If you have decided to make writing your career, your primary focus will be finding work. The popular way to find those jobs is to search for freelance writing gigs online. While numerous opportunities are available, you can waste hours running around in circles unless you know what to do and where to look.
Finding Jobs for Beginners
One of the best places to find freelance writing gigs online for beginning writers is with content writing companies. They provide content for clients using many freelance writers. Some of these companies post the jobs to a pool of writers who claim the ones they want. Others match the writer with the client based on expertise and interests.
Some places you can check out include:
While the pay is lower, you can get valuable experience, and it is a way to begin earning an income right away.
Temp Agencies and Job Search Sites
Just like with any other job, temporary job placement agencies offer jobs for writers. Some companies focus specifically for clients who need writers while others include writers with many other job titles. The competition is fierce, but you can find work if you focus on areas where you have experience, even if it is non-writing related.
Job search sites like Monster.com and Indeed.com include every kind of job imaginable and you may overlook them as sources for freelance work because they focus on employment. Just remember that most companies prefer to deal with the same agencies all of the time. If they go to Monster to find employees, they will probably use them when looking for freelancers as well.
Other job search sites are designed specifically for writers, such as Media Bistro and Journalism Jobs. These sites offer employment listings for writers, but they may also include freelance work, too. Just note that writers with experience will fare better here than beginners.
Social Media
Many businesses include job openings and listings for freelancers on their social media sites. They like the idea of hiring someone who is already familiar with their product or service, so they will link to a job posting from another site or mention an available opening in their posts or tweets.
To find jobs on social networks, just enter a search for freelance writing jobs or freelance writers. You will find thousands of jobs in this search, so you may want to narrow it down to specific topics or types of writing. You could search for blog writing job or real estate writers.
Bidding Sites
One of the easiest ways to find a constant flow of available jobs is through bidding sites. In fact, most writers look to these places for freelance writing gigs online at some point in their careers. The most popular sites are Upwork.com and Guru.com.
These sites allow clients to post projects and writers can bid on them to win the job. Hundreds of new jobs are added daily, so the opportunity to land work is there. However, the competition is fierce, so you must prove why a client should hire you over the other people who also apply. The key to winning work here is either to charge less than everyone else or to show you are an expert in the topic. While the sheer volume of writers on these sites may be intimidating, realize that many of them are earning a living and you can, too.
Online Job Compilations and Job Listings
Several sites have started adding job listings for writers. They search online through sites like Craigslist, Indeed.com and many others to create a list with the best jobs for writers. These sites are often free even though a few places do charge a fee for you to participate. The idea is that you can spend more time applying to jobs instead of searching long lists.
The downside is that these jobs will have a lot of stiff competition. That doesn’t mean you should never bother applying, but it does mean you should choose jobs where you have knowledge or experience for a better chance of being accepted.
Some of these sites include:
How to Find the Jobs
With so many options, you may wonder how you should focus your time. It’s easy to get overwhelmed by all of the places you can look for jobs. Begin by selecting two or three methods. Choose two or three sites within each of these methods and follow up daily. For example, you may start your day checking out ProBlogger and Indeed.com. You may then move on to Blogging Pro to see what’s new since yesterday.
Then you’ll move on to Upwork.com and enter a search for new writing jobs or check the list from your notifications if you set up alerts for specific searches. The key is to follow this routine until you start getting jobs. You may even add to it if you aren’t getting the results you want. Remember that getting a freelance writing job is a numbers game. The more applications and emails you send out, the better your chances of finding a job.
After you start getting work, you won’t want to stop marketing. In fact, it’s important to keep it up even when you are swamped with work. Clients come and go, and you never know when you will go through a slow time. To avoid having days or weeks where you have no money coming in, you must be constantly looking for new work. You can scale back though and only check one or two places daily or be more particular about which jobs you apply for, but you should never stop.
Never give up and don’t get discouraged if you don’t get a job right away. It can take some time, and you should keep learning as you search for work. Study those who have become successful and one day, you will be one of them.
