One of my biggest freelance turning points came while I was sitting in quiet town in Japan.
I was visiting my brother, spending the days going to festivals and helping him with his voice over side hustle. It was a working vacation and I wanted to enjoy myself, so I only turned on my laptop during those jet lag hours when I was up way too early.
That meant from 4-8AM, I’d get work done, before anybody else even got up.
After a week, I looked back at my hourly rates and realized I was making more than I had been back home in the U.S.
It sounded off at first. Then I realized that I was working for clients who had simple, high-paying pieces. Pieces where I was knocking out $750 to over $1K worth of work in just a few hours.
That realization made me rethink everything.
I started looking at that type of work as a beginning. I didn’t want to do any more of the $300 blogs that took a whole day. I took a step back to look at the type of clients I was working with and the kind of work I was doing in Japan. Then I focused my marketing on bringing in more of that.
That year was the one where I saw a huge income spike that took me consistently over the 6-figure level.
It seems like a basic concept, but if you identify your highest-earning work, examine it, and position yourself to get more of that, you’ll see your hourly average naturally creep (and even jump) up.
It can take a little bit of nuance though, so if you want, come talk it out on the Academy board.
Megan