1 article down, 5 more to go | A little bit of networking brought me 6 assignments!

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I got asked to write an article for a Dutch website

After I connected with the website owner to link an older article of mine, the owner agreed and asked me if I'd be interested to write an article for his website. You see, I wasn't aiming for anything like that because I was actually just trying to "sell" my older article to the world, hoping to get it cross posted and gain more traffic to my article. But on top of him being enthusiastic and agreeing on linking my article, he asked me to write for his website in particular. And without me even having to ask for it, he mentioned he was able to pay me 25 to 40 euro for it, depending on the quality of the article. I was happy that this finally happened, the timing couldn't have been better either. I decided to go through his site a bit more first, and think about what my article should be about. When I talked to him a week later, he also mentioned that he had been looking for someone to write for his website more often, so I saw an opportunity there. I knew at that moment that this was my chance to make it happen. Where I first thought of writing an article containing all kinds of tips about how to survive without money, I now decided that my first article should be the introduction of what I have to share with the readers.

I studied the articles on his website before starting to write mine

As I wanted to know what was already on the website, but also how the average article on his site was. He told me in his e-mail that my blog didn't have to be long, as long as it was informative. When I get enthusiastic about things, it's hard for me to keep it short, and that may be my biggest obstacle, keeping my writings without any noise in it. I know that I can go from one topic to the other easily, but when someone is paying you a certain amount for your article, you don't want to make a fool out of yourself, right? I was pretty nervous to finish my article, I wrote, erased, wrote again, deleted and polished it up some more before I decided this is what I'm going to send him. I wanted it to taste like there was more to share, but I didn't want to give it away.

The next morning he e-mailed me

Thanking me, and telling me he would look into it later that day. Ok, great, so he didn't forget, and now I wait some more. Kind of nerve wrecking, I can tell you! All day I was wondering if he'd be satisfied with what I wrote and if he'd keep his word about paying me for it, because in the end it's still a gamble. In the evening he finally got back to me, telling me he edited a few things, but that he was going to pay me € 35 for this article, not bad at all !
What's extra cool is, is that he asked me if he'd give me 5 more articles to write, what the topics would be and what the titles of the articles were going to be. The 5 articles would need to be delivered with 2 - 4 weeks in between. Did I just read this correct? Seriously? I guess I got exactly what I was aiming for, I delivered one article, and he wants me to write 5 more, I freaking did it!! Yeah!

This has given me quite a confident boost

I love networking, I did that a lot when I still owned my own company, and even when I officially closed my shop, I was still always trying to sell some of my older articles out of my stock which I pimped up to something sweet again. This is me, the entrepreneur selling her "product" and while not even expecting anything else than getting some free marketing by letting another person cross post her link, getting offered extra work. I love it, and it reminds me of my skills and what I can do if I'm passionate about something. As you all probably have read by now, I've been doing a few different things besides blogging on the blockchain for future projects, you'd think I've enough to do already. But it's actually not the case, these kind of milestones give me such renewed power to keep going that it only awakes that business lady inside me. This brings even more opportunities as I can now also say that I also wrote for a website that paid me to write a series of articles about my experiences. The articles aren't about the best time of my life, but I turned it into something positive by writing about it, I help people that may be having trouble at this exact moment.

Everything happens for a reason, maybe my reason for the hardest years in my life was to awaken the writer in me. To share my experiences and stories, to help others that may now desperately need to read that things can actually get better again. I hope to inspire a few people along the way by sharing my stories, so the hard things that happened to us weren't for nothing. The biggest gift I've gotten during the years was learning to think outside of the box, thinking in solutions instead of problems. It's ok to feel angry, sad or disappointed, but don't stay in that vibe too long. Sleep over it, and tomorrow you may have other insights.

~Much Love

Anouk