How I Went From Earning Peanuts to Becoming a Full-Time Writer

And how you can capitalise on similar opportunities.

Adrian Drew
7 min readMay 13, 2023
Photo by Andraz Lazic on Unsplash

“I’ve just got a part-time job at McDonald's,” my friend said, sitting across from me in our school common room.

We were seventeen at the time, most of our classmates landing weekend positions earning peanuts from local businesses.

They seemed pretty happy. To me, it sounded like hell.

At that point, I’d been reading about making money online for a few years. I’d created a multi-page document about dropshipping, studied the ins and outs of Amazon FBA, and firmly decided that the traditional working world just wasn’t for me.

But retail wasn’t exactly my passion back then. Writing was.

On Christmas Day of that year, I was given a new laptop. The first thing I did was open it up and start searching for writing jobs.

I remember seeing the post on UpWork — an SEO specialist looking for a freelance writer to handle content for his clients. 10,000 words per week for a whopping total of £100.

The money was abysmal, feeling more like slave labour than a feasible job opportunity. But I took it.

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Adrian Drew

Owner of Mind Cafe | Let’s chat on Instagram: @adriandrew__