My name is Vas Blagodarskiy, I’m a Russian-born Business major at University of Maryland (College Park).
My family moved to the US from Europe about a decade ago. Thanks to my Dad who has had a PayPal account for almost 10 years, I’ve been able to do business online since I was 14.
When it all started, I was “that annoying kid” who would try to make money online any way he could.
Due to my lack of experience in communication on professional forums, NamePros and WHT infraction points started adding up, until I got banned from those two.
However, I did the smart thing and learned from my mistakes: I got the hang of online etiquette, starting checking twice if I’m posting in the right forum or not, and overall treated others with a lot more respect than I used to.
While I was 14-15-16, I learned HTML rather quickly, moved on up to basics in PHP, quickly mastered Photoshop, and was able to make $150-$250 a month working from home.
Not bad at all for an average teenager, making money from his computer, right?
Now that I’m an adult, I have all-grown-up responsibilities: rent, food, gas, not to mention about $10k a year in tuition. A part time job isn’t enough to make ends meet.
I knew that High School was coming to an end and College would start sooner than I could blink, so I got started on content creation a few years ago.
I began the way most content writers start out on DigitalPoint: $1.00 per 100 words.
Then I realized how hard it is to actually come up with content – I had high standards of my final products, because I wanted to get a good reputation on DP.
I soon had to start charging $1.50, then $1.75, then $2.00 per 100 words.
As my feedback score (formerly called “iTrader points”) racked up, people realized that I’m serious about my work ethic, and that I’m actually fluent in English (imagine that!
On a forum full of foreign writers who are happy with making $2-$3 a day).
