Start as You Mean to Go On
AKA – “I’m Not a Guru”
When I first started working from home, it was by necessity versus choice. My husband was in the Air Force at the time, and I was at home with our two kids. Between rent, the car payment, insurance, electricity, groceries, baby supplies and everything else, we needed extra money just to cover all of our bills.
To make matters worse, we were young (in our 20s) and kind of stupid, at least with regards to money. We had credit card bills. We were in debt. Figuring out a budget seemed impossible, because no matter which way I divvied up the bills, there was “too much month at the end of our money”.
I started looking for jobs on base and didn’t come up with anything I was qualified for. Working off-base was out of the question. We had one vehicle, and zero money for daycare.
So, I started searching for jobs I could do from home, online. Looking back, if I’d been going the traditional budgeting route I would have known to trim things like the internet in order to save some money.
Realistically, getting my husband to stop playing World of Warcraft at that time in the name of saving money would have probably ended our marriage.
My First Freelancing Job
But as luck would have it, I found a site that promised real, paying jobs. It was even free to get started. It took applying to a lot of different projects, but from that site (Guru.com if you’re curious) I got my first job.
It paid $30.
Definitely not a life-changing amount of money. But the work — editing a technical report — was simple for me because I had experience with the topic. It took me about an hour to finish. I’d made $30 in an hour. It was better money than I’d ever made in my life, when I looked at it that way.
It took me a long time after that to get consistent work. My success rate seemed to be pretty hit or miss. Every client I worked with always gave me great reviews, but getting my foot in the door in the first place was hard. I had to learn how to write proposals, how to put together a portfolio of work that showed what I could do, and how to find more and better projects.
All of that took a lot of time, a lot of trial and error. It also took a lot of schedule juggling because neither of my kids were in school, and my daughter is special needs (developmental delay + severe ADHD). There were a lot of jobs I just didn’t even apply for because I was sure I’d never have the time to finish them, even if I did get hired.
Fast-forward a few years, and I was making maybe a couple hundred dollars a month, but not consistently. When my husband decided not to re-enlist, I ended up taking a “real” job as a technical writer for a small software company back in our hometown just so we’d have some money coming in.
Suffice to say, working outside the home then coming back to housework and a daughter who needed every ounce of my attention wasn’t a workable situation.
I started looking at freelancing jobs again.
I ended up finding a project that was slated for 3 months. It paid twice what I was making at the time at the software company, but it was obviously not a replacement for a full-time job.
Still, I was desperate. Against the advice of multiple members of my family, I went for it.
And I won the project.
That was my start. The path has been anything but easy, but I’ve learned a lot about myself as a professional, as a mom… well, as a person, period. And I wouldn’t trade the journey thus far for anything.