How I Keep Track of My Freelance Work: Pitches, WIP, and Delivered

But then when it comes time to share your work, you’re scrambling to gather the published links. Or maybe you have so many drafts that the idea of finding a specific delivered piece again gives you anxiety.

As a freelance writer, I created a simple system to keep track of my work, including all work, not just client work. After all, my portfolio includes guest posts, my Substack, my writing here on Medium, and other publications. I need a centralized list of everything for easy reference.

I use Airtable for this effort, but Notion or even a Google Spreadsheet would work. The important thing is to capture the data in a way that makes it easy to sort and find later.

One very important point: Airtable is not my project management tool. For that, I use Trello. People can (and do) use tools like Airtable, Notion, and GSheet to keep track of work, but I like the visualization of Trello more.

My system in Airtable is a running log of everything I’ve done: all client deliverables, pitches, guest posts, and more.

Keep track of client deliverables

I have created a shared Google Drive folder for each of my clients. This is where I store my working copies of drafts and the versions that I share for feedback. On occasion, I’ll even create Canva images to go with posts and those will be in the client’s folder as well.

In Airtable, I can keep track of the details about each project: client name, length, date delivered, amount paid, and any notes I have. Airtable also lets you upload files, so you could add things like PDFs or images.

But the two most critical fields in my Freelance table are the link to draft and published link.

Over time, some of my client folders end up with a lot of drafts. Airtable is a way for me to quickly sift through my projects and locate a specific draft, rather than relying on the search feature in Google Drive.

The published link is part of my overall writing portfolio. I want to keep track of my work in the wild, so I’ll add the link to the live version once it becomes available.

Overall, this process makes working with clients more efficient, cutting down on some of the nitty-gritty details of freelancing. After all, the more time spent on client work, the less you earn overall.

Keep track of pitches and other published work

In addition to writing for established clients, I’ll send pitches to publications. As any freelancer can likely attest, some take a very long time to respond, and it is hard to keep track.

Whenever I send a pitch, I log it in a separate table. I include the name of the publication, the email address of the person I sent the pitch to, and the date sent. I then have a “Status” column to indicate if I’m waiting to hear back, if the pitch was accepted, or if the pitch was rejected.

In my Pitches table, I also have the link to the email I sent (from Gmail) and the link to the draft (if accepted or if I had to send a complete draft for consideration).

Including the link to the email has been invaluable. I can quickly see exactly what I said in my pitch.

And, of course, this table has a column for the Published Link for the live URL if my work was accepted.

Keep track of your other appearances on the web

Like many creators, I appear on the internet in places other than my own work. I have been a guest on podcasts and had articles written about me.

I consider these part of my overall portfolio. So I have yet another table to keep track of this “other” content, with information about who published it and a link to the live URL.

I also have a table with links to my content: my stories here on Medium, anything I publish in my blog, and each issue from my Substack. I add categories to each post in the table so that if I want to link to my own work in future posts, it is easier to decide what to include.

Capture your work in a “tear file”

Live URLs can be tricky. At any point, a client or publication could remove your work without warning. So while the Published Links are important in my table, they carry some risk that they could vanish and then I don’t have a copy of the work (other than my draft).

Back when advertising mainly occurred in print, a copy of an ad would be “torn” from a publication to prove to clients that the ad ran. Writers, photographers, and other creatives would have a collection of their tear sheets and this would serve as their portfolios when applying for jobs.

I have created a “tear file” for myself modeled after this concept. For anything that appears online, I capture it. I use Microsoft OneNote’s web clipper to do this — mostly because I’ve been using it for many, many years and don’t want to make a switch. But Evernote also has a great web clipper, or you could simply do a Print to PDF from the web page (though the formatting can get wonky).

MS OneNote or Evernote pages can be linked in your Airtable and you could upload a PDF version, to keep everything in your log of work. Overall, I’m somewhat obsessive with capturing information through notes, so it’s important to me to have a copy of the original published work.

Use automation to save time

Does it sound time-consuming to keep a log of your work? It doesn’t have to be. For some fields in Airtable (like the published links and tear file), I block off time and only update once a month and then spend an hour or so entering the information. Because it’s my system of record and not my primary project management tool, I don’t need to touch it more often than that.

But I also use automation to save time. Whenever I have a client piece to work on, I add the record in Airtable and then use Zapier to automatically create a new document in Google drive, and write that GDoc’s URL back to Airtable.

I also use Zapier to capture my published work on Medium, my blog, and Substack using RSS feeds. Rather than manually entering the URLs each time I publish, records are written to Airtable automatically. That way, I’m only adding a few details, like categories.

Even though the process to keep a log of my work takes time, it has proven invaluable. I’ve had questions about client drafts that were written months ago. Or I want to share a link to something specific I’ve published when I pitch and editor. By having a log, I can quickly find the information I need when I need it.

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