Anyone ever did freelance writing?

[Vandelay]

I studied broadcasting and mass media in college, so I not only produced media, but I wrote a helluva lot in college. I'm not doing anything remotely close to it now. I'm looking to get into as a side-hustle, but I'm having some trouble breaking into some of the blogs and publications I would like to go for.

Any tips on how to get my foot in the door?

 

[Jimmy from Linkedin]

My aunt started on UpWork (it used to be called eLance back in the day).

Getting the first gig is going to be the most difficult but if you can write about something everyone is hiring content writers for content marketing. Humble yourself and grind it out. Once you can start doing that then you should be good.

OTOH. If you know there is a topic you'd like to write about, consider something more local and writing on that topic for them. Having especially print by lines can be helpful for establishing credibility.

 

[Cereal_Bowl_Assassin]

I currently do that now as a side gig. Someone reached out to me when they read a couple of my medium post about software engineering.

To my surprise there are plenty of sites (well within tech) that are looking for writers.

What topics do you write about?

 

[Vandelay]

My aunt started on UpWork (it used to be called eLance back in the day).

Getting the first gig is going to be the most difficult but if you can write about something everyone is hiring content writers for content marketing. Humble yourself and grind it out. Once you can start doing that then you should be good.

OTOH. If you know there is a topic you'd like to write about, consider something more local and writing on that topic for them. Having especially print by lines can be helpful for establishing credibility.

I'll try this, but I heard you have to pay. I don't mind paying if it gets me legitimate work.

I currently do that now as a side gig. Someone reached out to me when they read a couple of my medium post about software engineering.

To my surprise there are plenty of sites (well within tech) that are looking for writers.

What topics do you write about?

Pop culture, politics, local news (I'm in Chicago), I used to be big about computers and electronics but I've fallen off over the last 10 years. I could pick it back up, but I want to do something that's accessible to me that has little investment to get going.

 

[MasterOfAllHeSurveyz]

Say NO to content mills and stay away from places like Up work. Why work for literal pennies?

I'm on my phone right now, but I'll link to one of my earlier posts later when I get a chance.

Write for money. Forget that writing about what interests me shyt. That's a first class ticket to never making a dime. You write for what interests other people and what the client who is paying you wants you to write about. It's not about you. It's like saying I only want to sell products in my store to people with stuff that interests me and only me.

Please. Please. Please. Whatever you do, STAY AWAY FROM CONTENT MILLS. Don't work for pennies and learn how to say NO to shyt pay.

Head over and join the Writing Revolts Facebook group.
Sign up to Jordan's Creative Revolt formerly Writing Revolt email list.
Also, sign up for the Freedom With Writing email list (always posting working and contests).
Keeping With Kimmoy (a sister) is another good email list. She's always posting technical writing jobs that she doesn't have time to do.
The originator over at Make A Living Writing email list.
The Freelance Writers' Den email list.

I can't think of the brother from Nigeria's website. Dude started from absolute zero and changed his life within 45 days. He pulled some of his content off of his site, but most of it is on archive.org. I'll post the link when I remember it.

Addendum: I remembered it. It's the Writers In Charge blog.

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It's not your field and I don't do it anymore but I used to write a lot of tutorials for Vultr, Linode and Digital Ocean due to my IT background. I always aimed for the 1500+ word/$300 payments (I liked Vultr best, DO second with Linode pulling up the rear), because I know if one of my tuts were accepted, I could make small changes to the source document and get an additional $75 for each operating system port. Nothing like waking up in the morning to see a $900 payment in your PayPal account from work that took at the most two days. I'd go a little further as I included screenshots in my tuts. The only thing that sucks is that you had to put in YAML format, a type of markup language and about a month's time for approval. Payment was usually 5 days later.

Just to show that I'm not full of shyt.

Red = Rejected
Green = Accepted
Black = Revisions Required
Purple = I can't remember what it meant

Say NO to content mills. You could be making a couple of Gs/month minimum in no time using freelance job boards & Google to build your initial portfolio (example Google search string: "write for us" + "$XXX"). Get paid actual dollar amounts ($50 to $500) instead of fishing at the bottom of the barrel on those types of sites for pennies.

The most I've ever made for a single article was $2500 for a feature in one of those corny airplane magazines you'd think that no one ever reads.

I mostly write for Vultr & Linode if I need some easy quick cash. Unfortunately, I'm learning that Vultr gets backlogged to hell around the holidays though. If they approve all of my submitted tuts, I'll get $2625 for 8 original and 3 update tutorials. The only downside for both is strict adherence to the Markdown (YAML) format.

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SPICE UP THAT LINKEDIN PROFILE!

 

[NZA]

as an infrequent employer of freelance writers, i can suggest:

specialize - subject matter experts have more notoriety, money, and stability

upwork can be ok, but you have to set high rates so cheap people dont bother you

clearvoice is probably where you will get your first decent paying gig

write spec work for higher level projects so you have something of quality to show even if all your actual experience is low level stuff

 

[Takerstani]

I did for a few years. I didn't go to school for writing, I was just good at it. I worked on what's now Upwork, but was Odesk. I would not work on this platform now, everything is a money grab and much of this stuff didn't exist a few years ago when I was doing it. I started out with no experience and no writing background getting $35 per article with a long term client, but also (for other clients) I did copywriting, wrote articles, a course, I did research..all types of things. Just rework stuff you did for school into an article and use it as example work. That's what I did.

Articles were between 500 and 1000 words, depending on the job. If blogging is your thing, keep your own blog going. I saw plenty of jobs back in the day that required the writer to have their own blog with a certain number of blog posts or followers.