Another week, another milestone on Codeable, and another opportunity to put fun charts in a post. These are always my favorite ones to write… To date, I’ve cracked the “tree fiddy” mark for completed projects, made my way into the top 10 developers list, and now I’m pretty damn excited to announce that I have completed over $100,000 of development work (on nearly 400 WordPress projects) as a freelancer.
That’s a lot of zeroes, in not a lot of time. So, how did I reach this milestone in under seven months?
Well, for starters, I got my grind on… I also stayed committed to quality, and chose my clients carefully.
The amount of money I earned varied from project to project, but the bottom line is I never stopped working. Well, I did take four consecutive days off over the holidays, but hey, that’s a special exception, right? Anyways, what I’m trying to say is this all added up to a pretty amazing six-months and twenty-one days for me.
Now, while that fancy graph with the weekly breakdowns looks cool and all, it’s not a very common way to visualize nearly 7-months of data… So, let’s take another look at these numbers, month-by-month this time.
To make a living as a freelancer you must commit to working every day. Or, at least almost every day…
No one’s going to call you to ask where you are, or why you haven’t shown up to sit at your beloved desk from nine-to-five. As a full-time freelancer, there’s absolutely no one forcing you to show up, besides you. It’s now solely your job to keep yourself motivated and on-task every day.
Here’s what my self-motivation, or “days off” per week, looked like from Aug. 2015 through Feb. 2016.
I opened at least one project every single day (Monday through Sunday) in 7 of 30 weeks. There were also six weeks where I closed at least one project every single day.
This non-stop opening and closing of projects overlapped four times, which means I’d both opened and closed at least one project every single day during four of my first thirty weeks.
Work ethic doesn’t just mean chasing down projects. It means getting them completed as efficiently and effectively as possible. The chart below (on the left) shows the breakdown of my average project turnaround time. As you can see, I know how to manage my time to handle projects when they’re flying at me constantly. But when you’re opening and closing this many jobs this quickly, they’re all not going to be career-makers. The chart below (on the right) shows what $100,000 looks like, broken down by average project revenue.
The longest it took me to complete any one single project was a whopping sixty-three days and the biggest website development deal I’ve signed (so far) generated $10,021.10 in revenue for me.
That $10K project sticks out like a sore thumb. A very lucrative, sore thumb (which was split into four phases at $2.5k each). Ten percent of my total income came from about .003% of my projects, but I never got in a position where I had to rely on the occasional white whale to make ends meet.
Here are some additional weekly stats, which can also be found in my income reports:
- Best Week (Opened Projects): $10,097.40
- Best Week (Closed Projects): $7,633.65
- Best Day (Opened Projects): $4,712.25
- Best Day (Closed Projects): $3,585.14
No one could ever accuse me of not being transparent, click here to learn why.
I’ll show you the bad right along with the good. Earlier I mentioned the four day work-free streak, which is a record I never want to break. This is what a bad week looks like for me:
- Worst Week (Opened Projects): $563.56
- Worst Week (Closed Projects): $558.36
Other than a couple small hiccups, the past six months and twenty-one days of freelancing on Codeable has been completely life-changing. And really, this is just the start of my career.
I’ll leave you with one last stat here, undoubtedly the one I’m most proud of:
Number of nine-to-five jobs I was able to leave to become a full-time freelancer: ONE
I couldn’t have reached the $100,000 milestone without the trust of my clients and I’m more motivated than ever to ramp these numbers up even further and see just how far Codeable can take me this year. So, if you’ve got a problem with your WordPress website that needs solving, please get in touch with me today.
Or, if you’d prefer to post your next task publicly and engage in a conversation with both my colleagues and myself on Codeable, I’d encourage you to click here and receive $10 off your next project.
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