From Amateur to Freelancer in 30 Days: Day 1

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I’ve decided to start a new daily blog series focusing on my journey from a retail store assistant manager to a freelance guru!

I’ve been taking a bit of time off from Medium to push all of my energy towards freelancing, and I thought it might be useful to all of you aspiring and amateur freelance writers if I started a 30 day challenge chronicling my adventures in freelancing!

My journey really started back on June 19th, my last day at my retail job. I applied for two jobs on Upwork, a “content-mill” site, to help me get started. Both of them interviewed me within days and decided to hire me!

I owe this entirely, I believe, to my writing samples. Both of my first two clients reached out and told me that my writing sample was the best by far of all the candidates, and that’s ultimately what led to me getting those two jobs. So my first tip for all of you amateur freelancers: work hard on your samples.

Haven’t done any work yet? No problem, just do a one-page mock-up of a topic similar to the jobs you’d like to take. Make sure it’s well-written, because this is where you get to show off your skills.

I always like to try to personalize whatever topics I write about — include a story from your life to make it more interesting for the clients to read. (Unless, of course…