Hi Chad,

Thank you for your response, for your kind words, but mostly for taking the time to read so much of my work. You can’t imagine how happy it makes me that what I’m writing resonates. Right now, it’s more important to me than anything. Putting something out there that will help someone. That’s all I want.

You ask a lot of (good) questions so I won’t be able to answer them all. If you are interested in talking more, you can email me at msayvanova@gmail.com

Now, for the few questions I want to address. The first thing you should do as you embark on this writing adventure is decide what kind of writing do you want to do. I’ve been a freelance writer, ghost writer, copywriter (the difference with freelance writer is that copywriters mainly write sales copy, such as for ads, landing pages, etc, while freelance writers often write service pages, articles and others), blogger and a striving novelist.

And that’s not even all you can be, but these are the main options.

As a freelancer/copywriter, I’ve achieved $15k per month, but that was my best month. Let’s say my average was about $4-$5k per month, and I was able to make this after 2–3 years in the business.

Keep in mind I’m a non-native speaker who lives in Bulgaria, which made it that much harder for me to build this thing up from the ground. If you’re native and/or live in the Western world, it would be easier for you to learn the tricks of the trade and command high rates.

As a blogger, I’m still in the beginning. I started about a year and a half ago, but with two small children, I’ve been writing on and off, and my earnings are reflection of that. My best month was $1300, I think, but there has been a good amount of passive income (about $100-$200 from Medium, specifically) even when I wasn’t able to write that much. That happens when you reach a certain number of followers and have written a certain number of curated pieces. What are those magic numbers, I can’t tell you exactly.

With writing, really, the sky is the limit. Blogging specifically is a personal story game, and it sounds to me like you have a lot to share, a lot of valuable lessons, be it life lessons, illustration lessons or whatever else floats your boat. I think you’d be great at it.

If I have to give one big, real big, real important piece of advice, it is this: try not to focus on the money. That’s not to say don’t make money, and I know if you’re looking for something to pay the bills, money is imperative.

BUT! ironically money will come when you least expect it, and it will come in buckets, just because you were focusing on finding and polishing your message, and giving value to your readers.

For any piece you write, ask yourself “If this became viral for some unknown reason, and millions of people get to read it, what would I like to tell those millions of people? What would I like my message to be? What is the best I can give?”

This shouldn’t scare you and make you a procrastinating perfectionists. On the contrary: you have a lot of messages to share, thousands, and they all have the potential to deeply touch and help someone (or many people) out there.

So all you have to do is write these messages, sometimes repeatedly and better, and focus on helping and on giving.

Then, I promise you, you will be rewarded.

No one can keep a good thing small.

For more info on Medium and GReat wRiting advice, I’d follow Shaunta Grimes .

For awesome free writing courses, I’d check out Coursera.org (use the free option where you just watch the videos, it’s plenty to learn).

For writing advice and information on how the publishing industry works, check out Writers Digest website.

I think an alternative platform to Medium is NewsBreak and there are a few more, you can Google for more info since I’m not interested in pursuing this right now.

And that’s all I have to say for now.

Again, thanks for reading!

I hope you find your way.

Best wishes

M.