✍️The First Time I Got Paid to Write

It happened during the pandemic, when life stood still, but the bills didn’t.

I was a copyeditor at a BPO serving the publishing and research industries, working from home because the world had shut down. The company loved the savings—less office overhead, utilities down by a wide margin—but we got nothing extra. No internet stipend. No allowance for the electricity we burned through eight hours a day. We spent more, earned the same, while they quietly pocketed the difference.

I remember praying for something—anything—that would give me a little breathing room.

One night, I found myself on Twitter, debating whether to add to the noise or just scroll in silence. I chose the latter, looking for something worth reading. Buried in my feed was a two-day-old tweet from a guy looking for a writer. His colleague in the U.S. needed someone to craft 250-word YouTube video descriptions. Their company had a vault of content—marketing strategies, social media breakdowns—and they wanted to start publishing it on YouTube.

I replied, applying for the gig.

What saved me was that they didn’t ask for a writing sample—just a test. The next evening they sent one of their videos and asked me to write a description. I jumped on it, leaning on the same instincts I used for tweets and journal entries: short, tight, clear. Less than 24 hours later, I heard back from them. They liked it. I got the project.

Each video was a full podcast episode, sometimes an hour long. My job was to write a preview—250 words max—loaded with keywords so the video would rank. I worked on the videos between dinner and exhaustion—three hours a night after my day job. When I finished the first batch, about a week later, I got paid $200.

Two hundred dollars.

For context, my monthly salary at my company as a copyeditor in 2020 was $260. Don't ask me how the government, the companies, and the whole system do the math. But this entire nation knows that number is just enough to stay afloat. Anyways, back to the original story, I had just earned nearly a month’s pay in a week of side work. I felt like I’d won something.

Then, just as quickly as it started, the project ended.

They’d realized the videos were outdated. Social media platforms update their algorithms without warning—and faster than a fashion trend. So what's the point of moving their videos about marketing strategies from their website to YouTube? And so the second batch of videos never came. I had to let go.

And before I could even get upset, thank God a quieter thought surfaced:
𝘐 𝘤𝘢𝘯 𝘸𝘳𝘪𝘵𝘦 𝘴𝘰𝘤𝘪𝘢𝘭 𝘮𝘦𝘥𝘪𝘢 𝘤𝘢𝘱𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘴 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘣𝘶𝘴𝘪𝘯𝘦𝘴𝘴𝘦𝘴 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘦𝘢𝘳𝘯 𝘦𝘹𝘵𝘳𝘢 𝘤𝘢𝘴𝘩!

And the rest is history.

P.S. What feels like a lockout is sometimes a gentle reroute.
And as I keep looking for opportunities, this is the only reminder I needed to hear today.