Nigerian Freelance Writer: $6500 Earned in 1 Month

🇳🇬 John Iwuozor posted to LinkedIn a few weeks back…

I just want to share today a graph of my progress as a freelance writer from Jan. 2022 – Nov. 2022

Here are some useful takeaways:

👉 Expect feast and famine. While my lowest month was <$500, my highest was $6.5k

👉 Consistency works. I averaged $500/month in 2021 but 2022 brought that figure to ~$2k

He adds…

it’s been a journey of sheer grit and determination especially for someone living in a developing country limited to some opportunities readily available to others in different parts of the world.

I’m not sure how old John is, but he looks like he might still be in his early 20’s 💪🏾

He writes on his own website…

I started writing technical data science articles in October 2020 and by December 2020, I started writing for money, making $25 per blog posts for a chess website.

Cybersecurity, SaaS and Chess seem to be the main topics he gets paid to write about nowadays, and he even started his own agency focused on “Content Marketing for Chess Brands & Influencers” 😎

I heard about John via the Business Builders Africa newsletter, which shares a key takeaway…

John writes in a “boring“ industry with huge demand and big budgets. Everyone wants to be a travel writer, nobody dreams of writing about cybersecurity products. But cybersecurity writers get paid a lot more.

Another key for John seems to be good old fashioned hard work 🥵

He posted to LinkedIn last week…

I spoke to a friend yesterday who was shocked that I could spend up to 4 hours just on preliminary research

In a world where automation is taking over and people expect quick results, I could understand his reaction.

But you know, that’s the beauty of it.

The fact that I spend 2-4 days to work on a single piece (drafting, writing, editing) to produce content so pleasant I know would be hard to replicate.

Content production has always been tough work (with or without AI).

The point is to deliver to the best of your ability and reap the fruits of your effort in due time.

Love that 😍

Chenell Basilio is another person who’s winning in large part by throwing a ridiculous number of hours at her topic.