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When I first started as a writer, I used to have daily earning goals for all jobs. Here’s why I used them, and why I don’t need them now.
There are a lot of questions when you start writing. One of those is going to be about rate of pay, and that means knowing how much you need to make each month. When I first started writing, I had to work out a daily earning goal. This was the best way to figure out how much work I needed to do each day.
It wasn’t something I had to do all the time. In fact, I don’t set a goal anymore, but every now and then, I’ll go back to the process.
How to set daily earning goals
Just how do you go about setting your daily earning goals? Well, you need your monthly income needs first. This is going to be broken down into the number of days you’re going to work that month. For example, there may be 30 days in September, but are you really going to work all those 30 days? Chances are you’re going to work 22 days (that’s all the week days) so you can take weekends off.
So, if you have a monthly goal of $1,000 from your writing work, you’ll need to divide that by 22 and not by 30. That gives you the goal of earning $45.46.
This is the amount of paid work you need to do each day to meet your monthly goal. If you miss out on the goal one day, you’ll need to add that amount to the rest of the days left. If I went over, I wouldn’t shorten the daily goal the rest of the month. I’d take the extra.
Why I had the daily earning goal
There were a few reasons the daily earning goals helped me with writing. It would give me a focus for the day to make sure I did as much work as necessary.
That’s changed a lot now. I don’t do a lot of work that pays upfront as I work with pay-per-view or through affiliate marketing. It’s much harder to do daily earnings with those types of payment systems in mind. However, when I did mostly private client work that paid upfront, the daily goals helped because:
- It would push me to work harder
- I felt like I contributed more to the household, which encouraged me to keep going
- I gained confidence in my business
- It could help me get back on track if I took breaks
- It would stop me from worrying too much each month
Why I no longer set the daily goal
Over the years, I’ve changed the way that I work. I don’t set daily goals anymore. At one point, I returned to it. I’d just come back off maternity leave with my second child and I was pushing the business to be the sole income earner when my family and I all moved internationally.
Even thought I’m now the sole income earning after splitting with my ex, I still don’t need the daily earning goals. After being in the business since 2010, I know how much work I can do in a day. I roughly know how much I’m going to make each month with residual income and affiliate marketing. There’s not as much pressure to make a set amount of money with private clients.
If I go back to mostly working with private clients who pay per article, I’ll certainly consider the move back to daily goals. For now, I just don’t need it.
MORE: Why you need to create a writing portfolio
How do you set your earning goals? Do you think daily earning goals will help you? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
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