Right after getting my bachelor’s, I tried to start my freelancing career.

When I spontaneously decided to get out of college a year early with an international trade degree, in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, I made the decision I was going to take a year off to figure out what to do with my life. Granted, I could’ve just gotten a job, but because COVID had forced me to contemplate who I was and what my morals were, I had a feeling I wouldn’t want to work in the fashion industry anymore. It was simply too unethical and immoral for me to want to come to back into it after three years of attending a school with racist experiences.

Anyways, it was during month two of my year off that I realized I needed to start making money, or else I would be knee deep in debt once I did end up starting graduate school. Despite having a business degree and no journalism experience, I started applying around and building a portfolio, which is how now, as a graduate student, I make a good chunk of my income. But it surely wasn’t easy as someone who didn’t study this in college, which means there was a learning curve involved.

An important thing to note is that I make my income off of multiple streams. I do freelance writing and film criticism as a good chunk of my income, but I also work as a marketer, freelance website designer for clients, and then I also make money off of this blog. But we’ll get to these explanations later in the blog post!

My first paid gig was with MovieWeb.

I’m still with MovieWeb today, and I think this has been such a wonderful experience. Granted, it doesn’t make enough money that i could solely survive off of this, but I firmly believe starting out with MovieWeb has taught me so much that I needed to become successful today. I applied to a ton of jobs on LinkedIn throughout the first month and a half of being unemployed and living in my childhood bedroom during the year off, and MovieWeb was the only one that asked me to send a sample.

I was hired on as an evergreen and lists writer, so basically it was formatting lists to SEO with research on films and television. About a month into the job, I was interviewed by the Editor-in-Chief at the time for potentially being considered for an editor position (which I did not want then, as I knew that I was going to be a full-time graduate student once my year off was up), and I mentioned that I was interested in doing interviews and reviews, but had never had the chance. He gave me this opportunity, and I was added onto the critics team.

From there, I began doing reviews and interviews for the site. Over two million hits about two years later, when I am writing this, I’ve managed to build such an incredible portfolio while doing this as a side hustle. I’ve interviewed Whoopi Goldberg, Ryusuke Hamaguchi, and so many more when doing press for movies, and have been able to attend the New York Film Festival in person. These are opportunities I never would have had if I never accepted this writing offer at MovieWeb, and it has led me to develop so many press contacts in the industry.

Other freelance writing and marketing projects came through personal contacts.

My undergraduate degree is partially in global marketing, and so is my associate degree, so during the pandemic, I largely had internships when still in school focused on marketing and editorial branding. At one of my gigs for a small nonprofit theater in New York, it turned into an opportunity where I stayed with them (I am still with them as of writing this in 2023) to do the social media and website work. But because of my opportunities where I had the chance to interact with other theater people in New York and in arts spaces, I began building connections.

Thus, I started getting emails asking if they could hire me on a contract basis. I began doing more work for the organizations in New York, and then I started getting outsourced for more people to build websites. I’ve built some pretty nice websites for five or six people now, and I am happy to have helped them achieve them dreams when it came to design and what they wanted on their sites.

Anyways, when I moved back to Maryland, I mentioned to people I started this in New York. And then the Maryland clients started coming in as well, since they knew I had done this for other organizations in the past. So don’t be afraid to hype yourself up when needed.

During my gap year, I started a blog that’s now monetized.

I will admit, with all that time off, I was watching and reading a ton of content unlike any other time in my life. I was literally getting through a movie a day when I was sitting down trying to figure out what to do with my life. But there was a sad realization for me when I began reflecting on everything I had seen and read in my life—a ton of it I simply could not remember. I began this blog partially as a way to remember the books and movies I was consuming, as I wanted to become a more mindful consumer of art and other people’s stories.

But then this blog started blowing up in terms of the numbers. I learned through MovieWeb and a ton of free courses online that SEO was the bread and butter of the blogging world, then I began to connect the dots. If I drew people to this website, as they would be searching things up, they would be aware of my brand and business practices. Ultimately, somewhere down the line, they would become more knowing about my existence and what I do as a writer and freelancer.

So I pumped more energy into the blog. In June 2023 I finally made the executive decision to monetize this blog once I was hitting over 10,000 hits a month, and I’ve now made enough money (when writing this) that I can pay all of the expenses for the website just off of ad income. That’s so insane to me. I’m hoping to keep chipping away at this to make it a decent sized income stream in the end.

Looking to the future after grad school.

I’m preparing to write my thesis, and when I submit that and walk across the stage, I will have a master’s degree. I think freelancing right out of college started teaching me diligence and that if I wanted to, I could start my own businesses on top of the work I already do. I don’t think I want to completely freelance once I graduate, as I want to try the corporate world for a little bit, but instead I will probably work corporate then pivot after, for example, five years of working in the industry.

In the end I’m so glad I taught myself these skills and made these networks. I’ve met so many incredible people with stories to tell throughout the years because of it, and I’m excited to learn more about what magic people are making in the world!

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