Recently I mentioned a bit about how I used freelancing to build up my publishing warchest in a comment in this sub. It drew some interest, so I thought I would give it a write up. As you will see, I didn’t set out to do this, I sort of blundered my way into it, but I am happy with how it played out.

My first experience with freelance writing was in the music industry. For a time, 2008-2011ish I made money doing freelance press work for bands and recording artists. I kept it up off and on up until 2019 or so, but those early years were when I was much more involved in the industry, so once I moved on from that, the work quickly dwindled until my only gigs were occasional ones for friends. It never paid super great, but I was poor, and I liked to eat. It was also good experience.

I began my actual writing journey late 2012. As the years passed, I shifted from getting my short stories placed into anthologies to working on longer works, like novellas and novels. When I made this shift, there was a large window of time where I was working on books, and not really publishing anything. Initially I hadn’t really decided on self-publishing.

I was, however, still quite poor. And so I started doing freelance writing on Fiverr. My first go round I kept it simple: for 5 bucks I would write 500 words of whatever someone wanted. I actually worked my way to being a Level 2 Seller by doing this (which isn’t super easy). Here are some highlights of what I was asked to write:

A gritty crime noir story about a person’s pet cat.

A Doctor Who/My Little Pony crossover erotica.

A large amount of smut, especially cyborg related.

Long lists of potential magical items for a game someone was working on.

I actually ended up turning down quite a large amount of work. I had several folks reach out to me to see if I would ghostwrite a book for them, or even (in one case) a series of books. I was actually able to determine who one of them was, and they were a self published author with a large number of books out. In every case I turned down any gig longer than 5,000 words pretty much. At that point I did not have a novel of my own out, and I was gonna be damned if my first published novel wasn’t under my own name.

All told I made a few grand doing it. Much of that went to just living, but a fair chunk went to business type expenses. Microphones, a laptop, that sort of stuff. It was a pretty good gig, and the money certainly helped. It was also great experience, as I ended up writing in a lot of genres that I normally would not have. I got to stretch my authorial legs a bit, and it gave me more practice on writing to a deadline (building on what NaNoWriMo had already done for me).

In the end though I stopped. I was somewhat a victim of my own success, as the more gigs you complete, the more you get shown, which means the more folks end up hiring you. I reached a point where I was spending more time writing for other people than myself, and once I realized that, I shut it down. I actually deleted my account (which you cannot get back), to remove the temptation.

So some time passed. I started to get more and more serious about treating things like a business, and I had started doing some things like designing some shirts to throw up on Amazon POD. I was getting a small amount of passive income coming in, but nothing at all to write home about. Talking under a hundred bucks a month.

I ended up talking with the guy I now consider my mentor, John G. Hartness, and he convinced me to go selfpub with my main series. This was not all that long before covid came along. In conjunction with this, I was getting more and more into the indie tabletop rpg design space. I fell in love with one sheet rpgs, and started making them as a hobby.

So I could see where I was going to have some expenses coming up. I also was entertaining the idea that it might be nice to really explore the idea of being an actual full blown game writer. Mostly the latter if I am being honest, as at this point I didn’t have a full vision of just what self publishing was going to cost to do properly. Anywho, these two ideas merged together, and I decided to get back onto Fiverr.

I set up a new account (couldn’t get my old one back, remember), and this time went a bit more niche. I said for 5 bucks I “will write or worldbuild for your video or tabletop game.” At that time, I was pretty much the only person really doing that. Now I search and there are a bunch more, though at least at a quick glance I still have the most reviews.

I set out with the goal of making some money, but also building up my credits. I wanted to build a resume I could use to potentially get jobs with the sorts of companies that don’t hire strangers off Fiverr for their needs. So I only took jobs that I was allowed to take credit for having written on. If I couldn’t claim it on my website, then I wasn’t interested.

I also turned down a fair number of gigs over ethical issues. Many, many people would reach out to get even more world building done for their novel or game. And I quite often would tell them that they already had more than enough material, explained worldbuilder disease to them, and sent them on their way in hopes that they would stop worldbuilding and start writing. Because I have been there before in the past.

Also, I ended up getting hired by several NFT companies before I realized what they were. Once I understood what they actually were, I stopped taking work from them.

I did it pretty hard and heavy for a couple of years, whenever I had free time. I also increased my fee to 10 bucks/500 words to make it more worth my time. I can crank out 1k words an hour pretty consistently, and 20/hour was a lot more than what I was making per hour at my day job at the time.

I was more careful to make sure I didn’t allow it to overtake my primary writing time on my personal works, which I did a good job on. It was also a lot of fun. This is my favorite type of writing really, and if it was more profitable, it might have ended up becoming my focus.

I ended up stopping (though this time I kept my account open haha), because my books were starting to come out. Once they were out, the time I spent freelancing was converted into marketing time essentially. At some point Fiverr will probably drop my seller level, or maybe even kick me off if I don't start doing work on there again. But honestly, if that happens I'm ok with it. I've reached a point where if I want to do game writing, I can reach out directly with a bit of confidence and some credits to my name for proof.

Anyway, I made over 3 grand. Coupled with passively selling my shirts, indie rpgs, and all that sort of stuff, I had all the money I needed to hire my editors, cover designer, and buy needed software. Since it took until around book 4 for me to fully break even on launch costs, it was nice to not have to come out of pocket on any of those expenses. For years now I have been keeping all of my profits going into a separate bank account (even though I am a SP), and I use that pile for all my expenses.

So that’s how I built up my publishing warchest before I ever put out my first book.

Bonus Info

To fully round out the education, here is more exact info about my more recent Fiverr adventure.

135 reviews, 5 stars average.

162 total orders, with an average of $26.50 per order.

$3,111.52 in earnings.

And here is what my actual pitch on there reads:

DO NOT HIRE ME WITHOUT TALKING TO ME FIRST TO MAKE SURE I AM A GOOD FIT FOR YOUR PROJECT. I STRONGLY encourage you to message me first with the scope of your project, so that I can make sure we are on the same page about expectations, and that your project is within my abilities/availability.

For this gig I will craft you 500 words of what it is your game needs. Need flavor text for item drops? How about lore for your characters? Maybe descriptions of countries for your players to visit? Whatever you can come up with, I can flesh it out and put it to paper. I can do dialogue, map story arcs, or brainstorm classes and mechanics. I can crank out histories, plot hooks, and character ideas. If its written, and has to do with some form of gaming, odds are I have written something similar in the past and am thus at least somewhat experienced with your specific needs.

As for my qualifications, I am a published author who has been playing computer and console games for over 25 years now, and tabletop games like DnD for over 15 years. I have also written for multiple published apps/games, have released a number of ttrpgs, and created numerous worlds for game and story concepts.