My half year check-in

Welcome to Week 41 of my adventure as a member of the Marketing Plan Group. In my posts, I talk about my voyage down the road of self-employment as a website copywriter, my achievements and roadblocks along the way, and what I’m learning from my group experience.

In Ilise’s blog post yesterday, she suggested doing a mid-year check in. So I asked myself, Deidre, how ARE you doing this year? And to be honest, I wasn’t exactly sure.

Fortunately, the handy-dandy reporting tool in Freshbooks had me in the loop within minutes. It verified what I suspected… that I’m about even with where I was last year at this time.

While it’s promising that I’m on track to meet last year’s income, I upped my monthly goal since then -- and that means I’m a few thousand shy of my goal amount. Fortunately, this check in forced me to face that, and now I can modify my marketing efforts accordingly. (If you need help figuring out what you need to do to meet your monthly goal, check out the financial Mad Libs I created. It totally works! )

The good news? In first quarter, I did 8 estimates (of which I got 3 projects). In the second quarter, I did 15 estimates (of which I got 9 so far). I’m still finishing up some of those projects, and I’m anticipating that the third quarter could be my best quarter yet.

So, join me in the sea of financial awareness… What does your half year check-in look like?

Comments

[Emily Lux]

Hi Diedre,

A somewhat off-topic question. You mentioned you used Freshbooks. Do you like it? Do you use a bookkeeping software in addition to this?

I'm in the process of figuring out which way I want to go for bookkeeping/invoicing.

Thanks for your help,
Emily