Documenting my journey as a freelance writer — Week 1
By: Ahmad Alam
Tags: Writer, Freelance Writing, Content Marketing, Instagram, Freelancing

Documenting my journey as a freelance writer — Week 1

Sharing what I learned in my first week & how documenting your journey can help you too Ahmad Alam Feb 25, 2019·9 min read

it me

On February 19th 2019, I decided to become a freelance writer and share everything that I learn along the way. I hope to add value, inspire and make new friends in this journey.

You’ve found me way too early in this endeavor. How early, you ask?

Well, I bought my domain name — that’s when you know you’re legit — on February 19th 2019.

It’s called… Ninjalancer.com!

Don’t bother going there just yet. I haven’t even made my website at this stage. That’s how early I’ve started documenting my journey. The journey to becoming a ninja + freelancer; quick hint for those who didn’t get the portmanteau.

Alright, let me introduce myself.

My name’s Ahmad, I’m 27, and I’ve been a digital marketer since 2017. I’ve also experimented with digital illustration and creating websites on Wordpress. Basically, a whole lot of screen time.

*Looks away from the laptop and rests his eyes for a bit*

The most exciting thing that happened to me, and I swear this is relevant to the story and many more in the future, is that I created a community on Instagram called People With Laptops.

instagram.com/peoplewithlaptops

I started People With Laptops around the same time last year and since then, it has grown to a 7,500+ community of remarkable people from around the world.

On People With Laptops, I only post pictures of people with, you guessed it, laptops. But the magic happens in the captions, where I share their stories in an interview format. I’ve probably interviewed close to 300 people so far.

As you can imagine, this has paved way for me to become friends with, and create a solid network of amazing human beings from across the globe.

Here’s where it gets interesting 👇.

The response when I announced going freelance

I announced that I was going to start freelancing on People With Laptops soon after I booked Ninjalancer.com.

The screenshot on the left shows that 415 people saw my Instagram Story of going freelance. And the one on the right shows that 234 people clicked through to my then blank, zero-content Instagram page, also called Ninjalancer.

Here’s what I learned this week and how documenting your journey can help you too.

Accountability

As you saw the screenshots above, there’s no turning back from the path now. So many people saw it, and these aren’t strangers, they’re people I talk to. I openly declared this new venture that I was going to get into, and on top of that, I told them I’ll be documenting everything.

What I’ve learned is that when you feel accountable to someone other than yourself, you push yourself to get things done and keep moving forward.

This is not something entirely new; thousands of people are already doing it online. And it works wonders in many ways.

Building a community is so flippin’ important

My People With Laptops community flooded me with messages of encouragement as soon as they found out. The support was unbelievable. I’m not even joking, I spent the entire day responding to congratulatory messages and people asking me what my services were so that they can work with me in the future.

Oh by the way, I had not even disclosed fully what exactly my services were going to be on that day.

So what I’ve learned from this is to find your tribe. Create a community. Create a network. Surround yourself with like-minded, positive people. Be it on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Medium, wherever. For me it was Instagram.

Here’s a tip, start building a network or community especially when you have a ‘steady,’ comfortable job. Don’t wait for shit to hit the fan and then think of building a network.

I started People With Laptops when I had a full time job. That really helped me focus on growing my community and not having to worry about questions like ‘when am I going to start monetizing my audience.’

Just focus on growing your tribe, make genuine connections. I’ve learned that a strong community will support you, and give you the boost of confidence you need starting out.

Don’t wait for the New Year or the 1st of a month to start

This is the real stuff. Just start.

Before deciding to announce going freelance, I thought I’d wait for 1st March. You know, new month new everything.

But I started on February 19th. Who starts anything on February 19th!?!

I’ve wasted more than two months thinking if I should do this. If I should take this Udemy course to brush up on SEO, or that HubSpot course to add to my LinkedIn profile, when will I be ready, and the list of conditions and prerequisites just keeps growing.

And you know how many of those things I ended up doing? None. A case of serious decision paralysis maybe, mixed in with a bit of waiting for the perfect time to start.

If you want to start something, please, don’t let yourself be the barrier to your own goals.

Sharing your story is hard, especially on video

One of the hardest things I’ve done this week is putting myself out there on video.

So, I put two videos of myself on Ninjalancer’s Instagram, where I document my journey daily, and I won’t lie, picking up the phone and just talking into the camera was frightening.

Don’t even get me started on how daunting video editing on a phone is, at least for me. I gave up on my second video and decided to just record everything in one take.

But you know what, it felt good.

I learned that overcoming a challenge/fear feels great! And more importantly, when you own your story, who you are as a person, and be as authentic as you humanly can, things just feel right.

You don’t have to worry about coming up with something interesting and borderline-fabricated for the sake of creating content. You’ll never run out of ideas if you’re documenting yourself truthfully. You’re just out there being yourself, winning hearts, scoring leads and slaying the day.

I’ve learned that we all have our own stories and that’s what makes us unique. Use it.

Defining your future clients is the way to go

One of the very first things I tackled this week, was deciding what kind of clients/businesses I want to work with.

If there’s anything those two months of part procrastination part learning about the writing business have taught me is to pick a niche.

Now before you start giving me a hard time about how deciding which clients I want to work with, does not mean I’ve got a niche, hear me out…

I know having a niche would mean something like picking topics to write about; topics like productivity, travel, entrepreneurship or marketing. But as a new freelance writer, who hasn’t scored a client yet, I need to establish who I want to help.

That will help me with keyword research, optimizing my site copy, tone of voice, and just aligning everything under the sun to find and connect with my ideal clients.

This is exactly what I posted about on Ninjalancer on my 2nd day as a freelancer.

Here’s an excerpt from the caption of my post.

1. Who are my future clients? Tech startups, apps, digital products/tools, and SaaS products. At this stage, I’m not too worried about what to label this list. I know, some business names can be used interchangeably. 2. What are their goals? Being found online, more sign-ups, more email subscribers, more downloads, increasing user retention and creating a community of raving fans. 3. How will I help them achieve these goals? Content writing! This will be the main service. Since content writing covers quite a few things, here are the different ways I’ll help my clients based on their specific goals.

.

- To help them get more attention: blogs and social media.

- To help them convert visitors/prospects to leads and users: website & landing page copy.

- To retain and engage their users: email marketing content and also blogs again.

- To create an engaged community of true fans: social media content. These answers are going to help me take the next steps with more clarity.

Here comes the main course. By documenting this part of my journey, not only did I personally find direction for myself, I also let my audience know that I’m here for business!

Look for clients in your inner circle

This for me, was my dad, who’s opening a new restaurant in a few weeks.

I know, this is completely self conflicting if you paid attention to the point mentioned before.

I’ll be helping him mainly with social media and building his website; something that isn’t exactly befitting of the types of businesses I want to help.

It doesn’t hurt helping family though. Especially if you’re getting paid to provide a service 😅.

Key takeaway from a freelancer’s perspective: take up a side project to financially sustain yourself starting out.

And, look for leads in your inner circle.

Your experience is valuable, you just need to package it well

On day 3 of this week, we hired a photographer for my dad’s restaurant. We wanted some good pictures of the food we’ll be serving for our menu.

Now, from a content creator’s perspective, how useful is me telling you that I hired a photographer?

It’s not. Trick question. Got you didn’t I? Perhaps I didn’t. Moving on.

Now take a look at this part of my caption, copied from my Instagram post 👇.

We hired a photographer for the menu shots and she’s super talented. I met her about 2 years back, through Instagram. I sold her a small website and today, I became her client. She didn’t approach me — I did. Behold! The power of good content👉🏻. I’ve been following her journey on Instagram and I’ve seen how she has improved her skills over time. Would you believe that today was the 2nd time ever meeting her! Almost-a-cliche coming up.. People buy from people they know, like and trust. And good content helps with that.

What I did there? And what you can learn from this is, that I used my experience of hiring someone as an example of the success you can achieve with great content.

In other words, perhaps I can’t tell you how to sell your services as a photographer, but I can use my experience (from a buyer’s side) of hiring a photographer instead, and package that into useful, helpful content.

So look into your own experiences from different angles. You’ll find stellar things.

Writing stuff down can make you feel less overwhelmed

Let’s be honest, I can’t be a good writer if I don’t write. So I’ve been getting all the practice I can get.

And that applies to solving problems. I’ve included writing stuff down as the first step to getting to a solution.

If you’re a content marketer or anyone who wants to use different social media channels to help your brand succeed, you know how overwhelming creating a detailed content marketing strategy can be.

You ask yourself, “what do I post about anyway?” And often, the idea of having the whole thing sorted out seems so difficult, that you end up procrastinating, or not doing it at all.

So what I did this week, and what you can do too, was just:

Writing down the social media platforms I want to use

Writing down what goals I want to achieve per platform

And the actions I need to take to achieve those goals.

So writing stuff down, as I’ve learned, really solidifies thoughts as it has helped me come up with this simple technique that will now pave a way for me to create a more detailed content strategy.