Freelance Writing Schedules

In the beginning, I allowed myself to be overwhelmed because I was accepting as many opportunities to write as possible while spending large amounts of time to make each article exactly perfect...constantly second guessing myself and altering my work. Today I can complete 4 articles an hour for active income sites like TextBroker while in the beginning I was lucky to complete one. The same thing goes for passive income sites like Suite101. I'd spend all day rewriting, changing and second guessing myself. I was lucky to submit an article a week to just one of these revenue sites. Add in my first private client writing job and I was spending 18 hours a day in front of my computer. Yuck! Isn't one of the perks of freelance writing avoiding long, drawn out work days?

Being the avid researcher that I am, I took a day off and spent that entire day reading and taking notes from various freelance writer blogs on both scheduling and writing articles maintaining quality while banging out quantity. NoJobForMom is an excellent source of information about several aspects of freelance writing.

Once I had a general idea of how to plan out my freelancing time, I set to work making a schedule that worked for me. The very first thing I did was decide what my weekly, monthly, yearly and long term goals were. Then I chose the sites I would concentrate most on and the amount of time and number of articles I needed to complete to produce an income...both passive and active.

So here's my daily schedules and weekly checklist for my freelance writing career. Nope, I do not always meet my own expectations but the days like that are coming few and far between. Because my family and home are my number one obligations, there are days were nothing is completed because of appointments, illness and things like that. But for the most part, I accomplish every day what I set out to complete and therefore my goals are being met. Don't be surprised to see that sometimes I spend five days a week putting in at least 8 hours a day. Making freelance writing a successful career is my goal and putting in time and effort is the only way to accomplish that.

Two important side notes: Besides emails, stats and playing catch up if I skipped a weekday of work...I rarely work on Saturdays. I devote this day to family fun! Sunday evening is my research time where I plan out my passive articles using the Google AdWords Keyword Tool to determine hot topics and keywords. I also locate any pictures that I may use as well as reliable sources for information. I also plan out my topics and keywords for my private clients that allow my to choose what I will write about each week. I spend no more than two hours on Sunday devoted toward research and compile all of my information in a Excel Spreadsheet.

Daily Rough Schedule

• Check emails for any work information including weekly topics from private clients, check submitted articles stats for revisions, and check page stats (views, revenue totals) on other sites.
• Complete any necessary revisions. If I feel the revisions will take too long and cut into my other writing obligations, I release the titles.
• Check active income sites such as TextBroker and DemandStudios for article topics. If there are topics I can write about quickly and effectively, I usually spend about no more than an hour at these sites or four articles per site. I do not exceed an hour no matter how many topics I have been able to complete. On average, because of a recent decline in article availability I try to spend an hour at a minimum of two sites but this doesn't always happen.
• Depending on how many articles I have to produce that week for private clients, I map out the amount of time it should take me to complete them in five days. Usually an hour a day is enough to produce top quality assignments for these clients.
• I spend about an hour a day on this blog. This doesn't just include postings but researching tips, advice, tutorials and courses on creating a successful blog and then implementing any ideas.
• Lastly, I work on my passive income articles. This gets the majority of my time because my long term goals revolve around living well off passive income only.

Weekly

• At least one passive income article at each site I contribute to.
• Complete all articles for private clients.
• Complete the 4 article an hour per day at two sites guideline I implemented to keep a steady source of active income coming in for my family.
• Complete spreadsheet of article ideas, images and keywords for future reference. By keeping a spreadsheet of topics including specific keywords, photos, and reference this makes writing the articles much easier.
• Fill in my page view and revenue weekly/monthly/ three month spreadsheets for my passive income articles.
• Complete my weekly spreadsheet of my received income so I can calculate my expected quarterly taxes and other financial information.

Of course, this is just what works for me. I have found that by viewing other people's schedules, I can adapt their ideas into something that works for me. My rough schedule allows me to have a steady source of both active and passive income.