Tag Archives: freelance jobs

advice

Freelance Jobs, Getting Paid, and Getting Burned

2 Comments

by Joe Wallace


freelance-advice-and-jobs

One question I get asked all the time about freelance jobs goes something like, “How do I know I won’t get ripped off by my client?” Everybody wants protection from wasting precious time working on a project that turns out to be a non-paying dud, but when you’re going out for freelance jobs you do have to accept some level of risk. After all, you don’t actually know your new client…but then again, they don’t know YOU either. The best tactic to use if you are THAT worried about not getting paid? It’s pretty simple, really Continue reading Freelance Jobs, Getting Paid, and Getting Burned →

advice

Top 5 Things You Never Knew About Editors

freelance-writing-advice-3

by Joe Wallace

Ever wonder what it’s like on the other side of the desk? Here’s a little list of things you never knew about editors, written from my own personal experiences as one. I won’t presume to speak for others, but you can’t tell me some of these things aren’t common experience among my peers:

5. Sometimes we read queries, cover letters and resumes before coffee. On Mondays. Try to connect the dots here.

4. Stephen King on Harlan Ellison; “The man and his work have become so intertwined that it is impossible to pull them completely apart.” Editors get like that, too. Especially when reading the malformed prose of people on the Internet.

3. We make more than you. Sometimes. Did you know some editors actually look at their freelance staff with envious eyes because the freelances actually make more than the editors harassing them? Again, try to connect the dots here. Envy, jealousy, and then…we read your work. Are we LOOKING for an excuse to use our red pens? Sometimes, hell yeah.
Continue reading Top 5 Things You Never Knew About Editors →

advice

Top Ten Ways To Find Freelance Work

find freelance jobs background check

One thing about this list: you’ll notice that Craigslist is nowhere to be found. That’s because A) the goofball quotient on CL is very high and while you may find a decent gig on CL, you’ll have to waste too much time finding the diamond in all that sludge. B) With the over-abundance of freelance sites all scraping CL job ads, Craigslist is now flooded with responses to any ad–good luck getting your clips reviewed since every “day one” writer from here to the Atlantic ocean will clog up a poor editor’s inbox with replies.



10. Ask a friend or colleague. Surely one of your other writer friends knows someone who needs some writing help.

9. Check the Careers section of big sites such as AOL.com, Verizon Wireless, Tribune Broadcasting, etc. Contract jobs are often listed side by side with full-time gigs. Or who knows, maybe you’re ready for some steady paychecks? You might be surprised at what’s out there for writers in the regular gig department…not that we’re advocating you go back to working for THE MAN, but sometimes it’s good to get a reminder of why you went freelance in the first place.

8. Look at the news section of your favorite magazine/publishing/advertising mags. See those listings of new magazine announcements? New publications need HELP.

7. Look in your local online phone directory for non-profits. The money isn’t huge with non-profits, but you may find an opening for a wordsmith, however temporary.

6. Call your local churches. Times are hard, staffs are shrinking daily–do local churches and charitable organizations need a freelancer to handle newsletters, bulletins and other material? You might find a secret market lurking in your own back yard.

5. Join your Chamber of Commerce. I can’t tell you how valuable this can be for networking and making friends on the local economy. It takes time to discover new writing opportunities this way, but it is often well worth the investment.

4. Call your Mom. That’s right, your Mom. The right parent who knows the right people just might have a foot in the door someplace you might not otherwise get access to—in today’s economy can you afford to pass up any opportunity to land another writing gig?

3. Use LinkedIn to spread the word that you are for hire. Maybe your direct contacts can’t help, but what about your friends and their contact lists? Find out who is doing what and whether your skill sets apply–you could find an excellent match somewhere in the local business community.

2. Make yourself more discoverable–don’t just use Twitter to stay in touch with your friends, add professionals in your area of expertise to your Following list and put a link to your resume site. Don’t use Twitter JUST for job hunting, but consider it an extra avenue that could come in handy when other gigs become scarce.

1. Forget all the freelance job boards and just pick five companies you’d like to write for. Research them, put custom resume and published clip packages together for each one, and make your presence known. Target each company individually and be persistent without being a pain.

advice

How to Get a Freelance Job: Think Like an Employer

find freelance jobs background checkby Joe Wallace

Learning how to find a freelance job isn’t all about knowing how to write a query letter or write a solid article. Part of the game is learning how to think like the person who needs to pay a freelancer to do this work in the first place.

How can you improve your chances of finding freelance work? Simple–think like an editor. There are three factors involved in hiring a freelancer. Editors, project managers and hiring managers all want the same things–they need a reliable person who will turn the work in on deadline, provide clean copy and be responsive when the editor writes back with revisions.

SmartMoney’s SmallBiz.com ran an excellent article on how to evaluate freelance help, aimed at hiring managers. The piece is chock full of advice on what to look for when hiring freelance talent, and how to check out a freelancer to make sure they are a good fit for the company. Background check? You bet. Freelance contracts? Definitely. Here’s a hint–the author encourages hiring types to use Craigslist and MediaBistro.com.

The article isn’t aimed at writers, so why should you spend your time reading it?

Continue reading How to Get a Freelance Job: Think Like an Employer →

advice

How To Get Freelance Jobs

There are two kinds of advice when it comes to how to find a freelance job. One type is for people who are currently working traditional gigs and want to make the leap, the other is for those already in the freelance market looking to move on. This post is concerned with the first bunch. We’ll give some love to existing freelancers in another post.

For people still enslaved in the Land of the Cubicles, here’s some stuff you need to do to make the leap:

  • Skills Inventory. Take stock of all your marketable skills, including the ones you don’t normally associate with your job. Are you a hobby photographer? Do you retouch your pics in Photoshop? That’s a marketable skill, even if you don’t try to brand yourself as a photographer. Instead, call this work “digital image manipulation” or some other out-of-the-box description. The idea is to get you thinking critically about ALL your skills, not just the ones you use 9-5.
  • Re-think Your Resume.  If you have your educational pedigree at the top of that thing, fix it. Impress your freelance resume readers with what you can DO, not with that stuff you managed to accomplish between hangovers and co-ed mixers.
  • Position Yourself As An Expert. What was your day job? How many years did you do it? You could be an expert in any range of fields even if you can’t see that yet. A few years working for The Gap makes you qualified to write about fashion or blog about retail theft. You just don’t know how to reach in and use that specialized training yet—unless you’ve already recognized it, in which case half the battle is already over.
  • Apply For GOOD Freelance Gigs. Forget those stupid, pointless freelancer sites that are full of projects you have to bid or compete on with ridiculous, lowest-bidder rates. “Want 10,000 pages by Thursday. Pay=$200.” JUST…SAY…NO. I don’t care what all the other kids are doing.
  • Don’t Look In The Obvious Places. That job board that everybody goes to? It’s flooded. And so are those firms hiring freelancers from there. You’ll do much better looking off the beaten track.
  • Don’t Go Full Time Until you’ve saved some walk-away money.
  • Do Start Looking for freelance work while you are still at your day job. Don’t quit your day job and THEN go freelance. Go freelance first, THEN quit once you have the confidence that you have the ability to land another gig.
  • Apply The Right Way. When you fire off those resumes, don’t shoot yourself in the foot with a cover letter that indicates you’re committed somewhere else–those details can come later when you’ve got them interested in you. Just apply for the gig. If that freelance gig requires you to work hours in conflict with your day job, weigh your options–do you bail on the day job if you are accepted? If so, give the day job a two week notice and be sure you tell the freelance client you need to do so. Any firm that won’t respect your rightful desire not to screw over your current employer isn’t worth your time in the first place. Be upfront with the new company, but do so when it’s appropriate–which is when they ask about your availability. Stating up front that you have a day gig could knock you out of the running before you have a chance to impress them.
advice, editorial

Word Choices

freelance-writing-advice-3

Good word choices are tricky, even for experienced writers. In my day-to-day editing duties I find a wide range of mistakes that should make good writers cringe–once they are hip to the error. Do you know the difference between a credit report and a credit rating? What about the meaning of “affect” versus “effect”?

These are common errors that give editors grief–but they cause problems for writers, too. Imagine the look on a prospective editor’s face when they read a query that talks about “the affects of the electrical storm” or when you ask the editor to “bare with you.”

I’ve ranted on these issues before, but there’s a good reason. If your query letter is full of holes, it doesn’t inspire confidence. Why should an editor take a chance on an untested writer who starts off with issues like these?

The trick is to put yourself in the editor’s shoes and try to think like them. Look at your query letter with a critical eye and try to remove linquistic land mines before they blow up in your face.

That last line had some cheesy alliteration in it, didn’t it? As an editor, I once took a pass on a writer who got too cute with alliteration in one of their published clips. It made the piece read like a high school book report, and it clued me in that the clip itself was published in a college newspaper. Not the end of the world all in itself, but definitely a warning flag.

You might think that too cynical, but that’s the kind of thinking you work against when you query.