I am very tired. But it was worth it. I’m taking off for the rest of the month on Dec 13 and really wanted to finish the year strong. So I said yes to everything for the past two weeks. And had I the busiest week of my career last week. 

After writing about my record-breaking earnings in November, a lot of people had questions about how I got so many pieces written. So I decided to break down how I wrote 17 pieces in the last week and how I made It financially worth my while. My approach is a little different since I outsource some non-writing tasks. I do not outsource writing since I worry about quality and style but have found that by outsourcing other tasks I can really improve my productivity while writing high-quality posts. 

From Monday to Friday of last week, I wrote 17 blog posts. On Sunday, I wrote a draft of a whitepaper that I had been working on and spent a few hours Monday revising it. I didn’t include that project in this overview since I had been working on the interviews and outline over the past month. But I did want to mention it in full disclosure. 

Even if your approach is a little different, hopefully, you can get some ideas that you can apply to your business since I kept this straightforward. 

Here is an overview of each project and how I approached each one:

4 articles for big tech company through agency 
Scope: 1000 words a piece, no interviews
How I approached the story: I conducted web research myself for two of the topics and was able to write two of the articles mostly off the top of my head from prior knowledge.
How long for each post: I wrote the two less technical posts in 1.5 hours each and the two more technical pieces took me about three hours each for a total of nine hours.
Rate: $2600 total 

3 articles for a new client – working directly with business 
Scope: 750 words a piece, one interview that covered all three pieces (which I completed the week before)
How I approached the story: Paid for human transcription for the interview and then it was very quick to turn the interview into a blog post.
How long for each post: One post took me two hours while the other posts took me an hour each for a total of four hours.
Rate: $1500 total

8 articles for a long-term client through long-term agency client
Scope: 600 words, straightforward, no interviews, client provided a basic outline for about half
How I approached the story: For the stories without the outline, my VA did research on the trends for 2022 and 2023.
How long for each post: 1.5 hours for each post on average for a total of 12 hours
Rate: $4,000 total

2 articles for a client I started working with in October – through agency
Scope: 750 words, no interview, highly technical
How I approached the story: I conducted web research myself to supplement my existing knowledge of the topic.
How Long for each post: Each post took me 3 hours for a total of 6 hours.
Rate: $1500 total

 

My outsourcing costs: 

Proofreading: $800
Transcription: $80
VA Help: 3 hours at $40 an hour for $120 total
Total Costs: $1000 

 

Hours spent writing: 31 hours (not counting the whitepaper)
Total Earnings for the week: $9600
Grand earnings total minus expenses for the week: $8600

Why Outsourcing was the Key 

I have a super simple organizational system. I put my deadlines on my Outlook calendar and then have a To Do list in Word. I think one of the things that made this possible was that these didn’t require interviews or a lot of back and forth. Mainly just writing. And it wouldn’t have been possible for me to get nearly as much done without outsourcing. 

You are likely looking at the $1K outsourcing expense and thinking OMG that’s a lot of money. And yes, it is. However, it’s not that much when compared to the total I earned. It’s 10%, which is very reasonable and likely less than most businesses pay for help. I am also a million and 4566 percent positive that if I had not outsourced any tasks I would have only had a $4K week. There was no way that I could have gotten all of this done by myself. 

Outsourcing works for a number of reasons. The first is that I am paying someone else a lower rate than I earn to do tasks, which frees up my time. The other reason is that it frees up my head space so I can sit down and write making the actual writing much quicker than just the amount of time saved on the research. 

How my VA Made It Possible 

I couldn’t have done last week without my VA. I’ve worked with her for over 6 years and she’s amazing. We have a great system to work together and she knows both my preferences and my subject matter. 

The posts that my VA helped with the most were the eight roundup posts. They were straightforward but required finding five trends in different industries. If I was doing both the research and the writing then I would be switching between the research tasks and the writing, which for me makes it a lot slower. But I was able to simply open up the document with the trends and links to research and then knock out the writing very quickly. With the way my mind works, that makes a huge difference. 

She also was the saving grace with the whitepaper I mentioned as well. I conducted three interviews the week before. She went through the interviews and put the relevant parts of the interview directly into the approved outline. When I sat down to work, I had 6000 words from the interviews, and all I had to do was write it down to 2500 and cut out parts that weren’t relevant. So instead of doing multiple types of tasks, I was able to focus on writing. I wrote the draft in about five hours instead of triple that if I was working through the transcript on my own. And because she was just focusing on putting the content into the outline, it only took her two hours.  

How my Proofreader Made It Possible 

One of the reasons that I am such a fast writer is that my brain moves very fast. And because of that, I am the self-professed typo queen. Almost all of my work involves translating very technical content into real people’s language, so I think that adds to the problem because it takes so much focus. But some of it is just my personality and weaknesses. 

Many years ago, I was getting complaints about typos from clients. And I even lost a few clients over it. I realized that I needed a second set of eyes for everything I sent to a client. I know some writers can proof their own work, but that’s not me. So after a few tries, I found my current proofreader who is excellent and patient with me. And when she’s not available or I need something on the weekend, I use ProofreadNow as a backup. But I much prefer her. 

While I started using a proofreader for quality, I realized another unexpected benefit: increased productivity. Because I wasn’t spending WAY TOO MUCH time trying to do something that I was terrible at (proof my own work). Once I had my proofreader on my team, I was able to really focus on my superpower–writing technical content that people want to read. 

Let’s Talk About Quality 

I’m sure someone out there is saying, I’m sure what you wrote was crappy if you did all that in a week. Nope, it wasn’t. I promise. It was very good. And I’ve already gotten great feedback from clients for last week’s work. With all that I did, the proofreader really helped even more last week. And I don’t expect many (if any) revision requests on these projects. 

I also think that the key was that all of my work was for long-term clients, except for three posts. So I was able to write more quickly because I was familiar with the style and content. Last week would have been hard if not impossible if I was working for mainly new clients on new-to-me topics. 

What Does The Rest Of My Month Look Like?

I could (and actually should) have gotten more work done last week. I have 7 posts due today. And then I’m mostly done for the month. I worked for 5 hours last night and wrote 5 of the roundup blog posts using the research from my VA. So all I need to do today is finish up the last two. And then I’m on vacation. WHOOO HOOO. 

I may pick up some work when I get back if my kids are busy and a client is paying enough to make it worth my while. But I don’t have to work more and will only work if I want to.  I’m going to take the attitude of my college son who likes to say I’m not making plans but will just see where the night takes me. 

I’m glad I said yes last week. I like finishing the year strong. I believe I crossed $200K but haven’t added it all up yet. And even more importantly, I feel like I am in a good position for January. I have three new clients set to start in January–I expect at least one to flake. And several of my current projects appear to be continuing. So that’s a good sign. I think that my push for the last two months really helped set me up for what I think will be a good position for 2023. 

What is your experience with outsourcing? How have you been able to get a lot done in a short amount of time?