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My Freelance Progress and the Burnout That Followed

· 3 min read

In My last post, I discussed how I restarted freelancing after quitting it in 2020. I shared how I found a direct client for content writing and got my first WordPress development order on my new Fiverr account. In today’s post, I will share my progress after it.

I was writing one article for BrowserToUse and started building the WordPress website for the first order I received.

Even before I had delivered the first order, I got the second order for a minor addition on a website. For which the client was only offering $10. Although the order amount was low, I took it to get a review on my account. Similarly, orders kept coming for WordPress development.

One day a client reached out to me for my Tech writing services. He wanted me to write the About Us page of his business. I was not very good at writing Website content, but I still accepted the order as it was the first order for my content writing gig on Fiverr. The very same day, I made all the effort and delivered that order. The client was pleased with the result.

Riding on the success, I thought, why not give Upwork another try? I tried it in 2020 with no luck. I started sending proposals to both WordPress Services and Tech content writing. I received messages from job posters, but none of them were converting for work. After a couple of weeks, one client got agreed. His requirement was writing content in the Data Recovery niche. I hadn’t written such content, but I took the order.

Now, I had so much freelance work on my plate and managing my business. If I list them:

  • One Article daily for BrowserToUse
  • Website Development Orders I had from Fiverr
  • Content Writing Orders from Fiverr
  • One Article daily for the Data Recovery client I found on Upwork.

I started working the entire day to get all the work done. At first, It seemed Impossible, but later I got used to doing it. I kept working like this until the last week of August. After it, I had to slow down my work due to an emergency in my family. When things improved a bit after 1.5 months, I had to stop some of the work, but still, I was working.

But all the earlier work stress and the emergency within my family lead to complete burnout. By November, I was so stressed that I started saying no to clients on Fiverr. I even enabled Unavailable mode on the platform to avoid any new orders. For the next five months, until March 2022, I didn’t take freelance work. I started it again in April 2022. I will share the progress of 2022 in the upcoming posts.

As I worked hard in freelancing and my business in 2021, I made a decent income for the first time in my career. At that time, everyone was talking about Investing in stocks, mutual funds, etc., so around June 2021, I decided to try it. In tomorrow’s post, I will share how I started my investing journey. So, stay tuned for that.

Thanks!