Personally, I view my situation with a touch of grim self-deprecation, but this post is still going to contain a lot of potentially triggering negativity. That’s why I decided to give you a heads-up and put the rest of this under spoiler tags. The irony of my life is that I’ve faced two major turning points where I saw exactly what was happening and knew what needed to be done, but I just didn't have the means to do it. The first was in 2009, when hardly anyone knew about Bitcoin. I was in the loop thanks to industry connections and word-of-mouth, but I had zero opportunity back then to actually sit down and figure it out. The second moment came in 2022 with the release of ChatGPT 3.5. Knowing client psychology inside and out and understanding how much everyone loves cutting costs, I knew right away that copywriting was in for a rough ride. I realized I urgently needed to adapt, upskill, and pivot. But the invasion of my country, the war, the blackouts, and just the sheer chaos of everything left me with no real chance to make that shift. My Story in a Nutshell I got into copywriting back in 2009 for two simple reasons: I loved writing. Due to a number of chronic health conditions, working remotely was my only realistic option. At the time, I mostly worked for the Russian market. This was before the occupation of Crimea, so it felt completely normal back then. The Russian market was wealthier and offered better income. Plus, almost the entire Ukrainian web was in Russian. In 2014, I decided to pivot. I started actively looking for Ukrainian clients and found quite a few. The problem was that economic ties with Russia were still very close. Many of my Ukrainian clients continued to do business with Russia. And even when it came to strictly Ukrainian websites, about 80% of the time they still needed content in Russian. This became a massive problem in 2022 when I severed all ties. The Russian-language articles in my portfolio turned into a toxic asset, as did any of my work published on Russian websites. At the same time, the market shrank overnight. With so few clients left in Ukraine, they had all the leverage—they could set whatever demands they wanted, like publishing strictly in Ukrainian, requiring a specific number of reviews on one particular platform, and so on. Where Things Stand Today Since 2022, I’ve been scraping by on my remaining clients and my financial cushion. But the client pool is constantly shrinking. Some are opting for AI, while others are shutting down projects entirely because AI has stripped their websites of traffic and wiped out their own revenue streams. At the same time, breaking into the international market is tough. For instance, Ukrainians can’t use PayPal to receive business payments—only for personal transfers from friends and family. Yet, many global projects prefer PayPal or other payment gateways that just aren't viable options for us. And that’s just part of the bigger picture. The bottom line is, I spent 17 years honing my craft—learning how to write landing pages, homepage copy, blog posts, mastering various formats, and adapting to different brand voices. Honestly, it’s easier to list the things I haven't learned. And for what? To end up desperately scrambling for any gig I can find since February. At first, I thought the problem was me—that my approach was wrong. But then I came across a study on the Ukrainian job market showing an average of 79 applicants for a single copywriting vacancy. It has become the most sought-after job by candidates in the country, resulting in a brutally oversaturated market. I honestly have no idea what to do next. And every adjacent industry is suffering from the exact same issues.   submitted by   /u/Rinamara [link]   [comments]