Overcoming Obstacles: Interview With Blogger Sophie Lizard (Part 1)

Thrilled. Honored. Inspired.

These adjectives describe how I felt interviewing Sophie Lizard, a freelance blogger whose guide to high-paying blogs led to me nabbing my first guest post. Her blog, “Be A Freelance Blogger” launched on the 15th with tons of feedback and subscribers. She said she is really happy with the response so far and is “poking around” with the design of the page.

I didn’t want to omit any detail about her journey to becoming a writer, so this will be a two-parter! Enjoy! Links are included in these posts, but they aren’t affiliate links. Just showing Sophie and the folks who helped her some love.

Triumph From Turmoil
“When I was a teenager, I used to write my own fanzines,” Lizard said, who lives outside of a small town in Redding, United Kingdom. “I would photocopy at home and tape them together.” She sold them at music shows until she went to college. Then she was hit with her first roadblock.

“I left university without graduating because I had glandular fever and couldn’t study anymore,” she said. It took her a long time to recover and get back on her feet.
“I was very unconfident about a career,” Lizard said. “I had been out of action for abut 18 months, and I hadn’t graduated which I felt really bad about.”

She not only had suffered physical weakness, but she lost some self esteem as well. She ended up taking a work-from-home data entry job and worked there for the next five years. She was a “data entry specialist,” she recalled, amused the title didn’t match the pay.

“The main reason I stuck with it was because it was work from home,” she said. “I could buy a pint of milk when I needed one. It was almost worth the low wages.”

After a divorce in 2008, she was “suddenly and unexpectedly homeless.” She moved back in with her mother and stayed in her storage room, which was filled with stuff. Lizard only had a mattress on the floor to sleep on.

From Explainer To Writer
“So that was a real low point,” Lizard said. “I was sitting around thinking, ‘What do I do with myself?'” Then she applied for a job as an explainer (a tour guide of sorts), at a science exhibition center. The hiring manager was so impressed with her interview, he asked her about applying for a bigger position instead.

“You seem to know a lot about science,” the manager told her. “And you seem to be honest about everything.” She honestly wondered if she could even handle the job. She had been through such a low she had a difficult time taking care of herself.

However, Lizard accepted the position and worked hard at it for nine months. “It was exhausting,” Lizard said. “It was a lot of fun and a great learning process, but it was really exhausting.” Managing a large team was not her calling.

She pondered over this while her cash reserves dwindled. By this point, she was pregnant with her first child and still living with her mom but also staying at her fiance’s apartment.

“What do I do next?” she asked herself. “And the answer to me was, ‘I want to write.'” Then she discovered PeoplePerHour, and she described this moment as one of those points in life where the “clouds open up” and the sun beams down from heaven.

“Within a couple of months, I had a fairly steady income.” So besides her writing success, what does she consider her biggest personal achievement?

“The fact I’m alive,” Lizard said. “The fact that I have an amazing daughter.” The birth of her daughter was an incredible achievement, as she went into labor at her fiancé’s apartment, with only his assistance and no medication.

After a few months of recovery, she considers herself “incredible lucky” to come across Match2lists.com about two-and-half years ago. She was hired initially as an executive assistant. They loved her writing skills, so she now focuses on copywriting duties to this day.

Her next major client was an Australian network of over 20 personal finance blogs.

“They hired me mainly as an editor. I only contributed writing occasionally.” She oversaw changes to the blogs and worked with SEO. “That was a whole new experience for me,” she said. Her latest work is at thefinalchapterblog.com, which she has enjoyed working on, because she gets to immerse herself in the book publishing industry.

“Everything that I write is something that I find interesting,” she said.

Next week I will be talking with her about her writing achievements, best business practices and the future of her website.

Here’s part two of my interview!

What do you think of the story so far? What success stories inspire you?

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