My Freelance Journey In Hindsight

It was the year 2013/2014. The second semester of my final year had already begun. During this period, students on my level always needed more money from the home front to sort out their sundry social and academic bills.

Because it was my final year, I needed money for my final year project (though my course of study’s complexity got me a waiver), final year dinner, final year excursion, and other events of equal importance.

While my colleagues were getting financial supports of different ranges from their parents and guardians, mine could not lift a finger to help me.

How so?

Well, this is it. As of the time I got to my final year, my parents’ employer — the Osun State Government — could no longer pay the salaries of civil servants, owing to the huge debt on the Aregbesola-led administration’s neck.

As bad as I would have it, while some junior civil servants were being paid half of their salaries, just to keep body and soul together, my parents’ cadre — the senior staff cadre — was exempted. For more than 18 months, my parents were owed salaries and that brought the family’s finances to its knees.

Seeing that there was no solution in sight, I started looking for ways to make money off my skills and knowledge to keep body and soul together. Unlike the typical narrative of getting a hard-labour job, I opted for a mentally challenging job.

Being good with languages, I started considering freelance writing and editing jobs. This was easy because, apart from studying Linguistics and English (double honours), I have always had a knack for writing and its correctness, hence my choice of writing, on the one hand, and editing on the other hand.

Now, though I was determined to succeed at this venture, this isn’t to say that it didn’t come with its retinue of doubts and disappointments. I could remember that during my early days on upwork.com, I would exhaust my points pitching proposals to prospective clients without getting a callback.

That continued for a long time that I started doubting my abilities.

But when my first major writing deal came, it didn’t even come through any freelance platform. It came through a friend who pitched to another final year student that I could help with that student’s long essay.

It came as a surprise to me when the gig came through. I was trepid considering that I hadn’t written a long essay before, and I certainly would not start handling freelance jobs with a long essay.

After a period of going back and forth with the friend that brought the gig, I agreed to write it, but it wasn’t a deep resolution. My plan was to charge the student a high price that she wouldn’t be able to afford. If she couldn’t pay, I would also insist that I wouldn’t charge her below that price. That way, nobody would say I did not want to handle the project or that I was afraid. It would simply come off as we differed on pricing, hence the reason for not handling the project.

I was wrong. Immediately I called my supposed high price, the student agreed to pay and asked when and how I want to be paid. She also requested that I begin the project pronto.

For two days after we concluded on the pricing and the student paid, I could not do anything. Fear had gripped me and the next challenge I had was I had to deliver her project otherwise, I would lose face.

On the flip side, she agreed to pay me N30,000 which was a relatively huge amount of money then for a student to possess in school — especially for someone like me who had stopped receiving money from home.

I used my fear as fuel to undertake the task at hand and after studying several long essays as models, I was able to complete the student’s project. I still did not touch the money I was paid because I was afraid the project work would be returned for not meeting the set standards. If that happened, I could be asked for a refund. And since a lack of money pushed me into freelancing in the first place, I didn’t want any situation whereby I would be shamed about money.

Thankfully, the project was not returned. In fact, the student in question never brought it back for corrections. Rather, she brought me 3 other people who wanted to write their projects and I charged each of them N30,000. That was how I made N120,000 in my final year at the University.

Ever since that time till now, I have lost count of the number of writing and editing tasks I have undertaken. For some, I already knew what to do; for others, I did them in fear but came out better.

Moral Lesson: Fear can either make or mar you, but it’s best to take life head-on once faced with challenges. Ply the difficult road — it makes life easier.