Making a living as a writer is notoriously hard. After one year of trying on and off, I finally made a record amount of money by doing freelance writing. I made $700 in a week, and I didn’t have to work 40 hours to earn it. If I had to put a number on it, I probably worked 12–15 hours. Even after taking taxes out, that’s not too bad.  It’s a taste of the full-time freelancer’s life for me.

To be fair, I haven’t the slightest clue whether I can sustain that for any length of time. Truth be told, I didn’t even look for any gigs. The gigs came to me through direct hires and invitations from either Upwork’s Talent Specialists or job posters themselves. But hopefully, through effective marketing, I can continue to have well-paid gigs show up in my inbox. I’ve worked hard to earn stellar feedback and a great rating, and I’m hoping that my reputation will pay off.

Finding Your Niche

I think that I’m finally starting to understand the niches that I can occupy with confidence. My unique selling points amount to three main factors. First, I’ve got a boatload of sales experience, which is capped off with an effective degree of management and leadership experience. Second, I’m a pretty decent writer (at least most of the time). Third, I have a remarkable ability to empathize with another person, which means that I can quickly understand their needs and how I can best fulfill their needs through my writing.

With all that said, it makes sense that I’m making a fair amount of money from writing a few things:

• Product descriptions for eCommerce, including Amazon and Shopify
• Website copy and electronic press kits (EPKs) for musicians

I love working with musicians and I hope to continue writing for musicians. There’s something extremely satisfying about listening to their music, listening to their artistic vision, and creating a piece of writing that really puts all of that into words. It really puts my strengths to good use. As for product descriptions, this would seem to be a natural fit. My background in sales has trained me to see products in terms of benefits and solutions, and my education as a writer has equipped me to tell a story well.

Building a Freelance Income: A Dream

My goal is to build a career as a freelance writer, meaning that I have enough income to support at least myself, if not a family, through that work. It won’t come easily, that’s for sure. A professor of mine told me that his 40-year-old son only recently started getting enough work to support his wife and children. So I guess I’m going to take after Ray Kroc and keep at the grind. After all, as he describes in his autobiography, he built McDonald’s after decades of grinding it out.