How I Decided to Quit My Job and Start a Freelance Writing Career

Here's a brief background to my story: I worked for four years at a small software company as a jack-of-all-trades, writing technical documentation and marketing copy, designing marketing materials, attending trade shows, training clients, managing large custom projects, and so on and so forth. I learned a lot, but I could never get the writing bug out of my system. Like many here at Associated Content, I'd been a writer all my life, even if I'd never done anything serious with it.

And so I decided to embark on a journey, with the end goal being making a living as a freelance writer. I knew it would be difficult, and I knew it would take a long time to get established, but I was through with letting doubts and fears block me from what I really wanted to do with my life.

Starting As a Freelance Writer on Squidoo

I had started writing content on Squidoo (a site that allows you to create webpages, or "lenses," about any subject you like) a few years back, and my first step as a freelance writer was to step up my Squidoo contributions. I joined a competition to see if I could create one lens a day, and also made lenses on non-competition related subjects. My mini-goal was to complete fifty top-notch lenses, at which point users are awarded the "Giant Squid" moniker and receive other benefits.

Moving on to Article Writing Sites

More recently, I discovered sites like Associated Content that focused on pure writing, and paid writers for generating articles. I was in heaven! And yet, at the same time, I started to realize at this point the enormity of my task.

The performance-pay based sites were wonderful, but from what I've seen, it takes a long time and a lot of dedication to build up the number of views that will provide a decent income. So I started looking at sites like Break Studios and SEED that offer higher up-front payments.

Practicing Self-Promotion and SEO Techniques

That's about as far as I've gotten with the markets. On the promotion side, I've been a student of SEO and online marketing techniques for years, but only now am I starting to realize how very important these techniques are to building your freelance writing career. You could write the most amazing piece in the whole history of humanity and it wouldn't matter if no one read it. I've polished up my personal website, started posting in earnest on my blog, and am learning how to utilize tools like Twitter and Facebook.

Looking to the Future

I've still got a long, long way to go - such a long way, in fact, that the progress that right now seems amazingly huge will one day appear like nothing at all. For now, though, I'm holding on for dear life and trying my best to keep my head above the water as I battle the swells on my way to a freelance writing career.

Interested in learning more about my journey? Check out How to Start a Freelance Writing Career, Freelance Writing for MadeMan, and Freelance Writing for Associated Content.