Make A Living Writing

Carol is on vacation. This week, she’s reprinting a couple of posts from the early days of her blog, back when it was on her writer site. Enjoy!

Back when I first started out as a freelance writer, it was tough to find writing jobs. I’d either have to look in the Writers Market, or get in my car and go down to the library and get out the Gale’s guide to research possible article markets. Next, I carved my articles on a rock…OK, I’m not that old, but there was a lot more legwork involved!

Nowadays, you can see lots of writing jobs online without moving from your living room. Personally, I like to look at Freelance Writing Jobs or About Freelance Writing. Between the two of them, they seem to digest all the major job sites around, so you don’t have to look at a lot of individual sites.

The catch is, most of the job ads you see online are a big waste of time for anyone who’s serious about making a good living from writing. They’re no substitute for in-person networking, asking current clients for referrals, cold-calling copywriting prospects, or any of the other tried-and-true methods of finding good clietns.

The key is to save time and not waste hours online looking at job postings. Over the past year, I’ve developed some rules for cutting through the junk and only responding to what seem to be viable, good-paying clients. I try to send out several resumes each week…but I’m pretty selective about who I take the time to develop a submission letter for. I try not to spend more than a half-hour a day online job-hunting.

My rules:

1. Skip the scams. Avoid anything that contains phrases such as “you’ll get good exposure” or “we pay on revenue share” or “pay for page views.” None of these pay anything that will even buy you a gallon of milk.

2. Skip all Craigslist ads. Especially the sketchy, two-line ones. The vast majority of Craigslist posters are either scam artists outright, nightmare clients with only a vague sense of what it is they actually want, or $10-an-article types.

3. Skip all “lots of topics,” “we need lots of writers” or “pick your own topics” assignments.Any ad that says they need lots of writers to write about lots of topics is unlikely to pay much. These are generally content portals where they make a fortune putting ads against your content, while they pay you nothing. If you can write about your dog, well, anyone can do that. So it’s not going to pay much.

4. Skip ads that ask for a sample article. These are all scams — they just take the sample articles, rip them off, post them, and don’t hire anyone. Or even if they do hire someone, odds are low it’ll be you. If you already have two clips, you don’t need to enter any of these article ‘contests.’

5. Skip anyone who says they pay by PayPal. Some may disagree with this one, but I consider this the hallmark of low payers and bogus companies, particularly U.S.-based ones. Any real company can write you a check, or use auto-deposit and toss that payment straight into your account. The reason they use PayPal is they’re planning to pay you $1.95 and want to save a stamp. If they’re going to pay a substantial amount and it’s an ongoing account, you stand to lose hundreds of dollars of income in fees over the course of a year.

6. Skip any ad that doesn’t tell you the company name or Web site Blind ads are a hallmark of scammers. Sane, functional companies tell you where to find them online so you can research them and send them an appropriate query with relevant clips. Those are the ones I want to work for.

7. Skip any ad you see frequently. If this ad agency, Web site or whatever is constantly advertising, there’s a reason. They are probably a nightmare to work for, or pay nothing. I’m looking for people who are a pleasure to work for, and pay well.

8. Target ads that ask for your specific expertise. For me, when an ad says applicants must have extensive experience in business reporting, financial, real estate, legal, tax, accounting, insurance or public-company coverage…they have my full attention. Niche expertise pays better. I’m probably going to send these folks a query.

9. Know when to break the rules. Sometimes, an ad will catch your eye even though by all the rules above it should be skipped. This happened to me recently with a Craigslist ad. Ordinarily I would automatically skip…but before I could hit the “back” button, I started to read the ad, and it asked for deep small-business newspaper or magazine experience. Which I have. The company listed their site so I could research what they needed.

I sent them a query and landed a two-month project worth several thousand dollars, which may lead to ongoing work…my first ever good-paying job off a Craigslist ad. I’ve since landed a couple of other very solid clients through Craigslist.

So rules are good most of the time, but remember to keep your mind open a crack for interesting exceptions to the rules.

Next time: how to use the job ads creatively to find more job opportunities.

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Photo via Flickr user dbdbrobot

Are you in a job-ad rut? I hear a lot of complaints from writers that there are no good jobs advertised online.

What writers who say that often mean is they keep going to the same two or three online job boards every week, or even every day. The jobs are all super low-paid junk from Craigslist…and they’re getting depressed.

If that’s you, I’d like to gently remind you that insanity is sometimes defined as doing the same thing every day but expecting a different result. If you don’t think you’re seeing quality job listings, it’s time to shake up your online job-search routine.

Some different places I look for writing jobs:

• Niche sites. Since I’m kind of a financial dork, I get great leads from Gorkana alerts, which seems to attract a lot of financial publications. I got my new gig blogging for BNET through Gorkana, and I did not see that job anywhere else. Somewhere, there’s a site for an industry specialty you have that might list related writing jobs. Find it and bookmark it. Realize that employers are sick of getting bombarded with 200 resumes when they place an ad, and they’re seeking out smaller-circulation places to put out the word.

• LinkedIn. If you haven’t looked for jobs on LinkedIn, check it out! It’s a growing, busy place for listings, and has a sophisticated search engine so you can filter jobs a number of ways. While I don’t see a lot of freelance gigs on LinkedIn, I’m impressed by the number of writing-sector full-time jobs I see on there, every day.

• Indeed. This is a powerful job-oriented search engine that searches across many other portals. It has interesting statistical capabilities too, and can tell you trends in job listings. Great way to toy with search terms and turn up jobs you might otherwise miss. Want to cheer yourself up? Look at this chart for jobs with “writer” in the description — and you’ll see ads have stayed fairly constant straight through the downturn!

• Twitter. Search on twitter for “writer jobs” and take a look at the number of sites that are streaming their job offers on there! Build yourself a nice list where you can look at your customized jobstream — or just follow my list if you like.

• Your desktop. I don’t often go on job-search sites anymore, because I’ve dragged most of the sites with jobs that interest me onto my desktop through RSS. Great way to save time and get to the jobs you want as soon as they’re posted.

• Industry association job boards. The Society of Professional Journalists is among the professional writers’ organizations with their own job listings. When’s the last time you checked them out? The National Writers Union has a job hotline for members that enforces decent-pay standards.

• Morning Coffee. I just discovered this list recently, and it’s one of the ones on my desktop, along with Writer’s Weekly. Morning Coffee seems to have a more extensive range of writer jobs than I find on many writer-job sites. I found a smokin’ hot lead for me this week on Morning Coffee that needed my insurance expertise and was offering up to $60 an hour.

Of course, as regular readers of this blog know already, I find the best jobs aren’t waiting for you on an ad on the Internet. You get them by prospecting — getting out and meeting new people, sending query letters, or however else you reach out in the real world. Don’t forget about in-person networking and cold-calling, as they can’t be beat for meeting new clients. But if you are looking for jobs online, think about new ways to approach your search if you’re not seeing quality leads — they’re out there.

Photo image via Flickr user szlea