot for me right now. while i’d love to be able to write more, i need to figure out how i can get bigger pockets of time to write to be able to make that happen.

i am finding that i’m getting a bit speedier at writing (sometimes) which is helpful. i find that i can’t really sit down to write until i’ve noodled on the piece in my head enough or else i just end up staring at my computer screen, but i’m finding that once the proverbial lightbulb has gone off in my head i’m able to draft a piece more quickly.

how much did i pitch this month?

my pitch numbers didn’t change too much from april, but there was a small improvement. i did a LOT of pitching toward the end of may which hopefully will pay off in june.

june is looking a little light for assignments which i don’t love, but my goal is to exceed my pitch goal for the month to try to drum up more work.

i also don’t have a sense of whether the summer is slower for freelancers or not?

how much did i make in may?

i was stoked about seeing this stat. i wrote the same number of pieces that i did in april, but earned almost $600 more. my average pay per piece rose from $143 in april to $187 in may.

again, i still don’t really have any bearing for what i should be aiming for on a per piece basis. the pay seems to vary wildly outlet by outlet. i don’t feel like i’m in a position to try to negotiate right now and don’t even know if that’s an option at all?

YTD stats!

metric	goal	result YTD	percent to goal
pitches	300	319	106%
pieces filed	55	66	120%
conversion rate	18%	20%	NA
estimated payment	$5000	$9365	187%