Hello! This is A-Mail, a newsletter about the chaos™️ of modern work and my attempt to make sense of it.

📢 Before I get into this week’s post, which is all about 💰money💰, Léo Hamelin, who’s been illustrating this newsletter for the last five years, is up for TWO Webby Awards for her documentaries!! The deadline for voting closes TODAY and I’d super appreciate it if you’d please vote for her films, Hooked: Another Kind of High, in the weird category and Fun & Dying in the longform category. THANK YOU. Ok, on with the show…

It’s been a long time since I talked about how I make money as a freelance writer!

I’ve had my nose in my accounting books recently because it’s a new financial year here in the UK and, for the first time in my six years of self-employment, I’m determined to file my taxes early (I’ll get back to you on how that one goes…). Regardless, I was busy making the pivot table of my various income streams and I thought you’d be interested to read about how I’ve been making money lately.

I usually preface any posts about money with a “privilege paragraph” crammed with a million disclaimers about luck, economic inequalities, the difference between revenue vs profit, etc etc but I’m not going to do that today. All I will say is this:

1. This is how I make my money

2. I’m sharing this because I think you might find it helpful (or maybe you’re just nosey, I’m also fine with that)

3. I’m not a financial advisor

So here is how I made money from January to April of this year.

📈 Active revenue streams

1. Client work (>90%)

Towards the end of last year, I decided to double down on client work and that’s reflected in the fact that over 90% of my income this quarter has come from two clients.

I got pretty burned out last year (who didn’t!!). So I made the decision to take a step back from “public-facing” work like writing for mags and rags, podcasting, this newsletter or anything else that requires me to either do something on the internet or tell the internet that I’ve done something.

Working online often feels like sweating it out as a chef in an open kitchen – it’s hard work, you’re always simmering close to boiling point and sometimes you get tomatoes thrown at you.

I needed a breather, so I actively sought out “private work” – things that I get paid to do but no one other than my clients see. Or, what most normal people just call “work”.

I have two clients that I’m working with on a retainer basis; I have a set number of days for both each month. A fancy way of describing the work I’m doing is content consultancy. What that means in practice is that, for one client, I launched a newsletter for them from scratch and for the other, I’m helping them streamline their content production process.

I got both of these gigs through my network. One came via a friend who I called up directly and asked to help me find work. The other came through a call-out I saw in networking group I’m in.

2. Journalism (<10%) 

I’ve only written one feature so far this year, a piece for the New York Times on Annie Mac's early club night. And so less than 10% of my income came from journalism this quarter.

It was a joyous, thrilling piece to work on. I actually left my house (who is she??) to do this thing called ~reporting~ in nightlife venues of all places. It was the most fun I’ve had working on a piece of journalism in ages. It was a chonky piece to work on, with a rigorous editing process from one of my favourite editors. It was thrilling.

I know some freelance writers write way more pieces than I do in a week let alone a quarter, but that’s just not my jam. Firstly, I just can’t write that fast! I’ve always been a slow reader and I’ve come to accept that I’m also a slow writer. It’s quite frustrating because my mind works at lightning speed, but it’s just another contradiction that makes up who I am.

I’m also a brat when it comes to journalism. There are very few publications I’m prepared to write for because I like to be edited. And I mean EDITED. The more intensely, the better. NO ONE EDITS A-MAIL. (Shout out to the reply guy who emails me whenever he sees a typo). So when I write for an outlet, I want to be torn to shreds, my darlings murdered and be left covered in proverbial red pen. I tell myself it’s because I want to improve as a writer, but maybe I’m just a masochist.

And so, any time I’ve tried to make enough money from just journalism, I’ve just been too stressed out. I personally find it more comfortable (and reliable) to make my money elsewhere and then do my journalism around that. That arrangement used to make me mad about the state of the media and also doubt my own abilities, but I’ve had to make peace with it.

3. Book and magazine royalties (<5%)

My book was my smallest income stream this quarter, making up less than 5%.

In March, I got one of two yearly payouts from the Author's Licensing and Collecting Society for secondary use of my book and magazine articles I've written.

(If you’re a writer and you haven’t signed up for the ALCS, you are LEAVING MONEY ON THE TABLE!! You don’t have to be an author of books either, magazine articles and scripts also get payouts).

While my book made me the least amount of money this quarter, that income was for the least amount of work. I did nothing book-related this quarter – this is just a payout I get because people are making copies of my book and borrowing it from the library. There’s a get-rich-quick scheme the passive income gurus don’t tell you about!!

It’s also worth pointing out that I'm still yet to “earn out” my book advance and get paid any royalties for its DIRECT sales. Oh hey, have you ordered your copy yet?

🔍 Work I did in Q1 but haven’t been paid for 

4. Public speaking

I did one speaking gig towards the end of this quarter, which I haven’t been paid for yet. I was turning down invites for these kinds of things for the aforementioned hot kitchen reason, but have finally felt able to start doing them again recently. And it feels SO GOOD.  

📉 Dormant revenue streams

Content marketing

This quarter, I didn’t do any content marketing (feature writing for non-journalism companies). Historically, I’ve made decent cash doing it, but I’ve found that while it pays better than journalism, it still suffers from the irregularity issue. I think it’s already clear that this season has been all about stability for me.

Podcast

I’ve made money podcasting in two ways before – the most lucrative being when a production company approached me to host one of their shows. I’ve also made some money from my own podcast, but we haven’t put out a new season in a really long time.

My co-host, Tiffany Philippou, and I regularly talk about making some more episodes, but it just keeps not happening. We both really want to but other things get in the way and it just slips further down the priority list. Our podcast has always been such a joyful, creative project for me, (it only ever brought in enough money to cover its costs) and I really miss making it.

It’s a good lesson in how you can do anything, but not everything.

Newsletter

I didn't make any income from this newsletter in Q1 because I didn’t tell anyone that they could support my work directly. 🥲

So consider this my pitch.

If you like this newsletter, you can pay what you like to support it. It’s a practical way of showing the value you get from my work.

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Despite the payment mechanism being on a monthly/yearly cycle, I don’t view it as a subscription. I see it as patronage; more like arts funding rather than a business transaction.

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But how much did I actually make this quarter?

Income reports. What a desperately dry financial statement. They’re usually stuffed with tables and graphs and while the insight it gives you is vital, it’s void of any emotion.

Whether we like it or not, money is emotional. I talk openly about money in my offline life, but I don’t feel good about doing so on the internet because I know that salaries and incomes, no matter what they are, always elicit a response in people. And while I’m feeling much better about getting back online, I’m not quite there yet.

So I’m going to publish my figures, but I’m only doing so for paying readers. Below is my version of an income report, which includes my total revenue, costs and profit for this quarter. It also includes my Financial Feelings Analysis™️, which I personally think is a lot more valuable than the raw numbers. I’m also opening comments just for paying subscribers to ask me anything about my money and how I make it.