Feast or Famine Income Every Month: How to Stabilize Revenue
Your best months create your worst months—when you’re busy, you stop marketing, then wonder why nothing grows.
Why your $12K months lead straight to $2K months
Kirsten is a freelance writer averaging $54K/year. Some months she makes $12K. Some months she makes $2K. She can’t plan. Can’t budget. Always anxious about next month.
She works like crazy when clients are there. Then the work dries up. She scrambles to find new clients. By the time new projects arrive, she’s two months behind on bills. The cycle repeats. Feast. Famine. Feast. Famine.
You’re on the same roller coaster. Income swings wildly. Good months feel temporary. Bad months feel like failure. You think you need more marketing, different clients, or a bigger pipeline.
You don’t. You need to stop doing the thing that creates the famine.
What You Think Is Wrong vs What’s Actually Wrong
You think you need more marketing channels. Better lead generation. Bigger network. Different client types.
Here’s what’s actually happening: Your best months are creating your worst months. When you’re busy with client work, your marketing stops completely. Then you’re surprised when the pipeline is empty 60-90 days later.
Let’s track Kirsten’s pattern over 12 months:
See the pattern?
High revenue months (>$8K): Average 2.8 marketing hours
Low revenue months (<$4K): Average 20.7 marketing hours
When she’s making money, she stops marketing. When money dries up, she panics and markets heavily. But marketing takes 60-90 days to convert. By the time her panic marketing pays off, she’s busy again—and stops marketing again.
She’s creating her own cycle.
Here’s the lag effect:
May: $12K revenue, 0 marketing hours
August (90 days later): $10K revenue (from February’s 25 marketing hours)
September: $8K revenue (from March’s 3 hours)
October: $2K revenue (from May’s 0 hours)
The feast directly causes the famine. Not immediately—60-90 days later.
The math is brutal:
Average monthly revenue: $4,500
High months: $10-12K (happening after heavy marketing months)
Low months: $2-4K (happening after zero marketing months)
Variance: $8-10K monthly swings
If Kirsten maintained 10 hours per week of consistent marketing (43 hours/month), her revenue would stabilize around $7-8K monthly with much smaller swings. That’s $84-96K annual revenue instead of $54K, just by not stopping marketing when busy.
The opportunity cost of feast/famine:
Current: $54K with massive stress and instability
Consistent marketing: $84-96K with predictability
Lost: $30-42K annually from stopping marketing when busy
The Reframe That Changes Everything
“Your best months are creating your worst months. When you’re busy, you stop planting seeds. Then you’re surprised when nothing grows.”
Stop treating marketing as something you do when desperate. Start treating it as something you do, regardless of the current workload.
Marketing isn’t optional during busy months. It’s MORE critical during busy months—because that’s when you’re planting the seeds for 90 days from now.
Do This Today (The Immediate Fix)
Here’s your immediate work:
Step 1: Track your last 3 “feast” months
Look at your calendar and bank account. Identify your three highest revenue months in the past year.
For each feast month, calculate:
Total revenue that month
Hours spent on marketing/business development
Hours spent on client delivery
For Kirsten’s top months (May $12K, Mar $11K, Aug $10K):
May: $12K revenue, 0 marketing hours, 180 client hours
March: $11K revenue, 3 marketing hours, 165 client hours
August: $10K revenue, 4 marketing hours, 170 client hours
Average: 2.3 marketing hours during feast months.
Step 2: Track what happened 60-90 days after each feast
Marketing doesn’t convert instantly. There’s a lag. What happened 2-3 months after you stopped marketing?
Kirsten’s pattern:
May feast (0 marketing hours) → August fine ($10K from old pipeline) → October famine ($2K)
March feast (3 hours) → June okay ($3K) → September okay ($8K from May’s clients)
August feast (4 hours) → November okay ($9K from July marketing) → Future famine likely
The lag reveals the cause: Low marketing today = low revenue 60-90 days from now.
Step 3: Create a minimum 5 hours/week marketing rule
This is non-negotiable. Doesn’t matter how busy you are. Doesn’t matter how much client work you have.
Five hours per week. Every week. No exceptions.
That’s 21.7 hours per month. Compared to Kirsten’s current average of 11 hours/month (but zero during busy months, 20+ during desperate months).
Block it on your calendar right now:
Monday: 1 hour
Tuesday: 1 hour
Wednesday: 1 hour
Thursday: 1 hour
Friday: 1 hour
Or whatever distribution works. But 5 hours minimum, even when you’re slammed.
What to do in those 5 hours:
Reach out to past clients
Post content on LinkedIn
Send proposals to warm leads
Nurture existing prospects
Ask for referrals
Network in your industry
Not random busy work. Activities that generate a future pipeline.
The 7-Day Protocol (Complete Solution)
Day 1: Audit marketing activity over the past 12 months
Pull up your calendar. Go month by month. Estimate hours spent on marketing and business development.
Create a simple spreadsheet:
Column A: Month
Column B: Revenue
Column C: Marketing hours
Fill in all 12 months.
Day 2: Overlay marketing hours with revenue
Now look for the pattern. Does high marketing correlate with high revenue 60-90 days later?
For most freelancers and consultants, the lag is clear:
Heavy marketing in Q1 → Strong revenue in Q2
Zero marketing in Q2 (too busy) → Weak revenue in Q3-Q4
Chart it if visual helps. You’ll see the cycle you’re creating.
Day 3: Set non-negotiable marketing minimum
Based on your audit, decide: What’s the absolute minimum weekly marketing hours needed to maintain pipeline?
For most: 5-10 hours per week
Set your number. Make it a rule. This happens EVERY week, regardless of client workload.
Write it down: “I will spend [X] hours on marketing every single week, no matter how busy I am with client work.”
Day 4: Create “Marketing Monday” recurring block
Don’t try to scatter marketing throughout the week. Batch it.
Block every Monday morning: 9 am-12 pm. Three solid hours. Recurring. Forever.
This is your pipeline-building time. Treat it like your most important client meeting—because it is.
What you do in those 3 hours:
30 min: Review pipeline, identify gaps
60 min: Outreach to prospects (5-10 people)
30 min: Content creation (LinkedIn post, article)
30 min: Past client check-ins and referral requests
30 min: Proposal follow-ups
That’s 3 hours. Add 2 more hours during the week for opportunistic marketing. You hit your 5-hour minimum.
Day 5: Build marketing activities that work even when busy
Some marketing doesn’t require active time:
Email automation sequence for leads
Content repurposing (one article becomes 10 social posts)
Referral incentive program (rewards for introductions)
Retainer check-ins (scheduled quarterly calls)
Set up ONE automated marketing activity today. Something that continues working even when you’re heads-down on client work.
Day 6: Reach out to 3 past clients for referrals
Your past clients are your fastest path to new revenue. And it takes 10 minutes per person.
Send this message:
“Hi [Name], hope you’re doing well! I’m looking to take on 2-3 new clients this quarter similar to the work we did together. Who do you know who [specific description of ideal client]? Happy to send you my availability if anyone comes to mind.”
Three messages. 30 minutes total. Could generate 1-2 referrals worth $5-15K.
Day 7: Create a 3-month cash buffer goal
Feast or famine is painful because you have no cushion. One bad month = immediate financial stress.
Calculate your 3-month cash buffer:
Monthly expenses: $_
3-month buffer: $_ × 3 = $_Make this your savings goal. When you have 3 months of expenses saved, the famine months don’t cause panic. You can ride out the variance.
Start setting aside 10-20% of every feast month toward this buffer.
Go Deeper: The Complete Framework
This solves the immediate problem—breaking the feast/famine cycle by maintaining consistent marketing.
But if you want the complete system for catching revenue issues before they become crises:
The Monthly Revenue Review shows you exactly how to monitor your pipeline health monthly. You’ll get the revenue tracking framework, the leading indicator system that predicts problems 60 days early, how to diagnose revenue gaps before they hurt, the action triggers for different pipeline states, and the forecasting method that eliminates surprises.
Want the full Clear Edge OS? 26 frameworks for $5K-$150K operators who want precision, not guesswork. Start here
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