Age 14: Embracing the Keyboard — How I Embarked on My Freelance Writing Journey
Hi guys, today I wanted to tell you a story about how I started my life as a freelancer. The reason why I want to share this story with you is because I am currently shifting from one life phase to another life phase, and also, I wanted to differentiate myself from other entrepreneurs and motivational speakers.
I strongly as my extended family, you must know me as who I am not as who I want to be or who I want to be seen as. Let’s break the egg, I am not one of those motivational business Gurus who just want to sell you something, I want you to know or at least, give you the ideas what goes behind those people who you see on the internet as internet moguls, motivational gurus or business leaders.
Let me start the story how I went from earning 5000 rupees per month from freelancing at just 14 years of age to being coming back to 0 rupees per month at the age of 18.
Backstory
This was the time when I was just turned 14 years of age in 2019, and we all know what happened during that period, for it will be etched forever in the history of humankind, The Covid Pandemic came to India and we were all locked in our houses as a result we were left with a lot of free time.
Many of us, including me started some hustles or pursued hobbies. But for a 16-year-old in India, just having free time doesn’t count as a sole reason to jump up to writing. I am not a bitter guy, I have never been one, every time I have seen a problem, I have always asked that how can I solve it.
The Problem
The problem that makes most of the people of the world to commit to nearly everything is family and when that family gets hurt, it hurts the most of us.
My start was the same, when I saw my dad feel desperate to the core to earn one cent, because he was not going to office and not getting his salary in the midst of the pandemic, when each thing was cost like a mountain of price.
Things were hard, really hard!! my mom and dad never saw me as their saviour or as an asset. But, the time, the one which is endless and ruthless, chose me. I felt the immediate urge to buckle for work, but what can I do as a 16-year-old?
I searched and I searched frantically, like a hound desperate to gulp the nearest prey. Before going to the next part, let me tell what was my condition at that time, I was starting from absolute zero, I had nothing and no one, no money to invest or pay for courses, the laptop is not super spec laptop…. and there were a billion more roadblocks that made me think that this is not possible but again I asked myself how can I do it?
Everyday my incapabilities used to eat me up when I saw my own family getting crushed by the financial desperation. My believe on the everything positive was shattering and I felt a strong that I must do something
During this time, I started writing diaries and journals and every day I used to write the same thing which had the same conclusions “Take me out”. During the days, I used to just attend school, sleep and do some research on different earning methods but some things required a bank account and some things required a website. I almost felt that anything for which I started my journey for came back to the loop of me being back to square one.
But, then one fine day I came around freelancing and I came to know about these platforms like Fiverr and Freelancer.com. Now, at this stage I was like “Whatever! let’s try that” and I went on for it. I posted my first gig on August 2020.
The Setup
So, after setting up my gig on scriptwriting, as I had already done a digital marketing course by Google, I knew that my gig will not go on its own. I started searching for YouTube channels that need scriptwriters and I also went with all the different ways of outreach I had known and that would be possible for me to do it free of cost. But, did I get clients? No, none at all. My Fiverr gig was getting impressions but no one was ordering.
How did I get my first client?
During that time, Fiverr had a feature that gave people the option to post their request and different freelancers could pitch them to get the offer. I came across this feature and I started replying to these requests, in whatever style I had known about pitching.
After months of pitching, finally one client answered and asked me some more things about my work. At that time, I had no samples that I could show to my clients. So, to compensate that I told him that I will write one script free for him to judge my work. He gave me that work for just $5 (Yes, that was my initial price). I started writing with utmost dedication, I wrote even when my school was going on online while keeping my camera off.
I was told to write jokes for a house party joke and that time I knew nothing about writing jokes or writing in general. All I had was a burning desire that I need to help my mother and father.
After almost 3 days of working on writing some shitty jokes, I gave him a list of some jokes or performance. But even after writing for 3 days and multiple revisions I was not able to impress him enough, and I was treated with the reply “I didn’t like it but I will still give you 5 stars” I was like “Dude! you are an angel”.
That’s how I made my first 5 dollars but from here, how from there I went back to 0 dollars. But that is for another blog. This is a blog series where I will tell you about my story of failure in the freelance industry, what are the lessons from that I took from that failure and what I will do to improve my venture in my next venture. This is Sagnik Dey, signing off
