And you know I feel your motivational pain, Lori. 🙂

My August isn't all that booked yet. I'm hopeful, but it's a case of the lazies combined with a vacation coming up. Hard to get motivated. 🙂

Luckily, August is booked, which is part of my problem. I'll have a bad month that I know is followed by a good month, so I'm not that motivated during the bad month.

Oh, well. I'm TRYING to get myself back on track!

But still… ouch.

This is a busy week, but I could use a little break so here's my assessment:

Queries & LOIs: Sent batches of ideas to Favorite Editor and Those Who Would Be Favorites If The Company Paid Faster. Favorite Editor should be assigning soon. TWWBFITCPF are the ones keeping me busy this week. They assigned me three articles, including a really fun, quick profile I turned in Monday that will run in a couple of days.

Existing Clients: The three assignments from TWWBFITCPF and a local client kept me hopping. I also did three more copywriting assignments for a still fairly new client and four short articles for a local publication. I only wrote two or three columns.

New Clients: Had a new résumé client. Sent an article to a new client who jerked me around on the fee. I was going by his posted "per word" rate, but he said that's for the "print edition" (which doesn't exist!), and the "online rate" was 1/4 of the stated fee. On the positive side, one of the local projects resulted in a viable lead – a marketing person at the regional medical school needs to replace a freelancer who's retiring.

Earnings: Sent invoices adding up to approximately my monthly goal, but only received payments for about 1/3 of my goal. Still waiting on $1650 for my June assignments for TWWBFITCPF (based on the new payment system, I should be paid within a couple more weeks). And am working on (or just finished and have yet to invoice) projects totaling 3/4 of my monthly goal.

Bottom Line: existing clients are great. But they're even better when they pay quickly. I'm trying to view the new owner's slow payment system as bonus funds, since I still need to work on assignments to pay the bills while I wait for them to pay me.

Cathy, I was merely the messenger. Jake deserves all the credit. 🙂 Great month for you – congrats!

I'm meeting target. I have two checks that should arrive any day now. I FINALLY got a late payment (2 months late) so that frustration is over.

New Clients Thanks to pals like you, Lori, & Jake, I landed a new client that I am hoping brings more work in the future. The 1st assignment was more aggressive than I like for a timeline, but it paid well, the deposit came quickly, and they were responsive. Thank you again, Lori & Jake!!

Existing Clients Long-time clients keep me in work. I am finishing up a white paper, blog posts, and ghostwritten articles.

In the hopper already are more blog posts (a regular, monthly gig), another ghostwritten article, a resource document, and an inquiry about increased projects for the last quarter of the year when the marketing director goes out on maternity leave. Bring it.

Marketing I've made two good industry contacts. I hope to meet someone face-to-face I've been courting when I go to San Francisco in September.

I'm also hoping to get in on some action locally for the insurance exchanges.

Bottom line It's all good. 🙂