I feel so much better after revealing my personal finance information and asking the steem community for guidance.
It’s not easy to deal with any kind of hardship - financial, emotional, physical, or whatever else. The hardest part though is to keep it a secret. Trying to pretend that you are in some awesome state when you are really struggling, that’s a way to create a bad mental state for yourself.
Now that I’m openly talking about my financial issues, I can get advice. And let me tell you, the steem community has delivered in spades.
For one thing, I got some really awesome upvotes on the last post. Thank you!!!
More importantly, I got advice.
Three Great Lessons from Three Different People
(1) @grizgal gave me a good basic overview of how I should proceed for the remainder of 2017: Diversify my income, especially w/ any old gigs I can get back. Focus first on building a small cash buffer for myself to avoid emergencies, then focus hard on paying back debts.
(2) @terenceplizga gave me SEO tips on using twitter, steem, and LinkedIn in combination to drive more google awareness that could get me higher in the search results going forward.
(3) @stellabelle talked to me via Twitter after I reached out with a question on freelance writing. She suggested that I post on Medium, “read more than [I] write”, obsess over James Altucher’s work, and take advantage of all the “free tools” such as social media platforms.
There were many other people offering great advice too. This is just a small selection of some of the most immediate and actionable info that I received.
What I Did Yesterday
I hit the ground running. With Grizgal’s advice about reconnecting with old gigs, I went ahead and submitted five new bitcoin articles to my Constant Content profile. This morning I wrote and submitted a 1,700 word whopper on lead generation for a marketing article request from a potential client. CRUSHING IT.
Since Stella told me to use Medium and check out James Altucher, I did both. I posted the first part of my top 50 cryptocurrency token analysis series over on Medium, and will keep posting them one-per-day. I also listened to a full episode of James’s podcast and am gonna listen to more ASAP.
I got claps!
On top of that, I applied for five bitcoin journalism / content creation jobs via angel.co. I’m not sure if that’s the right path, but I figure it will be best to apply now and see how it pans out.
What Else?
What else should I be doing? And, do you have any finance/career questions? If so, share ‘em in the comments and maybe other steemians will have insights to offer you.
You can also save some btc (or any other major crypto) and start lending on exchanges like Polo and Bitfinex. Will give you some residual income.
Wow what a start. I am afraid I cant offer much advice on free lance writing as I've never tried it. I would like to but I think I lack the creativity needed to make a piece really stand out.
I think you are doing all the write things. Don't lose heart if things don't happen immediately. I am always amazed when people looking for work apply for one job at a time, waiting to see if they get it before applying for others. I would always apply for everything of interest, get 5-6 interviews, of which I would be offered 2-3 roles and I was then in the driving seat and could either pick the role I wanted the most or use the others to drive up the rate.
I would say just keep going as you are and things will soon turn round. All the best.
I suggest using Amazon mturk to make extra money. Basically you get paid from doing small tasks like writing and interpretations etc. They pay isn't really high but for each task you complete for example a writing task, you can make about $10 an article.
It's steady income but does take some time to build up. I've seen people making as much as $300 a week using Amazon mturk. You should check it out, I'm pretty sure it could help you. Best of luck!
Cool, I haven't heard about mturk in many years lol. I'll take another look at it ASAP. thanks for the tip
Just keep plugging away and boost those streams of income. I haven't done anything in Constant Content for a long time. What's it like over there these days?
I used it consistently for most of 2017, with a short break over the last two months. It's been great man! I sell about 50% of my articles so far. Lately I am playing around with increasing the price per word a bit, not sure if that will reduce my sale % by too much... but yea it seems like one of the best places that any freelance writer can tap into.
When were you using the site? Was it a good experience?
The money was kind of low from what I remember. I think I stopped when I got on my Squidoo kick back then, then that wnr to hell as well. Into the Hub Pages bottomless pit.
And selflessly, you aggregated the useful information. Thank you for all of this.
You are welcome! So far so good.
Hey Matt, thanks for that. You're a quality guy for putting this summary together.
By the way, I found a cryptocurrency course on Coursera that looks interesting: https://www.coursera.org/learn/cryptocurrency. Let me know if you think it would be worthwhile.
You are welcome!
That class could be cool for someone who likes formal education style and wants to learn from scratch about crypto. I doubt that any class will be useful for somebody with a lot of experience though, and/or I'd probably recommend just reading the white papers and foundational essays by Nick Szabo for anybody who can handle that