Your personal financial situation is unlikely to be interesting to people other than you, and in particular it actively hurts your ability to get the best possible deals from clients.
I would strongly suggest you not let users direct your decisions. Most people are not freelancers. Most career advice I receive from people outside IT is shockingly bad. ("Glad to hear about the business being successful, Patrick. You know, you could go back, get your MA, and then get a nice secure government job! They'd love having someone with business experience! And you'd get a pension!") The intersection of "people who are in financial difficulty" (and would be interested in reading that blog) and "people who give good career advice" is vanishingly small, partly because many people who are experiencing financial difficulty got there as a predictable results of choices which they feel committed to justify.
With regards to freelancing: first, get out of the mindset that you are providing development/design. You are solving business problems for clients. Dev/design are two things in the toolbox that help you do that. Can you earn more than $7k or so solving problems that prevent businesses from making money? Yes. Absolutely yes. The people who you need to convince to buy your services to do this are not poor and, by and large, are not actively interested in the problems of poor people. "Hey hire me because I'm poor" will not be a successful tactic with them. "Hey hire me because I have a track record of producing useful things which made rich people like yourself even richer" is much closer to the mark.
I agree with patio11. In 2009 I lost everything, and no amount of bitching or asking for help helped on my slide down. The thing that did help was writing a blog about what I thought would work. It worked so well that I now have several people working for me. My contact info is in my profile if you want to know more.
Hey Patrick,
Thanks for your hints. These are really useful for me. The one thing I want to note is that I am going to compete using my skills, not using my financial situation because I agree it's not interesting for my potential clients. Other than that, I agree I should be a problem solver in eyes of my clients. I am going to work more on my objectives and tools using your thesis. Thanks!
I'm worried you may have missed Patrick's point. He's stipulating that you're using your skills. He's not accusing you of trying to sell sympathy. He's saying, the way you're positioning yourself professionally is going to damage your income.
If you are going to write a blog denominated in 92 days, anything other than "92 days of riveting new success stories from my clients" is a waste of your energy.
In particular, do not tell the rags-to-riches story. Prospective clients, like it or not, will see the "rags" and discount your bill rate 35%.
Having read all the comments I think I should shift my focus from creating such a blog to developing my personal professional brand in another way. I see now I should rethink my strategy. Thanks for all your thoughts, I really appreciate it!
Don't worry about "developing your personal professional brand" - just work. Stop trying to be strategic, and instead spend your time actually doing freelance work for money, which you need right now. Then, later, you won't have to develop a brand, because it will have happened by itself ("I'm the guy who did this great work for this long list of clients").
Blogging about how you're overcoming a difficult financial situation is likely to be interesting to a lot of people. The issue is that it's unlikely to be interesting to his particular clients, who may find it unprofessional or off-putting.
With very good execution, it may be possible to overcome those issues or even turn the whole thing into a positive with his clients. But it's a big risk.
It's also time he could be devoting to productive activities. Blogging and creating infographics for daily posts are time wasters. Given his desperate financial situation he needs laser focus on making cash. Which for most people means "get a job and give up your hobby until you get some savings in the bank."
I would strongly suggest you not let users direct your decisions. Most people are not freelancers. Most career advice I receive from people outside IT is shockingly bad. ("Glad to hear about the business being successful, Patrick. You know, you could go back, get your MA, and then get a nice secure government job! They'd love having someone with business experience! And you'd get a pension!") The intersection of "people who are in financial difficulty" (and would be interested in reading that blog) and "people who give good career advice" is vanishingly small, partly because many people who are experiencing financial difficulty got there as a predictable results of choices which they feel committed to justify.
With regards to freelancing: first, get out of the mindset that you are providing development/design. You are solving business problems for clients. Dev/design are two things in the toolbox that help you do that. Can you earn more than $7k or so solving problems that prevent businesses from making money? Yes. Absolutely yes. The people who you need to convince to buy your services to do this are not poor and, by and large, are not actively interested in the problems of poor people. "Hey hire me because I'm poor" will not be a successful tactic with them. "Hey hire me because I have a track record of producing useful things which made rich people like yourself even richer" is much closer to the mark.