I am often asked, “Mike, why did you choose to get into writing professionally? Is it because you’ve loved reading books since you were a kid?”
No.
Sadly, my entrance into writing was a lot less romantic than the fulfillment of a childhood dream or even a love of reading (though I do love that).
Instead, I got into writing because I was homeless, had zero marketable skills (didn’t finish college), and was pretty darn desperate for an income source that didn’t require any upfront investment (I didn’t have anything to invest).
Here’s what I did:
Step 1. Got a bunch of books from the library on “how to become a Freelance writer”
Step 2. Quickly realized that most of those books only gave general, outdated ideas but nothing specific enough to actually build a career off of (most of those books were just sales letters for high-priced writing seminars)
Step 3. Signed up to sites like Elance.com (before it was Upwork), Textbroker.com, iWriter.com, ConstantContent.com, thewarriorforum.com etc. hoping that high paying client work would fall into my lap
Step 4. Used the Public Library open computers to write 500-word articles for $5 a pop until my fingers blistered (no joke, actual blisters)
Step 5. Used that hard-earned money to get off the streets
Step 6. Got mega burned out writing $5 articles
Step 7. Wanted to quit (and almost did)
You too can follow my simple 7-step system to overnight writer burnout for only 27 bagillion payments of $97!
Just kidding.
To be honest, things got pretty rough.
I had just barely gotten myself off the streets and was seriously considering going back because I was so miserable churning out low paying content for terrible clients.
Desperate as I was, I spent the last of my pennies on every “how to become a writer” course you can imagine. AWAI, Warrior Forum, random dudes and dudettes on the Interwebs, overpriced coaches… I bought it all.
After cutting through all the fat and fluff (and some clearly made up garbage just to sell products), I discovered a surprisingly simple process for writing blog content that stood head and shoulders above most of the drivel writers were producing in my market.
More specifically, through trial and error, I took that knowledge and developed a method to write blog posts that helped my clients’ businesses grow in ways they had never experienced before.
A big part of that method also allowed me to write blog posts I regularly charged $400 for that took just a few hours to write giving me an hourly Freelancing rate of around $150/hour doing what I consider pretty easy work.
Easier than digging ditches anyways.
I had gone from keyword stuffing SEO articles with “HVAC repair in Phoenix Arizona” to writing semi viral content that was generating sales for clients I cared about.
The crazy part was that I was achieving this WITHOUT knowing anything about how to write sales copy, how to “persuade and manipulate” people, or having any formal training in “content marketing”.
Suddenly, my clients started paying me more for the same amount of work because my articles became more valuable to them from a pure business standpoint.
That was the aha moment I had been waiting for.