The story started
About Dash's Experience!
G’day, guys! My name’s Dash, I’m just a chill guy who lives in Australia. 🙂
For over four months now, I’ve been working as a content writer here at Pearl Lemon, so I’d like to share a bit about who I am, my experiences here, and the kind of stuff I worked on.
So then, let’s get into it!
Who I Am
It was about a year later, in 2022, that I had finally finished my last year in college, and COVID was making it seriously difficult to find any job at all.
Me living in Australia, in a more rural part of the country where it relies on tourism, its food retailers, clothes shops, and alike, needing to be open but not having enough qualified staff or hiring people with only experience, I was one of the unlucky guys who had never had a job in his life before.
I searched high and low to find any job I could get my hands on and applied to places I’d never even consider working for priorly. I needed the money to stay afloat.
I was about to give up when I saw an ad on SEEK, an employment website, for an Email Copywriter position at a company called Pearl Lemon. It was remote, which for a recluse person such as myself, worked perfectly.
It almost seemed too good to be true, but I applied anyway, seeing as A. I needed the money and B. I did enjoy writing and doing stuff like this when I was in school.
After going through their wicked cool application process, I met one of the Team Leaders, who walked me through their process, also changing my position to Content Writer, instead of Email Copywriter as it suited me more.
They started me out on a 3-day trial to see how I’d go with their content load, and before I knew it, I was hired and 4 months flew by without a synch.
Month 1
So my first month at Pearl Lemon was a bit of an adjustment, as I hadn’t worked a day in my life before, just bits and pieces around my dad’s office or housework, but that didn’t stop Pearl Lemon from seeing my potential!
I went through training throughout the most part of my first month, while casually doing SEO service pages. I’m gonna be real with you- they are HARD to do. For the team that does work on them, props to you! I mean, for the most part, I was just struggling to get to the word count, let alone figuring out how to sell the product or service properly.
For most of month one, that’s what I was tasked to work on, onboarding toolkit, video tutorials, and completing 2-3 SEO service pages per day.
I had to be contacting my team leader every day as well, to ensure they knew what I was doing, and that I was on task. Which was kind of fun, to be honest! It was like having a pen pal because when we worked it would be at different times of our day, so messages would be left.
I only had a few mishaps here and there, one’s that could easily be fixed. It had been a while since I’d written anything like this, but over time I just got better and better.
Choosing my own hours was the best part about this kind of remote work for me personally, so I’d do about 3 hours a day, so I could spend the rest of my day doing my very much-needed housework and looking after the animals here. (I have two beautiful doggos!! They’re very demanding and require all my attention and energy for walks.)
It wasn’t until the end of my first month, that I was tasked to stop working on service pages and help out another team member with Guest Blogs, and I’ve been there ever since.
Month 2
Moving on to my second month at Pearl Lemon, I was starting to slow down on needing to do the video tutorials, as I’d gotten through most of them quite quickly, leaving the required time stamps when I’d learned something, and having more time to work on the Guest Posts and blogs.
I got a lot of opportunities here to write about topics that interested me, having a long list of clients that needed their guest blogs filled out, and when doing research on them.
This is where I also got to learn about new topics that I hadn’t even heard of before or knew existed. Every day I’d be writing about something new, something that I’d never heard of before, or something I was interested in but didn’t have the time to look up myself.
However, when it came to talking to Team Leaders, and heads of the table at Pearl Lemon, it became difficult because of the timezone differences and just generally working at different times compared to others. There had to be a lot of compromises on my part in order to make meetings work.
Friday meetings, where EVERYONE had to attend, were difficult to get to for me personally, as they were around 11:25 at night when they started, and could sometimes go until 1 in the morning. So a lot of the time I ended up passing out by the time came around.
A lot of the time, I ended up just watching the recorded videos of the team meets, in order to not miss anything, and take notes on the things that were important.
It wasn’t until later that I got used to staying up later, or getting a nap in before the time came, in order to not miss the meets.
Either way, even if I was tired, to begin with, it was all very much worth it, because when I did finally get the chance to go to my very first Friday Team Meet, I got to meet a lot of wonderful people, with funny and bright personalities.
Month 3
Things started to pick up more around the third month of my time at Pearl Lemon, the person I was working with the Guest Blogs with had to go on a short leave, leaving me to work on the rest of the guest blogs, etc.
I took this as a bit of a win since it felt like I won the trust of the team enough to be able to work on it by myself, even if I did have some improvements I needed to be focusing on. (Still do, but hey we’re human, and we improve over time and practice!)
Not only that but when Guest Posts started to die down a little bit, being a slow month and all toward the end of the year, I got tasked to also work on Preview Descriptions!
These were really fun to do, and there were a lot of them to do, so I’d set a certain amount per day to focus on while working on the Guest Blogs.
Because my Team leader / the person I was working on the work with were away, I got to contact a lot more people and talk to them about what I was doing, which was a really fun opportunity to get to know a bunch more people, even if some were just brief conversations.
Writing became easier, though sometimes motivation was a pain, being a person that suffers from emotional disorders, ADHD, and alike. The best part about all of this though is the Pearl Lemon team is very understanding and will help you throughout the entire process.
If you don’t understand something, then they’ll explain it to you, and keep trying to find ways to help you understand so you can be the best you can be when it comes to work, or whatever the issue was in the first place.
Month 4
Coming up to month 4, there was a skyrocketing amount of Guest Blogs that came in that took up a lot of my focus, which luckily by the time they came my way, I had already finished the Preview Descriptions, and the Team Leader/person I worked with on the Guest Posts was on their way back from their break.
I was getting 2-3 Guest Posts done per day, sometimes 3-4 if I was having a good day, and increased my hours a bit each day in order to have 3 days off so I could have more me-time, and spend it with both my partner and family.
During the fourth month, I was also tasked to do some reviews and related bits and pieces for the company, in order to help out more. At one point I was going to do video reviews for products and tools but found that the content writing was more suited to my personality.
Sometime during this period I also got the chance to help out with writing transcripts with other members of the writing team, which I found really fun! There was a lot to correct and a lot to transcribe, but we all ended up getting it done.
I was still getting a lot of enjoyment when writing the guest posts, and even when I didn’t like some of the topics being talked about, it was still good to learn new things.
When it came down to the things I didn’t quite understand, there was always someone there to help me write what needed to be written, or handed to someone with more experience than I.
I finished up any extra video tutorials that were left over during this month for training, and solely focused on the guest posts, completing them with ease thanks to the help of the Team Leaders and the person I worked under.
Now, Still Going
I’m a little over 4 months now working at Pearl Lemon, getting close to 5, and I’m still going strong. Being with a company like this can be very hard work, but for someone whose job life has just begun, and the number of opportunities they give you, it’s safe to say it’s worth it.
You can just really tell Pearl Lemon is like a big family, by the way they talk to you, their overall conversation style, and how they all communicate. From the very start, I felt very welcomed.
I hope to work at Pearl Lemon for as long as possible, as they offer a lot of free experience and training that you wouldn’t get anywhere else.