Let\u2019s walk through the two biggest mistakes and how to fix \u2018em, so that you don\u2019t get stuck in that cycle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/freelancetofreedomproject.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/Michelle-BetterGoals.png\")
<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\nMistake #1: The math just doesn\u2019t add up<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
I see this scenario play out a lot:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n If you consistently don\u2019t meet your income goals, it could be a problem with what you\u2019re doing\u2014but it could just as easily be that the income goal is actual-fax unattainable. Here are a few things to remember:<\/p>\n\n\n\n If your business is service based, you should probably plan for having 15\u201320 billable hours a week. Setting your income goals\/hourly rates based off of a 40 hour work week is a super common, and very big, mistake. You will not<\/em>get 40 hours of billable work done in one week without neglecting your business, period.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As a side note, you should also not set your rates as a direct conversion from an employee\u2019s salary.<\/strong> Not only do freelancers not have 40 billable hours a week, as mentioned, but we also have to pay our taxes, healthcare, etc. out of pocket. If you must try to convert from a salary, take whatever employee hourly rate and double it (at least) before turning it into a freelance hourly rate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Enough said.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n For example, for my freelance writing services, I charge per word, not by the hour. I know that 2,500 words per day is pretty much my absolute max output.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The math that many freelancers would do here looks like this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n But the actual hours don\u2019t break down that way, because I have to do more than write to run a business. <\/strong>If I write that many words in a day, my brain is pretty much kaput. I have maaaaybe an hour of good work left in me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If I was writing 2,500 words every workday, in that leftover hour, to keep my business running, I would need to:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n In theory, I could make that large sum of money every month if I did nothing but worked on client work all day, every day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But if I did that, the following would happen:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n In my case, I can plan at writing that many billable words three days a week, tops, which puts my current freelance income cap at $7,500\/month. That\u2019s gross, not net, so it doesn\u2019t take taxes or other expenses into account. And remember, that\u2019s based on my absolute maximum workload, which doesn\u2019t leave as much time for my creative side projects as I\u2019d like.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If you take all of these factors into account when creating your income goals, I\u2019m willing to bet the number you wind up with will look differently than if you just pick one out of the air based on what sounds good. Make sure that your rates, your income goals, and the amount of work you can <\/strong>actually<\/em><\/strong> do all line up. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n When you set a goal related to your freelancing income, you probably think something like, \u201cI want to get X new clients this month!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n That\u2019s good in theory, but the thing is\u2026when it comes down to it, you don\u2019t have any control at all whether people decide to be clients or not.<\/strong> You can do your 110% best and still not meet that quota, because it\u2019s out of your control.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What happens then?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n You get discouraged and go into the next month frustrated, which makes you less productive, which makes you even less likely to get paying clients.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Instead, you need to put your goal setting focus on the part of the process you can control.<\/strong> Rather than thinking about clients (or subscribers), focus on how many pitches you send per day or per week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This might sound a little more airy-fairy than doing the hard math, but it\u2019s just as important.<\/p>\n\n\n\n By focusing on what you\u2019re in control of, you avoid the disappointing sense of failure if the expected amount of clients doesn\u2019t come through. James Clear discussed a similar idea on his blog,\u00a0talking about schedules vs. goals<\/a>, and credits it as one of the tactics that\u2019s helped him to succeed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is also why, when it comes to income, I measure the amount of billable work I\u2019ve done each day and use that as a way to see if I\u2019m on track to meet this month\u2019s income goals<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I noticed that when I tracked the amount of money that came in on any given day, vs. the amount of work I did, I was much more likely to stay complacent or get discouraged if a payment came through a day or two later than expected.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When I track the amount of work I\u2019m actually doing per day, it\u2019s far more motivating. I can look at it and say, \u201cDang, I totally rocked it out today!,\u201d ending my workday with a sense of accomplishment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Those are the two biggest mistakes I\u2019ve seen freelancers making (and made myself!) when it comes to income goals<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Have you fallen into one of those traps? <\/strong>What did you do to make sure it didn\u2019t happen again?<\/p>\n\n\n\n (image credit:\u00a0The Freelance Planner<\/a>)<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Income goals are one of the very first things people set when they start freelancing. You know you\u2019ve gotta make that money to survive, after all. But the problem is that a lot of freelancers\u2014especially newbie freelancers\u2014go about their income goals the wrong way. That leads to income goals that don\u2019t work out, which leads … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/freelancetofreedomproject.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/freelancetofreedomproject.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/freelancetofreedomproject.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freelancetofreedomproject.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freelancetofreedomproject.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=130"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/freelancetofreedomproject.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/freelancetofreedomproject.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=130"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freelancetofreedomproject.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=130"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freelancetofreedomproject.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=130"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}MISTAKE #2: YOU\u2019RE NOT FOCUSING ON WHAT YOU CONTROL<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Wondering what to do next?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n