Creating Consistent Monthly Income in Your Creative Business: Break Out of Feast & Famine
Have you ever found yourself riding a financial rollercoaster in your creative business?
One month, you're taking in project payments, deposits, and retainers, and feeling buzzed from your record income month, and the next, those payments don’t come in, you don’t have the enquiries and you're left wondering how to pay the bills.
It's a cycle that's all too familiar for so many creative experts.
But here's the thing: it doesn't have to be this way.
I am so excited to dive into the strategies that will help you break free from this feast-and-famine trap and establish a creative business with a consistent monthly income.
How Inconsistent Income Impacts Your Business…
Running your own business can feel like you need to make sacrifices. One of the things we assume we need to sacrifice is consistent income.
This isn’t true 🚨
Consistent income is a possibility. You don’t have to dip into your savings every other month, you don’t have to stress about whether one month you’ll need to borrow to pay your bills. You can be financially stable and secure in the knowledge that your business provides everything you need to make consistent £3k months, £5k months, £10k months, and even more.
Worrying about making consistent monthly income can also pop up in our day-to-day life in a few ways:
1 Stressing About Paying Your Bills
We've all had that monthly bill anxiety. The worry that creeps in when you're not sure if you'll have enough to cover your bills or drop some money in your personal savings or invest in that program you’ve been looking at. It can be a constant cloud hanging over your head and feel like a juggling act.
2 Worrying About Your Business Sustainability
Your business is your baby AND your perfect dream job, and you want to be able to run it for as long as possible! You're probably wondering how long you can keep up with the rollercoaster that is being a business owner and the fear of not being able to keep your business running can be pretty scary.
3 Not Enjoying Your Client Work
We got into this because we love what we do, right? But here's the thing: financial stress and worries can steal the joy from your work. It's tough to focus on creating when you're constantly thinking about money. You deserve to enjoy the craft you're passionate about and wonderful at!
Inconsistent income can be a real emotional and financial rollercoaster. You completely deserve to find a way to bring a sense of financial stability and creative joy into your life and I want you to know that it’s a possibility for you!
The main reason it hasn’t happened yet is that firstly, we are told consistent income isn’t possible, and when something isn’t possible - why try? Also, you haven’t yet seen the simple systems that can help you make consistent income a reality.
I can’t wait to share some advice and strategies to help you take control of your monthly income, so you can keep doing what you love for as long as possible without the stress of money troubles.
can consistent income really make that big a difference?
You might be wondering why to put in the work to build more consistency in your monthly income. You’ve got so far coping with the ups and downs of freelancing, why change anything now and upset the balance?
So let’s say you've worked through all of the strategies I’m going to share and you’re able to make more consistent income - what could that actually look like for you and your business?
Financial Peace
As you regain control of your monthly income, you can feel so much more at peace with your financial situation. No more late-night worries about bills or savings goals. You'll be able to confidently manage your money and have so much more security.
Business Sustainability
With consistent income, your business automatically builds a foundation of sustainability. Not only do you feel calm, but can make decisions knowing you have that foundation so you can focus on growth and reaching your own dreamy goals!
More Time and Space
You'll also gain so much more control over your time so you can give yourself space for rest, creative hobbies, self-care and keeping your cup full to be your best self in your business.
Building a more consistent income allows you to unlock financial stability, creative joy, and personal freedom. You can craft a future where you get to do what you love, without the worries that used to hold you back.
Before I jump into the strategies, let me tell you about my client, Shenika
Shenika is an amazing brand & website designer who loves working with lifestyle brands. When she decided to join my group mentoring program for creatives, The Clubhouse, she was stuck in a feast & famine cycle that was taking over.
Although Shenika loved her work, the financial rollercoaster was becoming too stressful, and a combination of low pricing, late payments and no forecast for future stability meant she was prepping for getting a full time job instead of continuing with her design business.
Armed with the exact strategies that I share below, Shenika was able to quickly turn all of this around. She immediately raised her prices, started booking on a planned schedule and in just a couple of months, Shenika managed to triple her previous income - not just for one month, that income was then much more consistent across the months.
With this additional financial security, Shenika started only saying yes to perfect fit clients and had a much dreamier workload. This wasn’t just about money. It was about building more sustainability and consistency in her business so she could be her best creative self at all times!
#1: Raising Your Pricing
I’m going to make a bold claim here and say that 90% of the time, the problem is pricing. As creatives, pricing is hard and we can let our emotions and confidence get in the way of pricing our services in a way that truly reflects the value of what we do.
As a mentor who has worked with hundreds of creative service providers, pricing is always a huge area to work on. But let me tell you this - I have never worked with anyone who was overcharging.
Chances are you don’t want to raise your prices because you’re lacking in confidence in your own abilities or you worry you don’t have enough experience. But think about what has got you to where you are right now, the projects you’ve worked on, the skills you’ve developed, the unique style you’ve grown and the reason you started your business in the first place
The way I look at pricing is to take out the feelings and price your services impartially, using your income goals as a guide.
So here’s the strategy I use for impartial pricing by reverse engineering your income goals:
Start by working out your income goal based on what you want and need to earn within a year. This means including any business expenses, personal expenses, savings, investments, lifestyle spending and of course, your tax.
The second number we need is how many projects you want to work on each year. We can easily work this out by thinking about how many weeks we want to be working (52 take away your holiday weeks), how long our signature service timeline is (how long it takes you to deliver your offer) and how many clients you want to work with at a time.
Finally, you can divide the two to get your final pricing figure! This rate for your service isn’t just a number plucked out of thin air. It’s been carefully calculated based on facts, logic and data. How much you need to earn to sustain your lifestyle and your capacity for clients!
With this strategy you don’t have to bring feelings into the mix and you know your pricing is always based around helping you reach your income goals as a foundation for your consistent monthly income.
Remember: Pricing is always evolving. As your skills and expertise develop, you can increase your pricing to match the value and experience you offer your clients. Check on your pricing periodically, either using a set timeframe or after a certain number of projects to make sure it’s still aligning with your expertise and income goals.
#2: Payment Plans
With a solid strategy in place to make sure your pricing is supporting your income goals and giving you a good foundation for your consistent monthly income, we now want to look at how your income is spread out across the year!
This is where consistent income for a lot of creatives can be very up and down and you may find that even with a steady flow of clients and well-planned pricing, you’re still experiencing the ups and downs, feast and famine cycle when it comes to your monthly income.
Here’s why that is:
Payments based on milestones…
Although milestone payments seem like a great and consistent way to streamline your monthly income, the reality is that often client milestones are varying and inconsistent.
For example, if you take a deposit payment, a payment before your project starts and a final payment once the project has been completed, only one of those payments (the pre-project payment) across multiple projects will be consistent, assuming your projects are evenly spaced.
Your deposit payments will vary depending on when you book your projects and although you can make your projects more steady and streamlined, your enquiries may be more seasonal and come in waves. Your final payment could be delayed depending on how the project goes (we know how scope creep can affect this!) which means you never actually have a set date - it all relies on when your client is happy to sign off on the project.
All of this combined means that your payments can end up being a bit all over the place - even though they’re on a set schedule that feels like it should keep everything consistent.
Large, compacted payments…
Similarly to the above, if your payments are split into a small number of installments (e.g. 50/50, 20/40/40 or 33/33/33) and you have several projects at a time then you can end up with large amount of money coming into your account at the same time.
Although this doesn’t seem like a bad problem to have (yes please to big chunks of money coming into my account), it can actually cause more problems than it solves. Those big bulky payments months are usually balanced out with months where very few if any payments come into your account which can cause you to panic and feel like your income isn’t reliable.
You most likely find yourself saving all of the money that comes into your account in the big months to make sure you’re covering the empty months which can prevent you from investing in extra learning or paying yourself a consistent monthly pay cheque.
No payment systems
A more frustrating element of payment plans comes in the form of late payments and missed invoices. Nothing is worse than taking time out of your day to chase invoices and make sure your clients are paying what and when they need to keep your projects moving.
But we can also understand how tough it is to keep on top of everything when you run a business! It’s not always easy to remember dates that things need to be paid or how to make the payments. This is where your systems come in.
Using payment automations and easy online payment software can add so much ease into taking payments without needing to lift a finger.
Dubsado and Stripe are my favourite tech duo and they work together to send automatic reminders and easily take online payments so my payments are taken without even realising the due date had come around!
So you might be thinking… What works better than the payment plan options above?
It’s simple really! Consistent monthly income needs consistent monthly payments. It’s very hard to plan your income when your payments are coming in only based on project dates or milestones and splitting your payments into large chunks.
Splitting your payments across months allows for more consistency and actually makes for a much more accessible and easy to follow installment plan for your clients. The biggest difference I’ve seen in my monthly income has come from making this very small tweak to my project payments.
I’ve managed to go from month highs of £15-20k, followed by a £2k month - to balancing out to make consistent five figure months throughout the year. Even when enquiries are quiet, even when I take time off for rest or the holidays and even when I took a three month maternity leave. It really has been a game changer!
#3: Booking Schedule
This strategy is my bread and butter as a creative mentor! I love teaching creatives how to create a streamlined, organised booking schedules and it’s amazing to see the results that this strategy has to help my clients create more consistent income in their business.
Booking in advance on a strategised schedule works so well because of that exact reason. It’s more organised and keeps your projects consistent. Consistent projects means much more consistent income, and paired with the other strategies, you are on to a winner!
So how can you create your own booking schedule to help keep your projects simple, streamlined and consistent?
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Step 1: Plan your signature service timeline and how many projects you need to fit into one year (psst… we already did this for your pricing strategy!)
You want to make sure you know your timelines so you can create slots that are that length of time and this also helps you figure out how many slots you need for the year.
Tip: This is great to plan yearly so you have a good amount of time mapped out and you can feel organised for the full year ahead! Feel free to check back in every few months so you always have a year planned in advance - you never know how many projects you’ll get booked in there!
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Step 2: Use a wall planner or digital calendar to map out your planned time off for the year ahead
Before we start to plan our actual project slots, we want to schedule our time off! This is such a crucial step because planning ahead can sometimes leave you with a lack of spare time for yourself. We cover this straight away by scheduling in as much time off as you’d like.
In the past, I’ve planned up to 16 weeks a year off, and having the notice really helps me carve that space and get some well-deserved rest!
Tip: Planning your holidays doesn’t have to take away your flexibility! You can still move the slots or timings around but you at least know that the time off is in there.
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Step 3: Use your wall planner or digital calendar to map out your project slots, based on your timelines and how many projects you’d like to work on at the same time
Now you have your time off in place, you can plan the time on! This is where you schedule in your project slots based on how long your signature service is and how many projects you’d like to work on at once.
You should end up with well-organised project spaces, one after the other, with some overlapping depending on how many clients you’d like to work with at a time,
Tip: Staggering your projects is a great way to keep your workload calm and streamlined - without the same time-consuming phases of multiple projects overlapping (like launching!)
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Step 4: Book your clients into the slots! Not only does this make your projects more organised but you can also start booking in advance which has other amazing benefits.
As soon as you have a reliable and streamlined schedule for your projects, you’ll find the consistency of your work feeds into the consistency of your monthly income. Building consistency throughout your business supports this financially too!
some little extras…
Contracts & Legal Documents
We all know that we need a contract. And if you didn’t know that, I’m here to tell you… YOU NEED A CONTRACT!
It’s not just for you to look professional and make sure that you’re covered if your client disappears (although it is great for those things too), your contract should outline project scope, timelines, deliverables, payment schedules, and any additional fees if any of this doesn’t work out.
All of this keeps you protected from missed payments, project ghosting, changing timelines and other things that can mess around with your payment schedules.
Retainer Projects with Past Clients
If you want to boost your income even further and consistently, retainer work is a great addition to your ladder of services. Especially if you’re finding you have space in your schedule and extra creativity to throw around!
In the past, I have had sustainable, monthly retainers that added up to the total of my household and personal bills which didn’t just give me a huge sense of security, but allowed me to boost my income consistently - whilst working with clients that I already knew were amazing to work with!
Solid Client Processes
Something else that helps keep your projects (and in turn your payments) tight and organised is your client process and systems.
Having a step by step plan for your project phases, concept approvals, refinements and delivery means you can relax in knowing that a) your payments are going to be approved by a happy client and b) your project is organised and following the plan you’ve got in place
If you have payments that are relating to offboarding in your projects then having a smooth process for your offboarding is key to make sure those payments come in when expected.
Setting clear dates and expectations for your offboarding can stop those never-ending projects that don’t just stop you from having an amazing portfolio piece, but stop you getting paid!
🗣 “Excuse me… you didn’t mention Passive Income?”
Hang on a minute… I’ve written nearly a full guide on consistent income and I haven’t mentioned the old favourite passive income, even once?
I’m sure you’ve lots of things across the internet that suggest otherwise but I’m here to tell you that passive income is absolutely not necessary for consistent monthly earnings.
Don’t get me wrong, if there is something that you are passionate about that you would love to bring to life and you know would be super helpful for your perfect people, that’s great! But if you’re creating an e-book, course, workshop, template or anything else just for the sake of it, you might find that it adds more work and stress to your plate than it’s worth.
Creating and managing passive income streams (which, let’s be honest, are never truly passive) can eat up your time, energy, and resources AND you may find that whilst doing all of this, you lose focus on the thing that really matters – your amazing offers.
I would love for you to know that it is possible and even sometimes a little easier, to make consistent income with services only.
Let’s Wrap This Up
Achieving a consistent income definitely feels like something that is beyond our grasp as self-employed business owners, creatives, freelancers - whatever you like to call yourself! But I’d love for you to know that you don’t have to be going through a feast and famine cycle which gives you an M&S budget one month and an Aldi budget the next (no hate, I’m a big fan of both) can be a thing of the past.
Using one, some, or all of the strategies in this guide can ensure that you can focus on your signature services, whilst maintaining a consistent income that supports your lifestyle, helps you reach your income goals, and is as reliable as you are to your amazing, dreamy clients!
my group mentoring program helps creatives book dream clients 2-3 months in advance to build consistent monthly income
The Clubhouse is a 12-month group mentoring program for overworked and overwhelmed creative service providers who want to build a flexible, joyful, dreamy business
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