the monthly TLDR (annual TLDR at the end):

metric	goal	result	percent to goal
pitches	60	81	135%
pieces filed	11	8	73%
conversion rate	18%	10%
estimated payment	$1000	$1551	155%

oh look, a timely monthly recap. no, it didn’t mean that i suddenly got my sh*t together. it meant july was slooooooooow, painfully so.

i saw lots of posts from fellow freelancers on linkedin about things feeling slow, but i’m not sure if there is any validity to summer months being slower than other times of the year. i mean, content still has to go up on sites doesn’t it?

i’m scratching my head because usually higher output with pitches/top of funnel activity will mean things shake out at the bottom. but it’s hard to tell if my pitches were straight up bad, if an editor just never read any of them at all or if they were ok but just not a fit right now. that’s the trickiest bit about freelancing to me, the lack of feedback, which makes it hard to know what to adjust to try to get better results.

all the crickets aside, july wasn’t all bad.

roses:

• i’m walking into august with three assignments, two of which are with two new outlets (!). i’m pretty stoked for both the assignments and the outlets, and hoping i can do a good enough job to get future responses from the editors
• i did get some really nice feedback from one of my editors on a piece. it felt really really good considering the overall lack of response for the month
• my second piece for wine enthusiast went live! i wrote about orgeat and how it’s popping up everywhere on menus
• i had a few “meet and greet” with pr folks and really enjoyed putting a face to a name. i feel like building great relationships with pr folks is a great way to stay in the know and to come up with more story ideas

thorns:

• it sucks to feel like you have a great idea and to not get any response yes or no. i mean, clearly the idea didn’t make an editor excited but there were a few pitches that i was certain i’d pick up
• not hitting my goal. i’m very goal oriented and hard on myself when i don’t hit a goal i set for myself. i’m trying to remind myself that i hit my revenue goal but i think at this point getting more bylines would be more helpful for my future in freelancing? not sure, i don’t know if just a few super high quality bylines matter more than a breadth of bylines.
• not enough time in the day. even though i wasn’t writing as much this month, i never felt like i had enough time to sit and think about ideas. i find when i step away from my computer inspiration often strikes, and i want more time to research meatier feature ideas.
• still didn’t get off the one hit wonder train for every outlet i’ve written for. that will be an ongoing goal until i land something else.

goals for august:

• nail the pieces for the new outlets. like i said, they’re ones i’m really excited about and i really want to show the editors i’m capable. i’m going to try to draft the pieces at least a few days before the deadline to give me ample time to edit
• keep pitching new outlets, ideally 5-10
• do meet and greets with two pr professionals and brainstorm ideas for their clients.

ytd stats!

metric	goal	result YTD	percent to goal
pitches	422	485	115%
pieces filed	77	86	112%
conversion rate	18%	19%	NA
estimated payment	$7000	$14,222	203%