Hello and welcome to Creator Confidential! This is the (very high-level) story of how and why I founded Creator Confidential.
My name is Angela Atkinson and I’ve been making my living writing online since 2005.
Back then, I left my corporate job and started out with blogging. Soon, I moved into content mill work – which helped me get my feet wet before I jumped into the freelance writing and editing world with both feet.
That led to my becoming a real-life, working freelance writer, and I spent the next seven years doing quite well for myself working with a variety of private clients, doing writing and marketing work for them. I became a recognized expert in online freelancing and publishing, along with social media marketing.
As time went on, I returned to my roots – journalism – during an almost 3-year stint with the now-defunct AOL Patch sites – I was a reporter and interim editor for 24 editions in the St. Louis area.
I published my first ebook in 2010, and a few more between now and then. In August 2013, I launched my publishing company, BlissFire Media, and at the time, continued blogging and working with my private clients.
In October of 2013, certain personal events in my life caused me to reevaluate everything I was doing, and I took a step back to reevaluate a bit – but in the meantime, I continued blogging and writing. I just stopped working with all but a select few of my private clients.
Meanwhile, on my personal blog, I had been doing a lot of research and writing about narcissistic abuse recovery since about 2005. Over time, I realized that my most often read and highest-rated posts were all focused around that topic, so I did a 30-day experiment where I shut down all other projects and focused on this one. During that time, I got my first certification in life coaching, which I completed in September 2014. This would eventually lead to the launch and future success of my primary project and focus, QueenBeeing.com.
Since then, I’ve grown and evolved both my business and my life. And while I was a pioneer in the development of my niche (being one of less than 10 creators focusing on this topic in the beginning), there are now literally thousands of people claiming a space there. Many have come to me asking for help growing their own platforms in the process.
There’s another thing about me. I have a passion for helping people figure out how to take something they love and turn it into their jobs through online content creation and product development. I will literally sit down with a complete stranger and spend hours helping them strategize and figure out how they can do what they want to do online – happily – despite the fact that my schedule is ridiculously overbooked as it is.