Anyone has dipped their toe in freelancing knows what the term "feast and famine," means. The business of freelancing, particularly in the writing arena is very much a cyclical rollercoaster of ups and downs. One day you have more work than you know what to do with, and the next you feel like you're walking in a desert. Of course, an extended period in the desert makes you hungry and thirsty, so when the work does arrive you gobble up everything you can, and then you get stuffed, and then you get sick, and then you need help. In regular business, this is known as the Wal-Mart effect, as a result of the big corporation dropping a huge order on a small business it can't reasonably be expected to fulfill, but the small business takes the order anyways because it's too tempting to let go.
Don't Eat the Whole Sandwich in One Bite
The problem with big orders is, they are goddam big. It's really easy to forget as a freelancer that, even in your best performance, you can only do so much work in a day. Worse, your performance degrades over time without a break. So, by the time you're getting to the 15th program or 36th article, you're at risk that your best work is well behind you and your current stuff is barely making it.
The key strategy is chunking up the work. For example, let's say an order gives you an opportunity for 100 articles. Think about the rate of production you're able to produce a day. Now, consider how many days you have before the deadline. Let's say it's five. If your production is 10 articles/day, then your safe zone is 50 articles, not 100. While it's tempting to grab all 100, you'll just sink yourself with an impossible task and deadline, and do shit work. And in the freelance world, your quality level and dedication to deadlines is what matters. That's what people pay for.
It's Tempting to Subcontract
No one would be honest if they didn't, at some point, think about subbing out work to make profit as a middleman while someone else did the actual work. It's a common evolution from being a good freelancer to being a project manager. There's a few problems, however. First, finding good help is hard. Second, finding good help willing to do the work at your rate is even harder. Get past those two barriers, then you need to be very good at describing the work needed, have a good sense of whom to trust, and you still need to build yourself a safety net if they fail. In short, you need a gap to come in and save the day if they miss their deadline. And it happens a lot. The failure of subbing can be so frustrating and hectic, many just say "screw it" and stick with doing all the work themselves.
Some will argue, "Oh, no problem, I'll just play the international game and farm out overseas." You still have the same issue of managing people and, worse, you lose the trust factor on whom you're working with. Sometimes it works, but my experience has been AI produces better draft work then overseas resources on the fly.
Well, You Mentioned AI, Use That!
For about one week, AI was definitely usable. However, then everyone put up AI screeners, and that resource became useless. Further, AI writing is generally pig shit. It's not specific, uses too much rewritten crap from other Internet content, and it's writing is very obvious to the keen eye looking for true, authentic content. Additionally, getting caught with AI material is pretty much a death-sentence in freelancing; you'll get fired and banned. That's not worth the trouble. Losing $1,000-$2,000 a month in extra income for one stupid AI laziness move is not worth the risk or minimal gain.
Know Your Limits
Successful freelancers maintain consistent growth. While the big order is tempting, sometimes it's better just to bite off a piece and keep steady work than trying to jump Mt. Everest in one leap. 99% of the time, people fail miserably. In the meantime, the consistently players ratchet up, adjust, put new resources in place incrementally, and ratchet up again. Knowing your limits and what you can deliver consistently is just as much a win as getting hired.
