And how to do it:
- without completely losing your earning capacity
- and without starting from scratch
And most importantly, how to use premium writing both as a way of replacing your salary 💰 and starting your own business 📈 if you want?
Here is my story 📜 of how I did it and never looked back… 👀
How to get into writing as a career?
“That’s it – I don’t care if I’m homeless – I can’t code anymore” 😲
These were my final thoughts as I decided to quit and leave a decade-long ⌛ successful development career.
Immediately after that, other questions started popping up:
- What will I do next? ⁉️
- How will I pay the bills? 💸
- What can I do that is at least similar in profitability? 📉
Because remember, this is not about quitting my job. Instead, I’m switching and pivoting my entire career 🤯 – the very thing I’m the best at (and I make the most money from). 💰
This situation is also known as the “golden handcuffs” that many developers experience. You don’t really want to code anymore, but you also don’t want to lose everything you’ve been working on until now.
Over the next 6 months, my full-time job was to find something that worked. 🤔 But it had to satisfy some important conditions…
New Career Requirements
FIRST
An absolute most important requirement was NOT starting from scratch. There was no way that after a decade-long career, I’d lose all my progress 📉 and transition to an entry job of ANY kind.
SECOND
The second requirement was to get at least half of my salary from day one. 💰
I understood I could not start something new and expect my prior top salary. However, if I started from 50%, then I realized I could get back to my previous earning capacity 📈 (and beyond) over the next 1-2 years.
And when I considered it took me nearly a decade to reach that salary in software development, then 1-2 years sounded pretty quick. ⏱️
THIRD
The third requirement was no videos and recordings of any kind. 📸 I don’t want to jump on TikTok or YouTube like a clown. 🤡
Besides, after a million video calls, the last thing I wanted was to sit in front of the camera the whole day. Essentially, I wanted to have peace in my new career.
Plus, I didn’t want to be tied to a location/studio. I wanted to be able to work on this new career from a coffee shop, a plane, or the beach. ☕✈️🌴
FOURTH
The fourth requirement is business potential. Just like you can start a successful company using nothing but code – this new career/skill had to have the same potential. 💻📈
FIFTH
The fifth requirement was it had to be future-proof and AI-resistant. 🤖 Because I didn’t want to have to change my career ever again. Once is painful enough.
And I knew if I had these five conditions met, I would have my dream career. 🏅
Where to start?
It took me over 6 months of trial and error to find something that really works (and satisfies all five requirements).
The worst part was – it could have worked from day one, but I didn’t have the knowledge of where to start.
Essentially what I found was a premium type of writing ✏️ that developers can do. And my lowest pay was $300 for 2 pages of text. 💰📜📜
Now… I don’t know about you, but I can pretty easily write two pages of text, so this was an ideal match for me. 🎉
NOTE:
I’m not saying you can type random words on the page like a brainless monkey and get paid. 💻🐵 In fact, most people can’t do this at all – hence why it’s so well paid.
BUT
Because developers have very unique knowledge and experience compared to your average writer – we can do this with ease. 🧑💻
The Future
A year after I started premium writing, the lowest I get paid is $400 for 2 pages of text. 📜📜 And I continuously improve and find better opportunities.
On top of writing income, I had enough time to start two businesses of my own (this website being one of them), and for the second one, I partnered with another premium writer. 🤝
Both of those are generating income now. It’s nothing life-changing (for now), but they’re not even running for one full year. So I definitely expect them to scale from here. 📈
Premium Writing
In case you’re also interested in changing your career, perhaps you might want to consider premium writing as an option.