My Journey into Freelance Writing

My experience has been more positive than I expected

Photo by Andrew Neel on Unsplash

My transformation into a freelance writer was completely unexpected. There was no logical thought process or planning — it just happened.

In July of this year, I graduated from university with a degree in Economics. I’d spent the best part of my final year worrying about what my coveted Next Step would be. It was a complicated decision for a few reasons.

I’m a very work-focused person — I generally enjoy work more than play — so I didn’t fancy taking a gap year or a meaningless job that wouldn’t take me anywhere. Yet none of the typical ‘solid career’ options appealed to me either. I refused to work for the government or a multinational corporation. I couldn’t convince myself that I was excited at the prospect of working in analytics or operations or finance or marketing — or anything else I could think of.

I was also in a long-distance relationship with a Mexican I’d met on my exchange year. I’m from the UK, so the distance was pretty extreme. As much as I hated the idea of putting my goals on hold for a guy, I knew the relationship wouldn’t survive long-distance forever. Besides, I didn’t even know what my goals were.

So I did what any thinking person would do. I flew to Mexico with no concrete plans. It wasn’t as crazy as it sounds, because I already had two ways I knew I could make money online: tutoring and a lead gen job I’d been doing for the last year.

Enter Medium

This happened to coincide with me finding Medium. In late July, I went to a university celebration event with some past alumni, and one of them handed me her business card. It included a link to her Medium profile. I’d heard of Medium before but had no idea what it really was or how it worked; after visiting her blog, my curiosity was piqued. I browsed the site and realized you could get paid for earning there.

This sparked something inside me and it seemed like a no-brainer. After all, hadn’t I always wanted to be a writer? I started writing ‘songs’ and stories when I was about four years old; ever since then, I’d told everyone I wanted to be a novelist.

Yet somewhere along the line, I’d internalized the idea that nobody can make money as a writer. That they’re just struggling artists.

But my modest success on Medium gave me hope. Lots of my posts were curated, and people seemed to like them. I made enough money through my efforts in September to pay half my rent for the month (remember, I’m living in Mexico).

Most importantly, Medium made me realize there were plenty of people making a decent income through freelance writing. If they could do it, why couldn’t I?

The start

Of course, I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. No idea what to include in my job applications, no idea how much to charge, and no idea what questions to ask. No idea what my expectations should be.

I was anticipating an uphill struggle to be able to find any kind of gig, high-paying or not. I still had that idea of the ‘struggling artist’ internalized. No matter how good of a writer I was, why would anyone hire me when I was a complete newbie with no experience bar a few Medium posts?

At first, my fears seemed to be confirmed. The Facebook groups seemed oversaturated with wannabe writers willing to accept pitiful rates. After multiple attempts, I couldn’t get accepted on Upwork. Nobody was replying to my job advert applications.

I resorted to setting up a profile on Fiverr, where I offered to write articles for $0.01 a word; I found a client who was nice enough and gave me a 5-star review, but earning $12 didn’t feel like much of a victory.

One day, my fortunes took a sharp turn. I replied to an advert on a job board asking for a personal finance writer, and set my rate at three times more than what I’d received on Fiverr. To my surprise, that lead got back to me almost straight away and gave me an assignment I’d earn $100 for. The same day, I had a reply from a lead I’d found on Facebook a few days ago; they had a big assignment they wanted me to start for the same rate.

Since then, I’ve had a steady stream of work and money from these clients. Yesterday I got a reply from someone I contacted a while ago for another writing position, so I have even more work now. I’m even considering giving up online tutoring, I no longer need the extra cash and I’d rather dedicate the time to writing.

What I’ve learned

The previous advice and stories I’d read about starting out as a freelancer writer seemed to suggest that you need to start at a low rate and work your way up. I was happy to do this since my living costs are so low, but in retrospect, I don’t think it was necessary. Earning $0.01 a word on Fiverr gave me the confidence to raise my rate to $0.03 a word, but it didn’t help me to do it. The quality of my samples (Medium posts) did.

I also read advice suggesting that sites like UpWork and Fiverr are great places to find your first clients and start off. In my case, that hasn’t been true. Finding work on Fiverr hasn’t brought me any benefit other than making me $48 richer, and despite my abysmally low rate, I’ve still only been able to secure more clients. It seems both easier and more lucrative to look for work elsewhere.

I’m also happy to report that I haven’t had any bad experiences with being scammed or cheated. So far, I’ve always been paid promptly. When my first client gave me an assignment, I asked him to confirm it was paid, and explained I can’t work for free — but could negotiate a discount. He reassured me no discount was necessary. Another client told me my rate was very low and asked if she could pay more to have more of my time. I swiftly doubled my rate, and she agreed.

Another surprise is that the process of finding work has been slower than I expected. I assumed that if I hadn’t heard from a lead within a day or two, they’d already hired someone else. In fact, a delay seems more common — yesterday I heard back from a job I applied to a month ago.

The plan going forward

My original aim was to be earning £500 (around $650) a month by December, since this is the bare minimum I’d need to survive if I lived with my mother in the UK. I’ve already surpassed this figure for October, even though I didn’t start at the beginning of the month and there are still eleven days to go. And I’m a total newbie. And I’m being underpaid.

My ambitions are now far higher — I have no reason to think I can’t be earning as much as my friends working professional jobs in London soon.

Now that I have a steady stream of work, I’m going to experiment with applying for gigs asking for a much higher rate and see what happens.

I now find it crazy that I was ever considering doing anything but freelance writing. It suits my lifestyle, strengths, and interests perfectly. After worrying about my career for so long, being able to devote myself to work I genuinely enjoy is so freeing. The flexibility of freelancing also means that I can work from anywhere in the world; even if my boyfriend can’t manage to get a job in Europe, we’ll never need to go long-distance again.

Part of me is scared that reality is going to come crashing down any time soon and I’ll realize I was misled, yet I’m confident I have what it takes to weather any challenges.