Meredith Sell

2025 Freelance Year in Review

Every year, I write a post looking back on my freelance work from the previous 12 months and setting intentions for the new year.

Need writing or editorial support? Let’s chat. I’m currently lining up projects for 2026 and eager to expand my active client list.

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This year got off to a slow start. After returning to freelancing December 2024, I ended up having ankle surgery in late January before there was much opportunity to rebuild my business. The timing was intentional: I knew I wouldn’t have a lot of work by then and wanted to get the surgery out of the way. But thanks to the slow start to the year, my total income for Q1 was roughly equivalent to my baseline monthly goal. Eek.

I devoted most of the year to rebuilding business stability, and to support that goal, I leaned into a greater variety of services than I have in the past. I also picked up a couple random gigs that don’t match my typical offerings.

I crunched some numbers to see how my services and industries broke down over the year. Here are a few highlights:

Services Breakdown

  • Social content writing accounted for about 25% of my income, more than any other service. This was mostly due to a short-term contract with a local university.
  • Editing and reporting followed, each representing about 21% of my income. Included in the reporting category are stories I wrote for industry or association publications. I’m hoping to grow both of these service areas in 2026.
  • Copywriting (13%) and report writing (18%) were next, and are also areas I’m aiming to do more work in. I had the opportunity to overhaul and write from scratch a few reports for nonprofit organizations and enjoyed getting to know their work on a deeper level while making it more accessible to their audiences.

Industry Breakdown

  • Healthcare clients provided about 43% of my workload, a stat that I’m happy to see. When I left my healthcare communications job in 2024, I wanted to use that experience to do more work in health and science. A combination of freelance networks, existing relationships, and local connections helped me land a variety of projects in this sector. I wrote articles, feature stories, reports, sales worksheets, blogs, and social content. I’m hoping to maintain these client relationships and continue working in this arena next year.
  • Higher ed accounted for 21% of my income. This was mainly social content. Going into the new year, I’d like to start writing again for alumni magazines and other university publications. Higher ed is where I started my career, and I wholeheartedly believe in the mission of education. Getting to interview and write about unique professors and alumni is a bonus.
  • Journalism, meaning stories for traditional outlets not organization publications, represented 4.5% of my income. This is a tough one for me. Part of the point of returning to freelancing was (and is) to do more journalism. But paying my bills is my first priority, so I devoted more energy to securing corporate clients. That said, I still pitched and landed three pieces, including a feature story with a publication I hadn’t written for before (more on that below).

Projects

Reported Articles

I wrote about brain science, counseling in rural areas, a physician-scientist whose research could improve care for infants with leukemia, and more. I also landed a few pitches with traditional outlets, including a forthcoming feature on Girls on the Run in recognition of the organization’s 30-year anniversary. Not all of these stories have released yet, but I will update with links as they do.

For association publications

For traditional journalism outlets

  • Running with the Girls (RunHer Mag) – This feature for RunHer Mag, a new print publication devoted to women’s running, tells the story of Girls on the Run, an organization that has been building girls’ confidence since 1996. I pitched a profile of the founder, Molly Barker, and RunHer’s editor asked me to write about the organization instead. The feature is printing in the magazine’s second-ever issue, coming in January. I’m currently on the lookout for other RunHer stories (and stories about women’s sports in general).
  • Rockies Got You Down? Root for the Onyx, Denver’s Winningest Team (5280 Magazine) – I pitched this piece on the Denver Onyx, part of Women’s Elite Rugby, a new professional women’s rugby league in the U.S. The Onyx happens to have the most players who also play on the national Eagles team (a feeder for the Olympics team). This was a beast to report due to the players all working other jobs on top of their grueling training and competition schedules.
  • Loveland Artist Anna Hultin Is Making Embroidery Cool Again (5280 Magazine) – I pitched this piece after following the artist on Substack for a while. Hultin’s embroidery style is quite distinct, and she released a book teaching her artistic process in October.

Copywriting & Reports

  • Report for the Denver Health Foundation: This summer and early fall, I developed the outline and content for DHF’s Core Mission Report, which they were reimagining as their annual report. This project took me deep into the work of Denver Health, Colorado’s safety net hospital, and was one of my favorites. The report has not yet been publicly released.
  • Copywriting projects for Tebra: I worked on a handful of digestible content projects for Tebra, a healthcare software company. These included a couple worksheets to help private practice owners evaluate their practices and an infographic showing the difference that Tebra could make for private practices.
  • Case studies for StreetLight: StreetLight is a transportation data company that provides analytics and data tools for transportation planners to understand how traffic moves through different corridors. I previously provided copyediting services to StreetLight, and this year, they brought me on to produce case studies explaining how the company provides unique value to transportation departments across the country. Here is one example.
  • Social content for University of Colorado – Denver: Toward the beginning of the summer, a colleague brought me on to develop content focused on enrollment and retention for CU Denver. I dug through the social accounts of other institutions, brainstormed ideas, and developed over 100 social posts for the CU Denver team to use at will.

Women’s Barbell Club

I continued writing my newsletter on women and strength training. The writing took a more personal turn as I chronicled my recovery journey after ankle surgery (currently working on my running stamina), but my favorite pieces weren’t personal. Here are my top picks:

It’s telling that my favorite pieces were traditional journalism, not personal writing. Next year, I’ll likely dump the personal writing entirely and focus on reported stories.

Looking Ahead

I’m ending the year about halfway to where I’d like to be in terms of business stability, but I’m starting in a better place than a year ago. I have a handful of ongoing clients and room for a few more, and I’m feeling encouraged now that there’s some momentum again in my business.

My goals for 2026 are pretty simple:

  • Book a few more ongoing clients in the healthcare, education, or environmental sectors. 
  • Work with more mission-driven companies that are seeking to help people and make the world better.
  • Pitch more reported stories to new-to-me outlets. Put my journalist hat on more often.
  • Finish researching and writing the narrative history piece I’ve been chipping away at all year.
  • Prioritize reported pieces for Women’s Barbell Club, aiming for a monthly publishing cadence.

Want to work with me? Reach out. My inbox is open.

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