It probably should be, but I've had tremendous consistency in my career to date. I'm no doubt the exception there, but ever since the first month I considered myself a full-time freelancer (three years ago: January 2008), I've been working very steadily. I used to have a low-end benchmark for the amount of income I'd need to make to have a "good month," and I believe I've only fallen below that once -- in either January or February 2009, right after EGM shut down, 1UP cut half its staff, and freelance budgets everywhere were tightening. I was briefly concerned, but was able to find and create opportunities elsewhere. And more recently, I've routinely doubled that former benchmark, which is why I don't use it anymore.

Consistently working for 10+ outlets is a safety net -- if one of them shuts down or loses its budget, or I fall out of favor for whatever reason, I can typically find other ways to fill that gap. There are thankfully more opportunities available to me than I have time to execute, so it's more a matter of picking the ones that are the best use of my time and pursuing those with regularity. But while I'm fully confident in my ability to maintain freelance success, I don't get complacent or lazy about my work. Because you only need to let an editor down once to create that aura of doubt, which certainly won't help when he/she is deciding on a freelancer to tackle some excellent gig.