How I made $25,000 from Part-Time Technical Writing

At the end of this video, I will be sharing a list of places where you can get paid writing gigs.

How I started writing

When I started writing, I never even knew I could write. I’ve always found writing as a bore and even though I had loads of great content ideas, I always believed I will pay someone else to write them if I ever needed it written.

But I loved sharing knowledge and in 2016 I got to hear that there was a tech role known as Technical writing. You get paid for sharing knowledge, however, you needed to have built up a portfolio of at least 10 well performing articles.

So, even though I never saw myself as a good writer, the money and the fact that such role exists became a motivation for me. So, I opened a Medium account and started writing. I remember then I was writing an article a week and surprisingly, I was getting good traction which was very encouraging.

Getting my first paid gig

Funny enough, my first paid gig didn’t come directly through seeking a guest writing opportunity. I didn’t even know that such existed.

I saw on Twitter that there was an opening for a Technical Writer role at Auth0, so I immediately applied even though I was a newbie writer, that was around 2017.

Luckily for me I got an interview after completing a programming task, and surprisingly I got to the last stage of the interviews after going through another 2 levels of interview.

It was when I was dropped that my interviewer told me If I would like to be compensated with a guest writing gig that pays $350 per article.

Half bread is definitely better than none, so I took that and started writing for Auth0. However, I wasn’t so serious with it because I was running a business then.

Not until 2019 when I took a decision that changed the game for me.

Making 25k in a year

So late 2019, after my wedding, my application to be a guest writer for CircleCI was approved. From there, I told myself I was going to get really serious with this writing thing and be the best writer on the CircleCI program. I was taking inspiration back then from the late Kobe Bryant on Mamba Mentality.

And unlike other goals we just tell ourselves going into the new year, this time I was fully serious.

We went into the pandemic in 2020 and I used all the extra time I got from working from home to fully focus on writing as many articles as I could.

I think that year I ended up writing 40 articles for CircleCI and they were paying close to $500 per article

I also wrote articles for Auth0, Twilio and Sanity.io all of which were also paying between $350 to $500 per article at the time.

So, by the time to multiply 40 CircleCI articles by $400 — $500 and other articles from the remaining companies also within that range, you start to hit $25k

Funny thing is I had no idea I was able to get that much until I was planning to make this video about the time I was guest writing on steroids 😊.