I’m writing this partly as a report on the last financial year, and partly as a resource for people who are thinking about going self-employed – particularly in content, and particularly in the third sector. (It’s also for anyone who’s just curious about what I earn and how my business works.)
I have a lot of conversations with people who are weighing up whether to make the leap themselves, and this is something people asked me to write about in a recent survey. I also think there’s a real benefit in being open about what this kind of work actually looks like financially and professionally. I want to give you the full picture – not just the wins, and not just the warnings either.
What I charge
I work on a day rate basis and charge £770 a day before VAT (Value Added Tax). I will reduce this for organisations with low turnover. When I started, I was charging less than half of this. I’ve increased it pretty much every year – sometimes gradually and sometimes in big leaps.
By a day rate basis, I mean that I cost up projects based on how many days I think they will take me, and that’s what the client pays. I’m pretty good at estimating after all these years and most projects end up being pretty close to my estimate. Sometimes if I’m not feeling confident in the estimate or the scope, I’ll include a contingency. That way the client has a minimum and maximum cost to go on, and the end price depends on exactly how much time the project took.
I originally tried value pricing – charging based on the perceived value of the deliverable rather than the time it takes – but it didn’t sit right with me, particularly working with charities. Clients also tend to prefer day rates, and sometimes require them.
What I earn
In the tax year for 2025/6, my total turnover was about £93,500. This is the breakdown:
| Consultancy and projects | £86,415.19 |
| Toolkit sales and newsletter ‘tips’ | £5,057.79 |
| Speaking and facilitation | £916.67 |
| Coaching and mentoring | £630.01 |
| Interest (from HMRC on an overpayment) | £446.00 |
| Total sales | £93,465.66 |
Consultancy is obviously the big one, accounting for the overwhelming majority of my income. Toolkit sales also contribute a surprising amount, given that I’m not great at marketing or promoting them. Coaching would usually be higher, but I limited the number of clients I took on pretty heavily.
Why 2025/6 was a bad year
Last year was a bad year in terms of turnover. The preceding years looked like this:
- 2024/5: £118,998
- 2023/4: £121,250
- 2022/3: £77,906
I saw a big jump in 2023/24 when I became a limited company (I was previously a sole trader) and had to register for VAT and start adding that 20% charge to all my invoices.
I don’t know for sure why last year was so bad. I do have some theories. I think there are fewer briefs around and budgets are lower because things are tough in the third sector. I also think it might have something to do with 2025 being at the end of a strategy cycle for a lot of organisations – the work I do is often more likely to tie in with the start and middle of strategies than the end. And I know for sure that I took my eye off the ball. I got a concussion, a project started to run very far behind, and between these two things I lost a lot of momentum.
Projects overrunning have been one of the things that consistently hurt my business the most. Income that I was supposed to earn over three months suddenly has to stretch to six, and not knowing about availability makes it really hard to take on other work. I’m looking at building client delay provisions into contracts at the moment to give myself a bit more protection. But I can also do a better job of predicting this.
What I actually pay myself
Last year, I paid myself £63,576, made up of a small director’s salary and dividends. (This is the most tax efficient way to do things apparently.) From that, I pay around £7,000 in Self Assessment Tax. So my final take-home was around £56,000.
Why I wish I earned more
In the grand scheme of things, this is a great salary. But I’d be being dishonest if I didn’t admit that I would like to earn more. I would like to be able to travel, spend money on hobbies, make some home improvements, save more. And I don’t think it matches my market value. But I’m much happier earning less and being self-employed than I would be in the kind of job where I could earn £60,000+ a year. For me, the freedom and flexibility add a huge amount of value. Plus, I’m a carer, and I can’t see how I could combine that part of my life with being employed full-time.
My business costs
The biggest cost is tax – just over £28,000 from the business. (This is in addition to the Self Assessment Tax I mentioned in the last section). This the breakdown:
| VAT | £16,790 |
| Corporation Tax | £10,159 |
| Directors’ Employer NICs | £1,110 |
| Total | £28,059 |
I also had about £25,000 in business costs and expenses last year. The breakdown is:
| Collaborator invoices | £9,339 |
| Software and subscriptions | £4,212 |
| Pension contributions | £3,600 |
| Office rent | £3,325 |
| Other bills and costs (phone, equipment, books, stationary, postage, printing, donations) | £1,854 |
| Accountancy fees | £900 |
| Travel | £601 |
| Conferences and training | £582 |
| Insurance | £498 |
| Accommodation and meals | £308 |
| Total | £25,219 |
Expenses to plan for
A few things worth flagging for anyone thinking about going self-employed:
- Pension. My contributions should be way, way higher – my pension pot is tiny. This is something most self-employed people need to factor in, unless you have some other way to pay for your retirement.
- Accountancy fees. I would never be without an accountant and never resent the money I spend. They are experts in something I know nothing about. It saves me time and stress, and I’m confident the advice pays for itself.
- Insurance. So many people skip this. I think that’s too big a risk – and lots of clients will insist that you have cover before they’ll work with you. What you need depends on your business; I have public liability insurance and professional indemnity insurance.
- Software. When you work in content, this can get absolutely out of control. Keep a close eye on it, cancel what you’re not using, and see if clients can add you as a user to their tools where possible.
Overall last year, more money left my business than came in — by about £7,500. I try to keep a buffer of £40,000 in the business at all times. That’s about 6 months worth of costs to tide me over through a period with no work, or an emergency. I had to draw on that buffer last year, so I’ll be working to build it back up.
It’s a really good idea to save for your tax bills, buffer, and business expenses with every incoming payment. Each time I get paid, I put a percentage into ‘pockets’ in my bank account for VAT, Corporation Tax, buffer, salary – and I do the same when I pay myself, for Self Assessment Tax.
Who I work with
Last year I worked with 9 clients:
- 4 charities – a mix of local, national and international
- 3 arts and culture organisations (one in partnership with/via an agency*)
- 2 non-profit membership organisations
I usually have two or three clients/projects on the go at any one time. Sometimes I’ll take on more, but only ever for short periods and with projects that are less strategic and require less deep thinking. For strategic content transformation work, I need long unbroken stretches of time where I can focus to do good work, and I need to be easily accessible to clients. Having lots of clients isn’t compatible with that.
Finding my client niche
My goal when I started my business was to only work with non-profit organisations. I wanted to focus on applying content strategy in a context where it might do good in the world in some small way.
I didn’t have much experience in the third sector when I started out, so for the first three years, I still worked with a few for-profit organisations on projects. But my last for-profit client ghosted me in 2020 at the start of the pandemic, and I have been 100% third sector focused since then. The pandemic created a few opportunities for me in the charity sector, but the real thing that made the difference was having three years of experience and building a new network.
*The only exception to my non-profit rule is that sometimes I work with for-profit agencies on non-profit projects. But they have to pass some ethical criteria about the clients they work with, their investors, etc.
Choosing projects over contracting
A lot of content folks who are self-employed tend to work full-time with one client, by working as a contractor. It would probably be a lot simpler in many ways, but this doesn’t work for me. It feels too much like having a job-job, for one thing. But also, I don’t think many clients need someone doing what I do full-time. These kinds of roles are far more likely to come up in content design and editorial.
What kinds of project I work on
Last year the projects I worked on were:
- Content strategy development, content ops rollout, and website redesign support for a membership organisation
- Content strategy development and rollout for a large charity, with a brand and fundraising focus
- Content strategy development and content model design for a product/service within a cultural organisation
- Content ops and process design for a large charity, with a brand and fundraising focus
- Content type and guideline design to support website redevelopment for a membership organisation
- Messaging hierarchy development for a local charity
- Website evaluation for an arts organisation
- Content strategy development and content ops rollout for a charity – this one was more hands-off guidance facilitation than typical consultancy
- Content audit for a cultural organisation
Focusing on specific services
As you can see, the big focus was content strategy. Most years would involve more of a mix of content strategy and content design. I was actually pretty surprised when I looked at this and saw that I hadn’t done a content design project that involved production in over a year.
Sometimes I think that I should drop content design as a service area, and just focus on content strategy. But I’ve resisted so far, because I think they are very complimentary. And I work on a lot of website redesign projects, which are the middle ground that connects the two.
How I find clients and work
Last year I had nine new leads – this is very low, roughly half what I’d usually expect. I’m kind of ashamed and don’t want to share this, to be totally honest. This makes me feel like a bigger failure than falling turnover. One of the tough things about self-employment is that all of this can feel very personal. When things don’t go well, it’s hard not to feel like a failure.
This is what happened to those leads:
| Won | 5 |
| Lost | 1 |
| Went silent | 1 |
| Paused/deferred | 1 |
| Opted out | 1 |
And this is where they came from:
| Word of mouth | 4 |
| 10 Things/website content | 3 |
| Existing/past client referral | 2 |
Almost everything comes through relationships – people who know me, have worked with me, or have been reading my newsletter or articles. I’ve never done cold outreach, I don’t advertise, and I haven’t gone down the awards or rankings route. These things don’t feel like me, and I don’t think they’d work with my clients either. My strategy is to share my knowledge and experience via 10 Things, my website, on LinkedIn and speaking at events, so that when people need a similar skillset, they’ll know who I am.
I’ve also heard, anecdotally, that people in the sector want to work with me but think I’m too busy or too expensive. So I probably need to do more marketing about my availability – and think about more affordable packages for organisations with smaller budgets.
What I’ve learnt
Here are the biggest things I’ve learnt since I started working for myself, that I hope will be helpful for anyone weighing up making the shift themselves:
Remember that you’ll take home about half your turnover. This was a good rule of thumb that really helped me to budget. You might see invoices coming in every month that are way higher than your monthly salary when you were employed, but don’t get too excited. Remember the expenses and the taxes, and that you need a buffer for the slow periods, and to save as you earn.
Charge the highest amount you can ask for, without actually throwing up at your own audacity. I increased my day rate by a third a few years ago, after seeing a partner easily get a day rate for us that I thought was impossible. (Thanks Mike!) In my experience most people – especially women – undercharge. So go for it. Just be sure to benchmark against peers, acknowledge context, and don’t be a fantasist.
You can build the perfect career for you. I turned to self-employment because there was no job that felt right. There were no opportunities at the level I wanted in my city. I didn’t want to commute or move. I didn’t want to work for an organisation whose values didn’t match mine. Starting my own business felt like the only option – but it’s been great, because I’ve been able to grow it and shape it and make it what I wanted and needed. There’s no job that could give me what my business gives me.
Don’t get hung up on salary as the only measure of success. There are a load of other benefits that can come from building a job around your needs and values and preferences. Make sure you’re keeping track of these too.
It’s all on you, so it helps if you love what you do. Running your own business is different to being employed. All the responsibility is yours – there’s no one else. The success or failure is in your hands. And I think that’s easier to shoulder if you love what you do and if it gives you some meaning or sense of purpose. I had a lightbulb moment on a call with someone who was thinking about going self-employed. As we chatted, they said they could tell they didn’t have the drive or passion that I had for content – that it was just a job to them – and they were reconsidering. I thought that was a really honest and self-aware thing to conclude.
External forces can have a big impact. Big caveat to the last point. A pandemic, a Liz Truss budget, and US presidential whims are just some of the things outside of my control that have negatively affected my business. So yes, it’s all on you, but markets and systems can still mess things up even when you’re doing your best.
Ready isn’t a feeling, it’s a decision. I wanted to go self-employed for a long time before I did it, but I was waiting until I felt ready. But cautious people like me rarely feel ready to take a risk. You have to decide that you’re ready, and be comfortable with taking a leap. If you wait to feel it, you might wait forever.
If you’re thinking about going self-employed and want to talk it through, feel free to get in touch.
