5+ years of Experience & NOW Just Over Broke.. What's next?!

N

narayanan86

Junior Member
Joined
Aug 29, 2009
Messages
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Hello people,

This is a crazy walk through of a 25 year old full-time freelancer. I begun my freelancing career as a Data Entry guy creating accounts, forum profiles & other grunt jobs way back in 2006.

Later, in 2007 I was posting on forums and then started writing articles for websites & article directories (Guess web 2.0 properties were either not there or not popular). And in January 2008, I started learning WordPress and offering my WP services ever since.

That's the summary of my early freelancing days. Here's why I'm posting this thread.

Long story short

I turned workaholic in 2009-10, started hitting $1.5K a month for a few months in a row offering my content writing & niche sites creation services.

And then, I was little bit out of my mind mainly 'coz of the wrong investment I made in a real estate and hence lost my control on my biz online. There was no immediate impact on my freelancing career, but slowly started to diminish.

Things started going down, worse & now it's pathetic. From $1500/mo to $150 (this month) and now I'm jobless. I was serving as VA for a couple of guys from UK & USA which helped me to make $1,200/mo fixed income ($8 per hour) that I totally lost now.

As I'm typing my story here, I'm left with $14 in my paypal account and that's all I have. I have been trying to grab some work & build clients list so that I can roll back into the game and turn workaholic again (for my goodness), but luck is not favouring me this time.

What am I good at?

To be honest, I'm good at most of the things online (except designing & coding):

  • Content writing (Articles, Reviews, Snippets, Blog posts, etc.)
  • WordPress (Everything - Installation, Configuration, Themes & Plugins, Onsite SEO)
  • Creating Video Tutorials
  • Simple HTML work
  • Building niche sites
  • Building Review sites
  • Customer Support
  • Grunt/Boring jobs (Got a couple of friends who'll accompany me to get these ones done)
  • SEO (Handling campaigns, and also have my own strategies for ranking)
Just wondering what's going wrong and why I'm unable to bounce.

Expecting you people to throw some light on me. Any word is welcome. Let it be critics (or) opinion (or) help (or) anything else.

~ Sam ~
 
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You are in the right place mate. Honestly I don't have something to offer to you at the moment. It seems that you know your things well. You would have probably made some good permanent clients of BHW, had you been active on BHW.
Anyways now that you are here, I am sure you will get some work.

Regards for you mate :)
 
work smart not hard ! , btw if you can post on CL i think i can help you JV .
 
Well once you hit $1500 you should have kept pushing ahead but like you said you lost your focus. You need to marry what customers are looking for in your area to your skill set and advertise accordingly. Consutling and IM are increasingly more difficult because of the eroding business climate and the number of jobless looking for side work. Come up with a plan and keep plugging away at getting new customers.
 
cooltoad said:
You are in the right place mate. Honestly I don't have something to offer to you at the moment. It seems that you know your things well. You would have probably made some good permanent clients of BHW, had you been active on BHW.
Anyways now that you are here, I am sure you will get some work.

Regards for you mate :)
Click to expand...

Looking forward to establish some relationship here mate. Hope I get some wind in my direction

trustedfire9 said:
work smart not hard ! , btw if you can post on CL i think i can help you JV .
Click to expand...

Unfortunately no pal. I'm not into CL. Thanks though
 
If work has dried up, then you should be actively marketing your services on relevant niche forums, like the BTS section of this forum. You could have a article writer sales thread.

Freelancing sites:
Odesk
Elance
Freelancer
Fiverr
etc.
 
bertbaby said:
Well once you hit $1500 you should have kept pushing ahead but like you said you lost your focus. You need to marry what customers are looking for in your area to your skill set and advertise accordingly. Consutling and IM are increasingly more difficult because of the eroding business climate and the number of jobless looking for side work. Come up with a plan and keep plugging away at getting new customers.
Click to expand...

Yes. That's where I did the mistake. I was happy about making 4 digits consistently & then turned towards investment. Made a wrong move & things fell apart.

I'm trying to get new clients and yet to get any. Unfortunately, no takers.

The worst part is, if things are going to be the same for next few days I will be left with no option but to quit online (which I don't want to happen) & hunt for a dayjob :(
 
SEOWhizz said:
If work has dried up, then you should be actively marketing your services on relevant niche forums, like the BTS section of this forum. You could have a article writer sales thread.

Freelancing sites:
Odesk
Elance
Freelancer
Fiverr
etc.
Click to expand...

My Fiverr gig didn't shoot up. No idea why!

Buyers @ Freelancer, Elance, Scriptlance are expecting cheese burgers by paying for peanuts. I am not interested in offering my services for the price that's usually paid for below par quality.

Just signing up with Odesk.
 
If you can write content, know Wordpress and are good at grunt work then you should be setting up your own white hat blogs with Adsense or Clickbank or whatever. You could be making more than $1500 a month, working way less hours and you wouldn't have to put up with working for clients and trying to find new jobs.
 
There's always people here looking for good content writers and your other skills seem to measure up well too. I'm certain you can pull in some work here.

It's all about relationship building-I'm sure you know that already. Secure a bit of work from someone here, get good feedback for it and surely more work will follow for you.

Good luck and let us all know how it goes.
 
narayanan86 said:
Buyers @ Freelancer, Elance, Scriptlance are expecting cheese burgers by paying for peanuts. I am not interested in offering my services for the price that's usually paid for below par quality.
Click to expand...

If you need the money this might not be the best attitude to have. Here are a few more sites to get you started:

textbroker
content authority
mturk
microworkers

I 1000% agree with Autumn that you can be making a lot more by working for yourself than working for others.
 
why not selling your skills on forums? That should work. Go on fiver, give it a try there also, anywhere you can get clients.

Never give up!
 
No reason not to do a day job and continue with IM during your off hours. That's what I do so consider IM to be your part-time job. You had a taste of what it could be so maybe next time you'll be hungrier. You're young so you can expect to screw up!
 
The best advice I can give you is focus on 'who' you were when you were making that income online and go back to that focus and work, work, work... I have literally started my IM business over at least 4 times. Some times shit just happens, be it rankings, life, focusing, becoming an heavy drinker (lol) get back in there and work. I recently went through a big slump with G update and now am working my way out of it.
 
As what bertbaby said. This can be a good idea if you are getting a real job. In this way you can get $$ and thereater you can invest on the online bizz
 
matt1972 said:
The best advice I can give you is focus on 'who' you were when you were making that income online and go back to that focus and work, work, work... I have literally started my IM business over at least 4 times. Some times shit just happens, be it rankings, life, focusing, becoming an heavy drinker (lol) get back in there and work. I recently went through a big slump with G update and now am working my way out of it.
Click to expand...

Very true. I've always found that I make the most money when I'm centred and my head is properly in the game. Mental attitude trumps all.
 
narayanan86 said:
Hello people,

This is a crazy walk through of a 25 year old full-time freelancer. I begun my freelancing career as a Data Entry guy creating accounts, forum profiles & other grunt jobs way back in 2006.

Later, in 2007 I was posting on forums and then started writing articles for websites & article directories (Guess web 2.0 properties were either not there or not popular). And in January 2008, I started learning WordPress and offering my WP services ever since.

That's the summary of my early freelancing days. Here's why I'm posting this thread.

Long story short

I turned workaholic in 2009-10, started hitting $1.5K a month for a few months in a row offering my content writing & niche sites creation services.

And then, I was little bit out of my mind mainly 'coz of the wrong investment I made in a real estate and hence lost my control on my biz online. There was no immediate impact on my freelancing career, but slowly started to diminish.

Things started going down, worse & now it's pathetic. From $1500/mo to $150 (this month) and now I'm jobless. I was serving as VA for a couple of guys from UK & USA which helped me to make $1,200/mo fixed income ($8 per hour) that I totally lost now.

As I'm typing my story here, I'm left with $14 in my paypal account and that's all I have. I have been trying to grab some work & build clients list so that I can roll back into the game and turn workaholic again (for my goodness), but luck is not favouring me this time.

What am I good at?

To be honest, I'm good at most of the things online (except designing & coding):

  • Content writing (Articles, Reviews, Snippets, Blog posts, etc.)
  • WordPress (Everything - Installation, Configuration, Themes & Plugins, Onsite SEO)
  • Creating Video Tutorials
  • Simple HTML work
  • Building niche sites
  • Building Review sites
  • Customer Support
  • Grunt/Boring jobs (Got a couple of friends who'll accompany me to get these ones done)
  • SEO (Handling campaigns, and also have my own strategies for ranking)
Just wondering what's going wrong and why I'm unable to bounce.

Expecting you people to throw some light on me. Any word is welcome. Let it be critics (or) opinion (or) help (or) anything else.

~ Sam ~
Click to expand...

What is going on how many threads have I read of people being broke and jobless now on BHW?

:batman: :confused:
 
IM work changes, all those things you say you do its easy to outsource them for cheaper i think you should get more into coding because IM and SEO changes over time but programming doesn't.
 
narayanan86 said:

What am I good at?

To be honest, I'm good at most of the things online (except designing & coding):

  • Content writing (Articles, Reviews, Snippets, Blog posts, etc.)
  • WordPress (Everything - Installation, Configuration, Themes & Plugins, Onsite SEO)
  • Creating Video Tutorials
  • Simple HTML work
  • Building niche sites
  • Building Review sites
  • Customer Support
  • Grunt/Boring jobs (Got a couple of friends who'll accompany me to get these ones done)
  • SEO (Handling campaigns, and also have my own strategies for ranking)
Click to expand...
^^This is what a self employed SEO does.

I have been rather successful grinding it out on my leather ass. :)
Have you thought about a JV? I have many ideas....
 
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