Writing Your Way To Wealth Part 2

In our last post, we talked about the skills you might need to become a freelance writer. The simple truth is, though, you can have the best skills in the world, but if you don’t know where to put them to good use, you still won’t be collecting a paycheck as a writer. As I mentioned earlier, most of the freelance writers who make great money at it these days have diversified their client bases away from print media and toward the world of ecommerce. As a result, when you’re just getting started, the best place to collect a writing paycheck is online.

Freelance Job Boards

Lots of copywriting companies these days are in serious need of online freelancers to help fill orders. Working for a copywriting company is a great way to get your feet wet in this business. Instead of being directly responsible to picky clients, you’ll only be responsible to the company you work for. Moreover, most of these companies have editors on staff to go over your work, and that can be really helpful if you’re just getting started as a writer. Furthermore, working for one of these companies is a bit more security when it payday rolls around. While individual clients might leave you holding the bill, a copywriting company certainly won’t, as it makes it much more difficult to hire writers in the future. The downside to working for a copywriting company, though, is that they expect you to take on at least one assignment per week, and many of them are willing to fire you if you can’t keep up with the workload, as they have hundreds of applicants each week.

If you are interested in working for a copywriting company, there are several good places to look. Online Writing Jobs (www.online-writing-jobs.com) is a good place to start your search. Not every posting there is a company looking to hire a writer, but many of them are, and the site is fairly easy to navigate. Online classifieds sites like craigslist are also a really good place to get hooked up with individual copywriting companies.

On Your Own

If you have a feel for the freelance writing profession already or you just don’t want to be involved with a company, you can still earn a great living as a freelance writer. There are a few sites online that will help you do it. Elance (www.elance.com) allows you to post a profile and bid on jobs that are interesting to you. They do, though, charge a membership fee, and they take a commission fee on every job you win. Guru (www.guru.com) also allows you to bid on writing jobs that you think might work out for you. Other similar sites include www.ifreelance.com, www.freelancework.net, and freelanceworkexchange.com. Keep in mind that all of these sites either charge a membership fee, a commission fee, or both.

Diversifying your client base is the key to success, and if you’d like to try a mix of writing for online audiences and print audiences, there are several other places to look for the right opportunities. Journalismjobs.com is a great resource for print media jobs. Freelancewriting.com is also a good resource in that they have a guidelines database for nearly 700 magazines. Write an article of interest, follow their submission guidelines carefully, and you could find your name in print in just a few months.

If you’re ready to get started, keep reading. In the next post, I’ll be discussing the various types of texts you might be asked to create.

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