The Freedom of Freelance
by Bill Scott
As a staff writer at "Home Based Business" we regularly answer questions
submitted by our members, one great topic is freelance writing.
The so-called starving writer may not exactly be starving these days, but there
are still bills to pay, clothes to buy, and other living necessities that any
average Joe needs. The best part of all is that you no longer have to scribble
out poems for a few pennies on the street. And if your local newspaper is not in
need of your talents, then perhaps someone, say, in Vermont will be.
In our Internet connected world, with the right credentials you can be on the
editorial staff of a major magazine or other publication and only go as far as
the next room to sit down at your computer. All you need is a connection, a
telephone or an email account, and your writing skills.
Freelancers working this way often write for several publications at one time.
One freelance writer may work with five different places doing five different
jobs; writing varied articles for a magazine, email news letters, blog editing,
blog writing, and columnist for another magazine.
After building up a good base, you can let go of the low-paying jobs and trade
them in for new high-paying jobs. By doing so, you increase your earnings from
around $30,000 to $100,000. Multiple clients mean multiple incomes, and combined
these easily put away the starving writer notion.
The trick to being a freelance writer is to know where to find freelance writing
jobs. There are several places on the Internet you can look and make your
decisions based on your experience, time devotion, and the kind of pay you want.
Smaller Job Sites
OnlineWritingJobs.com
and The Write Jobs
These are just two sites of many that post a veritable free-for-all in writing
jobs. Some of the requests are specific, such as an editor or website's need for
a correspondent to visit local clubs and write about the bands that perform
there. Other requests are general, companies that need numerous articles written
on various subjects.
Usually the pay offered on these sites will be low (OnlineWritingJobs.com does
have a "High-Paying Writing Jobs" section, but some posts do not mention pay
rates so it can be hard to tell), but they offer you the ability to start a
decent freelance track record for future higher-paying jobs.
Professional Job Sites
mediabistro.com
and JournalismJobs.com
These websites aim their freelance work toward professional writers. The work is
varied, from magazine and book publishing to the newspaper industry. Jobs can
include the usual editing or writing of articles, longer term projects, or just
simply long-term work for good pay.
After you have created a solid list of credentials from smaller writing jobs,
you can work on breaking in to jobs offered at these sites, thus trading out
low-pay for high-pay.
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