How to make $10k a month as a freelancer? Here are 10 proven strategies on how to make $10k a month as a freelancer, whether you want to work on the go or from home, these strategies are exactly what you need to apply to achieve your goals.
Ten thousand dollars per month means different things in different cities. In San Francisco, you’d fall below the median income. But where I live in Colombia, you’d live like absolute royalty.
It’s safe to say that in most places on earth, $10,000 goes pretty far.
It’s an admirable income goal to shoot for. And in this guide, we’ll explore how to make 10k a month from home (or anywhere in the world) with 10 flexible strategies. Let’s dive in.
How to make $10k a month as a freelancer
There is always more than one way to do something. The goal of this post is to help give you some ideas to get those juices flowing. You can start out with any of the below ideas or branch off and try something new as a freelancer.
Join Oziconnect to offer your services to global clients and start earning while doing what you love
You can also combine some of these ideas below to mix things up and generate income from multiple sources while working as a freelancer. After all, the average millionaire is said to have at least seven income streams.
1. Virtual Assistant
Freelance Virtual assistants do something different every day. However, most of them, especially the ones making top dollar popular freelance platforms, have some sort of specialty. This can include research, customer service, blogging, social media marketing, and email marketing.
If you have in-demand skills or want to learn some, being a freelance virtual assistant could be a great path to get you to 10,000 dollars a month.
This kind of job requires you to market your freelance profile on multiple platforms. In addition to freelance platforms, you’ll need your own website, portfolio, or referral system to keep high-paying work coming in on a regular basis.
Successful freelance virtual assistants are able to multitask, market their business well, learn new skills, and have a constant passion for learning. If you possess these traits you can probably earn a solid living.
How to make $10k a month as a freelancer in the virtual assistant category
Maybe you’re skeptical. Can someone really make $10k as a freelance virtual assistant?
Well, let’s look at some examples.
Here’s a news story of Jemma Broadstock, a (then) 24-year-old pulling in £10,000 a month working 30 hours a week.
There’s also Kayla Sloan. She worked a crappy retail job making barely more than minimum wage. After deciding to pivot into a different career path, she got into virtual assistant work. Her specialty is working with personal finance bloggers.
It took her two years of grinding but she eventually earned $10k a month as a freelancer and a virtual assistant. She still works as a freelance virtual assistant, but she’s also created a course to help you grind to 10k a month from home as a freelance virtual assistant a little easier.
2. Blogging
Blogging is one of my favorite ways to make money. You create the content you enjoy, monetize however you want, and experience all of the joys of owning your own business without a lot of hassle.
Granted, there can be some stress. Many folks start blogging as a hobby. After they make a few bucks, they realize they’re sitting on a gold mine. And as one of history’s wisest men explains…
The more you treat your blog as a business, the more business-like problems are going to come along with it.
You’ll have to create a content schedule. You may have to hire writers, editors, and social media managers.
However, when it comes to blogging, you can control your growth. This is one of the ways it differs from a traditional business. And you can stall your growth as you see fit. But if you want to hit the 10,000 dollars a month mark, you’ll be grinding hard.
This may include:
✔️ Having regularly scheduled blog posts
✔️ An email list (and actually using it)
✔️ Promoting your website on social media throughout the day
✔️ Engaging with your audience
✔️ Fighting for the top position in Google search results
There are many paths to success, but this one is one of the most promising for 2022.
Also read: Freelance Writing Rates: 3 Tips On How Much You Should Charge as a Freelance Writer
How to make $10k a month as a freelancer from blogging
Ten thousand dollars per month is over a six-figure salary.
There are plenty of bloggers at this level (and far beyond it). But 99% give up before reaching this point.
There are blogs earning five figures per month in many different niches.
Once you dive down the rabbit hole, you’ll also find many bloggers who own multiple blogs.
So instead of one ginormous blog earning $10,000, you might find people who have three blogs that earn several thousand dollars each.
Once you master the formula and have extra cash flow from your first site, you can re-invest it into growing additional sites
3. Drop Servicing
Drop servicing is similar to starting an agency. You sell a digital service at premium prices, then you turn around and outsource the work to a team of freelancers willing to work for less.
For example, let’s say you’re a freelance writer. And you’re busy. Congrats on being great at your job.
But the problem that comes with being great at a job is demand for your service goes up. Your schedule is packed.
So you decide to start outsourcing some of your work. The cheaper stuff. The stuff any writer can do.
You realize that while you aren’t making as much, you are essentially creating an income source that’s mostly passive. You earn as the middleman (or woman).
Now you decide to start an agency. You bring in some independent contractors to write the stuff you aren’t interested in writing. The business grows and you start offering extra services.
The problem is you know nothing about these other services.
Fortunately, with drop servicing, you don’t have to. You just need to hire freelancers who do.
Why isn’t everyone doing this? Well, it’s kind of hard. One of the hardest parts of being a freelancer is landing high-paying clients. And as a drop servicer, you have to master the art.
How to make $10k a month as a freelancer from drop servicing
Find out what you need to do to make $1,000 a month in profit, then just 10x it.
Let’s use the above example of outsourcing your writing work.
You make $0.25 cents per word. You know other freelancers who work for $0.03 per word. When you outsource, you end up earning $220 for every 1k words. In this case, you’ll probably have quite a bit of editing to do. But if you’re willing to take lower margins, you can hire more expensive writers that don’t require as much oversight.
Once clients start rolling in, hire some more writers. Rinse and repeat until you hit your desired level of income.
After a while, hire editors and a content manager to run the business for you and you’ll have a completely passive income source.
Writing is just one example. This works in a variety of drop servicing niches — website design, animated videos, SEO services, etc. You just have to make sure the numbers work.
4. Amazon FBA
There are a ton of people making money on Amazon. Most of them aren’t employees. I’m talking about FBA, which is an acronym for “fulfilled by Amazon”.
Here’s how it works.
☑️ You find a low-competition product that’s selling well on Amazon (among other criteria).
☑️ You find a supplier — oftentimes in China — who makes the product.
☑️ You slap your logo on it, make improvements, order inventory, and ship it to Amazon warehouses.
Amazon takes care of everything from there — orders, fulfillment, shipping, returns, etc. — for a fee.
If done correctly, this can end up being a great way to make $10,000 a month in passive income. At least relatively passive.
The problem is, it’s easy to screw up if you go it alone (been there, done that). To start on the right foot, check out this free Amazon FBA masterclass.
I also recently took the MPSH course, which I highly recommend. For an inside look, see my Marketplace Superheroes review.
How to make $10k a month as a freelancer on Amazon
For Amazon FBA to be worth it, you need to find the right products.
You want products with decent sales volume, but not too much competition. This gives you the chance to rank in the top of Amazon search results when someone searches for your product.
You can boost your income even further by selling in multiple countries.
For example, let’s say you sell seven products in five countries. Each product has a profit margin of $15 on average. To make $10,000 a month on Amazon, you’d need to sell roughly 19 units of each product per day, per country.
That might seem like a lot but think about it. There just needs to be 19 people in an ENTIRE COUNTRY that are searching for your product on Amazon each day.
If you offer a product that ranks #1 and is a bit better than your competitors, this is perfectly feasible.
And there is no limit to the number of products you can sell.
5. Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is a beautiful thing. You partner with a brand. Then this brand gives you a link. When your audience clicks on this link and makes a purchase, you receive a commission of the sale at no additional cost to the customer.
Just don’t be that person who pimps a bunch of scammy garbage links. You’ll lose your readership and may even get penalized by search engines. Focus on quality products and services that you believe in and mention them casually. Don’t be pushy.
Better yet, start by focusing on only products you use and love yourself.
How to earn $10k a month as a freelancer from affiliate marketing
Bloggers and YouTubers are usually the people who reap the most benefit from affiliate marketing. It’s a versatile monetization strategy because it gives creators with smaller audiences the ability to bring in some cash.
Once you grow your audience, this income will usually grow with it.
My favorite types of affiliate programs are (1) high ticket items and (2) recurring services.
With high ticket items, you only need to refer a few customers to make a decent income. For example, if you promote a $1,000 digital product, you might earn a $500 commission per referral. For $10K, you’d need 20 referrals per month.
With recurring services, even cheap services, things can snowball over time. For example, I love Safetywing travel insurance and use it myself. I’m an affiliate and promote the program as much as possible. Here’s a screenshot of how my earnings have grown over the past year.
When someone signs up through my affiliate link, I only earn a few bucks. But I keep earning those few bucks every month until the person cancels their service. So instead of a bunch of one-off sales, it compounds as more people sign up long-term.
Another popular recurring affiliate opportunity is website hosting, but it’s uber-competitive.
6. Freelancing
As a freelancer, you offer services to businesses as an independent contractor.
There are LOADS of freelancing paths, here are the best ones for beginners.
That said, not all of these services will get you to $10,000 per month.
Just remember, there are three main factors that influence how much you can earn in any given freelancing field:
#1.) How valuable your service is to your clients
#2.) How irreplaceable you are
#3.) Knowing just how valuable and irreplaceable you are, and finding clients who recognize that value
For example, freelance proofreading is a great freelance job for beginners. But since the bar of entry is so low (i.e., knowing grammar rules), you’re easily replaceable by someone who charges less.
Certain types of freelance writing, on the other hand, require more specialized skills, offer higher ROI for clients, and are harder to replace.
For example, Let’s say a freelance copywriter writes a sales page that generates $10 million in sales for a company. That piece of writing is extremely valuable to the company, and it would be harder to replace that copywriter with someone else who can achieve the same results.
Also read: 5 Steps To Create Freelance Services to Make it Easier for Clients to Hire You
How to make $10k a month as a freelancer from freelancing
Copywriting is the easiest example to imagine. Going back to our example — if you spend a week writing that $10 million sales page, it wouldn’t be unheard of to charge $10,000 for your services.
After all, the company is essentially 100x-ing the money they invest in your writing services.
But even “content writers” can earn $10,000 per month. By content writing, I’m talking about freelancers who write articles and blog posts like what you’re currently reading.
Take me for example. I currently earn $250 to $500 per article, and I can comfortably write two articles per day (maybe even three if they are short-and-sweet). If I write two articles per day at my minimum rate, it’d take 20 days to hit $10,000.
Now, doing that much client work would drive me absolutely bonkers (and wouldn’t leave me time for Project Untethered), so I choose to work part-time.
But if push comes to shove and I need $10k in a month, the numbers work out.
It’s taken me several years to get to this point, but everyone needs to start somewhere. If freelance writing sounds up your alley, I made a free course explaining how to make your first $1k, step-by-step.
7. Course Creator
No one comes out of the womb knowing how to make money. It’s an environmental thing. We learn through trial and error. In my case, there has been a lot of error. And that’s ok.
I eventually realized that it makes way more sense to pay someone to teach you whatever you want to learn. You save time (and time is money). And you avoid potentially expensive mistakes.
The thing is, anyone can create a course. So if you’ve figured something out that other people might want to learn, you could become a course creator.
And remember, there are over 8 billion people on the planet. So even if you have a niche skill, odds are there are other people on the planet who would be interested.
How to make $10k a month as a freelancer selling courses
In the virtual assistant section, I talked about Kayla Sloan, who makes $10,000 a month from home as a VA.
She is also a course creator. Her course teaches others how to be successful VAs so they don’t have to go through all of the hardship she did.
If her goal is to make $10k a month from home as a course creator, she only has to sell 20 courses a month.
The best part is you can create a course once, and you can earn passively indefinitely (as long as you keep it updated and the demand to learn the skill continues)
8. Consulting
Consulting is a great path for people who want to use skills they already possess to go to work for themselves.
Consulting boils down to giving advice and it is seen frequently in business. If your business needs help with accounting, logistics, whatever, you can find a consultant for it.
And you don’t need to be some sort of business or marketing expert either.
I’ve met an entrepreneur who runs a holistic health consulting business, and another who offers virtual voice coach consulting.
That said, like freelancing, the more value you provide, the more your clients will be willing to pay.
If you’re confused about how consulting works, this short video explains it well:
How to earn $10k a month as a freelancer from consulting
To pull in 10 grand per month as a consultant, you need two ingredients:
#1.) Expertise that solves an important problem.
#2.) Marketing skills to keep your schedule full.
Let’s say you live abroad and offer consulting services to Americans who need help planning their move to a different country.
You charge $120 per 60-minute consultation. To reach your income goal, you’d need to schedule three consultations per day.
Unless you’re famous in your industry, this might be a tall order.
One way to supplement your consulting income is to create an online course option. Clients can choose to pay more to work with you directly, or if they’re on a budget, they can buy your cheaper DIY course.
9. Investing
Investing lets you put your money to work for you.
You can buy stocks and forget about them. You can play options, forex, or futures markets. There is a little something for everyone.
Strategies vary from person to person.
If you don’t know much about the markets and have no intention of learning, you have exchange-traded funds or robo advisors.
Different strategies have different risk levels. And oftentimes, the greater the risk, the greater the reward.
I’m obviously not a financial advisor, so always do your due diligence. I highly recommend reading The Boglehead’s Guide to Investing. It’s a great place to start your journey.
What I can tell you with certainty is — if you’re not investing in anything, you’re missing out on passive money-making opportunities.
How much to invest to make 10k a month?
Investing in companies you understand and believe is usually a good idea.
The average 20-year return in the stock market as a whole is around 10% per year. Investing in mutual funds and ETFs allows you to diversify your investment and mimic a large portion of the market.
If you want this 10% return to equal $120,000 (or $10k a month), it’s going to take some serious upfront cash. You’ll need a minimum of $1.2 million to earn this kind of pay.
For most people, this isn’t possible.
Fortunately, you can start investing with any amount of money. The earlier you start, the more your investment has time to compound.
Start slow. Add money to your 401(k) and your Roth. As your money grows, you can branch out into a regular brokerage account. These investments will snowball in the long run.
10. Multiply your income streams
Nothing is stronger than finding multiple ways to make money and then combining them all.
This is especially true with passive income streams.
You can use affiliate marketing with blogging and YouTube. You can also leverage your audience to sell online courses and consulting.
When you have the income machine up and running. Start something new. Perhaps an Amazon FBA store or a drop servicing business.
Be patient. It won’t happen overnight and don’t try to do everything at once. But if you slowly build up one income stream after the other — grinding away and never giving up — reaching $10K per month is inevitable.
Frequently asked questions
Is 10K a month rich?
The world’s average salary is $1,480 per month, which means $10K is considered rich in most places. But in some cities, it could be considered below average. For example, in San Francisco, the median family income was $135,968 in 2019. This is well over $10K per month.
How can I make $10,000 quickly?
One of the fastest ways to make $10,000 is to sell all of your stuff. If you like your stuff and would prefer to keep it, figure out the highest-value service you can sell. Reach out to your network, market yourself, and find people who need that service.
How much do I need to make a day to make 10K a month?
In a 30-day month, you’d need to earn $333.33 per day to make 10K per month. That is assuming you work every single day. Working a five-day workweek, or 20 days per month, you’d need to earn $500 a day.
How to make 10K a month with real estate?
There are several ways to make 10K a month with real estate. One would be with a portfolio of 33 rental units that earn $300 per unit per month. Another would be to flip one house for a $20K gain every two months. These figures do not account for taxes.
Credit: Projectuntethered
Comments on “How to make $10k a month as a freelancer: 10 Proven Strategies”