Anyone who has spent a week looking at the writing jobs posted on Craigslist knows online job ads are not a great source of top-paying clients.

The best clients, you find doing your own proactive marketing.

However…there are a few creative ways you can use job ads to find good gigs.

The key is to not let online job ads take up too much of your marketing time. You need to scan the ads quickly and move on to more effective marketing methods (namely, just about anything else).

I went through more than a year solid where I was scanning the job ads nearly every day. After a while, I got it down to a system and didn’t spend more than about 15 minutes a day on it.

How did I do it? Here are my seven tips for how to quickly find good leads in the job ads:

1. Look at the ads for full-time jobs. Yes, you’re not really looking for a full-time job. But when a company is advertising for a full-time person, my experience in 12 years of staff-writing jobs says that means the publication or company is now freelancing out that staffer’s workload to avoid overloading the remaining staffers.

Concentrate your attention on the companies that are a perfect fit — you know their industry or read their publication.

Maybe they need someone to fill in until they complete their job search? Maybe they also use freelancers regularly, as well as in-house writers? You won’t know unless you ask.

The full-time job ad simply provides me with a good contact. So if it’s a company or publication that fits my expertise, I go ahead and apply. I say, “Hi there, not looking for full-time, I’m actually a happy freelancer. But I have the skills you need (I usually throw in a few relevant samples here). Do you use freelancers?”

I’ve scored several great new editor connections this way over the years, including two in the past year or so that paid $1 a word. It’s a great way to get your name in front of people that use writers, at a time when they may well need help.

2. Be picky. As I hinted above, you don’t want to apply to a lot of online job ads, as most will be a waste of your time. So skip everything that asks for free samples, or says you can write about any topic you like, or that they have unlimited assignments. These are never good gigs. Be very wary of blind ads, where the company isn’t identified. You’re looking for the ad that seems like it was made for you — it mentions the exact expertise you have, and the company checks out as a real, decent-sized, going concern. That’s the one you want to take the time to apply for.

3. Look at site-specific job ads out of your area. I’m selective here — if it says anything like “meet with us weekly at our Akron offices,” I move on. On the other hand, if the ad title mentions a city, but the ad text doesn’t describe anything that needs to be done in person, and it mentions my expertise, I go ahead and apply if the company seems legit.

Just ask right up top if they’d consider someone working remotely. Play up your expertise both in their field, and your expertise in working remotely.

4. Watch for paid listings. Companies that place paid ads are usually established, legitimate organizations. Specialized job boards and organizations’ job listings are often paid situations. These companies are telling you something when they take out that paid ad — they want to post in more exclusive places as they don’t have time to wade through 300 resumes.

To me, a paid listing qualifies that client right away as a good lead.

5. Use social media. If you’re not looking at the jobs on LinkedIn, I highly recommend it — many of the listings are exclusive to the site. And LinkedIn listings are paid listings, which as we’ve just discussed is highly desirable.

LI is a great place to find full-time job ads you can piggyback on with your freelance request, as per #1. You can also try to use your connections to get a referral attached to your application, which I’m told greatly increases your odds of getting the contact’s attention in the pile of resumes they are likely receiving.

Twitter is also a growing place for freelance gigs. Not only can you tweet about the work you’re looking for, but you can use Twitter’s search feature to troll for jobs. Some of the sites mentioned above are on Twitter tweeting about listings, so you could get a jump on the masses this way.

There are an increasing number of job-focused tweeters, too — I’ve checked out  @WritersDigest, @FSsJobs (that’s Freelance Switch), @tweetajob, and many others.

Even Facebook is getting into the act lately — I’ve been spotting some interesting-looking listings going up from Facebook4Freelancers, which has a lot of writer listings.

6. Look for niche job boards. Get off Craigslist and find more exclusive job boards. These usually focus on one niche area. For instance, as a business-finance writer I’ve had good luck with Gorkana Alerts (they’ve got alerts for healthcare and media, too). You’ll have to do some sleuthing to find where your best ads hang out, but it can be well worth it if you find a good board. I got one of my biggest, long-term blogging gigs through my niche board.

7. Try the Junk-Free Job Board. Inside Freelance Writers Den, we’ve developed a job board that scans dozens of the mass job-ad places, screens out all the junk, and then only presents better offers (thanks to some tech help from Ty). Some weeks there’s hardly anything on it — a testament to how few good jobs can really be found online. But the few listings we have tend to be quality, and all are a cut above the usual $5-$10 article offers. You save a ton of time by not having to wade through the junk, and quite a few Denizens have already gotten good gigs from them. The bonus: I pass on a lot of freelance offers I get these days, and when I do, I often add that lead to the job board, too.

In this market, it pays to get creative when you’re looking for clients. If you’re not able to go out and do in-person networking, a discerning scan of the job ads can help you turn up good clients without leaving home.

How have you found good clients through online ads? Leave a comment and let us know.

See the previous installments of Marketing 101 for Freelance Writers starting here. Next up: how to make a classic marketing tool super-useful. Subscribe and you won’t miss any of this 21-part marketing series

It’s an anxious time for many online writers. Those writing at rock-bottom prices are finding the opportunities are drying up.

Demand Studios writers are up in arms because the number of $15 assignments has shriveled. Parent company Demand Media’s stock has plummeted since its IPO, and investors are skeptical about the company’s future prospects.

I heard from one writer in Freelance Writers Den recently who reports she has to write 350-450 pieces a month for another mill, just to scrape by financially. That’s the kind of virtual-sweatshop slavery story that led me to start this blog in the first place.

Writers used to commiserate about all the ways they could be exploited online by the Internet’s low-pay ‘opportunities.’ Now, some can’t even get that.

Meanwhile, over in other parts of the Internet, writers are earning professional rates. Getting $100 for quickie articles and blog posts, $1 a word for web content, and $2,000 for fully researched features. I know, because those are all rates I’ve earned in the past year.

How can you find the better jobs?

How can you tell if a site is really a scam?

How can you negotiate and get a good rate?

I’ve got a system for doing all that — and I’m going to be teaching it in a 4-week, live Webinar bootcamp in November — How to Make Good Money Writing Online. Here’s my planned outline for the class:

Week one: How to investigate websites, identify good payers, and negotiate a great deal with I.J. Schecter, author of 102 Ways to Earn Money Writing 1,500 Words or Less.

Week two: How to write query letters and letters of introduction for online markets that get you hired, with Renegade Writer Linda Formichelli

Week three: Essential elements of a pro writer website, with Angie Atkinson of WM Freelance Writers Connection

Week four: How to use social media marketing to connect with online editors and marketing managers, with Brandi Kajino, a social media expert with SOHO Solutionist.

Oh yeah — and there’s a bonus, 1-hour Story Idea Lab recording I created with Linda Formichelli that teaches you how to create ideas that get you assignments.

Five hours of instruction — four of them with live Q&A — to answer all your questions about how to move up and find better online writing markets.

Here’s the contest part:

What’s your question about how to find online writing gigs? Let me know in the comments below, and I’ll try to offer some answers. Is there something missing from my outline?

Writer job ads: Helpful, or a waste of time?

Since this blog is all about helping writers earn more, it may seem strange to you that I do not provide any writing-job ads. I can tell you that I have no plans to add job listings, either.

I’ve been meaning to do this for quite a while, but let me share with you today the reasons why I don’t have job ads on Make a Living Writing:

1. Most online job ads don’t offer good pay. Yes, there is the occasional real live, great-paying freelance writing job that pops up. I know because back when I was still scanning the online ads, I got a couple of them. But for the most part, the hours you have to spend sifting through the garbage (“Write us a sample for free!” “You’ll get exposure!” “We’ll pay you for traffic!” “We want you to post 10 times a week for $50!”) make trolling online job ads one of the least time-effective ways to find truly lucrative gigs.
2. Writers already waste too much time on online job ads. Practically every writer I’ve ever worked with in my mentoring practice has confessed to me that they can easily blow four hours a day or more obsessing over these easy-to-find online ads, rather than turning to more effective marketing methods such as cold-calling, in-person networking, email marketing, using your social network, or sending well-crafted queries. It is so easy to fritter away the hours mooning over these ads, fantasizing about getting these gigs, and crafting submissions. I don’t want to contribute to this problem by listing more job ads here on the blog.
3. Mass ads are too competitive. When you’re seeing a Craigslist ad, you know that 200 people are going to respond. Your simple odds of getting noticed and hired are tiny. Is this really the battle you want to fight? I try to encourage writers to seek out specialized, niche job boards such as Gorkana’s alerts on financial and healthcare-related writing jobs. I got a major gig off Gorkana this year, so I know this strategy works. Since I can’t possibly hunt up specialized jobs for everyone’s niche, I prefer to stay out of the whole job-board racket and steer people to good resources.
4. Applying to online job ads is passive and often demoralizing. When you’re applying to online job ads, it’s a passive dynamic. You’re letting the universe tell you what’s available. Where with pro-active marketing strategies such as cold-calling, querying, or networking, you are empowering yourself to get the clients you want. This is the mindset I want to encourage writers to have — that you are in control of your freelance-writing career. Many writers have written to me about their feelings of despair at applying to jobs they know hundreds of others are going after. You can easily send 10 or 20 resumes a week and get not one peep. This does not help keep your psyche in a positive head space about being a freelance writer!
5. Other writing sites have writer job ads already. If you still really want to troll the ads, you can head on over to Anne Wayman’s site, About Freelance Writing. She puts up job listings three times a week, and does a good job of compiling them from many sources. In case you’re wondering, I’m not recommending you look at her job ads because I’m putting on Webinars with Anne and like her personally, but because I think it’s useful that her ads are only three times a week and not every day. This performs a certain awesome triage in culling the ads, in that there’s usually a day or two of delay before her ads go up. That means all the really lame, mass ads will have dead links soon after she posts them — and that helps you avoid wasting time. Any professional company that needs something specialized and offers real pay will have their ad up for a week at least, so you miss nothing valuable. And it keeps you out of the cesspit of looking at online ads daily and wasting umpty-leven additional hours. If you commit to only looking three days a week instead of five, you’ve freed up two days for other marketing tasks that might prove more productive.

Do you think I should have online job ads? Leave a comment and let me know your experience finding work through the ads.

How to Break In and Earn Big as a Freelance Writer: Just a note that the presale price for this upcoming Webinar ends tomorrow night. Until then, it’s just $24.99, but goes to $36 after that. Get your questions answered live — for less — and register now.

Photo via Flickr user an1m8or

Last week, I discussed how to identify really great-paying clients. Now that we know the shape of the elephant, let’s discuss how to locate and bag that big game.

Here are some of the techniques I’ve used in the past year to connect with clients that pay $1-$2 a word, $100 an hour, and more:

1. SEO your Web site. If you are not yet aware, let me spell it out: Google is the phone book of the 21st Century. Are you easily findable in it? I got both a Fortune 500 company and a well-funded startup as clients recently through the clients’ Google searches for a writer, simply because I’ve worked hard on my SEO for “Seattle freelance writer” and “Seattle freelance copywriter.” You can find out more about how I got to the top of page-one results for those searches here. I believe SEO for your writer site is only going to get more important from here.

2. Work your LinkedIn profile. If Google is the phone book, LinkedIn is the specialty business-only phone book. Really pay attention to what you’ve got in your profile on LI. Make sure it’s complete and has a nice photo of you.

Is it up to date? Does it link to your writer site? Your blog? Your hottest recent article? Do you belong to relevant groups? Update your status frequently with news of projects you’re working on and sources you need, so it creates a thread of relevant information. Be sure to add new client companies and publications to your status.

Most importantly, look at how you describe yourself, and add every relevant word a prospect might search on to locate you. Play around with your “professional headline” so it includes your keywords. I just updated mine (I just noticed it tends to pick up your most recent freelance gig and make it the headline) to say “freelance writer, blogger, copywriter, and writing mentor.” Those might not be the exact words you want — but think about it and experiment with your descriptors.

I got my second new Fortune 500 client this year from my LinkedIn profile. The editor of their company newsletters went poking around on there, looking for a local pro writer. They needed a couple of executive profiles done in a huge rush. I made a quick $1,200 doing utterly enjoyable articles, and found out they’re looking for a writer to put on contract for 2011. Now I’m in a great position to go after a long-term contract with them. Worth a few minutes of buffing up that LI profile, I think.

3. Network in a better place. When I first started networking, I went to events in my small town. I met many small-business owners there. I got some nibbles and did a little work that way, but found smaller businesses were just as much of a pain as large ones, but paid less.

So I switched to networking at events in downtown Seattle. Presto! Totally different type and size of business trolling over there. I met editors that pay well, from companies both in the Fortune 500 and smaller ones, too. Know the type of client you want, and if you’re not finding them where you’re hanging out now, try some other in-person networking events until you find the pool you want to swim in.

4. Follow the trail. It pays to know who owns a site. Sometimes, a seemingly rinky-dink place can turn out to be the new URL for a major corporation or Web portal that offers really great pay. I just got two $1-a-word article assignments from an insurance Web site that turned out to be owned by one of the biggest finance sites on the Internet. Now, I have several good-paying Web sites that might assign me, all from making this first connection.

5. Read online job ads carefully. It’s weird, but every once in a while, one of these major publications or corporations just puts out a Craislist ad. Which I hate because it means I have to keep scanning job ads now and then…but there you have it.

In the past month, I started with a $1 a word client I connected with by responding to their online ad. They didn’t mention rates in the ad, but it was a fully fleshed-out ad with links to their Web site, and it was in a specialized niche. I have to admit I think of this one as sort of a moonshot…but it does happen.

How do you connect with your most lucrative clients? Feel free to add more strategies in the comments below.

Want to learn more about how to market your writing? Subscribe so you don’t miss next week’s big announcement about an exciting opportunity to really ramp up your marketing — fast.

Photo via Flickr user John-Morgan

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, as it would substantially increase their total expenditure! 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 getting paid on PayPal, as they charge fees up to 3 percent.

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 a couple of times with Craigslist ads. 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 one 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