I Got Paid $12 Dollars for My First Paid Writing Job

A copywriter’s sole purpose in life is to help their clients create new value for their business. This value could be seen as improving relationships with customers, attracting more visitors to a website, and so on.

In exchange for the value provided by your copywriting services — how does that translate into a paid copywriting job?

Not a copywriter, yet

I became a freelance copywriter in 2016 after teaching English in Japan for 2 years. Teaching English is a great way to live in Japan and make some cash, but, it wasn’t a life-long career for me.

So, I quit, sold introductions to my students, then cycled around Kyushu and partied in Okinawa for a few months.

Life was great but I was burning through my savings like crazy.

I gotta start making money again — fast!

Survival 101

I moved to a top-floor apartment in Taiwan.

There was a bed, dresser, desk, fridge, toilet, sink, and kitchen all crammed into one little space. 

For $375 a month — which included hydro and electricity — that’s a damn good deal.

While searching for my apartment, I saw some job opportunities for teaching English and marketing biomedical products.

I got interviewed and offered a job for both, but, I hated the idea of going from $5,000 @ 40 hours per month to a job that paid less than $2,000 @ 160 hours per month.

• My average hourly teaching wage in Japan was $125 per hour
• The average salary wage in Asia for white people was $12.50 per hour

I turned down the jobs and asked myself:

How the hell am I going to survive in Asia — NOT — teaching English?

(Or working some shit salary job either!)

Say hello to copywriting

Since I had a 6-month visa for Taiwan and a cheap apartment, I spent my time learning digital marketing and making WordPress websites.

I tried my hand at e-commerce, which was to dropship ninja shoes from Taiwan, but it was a total failure.

It was during this low moment that I came across the work of Gary Halbert and his Boron Letters.

(Yes, I’m one of those guys who lives, breathes, and preaches the wisdom of Gary Not-Vee Halbert!)

Copywriting. Why didn’t anyone tell me about this before?

I loved the idea of getting paid for writing and I wen straight to platforms like:

• Upwork
• People per hour
• Freelancer.com

I quickly searched the internet for the top resources on copywriting and online marketing. These were the books I discovered: 

1. The Boron Letters by Gary Halbert
2. The Copywriter’s Handbook by Robert W. Bly
3. Scientific Advertising by Claude Hopkins
4. Ogilvy on Adverting by David Ogilvy
5. The Brain Audit by Sean D’Souza

That first book, The Boron Letters, I read religiously for months. Not only did it provide a strong foundation on copywriting, but it also offers a solid structure for living your life. 

Between reading books about copywriting, I got a large pad of paper and practicing re-writer other people’s ads, landing pages, and websites. I searched for the best copywriting on the internet and analyzed the style, approach, and techniques. 

In the end, I discovered that copywriting…

…is the art of writing persuasive messages that attract people to products and convince them to buy.

And voila! I was a self-appointed, full-fledged, but never paid, copywriter. 

My First Paid Copywriting Job

I was too embarrassed to ask friends and family if they needed a copywriter or knew someone who did. 

You see, I come from a working-class family. They’re either working for corporate factories, professional welding companies, or fast food joints like McDonald’s. 

So, I did what many first-time freelancers do to find their first paid copywriting job: Upwork. 

I tried other platforms, like Guru and Freelancer.com, but I hated their dashboard and the overall feeling of their platform. 

Upwork was simple, straightforward, and this was before the update where you have to pay to play. 

Anyway, I created a profile and started with an hourly wage of $35. I sent out about a dozen proposals to clients all over the place. I had no strategy. It was all or nothing and I was desperate to get paid. 

I got a few bites but the so-called “clients” kept asking for work for free. They said they wanted to “see what I was made of” before they were willing to pay. 

Back in Japan, not a single student started their lessons without paying in full at the start of the month. Quite frankly, Japan is the pinnacle of business etiquette. So, there was no way I was going to let some good-for-nothing stranger take away any of my time and money for free — クソばか.

After sending dozens of proposals and filtering through junk responses, I finally got my first freelance copywriting gig for a 400-word article $12 USD. 

What’s The Moral?

Well, that depends. Arguably, there could be three conclusions to be drawn here, if not more: 

1. Failure is fundamental — you don’t know what you enjoy doing or how to get paid doing it without trying.
2. Never work for free, ever. Business is business. Charity is charity. 
3. If you can get paid to do something once, you can get paid to do it again and again. 

BONUS MORAL
If you get paid $12 the first time, go for $27 the next, then $100, and so on.

Keep raising your rates and adding value to your client by upselling them to new services that can benefit from.

As time goes by, you can look back at your first gig i