It’s the dream of many people all across the world: Quit your day job that you don’t really like to set your own hours and make good money writing about an industry that you’re very passionate about.
This is probably the best-case scenario for many freelancers, but it’s certainly not out of reach by any means. And each and every time another freelancer makes it big like this, we get to showcase another example of an entrepreneur whose drive and decisions can inspire others like him.
Meet Kristian Sturt, an English soccer fan and writer who left his nine-to-five job behind, so that he could cover everything the interesting transfer market in soccer. He began his challenging journey more than six years ago when freelance writing on the web wasn’t as big and well-developed as it is now. In other words, Kristian had to be a trailblazer of sorts, figuring things out as he went along.
He left a full-time job and financial security to start from the very bottom of the freelance world. Needless to say, Kristian was excited but also nervous about making this change.
“As anybody who is self-employed will tell you, the biggest fear is always losing your ‘guaranteed’ income,” Kristian told us over email. “There is absolutely no guarantee a writer, regardless of their quality, will get any paid work. Therefore, as money makes the world go round, your world when you turn self-employed will inevitably come to a complete halt from time to time.”
Though his passion was covering soccer, he started, as many freelancers do, writing about all sorts of strange topics for very little money. Sometimes, his editor would even stiff him, and he’d have put in hours to deliver copy without anything to show for it! If this sad situation sounds familiar to some freelancers, that’s understandable, but the key is to stay determined.
“Early on a lot of my work was completed out for free,” Kristian says of those early days. “Any paid work, because I had no experience, was for a lot less than minimum wage and often not on football. Initially I started working as a freelancer while still in full time employment so the transition involved a lot of hours. My average day would involve getting up at 7:30am, working from 9am to 5pm, getting home, showering, eating, and starting work again from 7pm until whenever I couldn’t keep my eyes open.”
For Kristian slowly but surely amassed a bigger and better portfolio by actively pitching his better pieces to soccer sites for which he really wanted to write. The end result: He finally made headway!
As the years wore on, he was able to write for more reputable sites that reached a larger audience. Also, and this is a huge plus, he was able to demand more for his writing. Though things were definitely trending in the right direction, he still faced one hurdle he had to overcome: social media.
Back when he started several years ago, social media wasn’t the force it is today.
Today, freelancers can take advantage of social networks like Twitter and Facebook to advertise their pieces and reach big audiences. However, Kristian was struggling at the time because he had to build a Twitter audience from scratch as an unknown freelancer.
One of the things he did, to his credit, was publicly challenge established journalists from the BBC, such as Ben Smith, when he believed their soccer reporting was inaccurate. You’d think this would’ve harmed his credibility, but it actually gave him a bigger platform since a much bigger fish was actually acknowledging him by getting into a debate over story accuracy with him!
The most important thing, of course, was that Kristian didn’t get discouraged after such exchanges. They simply motivated him to build up his Twitter following to more prominence. And guess what? It worked!
Today, Kristian’s much-respected Twitter account, @FootieWriter, has 145K followers.
Besides his social media influence, Kristian also owns his own content-creation company, giving him the luxury to work on the writing projects that he wants to entertain. His profile has also been elevated, as he now works with companies like Heineken and Citroen.
All in all, not bad for a freelancer who quit his day job! Several years after the fact, he’s a success by anyone’s standards. So what advice does Kristian have for someone looking to become a freelancer and make money off their passion?
“Always make sure you’ve got what it takes to win work in your desired field,” he says. “Make sure you obtain your first few roles while still in employment. Then, if they’ve gone well, you’ll leave knowing you have the ability, and you’ll also have a few contacts.”
He also praises the power of tenacity.
“Becoming a writer was actually my second freelance role,” he says. “The first one did not work out so I went back into full-time employment and started again. I never saw the first time as a failure, but simply as a learning curve. Without it I wouldn’t have succeeded the second time around as a writer.”
While we enjoy showcasing feel-good stories like this, you have to keep in mind that he didn’t get to this point overnight. It took him years of dedicated striving to attain his dream. You can, too, if you put in the smart work as a freelancer!
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