I have just completed my first year as a full-time online freelance writer. I would love to be dramatic and say it has been a rollercoaster of a ride, but it really hasn’t. It has been a fairly relaxed gradual climb that included more work than I thought it would. At the start of 2021, I had no clients and barely any income. That changed within a couple of months and has been pretty consistent since.
How did I start as a freelance writer?
Good question. I should preface all this by pointing out that I have been a professional writer since I was 18. I am nearly 50, so I have been doing this for a while. I did also have a TV career as well, where I wrote scripts, did technical stuff, and worked as a freelance writer on the side. I am not saying this to put anyone off giving it a go because you definitely should. I am just pointing out that I know how to structure an article and know vaguely what I am doing, which helps a bit.
Being ok at writing is just practice though, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. Being a famous writer is different, but professional writing is just the result of doing it a lot and a dash of training. However, all my experience had previously been with print magazines and working directly with editors. So, it was all pretty new to me. The plan was to give the digital online freelance malarkey a try, and if it didn’t work, and things got really, really bad, get a full-time job.
When I started working online, I thought I would start with online platforms I had heard of and then, later on, would pitch to other publications I wanted to write for. So, I started on Medium, Fiverr, Upwork, and applied for jobs on Pro Blogger. Two were great, two were not.
Here’s how that went:
Medium
Medium is pretty open, and you can write whatever you fancy. When you first go onto the site, it turns out everyone fancies writing about how to write on Medium. I thought I would try and find a niche and so wrote writing and literature. I wrote this:
You can read it here. I am much more of a ‘try it out and see what happens’ kind of a guy, as opposed to a ‘research and make a plan’ kind of fellow. You can probably tell. Consequently, I meant to look up what the whole publication thing was about when I was contacted by the Startup (the biggest publication on Medium), who wanted to publish my article. I said yes. Since then, I have found most publications are open for a pitch and they are definitely worth it.
I then wrote a load of stories and gravitated toward interesting history stories. Mostly because it was fun. One day I wrote ‘The gorilla who was brought up as a boy in an English Village‘. It went viral. I then wrote ‘North Korean 105-floor ‘Hotel of Doom’ Deserted for 30 Years‘ straight after and that went viral too. If you go viral, you used to make a ton of cash, but that seems to have changed lately. There has been tinkering with the algorithm or something.
Medium is a lot of fun, but things are a bit hit and miss. Have a look at some of my stats:
It can be good cash too. The North Korean story earned $2,340 and is still my top earner for a single article – ever. I have been writing there less but you can have a look at my stuff here and support my Medium work here. Medium is fun, but I wouldn’t fully rely on it if you want to make money.
Upwork
I tried to get into Upwork but just couldn’t. Again, I didn’t really do much research. I put up a profile and hoped the gods would favour me. They didn’t. To be fair, I’m an atheist, so that might be a flawed approach.
With Upwork, people post a job, and you have to pitch for it. I tried a few pitches, but you have to find the balance between having a good profile and pitching low amounts. There are definitely strategies that will help with this, but I never found them. Once you get a good enough profile and several reviews, people might get in touch. I had that happen a couple of times and each time, the work sounded like a scam or paid peanuts, or both.
I gave up and am probably being unfair. If you’re serious about being a freelance writer, then give it a try.
Fiverr
This has become a consistent earner for me, but it took a while. I started on 5 cents a word, put up a ‘gig’ saying I was a writer, and hoped for the best. Happily, I got a client pretty quickly – a 1000 word article about a famine. Slightly random, but the client was nice and gave me a great review.
Since then, I have written over 170 articles, had around 140 5-star reviews, and charge 12 cents a word. The good thing about Fiverr is that you rise through the ranks as you get more gigs and more reviews. You also rise through the search page. If you type in journalism, here are the top four (at time of writing):
You can probably guess which is mine. You can check it out here.
The good thing about Fiverr is that as you rise in popularity, you can put up your prices, and more and more people get in touch. This means I can be pretty fussy, especially as I have some long-term, really nice clients. I can’t remember the last time I didn’t have work in my queue.
The bad thing about Fiverr is that it takes a lot of time. Also, when you are starting out on lower prices, you meet some very strange people and get asked to write some weird stuff. There were also periods early on when there wasn’t much work. I like it.
Pro Blogger
This is a freelance writer job board that is actually pretty great. You can check it out here. I applied for a couple of jobs, but got nothing. In many ways it can be a bit like Upwork, where you are competing against others and frankly, I can’t be bothered. Like Upwork, some swear by it.
I still check in occasionally and the rates can be good if you get the gig – some have fixed prices. I recommend it, but it wasn’t for me.
There are a couple of final elements that really helped
Medium and Fiverr were the main platforms that helped out. However, there were two other things that really helped me stop worrying about going freelance.
One is that because of my decent profiles on Medium and Fiverr, coupled with the occasional viral article, I started getting emails from people offering me work. I said no to some, but a few are still my clients today. They are another regular source of income and came about directly because of my work on the platforms.
The second thing is linked – when they asked samples of work, I could direct them to my portfolio page on this site. This was really handy and I highly recommend it.
So, there you go. Hopefully, this will help anyone starting out and wanting to start a side hustle or even a full career as a freelance writer.
My plan for 2022 is to continue freelancing, but focus more on fiction and self-published non-fiction. Good luck with it all and happy new year!
