The next major bumps in income, from a bit of money to actual, could-someday-be-a-career money, came from two organizations.
First, I was accepted by a company that managed multiple websites to write a variety of lifestyles-related articles. While they didn’t pay exceptionally well, they had a super-organized system for assigning, the articles didn’t take long to write, and I got regular, interesting assignments. This almost doubled my income as I added multiple websites to my queue.
Second, I was accepted to do contract work for a marketing agency. They create a list of all the articles they need written, and depending on the length, you command a different rate. The pay is higher than average for marketing copy “mills” because the customer can choose to reject your article, which leaves you with rights to the article but also no pay. At first, I feared this would be a bad move for me.
However, it became clear that the site’s claim that only a small fraction of my articles would be rejected was true. I lost about 10% of my articles to rejections, but I made more than double the standard pay-per-word for most content-mill copywriters. Over time, I got better and better access to higher-word-count and higher paying jobs.
What was most helpful about this site was that, during times when I was working, I could stop doing marketing articles entirely. However, during vacations or during my two months off contract, I was able to “scale up” my participation, writing many, many articles and boosting my income substantially.
Throughout this time, I still pitched articles, pitched direct clients, and wrote multiple articles a month. My work was ramping up, but I didn’t feel like it took up all of my free time.
One more step had to happen, though, before I was ready to take the leap.