Secret Weapons to Finding More Paying Freelance Gigs

by Joe Wallace

If you’re wondering what a doctored photo of a moon walk has to do with getting a freelance job, keep reading. You won’t find freelance jobs on the moon, but if you’re fed up enough with a fruitless hunt for more paying gigs to consider looking there anyway, you’re well on your way to getting a new freelance opportunity.

I just started a high-paying freelance editor gig for a major national corporation. I found this gig in a place I least expected to–and that was probably the reason why I landed it. There was no horde of eager applicants to compete with–just a reasonable amount of competition. My source for this job isn’t as important as the idea that I landed the work because I opened myself up to new opportunities by looking in places I wouldn’t have explored a year or two ago.

So how can you create your own secret weapon to finding new freelance work? … Continue Reading

6 Freelance Job Resources You Haven’t Thought Of

by Joe Wallace

Looking for freelance gigs? You’ve probably been all over the map in search of more steady work, but there are a few places that haven’t been beaten to death by the scraper sites..though they probably will be after we publish this. Best advice? Keep your BEST job resources to yourself as long as possible to avoid the bandwagon syndrome.

That said, here are a few that haven’t been ruined by scraper sites yet…and some that NEVER will be due to the nature of the job sourcing:

Reddit Jobs is pricey for editors to list gigs on–300 a day for 30 days–so you won’t be troubled by a bunch of spammy ads from the usual places offering you three bucks a post or “revenue sharing”. At press time, the problem with Reddit Jobs for freelancers is that some fields are underrepresented, but that obviously changes depending on supply and demand.

Artisan Creative. The reason why Artisan won’t be scraped out of usefulness for a busy freelancer? They have a screening process for candidates. This isn’t an “all-comers” source of freelance jobs, it’s a situation where talent actually matters. Artisan is a creative staffing agency that places writers, coders, designers, and many other freelance specialties. The jobs are heavy-hitting, too. Major companies, household names. I have personal experience with Artisan Creative and am very happy with them.
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Freelance Jobs Are Just A Network Away

Yuwanda Black wrote an article many moons ago for CopyBlogger called Where Have All The Freelance Jobs Gone? Where indeed? I’ll tell you where. They’ve mutated.

Once upon a time, freelancers–especially writers–needed a set of skills directly related to putting words down to tell stories, report news, or sell products. They also had to sell themselves in cover letters, queries, and proposals.

Then came the web, SEO content, blogging, and an explosion in online copywriting. The notion that “everybody’s a writer” gave way to “everyone’s a blogger”. Some get paid, some do not, but the cliche is there for a reason.

Freelance work for writers seems to be subdividing into two basic categories, at least for now. I tend to think of it as skilled and unskilled labor. There’s a certain point in a successful writer’s career where a decision is made or a path is taken to an important collection of skill sets beyond the ability to write well. Those who don’t take the leap wind up stagnating. They don’t make it out of content land, instead remaining trapped like prehistoric dragonflies in amber.

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Freelancing Your Way to a Job

by Mike O’Mary

December unemployment numbers will be reported on January 8, and recent weekly reports on unemployment claims indicate that things are getting better. But it’s still a tough economy out there. As of the end of November, U.S. unemployment was 10%, and underemployment (a freelance writer bagging groceries, for example) was 17.2%. Pretty grim.

If you are freelancing by choice, my hat is off to you. I know some people who have very successful freelance careers and would never consider going to work for someone else. But if you’re freelancing because you’ve been laid off, I have good news for you: freelancing just might be the best way to find your next job.

Twice in the past decade, I was offered (and I accepted) corporate jobs from my clients. So my tip for those of you who desire a corporate job is to offer up your services as a freelancer first. I believe this is actually a better way to get a job than competing with the dozens (or hundreds or sometimes even thousands) of people sending in resumes for job openings.

In the two cases where clients offered jobs to me, I went to the client with no ulterior motive. I really was not looking for a job. I was looking for freelance work. I didn’t want them to give me a job; I wanted to give them some help. That difference in attitude made a difference to them. And in both instances, there was a definite sense that they had discovered me…their attitude was almost a joyful “look what I found!” (Compare that to the attitude of a potential employer during a job interview where all-too-often they are looking for reasons not to hire you.)

Bottom line: Don’t mislead a potential employer. If you’re not interested in freelancing, then don’t present yourself as a potential freelancer. But if you are interested in freelancing – and if you are also interested in the possibility of a full-time job with the right employer – then marketing yourself as a freelancer just might be the best way to get your foot in the door to your next job.

Mike O’Mary is founding dreamer of Dream of Things, a book publisher and online community for writers and other artists.

What You Can Learn About Freelancing From Your Phone Bill

It’s tough to know when to cut your losses. Deadbeat clients, those who ask for never-ending rewrites, clients who pay later and later, the list goes on and on. How long do you give them the benefit of the doubt?

That’s a question for another article. This post is about something completely different–those situations where the client is nice, friendly, reasonable…but you still find yourself getting the short end of the stick.

Example–the writer I know who has to make international phone calls to get his articles written. Calls that aren’t always reimbursed by his editors. This writer decided to start cutting out the companies that wouldn’t pay his phone expenses (which are regular and fairly predictable). He was shocked to learn he saved himself $200 in one month doing so. One of his publication credits wound up costing him half his fee in phone calls–clearly a losing option. … Continue Reading

Holiday Guilt?

Yo Prinzel wrote a great blog entry aimed at all of us who felt slightly guilty for taking a glorious four-day weekend off for the holidays. Adding my own two cents to this blog post, I’ll just say that one way you can offset the guilts for taking time off to stuff your face full of turkey is to pre-position some content or work for submission during your down time. If you’re running a blog or a for-pay website and have content that shows up over the holidays, you can feel confident that you’re feeding the audience while still giving yourself some much-needed down time.
… Continue Reading

Kaizen for Freelancers

by Joe Wallace

I was reading an interview at FreelanceSwitch and stumbled across a word I haven’t seen used in ages. Kaizen is a Japanese word (and concept) imported to the west by management types. The term basically translates as “improvement” but is used in context as “continuous improvement”.

It’s tied to a philosophy–you never stop learning ways to improve your business, and never stop looking for ways to make it more efficient.

Do you use kaizen in your freelance routine?

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The Freelance Jackass Factor: Dealing With the A-Holes In Your Business

It’s a fact of life in freelancing. Eventually you’re going to be stuck with people with habit and business practices which are annoying at best, completely infuriating at their worst. What to do? Here are my top five strategies–things I use whenever dealing with these people and their clueless behavior:

5. Risk Management. If I can spot them coming before I am entangled with them, I try to avoid ‘em completely. Sometimes you can’t, so I make sure I define my terms and conditions to the letter in order to head off the endless revisions or pointlessly long conference calls ahead of the game.

4. Get Paid According to the Level of Hassle. Part of defining terms ahead of time for me is getting paid more money for being subjected to a client’s boorish behavior. Those endless conference calls? I bill them. Those additional rewrites for no real reason? Ditto. People get pain and suffering compensation in lawsuits, why shouldn’t you get the same kind of compensation for dealing with a jackass client?

3. Keep Records. A jackass client will turn on you suddenly and demand extra services or other hassles based on what they claim is non-delivery or delivery that fails to live up to the agreement. Don’t be taken by surprise by this, no matter how nice they’re acting lately the potential is ALWAYS there. Get everything in writing even if that’s just you keeping careful notes for yourself.

2. Time Management. Don’t let your crappy clients steal time away from your GOOD clients. I would rather ask for an extension on a deadline from a crap client than a good one any day of the week. Pick your battles well.

1. Give As Good As You Get. The client that takes a full week to get back with you shouldn’t expect you to jump the second the e-mail hits your inbox. I try to “train” my clients to expect the same level of response and attention they give to me. Some get the hint, others don’t. My time is valuable–it’s worth a lot of money–and I try to convey that wherever possible.

One way I do this is by subtly reminding the clients that I work for other people, too. It’s easy to assume a freelancer is at your disposal. I never let that impression happen–I am always talking about other activities in a vague way. “Oh, sorry–I’m not available at 2PM, I’ve already got a meeting scheduled with one of my other clients.”

Freelance Career Stuff that Works For Me

There are plenty of writing blogs that advocate “best practices” or things that seem to be best practices…and enough of those things are similar enough that a newcomer might get the mistaken impression that the writing game has a set of rules or ways to “do it right” that, when used like a magic formula, equal success.

But the fantastic truth of the matter is, there’s no one right way to do this–freelancing is about what works for YOU. No formulas aside from a few professional courtesies and common-sense activities like spell-check and final draft revisions.

That said, here’s a list of things in no particular order, that I do on a regular basis that seem to work for me:

–I like to stay up late. Past midnight. I try not to work myself into the ground, but around 11PM, after Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, I do some shameless self promotion. … Continue Reading

TweetMyJobs Changes the Game

Freelance job sites like eLance and other for-a-fee providers, quake in your boots. TweetMyJobs has just changed your landscape probably forever with what its marketing hype calls “the largest Twitter job board in the world”. Pretty bold stuff for a company that didn’t exist this time last year, but that’s how things move in the Twitter world–it wasn’t three years ago Twitter wasn’t even a player in the game, now they rule a massive chunk of the online market.

I used TweetMyJobs for the first time yesterday to see what the fuss was about, and I can tell you that the for-pay sites are in trouble. Subscriber-based job sites have reached the end of their usefulness thanks to TweetMyJobs, and unless this fails to catch on with the folks posting the jobs themselves, FREElance is about to be FREE once again. … Continue Reading

Why Experienced Writers Don’t Allow Interviewees to Review Their Work

A lot of less-experienced writers make a common mistake–they offer to let an interviewee see their article before submitting it to the editor. This isn’t just bad form (I’ll explain in a moment why), it can make you blow your deadline.

Inexperienced writers who give in to an interviewee’s request to see the article give themselves away as being inexperienced. People used to dealing with the media know very well that we do NOT turn our work over to non-writers to be edited for any reason.

Invariably, the work you turn in to these wanna-be editors comes back horribly mangled–bad grammar, self-serving re-writes, bad copy all around. You will NEVER get good things back from one of these misguided attempts at “accuracy”. … Continue Reading

Glossary of Terms Found in Freelance Job Ads

New to freelancing? It takes time to learn how to properly interpret those Craigslist ads and other freelance job posts. Do you know what all those terms REALLY mean? Here’s the latest you should know, when you see the terms in bold, you should translate them.

Citizen-Powered–No pay

Citizen Journalist–No pay

Freelance Writers Wanted–Demand Studios wants you

Free-Lance writer wanted–Content site wants cheap writer to write SEO stuff

Get Exposure–No pay

Extend Your Reach–Examiner.com wants you
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Freelance Jobs Made Easy With iGoogle

Freelance Folder has an excellent post about simplifying your freelance job search using iGoogle to aggregate your favorite freelance job sources. Using iGoogle makes the entire process quick and easy.

Which begs the question–what does this do to freelance sites that depend heavily on pulling freelance job information from other sources (like we do for our own Freelance-Zone.com job posts)?

It seems to make our freelance jobs posting–and other sites more dedicated to freelance jobs–totally irrelevant in terms of offering a useful service. iGoogle has this angle completely covered for those who invest the time to actually set it up and check the feeds. So what’s a freelance site to do? … Continue Reading

Writing Jobs for Thursday September 24 2009

Time for another round of hand-selected freelance jobs and full-time opportunities for writers. As always, we personally comb through these positions and while we don’t catch every great freelance job lead that comes along, we do manage to snag a good variety of interesting gigs. If you have a freelance job to post, why not get in touch?

Just a friendly word of warning–we don’t post job ads for online survey takers or people hiring ghost writers for topics like payday loans or other bad-for-consumer products–if we know about that stuff up front, we don’t run the job listing.

Universal Media Group needs a freelance writer for a temp contract gig writing music-related trivial questions for a mobile quiz game. This gig is via JobFox and could turn into a half-year writing opportunity for some music-obsessive writer.

An unnamed company seeks a ghost writer who can polish up rough drafts. This one’s a bit mysterious–they have topics that range wildly–the music industry, networking, trade magazine topics. Stranger still, you’ve got to ring 310-422-2112 extension one, and ask for Cara rather than submit a resume or fill out an online application form. We’ll be calling that number later in the day to see just what the fuss is about simply to satisfy our own curiosity. … Continue Reading

Transparency: How Does FZ Find Its Freelance Writing Jobs?

by Joe Wallace

In recent weeks there’s been a bit of discussion on a variety of freelance writing blogs about writing jobs, scraping, controversy, and what pays and what doesn’t. I thought I would give a bit of behind-the-scenes insight into how we find freelance jobs and what makes our process “unique”.

Truth be told, there’s nothing unique about it. I simply hunt for freelance jobs the way I would if I were actively searching for work. When I find a freelance job on another freelance writing site, I link to that site rather than post the contact information directly. Ditto for when I find a freelance gig lurking on one of the talent agencies. I also find my jobs directly–USAJobs.com, for example, is the government job portal for people looking at Civil Service and related positions–and yes there ARE writing jobs listed there occasionally. … Continue Reading