entrepreneurship

I Relied on One Income Stream as a Creator… Until I Couldn’t

What an algorithm’s breakdown taught me about the self-employed life.

Anangsha Alammyan

03 Sep 2025 • 5 min read

Image from the author’s Instagram.

What an algorithm’s breakdown taught me about the self-employed life.

Since I quit my job to become a full-time writer, I worked hard to strike an equilibrium between passion and rest.

In 2022, it seemed like I’d cracked the code for the perfect creator routine. Write 15 Medium articles a month. Watch $1.5K to $2K roll into my bank account.

It wasn’t life-changing money. But as an Indian, the exchange rates helped. I could pay the rent in one of the most expensive Indian cities, buy what I want without looking at the price tag, and still afford vacations every two months.

I did all that while having enough time to read, think, and live slowly.

It was the perfect life, a life I’d swap nothing of.

But then, the algorithm changed. And my perfect life came crumbling down.

When everything stopped working

I’m not sure what happened with Medium, but overnight, my income dropped to $200.

I had no backup plan or comeback strategy. I remember thinking: “How will I pay rent next month?”

That’s when I realized: it wasn’t the algorithm’s fault. It was me.

Relying on one platform isn’t a business strategy. It’s a gamble.

And that’s when the real panic set in. Because if your livelihood can vanish overnight just because a faceless algorithm decides to shuffle the deck, do you really have a business?

Or do you just have borrowed time to pay off your bills for a while?

The very act of trying is the bridge between the life you have and the life you’re dreaming of.

The journal exercise that changed everything

That night, unable to sleep, I opened my journal. I wrote down two lists:

What I never want to do again as a writer.
What I’d love to try, even if it failed spectacularly.

The first list came fast.

I never wanted to feel chained to a single platform again.

I never wanted to be at the mercy of something I couldn’t control.

I never wanted to chase deadlines, or hire writers and build an agency model.

The second list was harder.

Because saying what you want out loud is scary. It’s safer to stay in survival mode, convincing yourself you’ll try later, when things are more stable.

But stability? It was a joke. I was already at $200, what did I have left to lose?

So I wrote it down:

I wanted to double down on my YouTube.

I wanted to grow my newsletter revenue beyond the basic subscription model Substack offers.

I wanted to pitch clients directly instead of waiting for them to “find me.”

I wanted to write about AI, even though I was scared people would say I wasn’t an expert.

That clarity didn’t fix my income overnight. But it gave me something better: courage.

Trying more doesn’t mean you’re scattered. It means you’re brave enough to keep looking.

Starting from zero again

In December, I launched ten new projects.

But — no surprises for guessing this — most of them flopped.

My YouTube videos were well-appreciated. But did they make me rich? No!

My newsletter was ranking well on Google with my SEO magic. But it didn’t bring in the thousands of dollars I hoped it would.

I wrote about AI, but the traction wasn’t as good as I thought it would be. I saw some potential there, but I needed more expertise, the kind that comes with getting your hands dirty and actually working with the technology you write about.

Every day, I felt like I was fighting a losing battle. But I kept in mind what I’d heard Ankur Warikoo speak at a conference at ISB Hyderabad,

“You are your biggest asset. Never give up on yourself.”

I had to lose what I thought was security to find real stability.

The lesson I didn’t want to learn

My December projects all failed. But by January end, something wild happened.

An unexpected opportunity came in — from a channel I didn’t know could pay.

Now, it brings me 5x more income than before.

It’s only because I kept showing up online even when I had no clue what I was doing.

Looking back now, I can see it clearly: the breakdown was necessary.

If Medium had kept paying me $2,000 a month forever, I would have stayed comfortable. I would never have pushed myself to try harder, scarier things. I would never have built income streams outside of one fragile platform.

I had to lose what I thought was security to find real stability.

And real stability, I’ve learned, doesn’t come from platforms or algorithms. It comes from your willingness to keep experimenting, to keep showing up, to keep sharing your work even when you feel like no one cares.

The algorithm can take your income. It can’t take your courage.

The breakdown you’re terrified of could actually be the breakthrough you didn’t know you needed.

If you’re stuck, here’s what I’d tell you

Maybe your version of $2,000 to $200 looks different. Maybe you launched a course and no one bought it. Maybe your job application inbox is full of polite rejections. Maybe you post online and get silence.

I know how much it hurts. I know how easy it is to spiral into, “I’m not good enough.”

But if there’s one thing my 2024 taught me, it’s this: Trying more doesn’t mean you’re scattered. It means you’re brave enough to keep looking.

Write the post that feels pointless. Launch the project that might flop. Send the email that might get ignored.

Because sometimes, the very act of trying is the bridge between the life you have and the life you’re dreaming of.

And sometimes, the breakdown you’re terrified of is actually the breakthrough you didn’t know you needed.

If you enjoyed reading this, follow me on Substack to see a more honest, unfiltered side of my journey.

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