May Freelance Earnings: 10x My Job’s Salary from 6 Income Streams
How you can publish on different platforms and diversify your writing portfolio.
I’ve heard it said over and over again that relying on a single source of income is never a good idea
Even though your workplace promises security, if you lose your job due to whatever reasons like a deadly global pandemic or a global recession or the mention of the country’s economy, you’ll have nothing to fall back upon
And that’s why it’s always best to work on multiple sources of income.
This post is about how I developed six sources of income aside from the salary of my day job. I’m going to give you a detailed breakdown of where I worked, and how I managed to earn that money.
But before we get started, let me clarify what is it that I actually do.
I’m a writer and most of my income streams are from writing-related avenues. Here, I’m only discussing a breakdown of my income streams, and not sharing the exact amount. If you’re curious about the details, you can read this breakdown I did for my January income.
Times have changed since then and I’ve added a few more hundreds to that number. My methods have also changed, and that’s what I wanted to share in detail in this post.
Before we proceed, if you’d like to watch this in video format, here’s a link:
Stream One: Medium Partner Program
The first income stream, of course, is writing on Medium.
If you’ve been following my articles for a while, you’d know that I’ve been writing on Medium for about a year now. It still makes up a huge chunk of my monthly income.
May was especially good because Medium decided to reward the top 1000 writers on the platform with an extra $500 bonus for “high member engagement.”
This was a pleasant surprise. Thanks to this bonus, the income that I made from Medium made about 23% of my total monthly income.
Stream Two: NewsBreak
The second stream that I had was NewsBreak.
I have already made a video about NewsBreak: what it is and how you can earn money from NewsBreak as a writer. You can watch it here:
NewsBreak a pretty great platform for writers from all over the world to start earning money from their stories.
May was a pretty good month because I managed to make about the full amount that you can make from the base pay. The earnings from NewsBreak amounted to 32% of my total income for the month of May.
Stream Three: Freelance Client
The third stream of income was from my freelance client.
I’ve said this before I’d say it again: I’ve been extremely lucky because I landed this freelance client just by writing on Medium.
I submitted a few stories to a particular publication, and the owner of the publication really liked my writing. They asked me if I’d be interested in doing a gig for them.
It sounded too good to be true, so, of course, I agreed.
I started part-time, but it’s been more than six months now, and the journey has been Incredible. The kind of articles I get to write for them matches the niche I love writing: which is self-improvement and personal development.
It has been a rewarding experience. The money that I earn from them helped make up 32% of my total income for the month of May.
Stream Four: Coaching and Consulting
The next stream of income comes from my coaching and consulting clients.
In May, I didn’t actively promote my coaching or consulting services. Most of the offers are from messages that came to me on LinkedIn.
I’ve been posting pretty frequently on LinkedIn and the engagement there has been great. I got several messages saying, “Hey, I’d like to have you as my mentor,” or, “Hey, I’d love it if you could help me edit this article.”
The income was pretty passive and it wasn’t much, but I’m still grateful because this made up about 4% of my income for May 2021.
Stream Five: Brand Collaborations from Swapstack
If you don’t know about Swapstack yet, it’s an amazing platform where writers who have newsletters can connect with sponsors. You can read more about how the platform works here:
Basically, there’s a list of brands, and among them, you can choose the ones whose vision aligns with the tastes of your audience. In exchange for a pre-decided amount of money, you can write a few words in your newsletter with a signup link to whatever this brand is selling. You can make a quite decent amount of money from that.
If you’re a writer who has a newsletter and are interested in selling ad space in your newsletter to suitable sponsors, you should definitely join Swapstack today.
I signed up on Swapstack in late April and was lucky to find three sponsors for my newsletter. The income that I made from these collaborations made up about 6% of my total income for May.
Stream Six: Miscellaneous
The last 3% of my income came from miscellaneous sources. These include:
- Book sales
- Sponsored collaborations on Quora
- Earnings from Quora Spaces, etc.
I don’t actively request sponsored collaborations. All of these came from being active on social media platforms.
If I see a message from a brand or company whose vision aligns with what I usually write, I usually take it up because it’s always a great opportunity to meet new brands, have interesting conversations with the founders, as well as earn some extra income on the side.
Plans for June
I’m happy to share that for June and onwards, I’ve signed on another freelance client. I am also taking up a new business venture, so it’s going to be a pretty wild ride. My earnings are going to be different as well.
I also plan to spend a little less time on Medium and a little more time discovering other platforms. If you’re wondering what platforms I’m going to try, here’s a hint:
I’m also going to seek out more high paying gigs and find clients who are looking for exactly the kind of articles I love writing.
Summarizing
The pandemic made me realize the importance of having multiple streams of income. No matter how “secure” your job might be, if you have nothing to fall back upon, how will you deal with unforeseen circumstances?
Since I’ve made the decision to seriously pursue freelance writing, I’ve worked on building multiple sources of income. May 2021 was a great month and the breakdown looks like this:
- Medium partner program: 23%
- NewsBreak: 32%
- Writing for my freelance client: 32%
- Brand collaborations from Swapstack: 6%
- Coaching and consulting: 4%
- Miscellaneous (book sales, paid partnerships, Quora Spaces, etc.): 3%