Hi Shelly. Thanks for reading!

You’re right that I don’t make $50/ hour on every assignment, otherwise this math wouldn’t make sense. Unfortunately, it’s not quite that simple to math out. I make at least $50 an hour per assignment, but for most of my work these days I’m making around $200 an hour, depending upon how fast I finish each assignment. Because all of my assignments are paid per story, not per hour, the math for every assignment is different. (Ie. my columns can take just 2–3 hours to do, which ends up being about $250/ hour, whereas I might work on a longer reported feature that maths out to more like $60/ hour after all is said and done). I hope that helps to clarify. And it’s worth noting that my work for Medium (not this post, but my writing for Elemental magazine) is paid, not through the partner program but through assignments and contracts that are up to $1/ word.

I also don’t do any marketing (all of my assignments so far have come through referrals, with an occasional assignment coming from me responding to job boards) and my accounting and admin are pretty quick, usually about 20 minutes per day. I anticipate this changing, as I’ve heard people typically need to spend more time marketing in year two. I’ve published another piece about a typical day, which might be helpful to see.

Also, I am the primary breadwinner in my family and am not relying on a significant other’s income. My husband is a nurse.