Journey of a Ghostwriter // Part 2: Where Do You Start If You Want to be Paid as a Writer?

Hey Steemians!

Yesterday, I had posted my first of this series which will be detailing my journey so far as well as the day to day happenings of my business and career as a ghostwriter. If you didn't get a chance to catch part one, I strongly suggest you check it out here. Today, I wanted to cover my beginnings in between when I had left my office job and before I started to earn a consistent income in the hope that it may encourage some of you who are looking at starting a journey of your own, let's begin!

There is Motivation There, I Just Have to Find It

When I had left my corporate job, I didn't have much of a clue of what I wanted to do. You have probably been in the same boat yourself. For a writer, you are automatically drawn to starting a blog to let your creativity flair. This was where I began as well. While I enjoyed blogging, my heart just wasn't in it. I was more focused on where I wanted to be rather than enjoying the process so after a few months, I had given up. I honestly look back and regretting giving up so early since there was a chance it could have gained traction after posting consistent but this is just the way things went.

The next step was taking on freelance work. I was running on savings at this point and gave it about a month before I would look for casual work just to keep my head above the ocean of bills that would start piling up. Freelancing, as many of you may know, is not as easy as it seems. I started quite small. I took on a job for $15 to rewrite some website content and also writing $5 email pitches. The first job, was on Freelancer.com, which I honestly don't recommend. I only ever used it that once and they pretty much took every cent of that $15 to pay for ridiculous fees of who knows what.

Those $5 emails, I didn't mind doing them even though the pay was atrocious. It gave me some good practice and I received feedback which gave me further confidence to keep going. I spent way too much time on them though. If we got out a calculator and added up the hours, I was probably being paid $1.50 an hour. Suffice to say, I had to go get that casual job. After a bit of searching, taking on jobs I never intended to stay at for longer than a week, I found a pretty good gig with decent pay. Best of all, there wasn't too much thinking involved.

Work Comes First, Cash Comes Second

I worked this job while I also doing freelance jobs on the side. This was where things really started to take off. I was using a combination of Fiverr and Upwork. You most likely would have heard of these websites and they frequently get a bad rep. If you want to make decent money as a ghostwriter, these job sites should be temporary, a practice ground almost. They help you get the basics of writing proposals to clients, managing deadlines and workloads and gaining helpful feedback for your own work.

I want to stress that they shouldn't be used much longer than a year into your career simply because they take a lot of your income in fees. Fiverr takes 20% for every $1 you make. This soon adds up with my first $10,000 being made on Fiverr, I hated to think that another $2,000 had go straight out of my hand. The way Fiverr is set up though, it is almost forgivable, they bring the work to you, they advertise on social media and this can simply be though of as your marketing budget. Upwork on the other hand is pretty shameful. They take 20% for the first $500 and 10% after that, topping at 5% for over $10,000. This is to encourage more long term work but for writing, it can be tricky to find long term clients, especially when writing books. Blogging is a little better for this but I found my passion in the books so that is where I centered my business.

As time went on, I started to get offered larger projects for more cash. This was pretty exciting. I would come home from my casual job and jump straight on the computer to start writing. I was pumping 12 hour days but loving every minute of it. There were mornings where I would wake up at 5:30 - 6am, head to the gym, write for an hour and a half and then head to work around 10am. I would work until 8pm, come back home and do a little bit more if needed. Of course I was exhausted during this time but my motivation was all about building my business and taking my work overseas to travel so there was no slowing down.

Sweet Taste of Freedom, Bitter Taste of Giving it Up Again

Around July 1st, I went on a 10 day trip to Bangkok. This was a game changer. I t was also my first time overseas so I was bitten by the travel bug pretty hard with the excitement of seeing a new culture. I took the week and a bit off work to enjoy my holiday and came back around July 10th. Settling back to my casual job was almost impossible. I remember the day I came back, still slightly exhausted from the travelling, I could barely function. I ended up going home early just to compose myself but I secretly just wanted to work on my business.

This continued for a while throughout July and August. I was itching to just up and leave and focus on my freelance writing full time. In my head, if I was making an extra $200 a week freelancing, if I had just quit the casual work, I could be earning so much more. Me and my girlfriend crunched the numbers, picked a date we would leave for Chiang Mai, Thailand for three months and decided that would be it. I would work about 6 more weeks, which in Australia is around 3 more pay checks.

Light at the End of the Tunnel

This made me feel a little better at work, knowing there was an end date. A few weeks letter, I sent an email to my supervisor saying I'll be getting out of here, best wishes etc etc. These last few weeks were great for adding cash to the savings to keep us safe for the three months in Thailand, in case something was to happen with the business or we ended up with some huge, unexpected payout. I had never done anything like this in my life, well that is not true actually. I am considered an extremely turbulent person. I can never stay in the same spot for too long because I basically want to see and do it all. This move was simply an upgrade for me, but it was still the boldest thing I had ever done.

By the time we were ready to move, business was coming in quite steadily. I remember getting off the plane in Bangkok (before the connecting flight to Chiang Mai) and tapping out some work at the airport. I felt so cool, like I was officially working online from my laptop, this was my actual job. I was still relying on the freelancer job markets at this point in time. I was making pretty reasonable money, enough to live comfortably overseas. The goal of this trip to Chiang Mai, was not to just take Instagram shots of me working by the pool, updating my Facebook about how great the "Digital Nomad" lifestyle was. It was all about focusing on the business, taking it to the next level and also a bit of an experiment to see if it was possible to make this work over the next three months.

Tune in tomorrow to see how things went down in Thailand, it may not be what you expect! Or maybe it was... Let me know in the comments

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PART ONE // How I Went From an Office Job to Being Paid to Write for a Living