I write for a living, but I can't teach you how to

I've made a decent amount of money from writing mostly by sleepwalking through the craft.

Over the past few years, several people have asked me how to make money from writing. This is not a simple question for me, because I never had to answer these questions while climbing through the career ladder that brought me to this point. I’ve made a ton of money from writing, and yet all of this money has come through different funnels that it’ll be impossible for me to legitimately explain to anyone who is not me how to make money the way I do.

First of all, I consider myself lucky to have matured into an era where content has become an important part of our social existence. The fact that I’m making more money off content than an overwhelming majority of the Nigerian working class is directly tied to the fact that writing has evolved from a niche indulgence to a mainstream corporate career pursuit. My father wrote too, but he did not dare to quit his day job in federal civil service. We for starve die.

Throughout my career, I have learned that talent is not what makes writing lucrative, access is. It’s not how well you write, but who you’re writing for. A person you are infinitely more talented than could be making 10x your income writing inferior stuff for people who are paying them way more than you thought your writing is worth.

I wouldn’t exactly call myself a freelance writer, even though I have always taken freelance jobs. I don’t use any freelancing websites, and I’ve never positioned myself as someone looking for a writing job. By reputation, individuals and organisations find me and they make an offer. If the offer is good enough, I take the job.

I’m writing this blog to chronicle my writing journey from the beginning to this point. My stories may not necessarily teach you how to make money from writing, but they might offer insights into the choices that have shaped my path.

Throughout my career, I have learned that talent is not what makes writing lucrative, access it. It’s not how well you write, but who you’re writing for. A person you are infinitely more talented than could be making 10x your income writing inferior stuff for people who are paying them way more than you thought your writing is worth.

Access, not talent, is your surest bet.

In December 2019, I attended an Abuja Literary Society weekly meeting. At the meeting, one of the guests was Dimbo Atiya, a filmmaker based in Abuja, responsible for hit Africa Magic shows like Halita and Sons of the Caliphate. Since I nursed a serious ambition to be a filmmaker, I was keenly interested in the session. He was asked about how an aspiring screenwriter could kick off their writing careers. Then he told a story that has stayed with me ever since. He spoke about a particular lady who was his friend on Facebook. She was a good writer, and because he enjoyed reading her, he invited her to the writers’ room of Halita. She had never written a script in her life and didn’t even know how to format a script. But she had the talent for storytelling, so he insisted on her joining the team and taught her all she needed to know about formatting a script. And just like that, she became one of the writers of one of the most popular shows on Africa Magic.

“But I learnt my first lesson about the politics of career success: Access is more important than talent.”

This taught me a valuable lesson on talent, access, and opportunity. A lady who didn’t even have a dream to become a screenwriter was suddenly writing because she happened to be on the friends list of the show’s creator. At that time I knew I was a damn good writer, and I already knew a lot of things about writing for screen. I just didn’t have the opportunity or access, because I had no one who could bring me in. Immediately after the event, I sent a friend request to Mr Dimbo, and to date that request has not been accepted. But I learnt my first lesson about the politics of career success: Access is more important than talent.

The power of exposure

Though I haven't reached my career goals yet, I am proud of my accomplishments so far, despite still having much to achieve. My Facebook followers are aware of my progress and, due to my relatively stable financial standing, some of them assume I am wealthy, which is ironic given how unlucrative a writing career is in Nigeria. Over the past few months, I've received numerous messages reflecting a misunderstanding of the economics of writing, with people assuming I have a secret lucrative source for my work and seeking similar opportunities.

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“It takes a lot of skill to build a reputation, but once you have a reputation, it increases people’s perception of your skills.”

Before anything else, I’d like to state that I’m not just a writer. I’m an all-round creative. I write prose, essays, creative nonfiction, and screenplays. I direct videos, design t-shirts, and do a lot of other stuff I feel like I’m good at— and everything boils down to creative content. I’m making this clarification because, in this blog, you’re going to see how being a general creative has helped me evolve through the different demands of my career.

The two things that have helped me the most in my career are my skills, which helped me grow an extremely reputable brand, which in turn gave me exposure. With almost 70,000 followers on all platforms, most of my followers know me as Victor Daniel the writer. I managed to gather all of these people together in one fold because I was considered an exceptional writer. Amongst my followers are directors in multimillion-dollar corporations, CEOs, and departmental leads in rich organisations. I have managed to establish a reputation as a good writer, and this reputation not only creates opportunities for me, it serves as leverage during negotiation. It takes a lot of skill to build a reputation, but once you have a reputation, it increases people’s perception of your skills.

I have never had to randomly apply for any full-time job before. I got my first 9-5 job when I made a viral post that caught the attention of a Dantata director (Abuja folks will know how big of a deal this is) and he reached out to me via my DM to invite me for a role in the organisation. It was a content writer role, and I was in this role for two years and six months before eventually quitting. I quit because I outgrew the job.

My second full-time job came a month later, as a Staff Writer at Vendease. The salary offer was about 8x more than I earned at Dantata. I got approached for this job through a friend I’d made on Facebook 7 years earlier, who had become the head of contents at the organisation. So I simply packed my bags and moved from Abuja to Lagos.

Next Friday will be my last day as a Vendease employee, because I’m resigning to work on my films.

Referrals: Building a social circle

Now, this might come as a shock to you, but there are startups whose content writers earn 7-figure salaries per month. Unfortunately, this job is probably not available to you, not because you’re not skilled enough, but because you do not have enough social capital through which this job will be made available to you. This brings me to my next point— Building a solid social circle based on your career.

When I started taking writing seriously in 2015, all of a sudden I was interested in making friends with fellow writers, so I started surrounding myself with friends and connections based on a shared interest in writing. I just wanted to have friends who I rated as talented enough to collaborate with and learn from. My social circle was filled with writers, many of whom went on to become very successful in their specific endeavours. It was through many of these guys I’ve had life-changing opportunities because when it fell on them to recommend someone for a gig, they looked for their friends or acquaintances who they trusted enough to deliver at the highest quality, and that was, in most cases, me.

Trust me, if I had to recommend someone for a writing job, I wouldn’t go on Facebook to recommend a random follower for the job. I would simply look around for people who already had a proven track record of talent and excellence amongst my friends and recommend them. That’s how it works.

In 2022, a man named Obinna was looking for someone who could write a 1-minute script for an advertorial voice-over jingle. Someone recommended me to him, and because he didn’t know who I was, he was sceptical. I delivered the script—about 120 words—and he was blown away. I was paid 40,000 for a 120-word script. It turned out that he worked at the Corporate Communications Department of the Central Bank of Nigeria, and since 2022, I have written over 100 scripts of audio-visual materials for the Corporate Communications Department of the Central Bank of Nigeria.

Based on referrals, I’ve written press statements for some of your favourite artists, just because I was referred to them by someone in my social circle.

My lifelong dream has always been filmmaking. It’s what made me become a writer in the first place. A couple of years ago, I decided to take film seriously, so yet again, I started building a network for filmmakers on my Facebook. I added film scholars, directors, critics, and even actors on my Facebook, and interacted with them as often as I could. In 2022, I got my first opportunity to write some film reviews, and I wrote about 15 reviews for Efiko (Owned by Oris, “Nigeria’s most acclaimed film critic.”) The pay wasn’t much, but I was happy for the opportunity. Last year, based on the strength of the reviews I wrote for Oris, I got contracted to write a film review for an international film festival, and this short review made me about half a million on one review.

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Early 2023, I decided it was time to commit fully to screenwriting. My immediate goal was to write a couple of short films. My long-term goal was to have a feature-length film, and maybe write a film for Netflix someday.

“In case you’ve not been paying attention, I’ve just leveraged talent, social connection, and reputation to achieve what I thought was a long-term dream within the shortest possible time.”

I’d been friends with Adio since 2016, and in our circle of writers, it was just the both of us who shared a genuine interest in filmmaking. By November 2023, he reached out to me that an executive producer was looking for young talents with great stories to work with. He introduced me to her, and in January I took an ambitious shot: I sent her a treatment script for my feature-length film. She loved it and sent it around to some of the biggest names in Nollywood (and a couple of filmmakers in the UK) and they all loved it. So she asked me to write a first draft of the script. Long story short, we are in the pre-production stage of my first film.

In May, she linked me up with a famous Nigerian filmmaker, who had been commissioned to write a Netflix series. This filmmaker had read the script for my feature film, and on the strength of that, she made her decision. She wanted me on the project. On July 1st, I’ll be joining the writers’ room for my first Netflix film.

In case you’ve not been paying attention, I’ve just leveraged talent, social connection, and reputation to achieve what I thought was a long-term dream within the shortest possible time.

Where do I start from?

Write everywhere that allows you to write. Write on your Facebook. Write on your Medium account. Write on your Substack. Write on your personal blog. When you get better, start submitting to virtual publishing houses. This is how to build portfolios.

Passion and the strength of a portfolio

“This is one of the most important lessons you should learn as a young writer: Build a portfolio. When you apply for a job opportunity, you’ll be asked for your portfolio. They want to see what you have written before and where they made it to.”

When I started writing, I wrote because I loved to, not because I wanted to make a living out of it. Throughout the first six years of writing, I was focused on improving my craft, writing the best stories my mind could imagine, and writing the strongest arguments I could muster about arts and society. As I matured, I realised that Facebook was no longer enough to put my work in, so I started looking for platforms. Kalahari Review was the first place I submitted my short story, and it was accepted. Then came Brittle Paper, then African Writer, and a litany of publications followed (Lolwe, Zikoko, Afrocritik etc). Whatever important piece I wrote, I shopped for the most suitable publication to house it, and I submitted it there. I wasn’t paid a dime for submitting to these places, but I didn’t mind, because I was building a portfolio. This is one of the most important lessons you should learn as a young writer: Build a portfolio. When you apply for a job opportunity, you’ll be asked for your portfolio. They want to see what you have written before and where they made it to.

I lost a couple of opportunities years ago because I was asked for a portfolio and couldn’t provide any. I have since remedied that.

This is my Linktree, and through this link, you will find a lot of what I have written over the past six years.

Know the craft

Before anything else, please, know how to write. Really. This is how you build a reputation and get referrals. One satisfied client can be your turnaround. I’ve lost count of how many people read my work for the first time and were utterly blown away by how good it was. I am acutely aware of my limits, so I do not overrate myself. I know many people who are better writers than I am, even among my peers. I know my strengths and weaknesses, so I lean heavily on the areas of my strength. I also know the minimum level of expertise I can afford to have if I want to reach the heights I aim for, and I work tirelessly to get there.

I’ve found that many young people do not respect the art of writing, because they assume they’re gifted writers just because they can write complete sentences. In a field as saturated as this, you must be exceptional to make headway. I’ve seen young people call themselves fantastic writers and based on this declaration (and against my better judgment) I gave them jobs, only for them to turn up with AI-written articles.

Writing has also evolved past writing great sentences, especially in the corporate world where organisations now need different classes of writing to help with their business models. The other day, my organisation put out a job vacancy for the role of a content marketer, and teenagers who were neither through with the university nor had any writing experience applied for the job. This was a mid-level position that paid around 700k. Not only do you need to be a top-tier writer, but you also need to have skills and content marketing certifications that prepare you for that specific role.

Upskilling

Being a writer is no longer enough for you to make maximum gains from working in corporate Nigeria. At Vendease (where I was employed as a staff writer), I’ve had to produce a video series, do voiceovers, produce a podcast, and work as a product and content marketer. You cannot afford to be just a writer anymore. You need to be an all-round creative that can do a lot of other content-related stuff other than writing. This is what gives you the edge. At Dantata I moved from content writer to digital marketing. So you see, writing is just the bait.

At this point, I assume I’ve exhaustively addressed the question of how I’ve been able to make a living through writing. As I explained before, this is not something I could teach you, so I told my story hoping It’d mean something to you. I haven’t even hit 30 yet, so there’s still a long way ahead for me. But I have made the best of the privileges life has afforded me. I have gotten lucky a lot, and I hope that someday you will. I hope you’ll be prepared when the time comes.