HOW DID YOUR FREELANCE JOURNEY BEGIN?

With everything that's happening right now, it's amazing to see how "regular" work and "normal" lives have pretty much transformed into one like ours.

You know, the kind where you simply make a living off of the Internet... which also means you get to create your income wherever and whenever you want, as long as you have a laptop with you.

My freelancing journey started back in 2008.

I was fresh out of a call center job (we did political surveys with US people over the phone) and I loved the feeling of being able to earn your own keep. Being able to put myself through a semester of college, even if I didn't have to, was my biggest accomplishment back then. And so when I got laid off, I decided to continue hunting for other opportunities.

My favorite thing to do ever since I was in elementary was to write. And despite being still in college, despite not being a native English speaker, despite not having any formal training whatsoever except the mandatory English classes at school, here I was... starting to make some money from putting together words and sentences.

The Internet was just starting to boom and people rushed to write articles for SEO, content for their websites, reviews and descriptions for their products (at 18, I was writing male enhancement product reviews lol), and so on...

To tell you the truth, the income I made when I was starting out as a writer was barely considered livable even in third-world country standards. I got paid $1 to write 500 word articles. Crazy times, I know!

But despite my lowly beginnings, I always feel amazed when I look back.

Had I not started exploring writing and blogging, I would not have found out the many other ways you could serve clients online. I would have been stuck doing Captcha work, or surveys (very rare in the Philippines), or visiting websites so I could earn swagbucks! (lol who can relate?) So never discount whatever experience you're gaining now. Because that exact thing might already be paving the way for your next big thing!

How did your freelancing journey start out?