Shumaila Saleem - Writer at Pickyreads

About Shumaila Saleem:

Hi, I’m Shumaila Saleem. Throwback to the past when I finished my Intermediate from Army Public College which was my dream but after that, I didn’t know what to do. So, It was so difficult for me to choose the field so I randomly took admission in chartered accountancy. I didn’t know that It was not my type of field. I did my first module then I realized I can’t continue this because I was losing interest. I got disheartened and didn’t have any clue where to go next. I waited for the reopening of admissions in universities then applied for the bachelor’s in Karachi University and now I’m a 2nd-year university student by the grace of God.

Shumaila Saleem’s journey as a content writer:

My journey as a content writer begin after I left my studies of chartered accountancy. I have always been passionate about writing but never had intended to be a writer. I’m also an avid reader and have been reading different kinds of books as well since my childhood. So, I thought to make my book reviewing page to spend my free time. I read self-help, books on blogging, books on writing, and a heap of books from the greats like Shakespeare, and so many more great writers who inspired me to keep going to the point where I decided to take the leap and try out my hand at writing.

Shumaila Saleem - Writer at pickyreads — Shumaila Saleem

While doing this I found that a lot of people look for professional writers for all sorts of reasons, even if it’s just for articles or blog posts. So I got curious how these people are earning through freelancing online by using their useful skills. I started searching out for some projects on Facebook groups, Upwork, and other freelancing websites but couldn’t find any job. Then I polished up my skills because I didn’t even know how to research for content, what to write and how to write. After finding a small project, I started to learn about the importance of meta tags, title, slug, format, etc.

When I thought that enough research has been done, my first article was submitted for review. I was shocked to see my article has been rejected. I was disappointed and asked for a reason but didn’t get any reason which can help me improve my content and submit it again. Then I learned and found out some mistakes in my article by myself and got a chance to improve my skills. I have been into content writing for about 2 years now. I can say that my experience as a content writer is not perfect nor easy.

In fact, in my journey of content writing, I faced many hardships. The first scam I faced was on fiverr.com. The person who hired me just took the blog content from me and didn’t pay me by saying this content is not meeting their requirements. To make matters worse, when I forced him to pay me for my hard work, he gave me bad feedback and blocked me from all of his profiles. Well, no worries, I learned a lot from this scam. I was scammed too many times by the different kinds of blog writing companies. Their empty promises made me so annoyed. I was about to leave the blogging world in frustration but then luckily I got the opportunity to be a guest writer for some blogs. My articles were liked by the readers and after that, some blog writing companies contacted me to hire me, I didn’t join any of them because of scams and low pay rates.

One other common thing is that if you are a content writer you will never get fair pay. I read lots of articles about content writing and it was my passion to write but I was stuck in the middle. Whereas some people were earning huge money from writing but at starting, I hardly got any money. When I got a job as a content writer then I decided to work with many blogs and gradually the rate of the money went up. One thing which I would like to share with you is that never leave your job because it never gives you a bad time but always tries to work hard and then definitely you will get success in this field.

So, my first job was with a blog that paid 0.5 per word. That was the start of an entrepreneurial journey as a content writer. As I want to continue this job, I took on other projects to sustain my lifestyle as well. The low salary of 0.5 per word took me a lot of effort to earn more than that. I tried many methods like marketing my work in different social media forums, increasing work, and taking more clients but not all were successful in providing me a great deal of income. I worked hard to earn 1 per word.

Content writing for me is great because it challenges me every day. I work every day not knowing what’s going to happen, which is a great feeling. There are unique challenges and I like solving them in my way. The love for reading, knowing new things, and exploring is one of the best perks of content writing. It’s an art and everyone doesn’t know how to give it a proper shape or design. However, as the industry is changing at a breakneck speed, I’m also keeping up my pace as well. It is thrilling!

I still think that I’m a beginner and I’m on a route to learning more and more. Writing is now just not my passion, it’s my dream. I believe that we all have our dreams hidden deep within ourselves and if we stand firm on them, be persistent, learn and grow. We will live our dreams one day.

Shumaila Saleem’s journey as a content writer:

Some of the summaries written by Shumaila at pickyreads are: