Do you have recurring revenue in your biz?

Jenni Gritters
4 min readAug 9, 2024

There’s this secret that high-paid freelancers and creators are keeping. And I want to let you in on it.

It’s called recurring revenue.

Let me back up: When you start working for yourself, many of us (myself included) begin by taking on projects — or gigs. For most of us, being a freelancer means juggling. If you’re a freelance writer, you’re probably working on dozens of projects at the same time. Same goes for programmers or digital content creators.

The problem with this method is that it works for a little while. For three or so years, most of us are able to sustain that conveyer belt of projects. But slowly, we start to get tired. I mean, who can run on a treadmill for that long? When we get tired, or we try to exhale, it also means we stop chasing down projects.

And you know what happens next: Revenue slows, or sometimes stops altogether.

It can seem like you’ve built a business monster that requires you to stay engaged every single second of the day. If you step away, you stop earning and you can’t pay your bills. So you run and run and run and run.

It’s a hamster wheel. It feels awful, mentally and physically.

About a year into my journey, I realized that 6-figure freelancers and creators were doing something different: Most of them had recurring clients. By this I mean that they had clients who gave them work over and over again. Some of these freelancers were on retainer

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Jenni Gritters

I’m a writer and business coach for freelance creatives based in Central Oregon. I write about the psychology of small business ownership.