You know that when it comes to finding high paying freelance writing jobs, I primarily recommend three things:

1. Build your visibility and writer platform so prospects can find you.
2. Build a solid referral network to get referred gigs from colleagues and other clients.
3. Early on, before gigs are coming to you directly, go ahead and target and pitch prospects directly. After all, query-free freelancing is an end goal; not something that will work immediately for every freelance writer.

Let’s talk more about that last one, because it applies more to newer freelancers or those trying to break into new markets. And those are the groups that most often ask me “where” the good freelance writing jobs are. They’re not in any one place just waiting for you to snatch them up. Most aren’t advertised. And those that are usually aren’t advertised on job boards or freelance bidding sites.

How do you find those writer’s markets then? Well, your trusty search engine can come in quite handy. And here are a few tips to help you find higher paying freelance writing jobs with better searches.

Forget “Freelance Writing Jobs”

Don’t waste your time searching for “freelance writing jobs” in your favorite search engine. You’ll find pile of crap on top of pile of crap. You’ll find low quality, rehashed job listings on blogs. You’ll find bidding marketplaces pitting you against hundreds to thousands of people worldwide willing to work for far less than fair market rates where you live. Some of the content mills even go out of their way to target the phrase to suck in low-paid “content producers.” Skip it.

Instead search for phrases commonly used when advertising more professional writing jobs and markets — “writers’ markets” and “writers’ guidelines” are two good options.

Incorporate Rate-Related Terms

When searching, don’t just look for ‘writers’ guidelines.” Also add some words or phrases related to rates. At a bare minimum you can find markets where rates are listed so you don’t have to waste time contacting people just to find out what they’re willing to pay.

For example, use phrases like “per word,” “per article,” “$1.00 per word,” or “cents per word.” If you’re looking for something in a specific range, search for the specific rate so you don’t end up with things like penny-per-word gigs in your results.

Search for Specialties

When you search for general freelance writing gigs, who know’s what’s going to turn up? You might have to dig through dozens of pages of search results before you find anything relevant. Instead, narrow down your search to your specialty area. For example, look for “business writer’s guidelines” or “blog writer’s guidelines” or “women’s writers’ markets.” Sticking to your specialty can help you weed out the gigs you don’t want while saving you time.

Use Specialized Searches

You can do more than search for your freelance writing specialty area. You can also try specialized searches. For example, a great option for freelance bloggers is to use Google’s blog search feature. Then search for keywords related to your specialty area. Find companies in your target market that run company blogs. Then you know who to pitch to see if they need help with the writing, editing, or promotion of that blog. Want to write short business video scripts? Use video search options to find companies putting out regular videos for marketing. Prefer to write for financial sites and publications? They have a finance search too — results giving examples of the type of content these financial publications are looking for. Move beyond basic search if you want to land more high paying freelance writing jobs.

These are just a few tips to get your freelance writing job search moving in a better direction. Do you have other search tips for freelance writers? Did a clever search query lead to an awesome freelance writing gig? Leave a comment below to tell us about it?

I’ve been wanting to add a market directory here on AFW for a while. Back when this was still SixFigureWriters.com, we put a lot of effort into bringing you paying writers’ markets. And later on I launched a separate site devoted to them at Writers-Guidelines.com. That second site was shut down a while back to prepare for its merge with All Freelance Writing. While it’s taken a little longer than planned to find a solution I was willing to work with, I think we’re finally all set!

This is a directory of paying writers’ markets. The pay level isn’t always included. If it is, I mention it in the summary so you don’t have to click the link just to find out what they pay. Directory listings are for any paying market, and they don’t have to meet the requirements we have for job listings here. That’s because a lot of great open markets don’t list their rates publicly or they negotiate with individual writers. While I’m willing to rule those out for immediate-need gigs advertised where there might not be much time to research that info privately or try to negotiate, that’s not the case for writers’ markets like these. I also want to leave the pay issue a bit more open here so we’re freer to branch this off into a publishing market section as well down the road, where pay rates aren’t always clear-cut (not mentioned, negotiated, royalty-based, etc.).

We’re kicking things off with 50 markets in the directory. I’ll be adding to the list regularly. There is currently no way for you to submit listings. If you’re an editor and you’d like your market included, you can email me at jenn@allfreelancewriting.com. The only requirements are that it must be a paying market (I don’t consider residual or performance-based pay to be a paying market because payment isn’t guaranteed), and you must have a link to public writers’ guidelines. To make sure AFW readers aren’t getting outdated info or inaccurate info simply emailed to us, all listings must be tied to published guidelines on the publication’s website.

Writers — go ahead and play with it. When you first visit the page, you’ll get the master list with all markets. You have the option to search them or browse by category. When you choose a category or submit a search term, the results will appear on the same page. To get back to the master list, just refresh the page.

I’ll likely add more categories as I add more markets. If a market fits into more than one category, I can only put it  into one without messing up the master list. So if something isn’t where you think it should be, see if another category would apply. For example, there’s one on family travel for families with young children. It could have gone in the home & family section or the travel section. I felt travel was more fitting than lumping it in with things like parenting magazines. The regional section is a big one for situations like this — a lot of different niches can be covered with a regional focus, so be sure to check that too.

Let me know if you have suggestions. I’m limited to what I can do with the plugin we’re using, but if I think a suggestion has merit and it can reasonably be done, I’m more than willing to make changes to improve the feature.

Enjoy! :)

When I was eight, I frequently wore a single, sequined glove and I took break dancing lessons. I was in love with Michael Jackson, wore my hair in a side pony tail and used to make my neighbor hold up a flashlight and point it at me while I danced in the street on my own, imaginary episode of American Bandstand.

Why am I telling you this? Because I’m getting old, that’s why. And old people like me enjoy telling the same boring stories about their youth over and over and… well, you get the drift. The thing is, if the following content mill blog post sounds the same as all the others, it is not because I’m getting old, it is because, so far, a content mill is a content mill is a content mill… sort of.

The Story

This week I worked with the relatively new content mill, Break Studios. I was actually excited to write for this mill because this is what they are looking for:

“Highly trafficked Break Studios is looking for freelance writers for our community of highly popular and humorous websites, including Break.com, MadeMan, Holy Taco, Cage Potato, Screen Junkies, and Chickipedia.”

So, alright, they need a little personality, eh? A little ho-ho-ho on their ha-ha-ha? Great, I’m in.

The Deal

Applying to Break Studios is easy. You send a resume and some samples, they approve you, and you fill your queue with 10 titles. They have How To articles, 10 Best articles, and Strategy articles. Some of the titles are misogynistic and others racy and some require an advanced familiarity with porn—but hey, at least they are trying a new content mill model.
You write your articles, editors review them, they get approved then you get paid. Right now there is no steady pay date, you simply get paid one random day each month.

The Pay

The pay is where it falls apart for every content mill, and Break Studios is no exception. In fact, the pay for this content mill is low enough that they might want to change their name to Break Neck Studios because writers will need to work at a break neck speed in order to make any serious dough—and with as slow as their editors are (we’re talking at least 5 days for article approval) your queue is unable to accept more titles for many a day after you finish writing the ones you’ve got.

Oh, right, the pay. $8. $8 for a 250-700 word article. It’s… well… yeah… it’s not very much.

What I Made

I wrote five 300-word articles in an hour. So I made $40 in an hour. Once again, I used my SlimTimer to time myself and that time does include the time it took me to select the titles.

Final Verdict

I don’t have to tell you that I am not a fan of content mill for full time freelancers. And while I’m sure many folks will say, “But $40 an hour is awesome” it really isn’t. $40 an hour is a tough full time income to live on once you factor in taxes, social security, retirement savings, business expenses (yes, even freelancers have those), sick and vacation time.

But you know what? If you needed a part time gig or a little extra shopping money, spending 2 hours writing with Break Studios is not such a terrible thing.

There is a very specific reason that I am saying this. Break Studios wants personality. They do not want you rehashing a Wiki article and then citing it in the references—they want you—your experience, your knowledge, your voice. The editors do not have a Napoleon complex, and they don’t have ridiculous editorial guidelines and thought police. And, most importantly, I actually had fun writing the articles I selected (and no, they were not about porn) which is a lot more than I can say for some of the other content mills.

*Important note: You must use some variation of your real name when writing for Break Studios. That means, if you choose to write about their racier topics, it could have a negative impact on those Google searches potential employers and editors do. Just sayin’.

UPDATE: Break Studios contacted me to let me know that they have always allowed authors to use pen names–so either I hallucinated that information or I misread it. Also, they now pay biweekly.

This week I played around with AOL’s new beta content mill SEED.While I would love to tell you that I felt my flowering buds of income potential spring forth into full bloom after planting the seeds of my content in the AOL plot, I need to instead tell you that this plot was a rocky, barren place where none of my seeds did grow.

If you have ever used the Helium marketplace, then you know what SEED is. If you have been smart enough to avoid Helium, then here’s the rough overview: SEED is a place where you write AOL editor requested content on spec, without any real direction and cross your fingers hoping you didn’t just waste your time.

Why Some Freelance Writers Might Like AOL SEED

Unlike other content mills, SEED doesn’t require any resume or samples to get started. You simply go and register for an account. Then, you start claiming and submitting assignments. That’s it–no approval, no test, no sweat.

The writing assignments are pretty fun. They range in topics from money management to lifestyle to pets to… well, you get the drift. Article length also varies; some calls for content are 100 word tips and others are 300-1,500 word articles.

I completed a total of three assignments, one on home decor, one on entertaining and one on travel. The assignments I completed averaged .10 per word–but I saw some calls for content that were as high as .46 per word. Of course, it is important to remember that they may choose to purchase your piece for full rights (and full pay) or for partial rights and pay based on page views.

Why This Freelance Writer Didn’t Like AOL SEED

The calls for content give you a topic to cover, but they don’t really tell you about the tone they need. With a real client, you can interview them, get samples of writing that they like, and test out a few different tones for the pieces they request. With SEED, you and goodness knows how many other writers all rush to find that magical, mystical voice that will satisfy the faceless editors. It’s like playing pin the tail on the donkey, but the donkey’s assular region is about 8 million feet wide and you are blindfolded facing the opposite direction.

Two of the three pieces I wrote were not accepted and the third is still under review (a 2-5 day process). The rejection letter SEED editors send is very nice and basically says they love what you are doing and want you to keep submitting, but gosh this one just wasn’t quite what they were looking for. Was it the mention of a velvet Elvis that turned them off of my article? The discussion of dusty linens and dirty pillows? I’ll never know.

The Upshot

I dunno. I can’t see spending time playing freelance writing roulette on SEED. Of course, after your articles are rejected you can take them off the SEED platform and post them to Constant Content or Associated Content so it isn’t like your time is completely unredeemable. Personally, I think you are better off spending your time building your name in your niche through good, old-fashioned marketing and networking.

February

• I’ll be recruiting the last of our new writers for now (we already announced that Dan Smith and Catherine L. Tully are joining the team — please don’t contact me to apply though; it’s a specialized niche and I’ll be recruiting this one independently).
• Our marketplace is launching this week. I’m working out a few final bugs in the ad submission process, and then we’ll be live!
• Our next free online tool for writers will be launched this month. It goes to the coder tomorrow. We have three more planned (and I’ll come up with other ideas after that). It’s possible we’ll have two new tools releasing before the end of this month, but I’m only promising one for now.

March

• Catherine, Dan, and hopefully our third new writer will be starting.
• The writer’s market directory will re-launch (this is still a part of the merger of AFW with the writer’s market directory I’ve owned for a couple of years on another domain as a part of my previous writing site network).
• You will most likely see the launch of a new series on Freelance Theater.
• We’ll be releasing one or two new online tools (depending on how many release yet in February).
• I’m planning a virtual book club for freelance writers who want to improve their business skills. There will be more information about this later. There’s a slight chance the launch will happen a little after March, but that’s the plan right now.
• I’m talking to an illustrator about a possible cartoon series here. Nothing’s final, and I haven’t decided if I’d prefer static comic-style or something animated. If the illustrator I want isn’t available, it might get put off until either he’s available or I find someone else that I feel is a good match.

Other

• The big industry survey I’ve mentioned previously will likely come out anywhere from mid-spring to the end of the second quarter. This isn’t a quickly slapped-together survey with leading questions to get results we want to hear. This is a serious, long-term research project that will continue for several months. Right now I’m still in the development stage. Then partners will have a chance to review and critique the survey to ensure there are no biases, important options missing, or leading or misleading questions involved. Only then will the survey be published and be ready for you to share your valuable insight.
• The podcast series on All Freelance Writing is also currently scheduled for a spring release — I would guess May, but I’d like to have it launched by April.
• We’ll certainly continue to bring you more free online tools throughout the year. I’m very open to you suggestions, so feel free to mention them and I’ll see if it’s something one of my coders can put together for us.
• We’ll have plenty of WordPress themes released for free as well throughout the year. We’re about giving you the tools to make career changes happen, and professional designs (without spammy-looking required designer links in the footer) are a very important tool for writers looking to build their visibility.
• I’ll be releasing my e-books whenever I get around to them (they’re never really a top priority these days, so I won’t make promises about when they’re coming).
• I’ll release a white paper here probably in June; possibly earlier.
• My series of e-courses will probably launch in the second half of the year (too many other large projects to worry about until then).
• I’ll be expanding the collection of free forms and templates for freelance writers in our freebies section (in the black bar at the top of the blog) periodically over the next several months.

I feel like I’m forgetting some things, but that should give you a general roadmap of where All Freelance Writing is heading this year — bigger and better resources with serious freelancers in mind. I hope you’ll find something resulting from our growth that helps in your own business growth this year. If you want to suggest or request anything else, feel free to comment here and I’ll consider it. :)

I’m going to start this week with an apology. When I try out each of these markets for freelance writers it can take weeks to do all the things I need to do in order to get a realistic idea of what each gig is like, what it pays (relative to the time you put in), and how hard it is to get. I have to submit bids, work on my approach, write words for little to no cheddar, send emails, you know–do stuff. There’s a whole costume I have to put on that helps me get into character. I have to clean my monocle and magnifying glass, get out my favorite brandy snifter and start speaking with a British accent. Seriously, this is not easy, folks.

Unfortunately,  I was not able to approach Constant Content in as many angles as I would have liked because I was busy with my actual clients (yup, I gots thems). Hopefully, other people will pick up my slack and chime in with comments about their experience with Constant Content.

What is Constant Content

Constant Content is an article broker. You can write an article and upload it onto their website to sell to whoever wants to buy it. You can give the article three different prices, one for each of the licensing rights:

• Usage license: Multiple buyers can purchase and display the article with no content or byline changes.

• Unique license: Only one buyer can buy it, but he or she cannot make any content or byline changes.

• Full rights: One buyer owns the article and can change it however they see fit.

The more rights the client gets, the higher you price the article. You can also choose to let the clients make a cash offer for rights–so you might price a 500 word article at $100 for full rights and they could offer you only $65. Naturally, you can refuse an offer.

Constant Content also allows clients to request articles written on specific topics  from individual writers or they can put an article request out to the entire pool of writers. If you choose an article topic that has been offered to the pool then you write it, send it to the client, and they may or may not purchase it. The prices the clients offered for these things were both bad and not bad. You could expect anywhere from $10-$50 for about 500 words and up to $150 for some that were 1,000-3,000 words. It is really subjective though, the clients could choose to offer anything.

It’s also important to remember that Constant Content takes 35% of the sale price and they pay once each month.

One Freelance Writer’s Constant Content Story

For weeks now I’ve been going into the Constant Content system to get topics that were requested by clients but unfortunately, I just never got around to writing them.

So what did I do? I submitted two pre-written articles for sale. One of them didn’t sell after a couple of weeks so I took it down and sold it to an existing client. The other article received an offer about 24 hours after I posted it. The problem is that the offer was for 50% of what I was asking for it. So I refused the sale and edited the article to make it more offensive and less safe and then I submitted it to Outright* as a guest post.

And that was the end of that.

In all, I didn’t have a bad experience with Constant Content… I guess you could even say that I didn’t really have any experience with them. Based on my non-experience I think you can probably get .10 to .20 per word which is pretty great when you consider that you can just throw up whatever it is you decided to write, sans deadline. I think it’s just important to really figure out if that is the best use of your article. For me, I think the exposure and links on Outright will be more beneficial than the money would have been, and I probably wouldn’t have gone for the lower amount they offered anyway, unless my cats had been out driving and ruined the car and my car insurance premiums were going to go up.

If you decide to use Constant Content, be firm about what you want for an article and don’t settle for less. But then, isn’t that what we should all be doing at all times?

*Disclaimer — AFW contributor, Jennifer Escalona, works for Outright. While that fact is completely unrelated to this specific article, we’re all about full transparency and thought you might want to know.

This week, I tried Amazon Mechanical Turk. Mechanical who? Why, Mechanical Turk. Yeah, the name doesn’t make any sense to me either.

Amazon Mechanical Turk’s tagline is, “Artificial Artificial Intelligence.” They act as a middle-man to website owners and workers. On Mechanical Turk you can find HITS (which are what the individual jobs are called) that entail doing transcription work, labeling photos, and writing blog posts and articles.

Now before, in the first paragraph, when I said I “tried” Amazon Mechanical Turk this week, I lied a little. I should have said I tried to try but then got physically ill and threw up a little in my mouth and decided that trying to try to do anything on Amazon Mechanical Turk is stupid.

Once Upon a Time….

I didn’t always feel that way. When I first started out I used Amazon Mechanical Turk. After earning a whopping $5.65 by labeling photos for someone I realized the site was not for me, but felt that it was a good option for people with a little extra time on their hands who needed some cash. Having gone through many embarrassingly poor patches during childhood, I know what it’s like when you need money now and Amazon Mechanical Turk is not the worst way to get it.

When I logged in to my old account yesterday I thought that I would take some writing HITS so that I could tell you how much I earned and give you tips and stuff. Turns out it was way easier and less time consuming than I thought it would be.

Freelance Writing Tips for Using Amazon Mechanical Turk

Don’t use Amazon Mechanical Turk.

Okay, A Little More Detail…

The first writing HIT I found was for a 400 word article for $1.55. Did you get that? $1.55. Not only was the pay bad, but the instructions for SEO and formatting were about 139 words long. I mean, it would take me 30 minutes just to go through this person’s never-ending checklist to make sure I had even written the article according to spec. This person is so delusional he’s probably holding coal up his ass crack to try and squeeze out diamonds.

So I moved on to a different HIT thinking that this was just a fluke. Found one to write three 200 word or more posts on Easter baskets for $3.00. Now, before you point out that this is actually more per word than the one above, consider this—the guidelines/instructions for doing this gig were 645 words long! 645! WTF?

The Upshot

Many inexperienced freelancers out there will take this information and say—“See, freelance writing rates are going down. Content mills like Demand Studios are really the best way to go. They even try to provide health benefits and grants for creative pursuits!” The sad part about these inexperienced freelancers is that they have the key to unscrambling the low paying rates right there in their statement and they don’t even realize it.

Content mills and low paying webmasters like those who post their gigs on Amazon Mechanical Turk are losing in the money-making game and they know it. So they either start paying less (in the case of Amazon Mechanical Turk webmasters) to try and eke out a little profit from their Adsense or affiliate sales or they try crazy gimmicks like offering non-insurance health insurance and token grants to fill their factory of writers (in the case of Demand Studios) so that they can get more and more and more content to try and maintain earnings or get a small increase. Freelancers who spend their time finding private clients understand that, if anything, rates are going up for web writers–not down. They also understand that the contraction of the print industry it not a harbinger of doom for all writers, it’s an indication of the popularity of online content–which means even more opportunity for high paying web content writing gigs.

If you are a good writer, don’t get sucked in to these sites. Set your own sites a little higher, market yourself, and define your career and your possibilities yourself—don’t let someone else do it for you.

Oh and, yes, Amazon Mechanical Turk is an offshoot of the real Amazon.com–but they are just a middle man. I wouldn’t blame them for the rates.

If you spend any amount of time online reading the many freelance writer’s blogs that dot the virtual landscape, then you have probably run across a post or two that sing the virtues of Associated Content’s residual earning program.

Now, I’ve spoken out about residual earnings and how they affect the time value of money before, as has Jenn. Essentially, earning residual income from other outlets (rather than your own blogs, e-books and other products) is pretty much never the best plan. If you happen to get a lot of traffic on your residual pieces, the online outlet may pay you a big enough chunk each month to keep you happy but you have to remember that:

a) They are sharing earnings with you, which means you could have more earnings on your own without sharing.

b) The company or website may not be there forever, and then your future residuals will be gone…gone I say!

c) Sometimes you have to work really hard to get traffic to a site that’s not only NOT yours but is also only paying you part of the ad revenue for the traffic you bring.

What I Did Last Month for Residual Earnings on Associated Content

Since I closed down my own freelance writing blog, I decided to throw my old, previously published posts up on Associated Content for residual earnings. It is important to note that I was paying freelance writers to write on my freelance writing blog and I was doing next to nothing to promote it—so I had lost money rather than made. This means that I am actually making more on Associated Content than I did on my blog…but that’s just because I handled my blog stupidly, not because Associated Content’s residual program rocks.

I posted the articles between 12/04 and 12/21. I set up an automatic feed from my Associated Content account so that it announced on Twitter and on Facebook when I had a new article posted and I did let the 30 or so members of the Freelance Writerville Ning community know that I was moving the articles there. That is all the promotion I have done.

The Results and How I Plan to Retire

By far, my most popular article was How to Increase Your Freelance Writing Rates for Existing Clients which was the last article I posted. It has gotten 110 views. Not too shabby for little to no promotion. That has earned me a whopping $0.17. That means I make roughly $0.0015 per visitor. Nice. I think I just found my new retirement plan.

The next most popular (posted on 12/06) is 5 Things to Do Before You Quit Your Job to Freelance Full Time. This high performer has gotten a total of 49 views and made me $0.07. Third most popular was the first one I posted (on 12/04) 6 Ways to Improve Your Freelance Writing Portfolio’s Conversion. There we have a total of 34 views and $0.05.

The rest have between 24 and 12 views each. In total, I have made $0.46 on the 9 articles I posted in December. Let’s say they had NOT been previously published on my blog and I had just sold them for non-exclusive rights (you can get significantly more for exclusive rights) to a blogger like Jenn at a rate of $25 per post. I would have $225 busy working for me–earning dividends or interest in my brokerage account, earning money and affording me a tax deduction in my SEP, reducing my interest and paying down principal of my home…really, there are so many better things I could have done with these articles.

If you want to spend the time to build up traffic to the articles you post on Associated Content (or Examiner and Suite 101 for that matter) then you will make more money but at $0.0015 per visitor, wouldn’t you be better off spending your time learning how to spin the cat hair on your sofa into yarn for clothing? I think you would.

Freelance Writing Marketplace

I was really torn between a few models for the marketplace, but I’ve opted to go with a standard classifieds format. There will be a section where clients can post ads, and there will be a section where freelance writers can post a writer profile that potential clients can view.

There will be minimum pay levels in the marketplace just as there are in our lists of freelance writing jobs. That will be $50 per article or $.10 per word. I haven’t chosen a specific hourly rate, but $50 per hour sounds about right to me. Any thoughts on those levels?

There will also be limits to which writers can post profiles. I do not want the marketplace to become a low-baller’s heaven. It’s just not what I want for All Freelance Writing. I expect higher tier jobs, and I expect higher tier profiles. But coming up with a way to enforce these limits is difficult. I could use the same rate requirements that clients have to stick to. Or I could require a certain number of links to by-lined samples that would be reviewed before they’re approved on the site. I’d prefer income requirements to standardize things a bit, but I’d like your feedback before making a final decision.

In the beginning both aspects will be free. In the future, there might be a small charge for the profiles, or perhaps an upgraded profile option allowing more links, longer ad posting periods, etc. I don’t expect to make that change too quickly though.

Writer’s Markets

As some of you may know, I’ve been running a writer’s market directory for a year or two now. It used to be located at Writers-Guidelines.com, and that site was recently taken down and redirected to the jobs sections here as the sites are being merged. I’ve toyed with listing markets simply as other posts, but I’m not crazy about that idea. I’d like them in a separately-searchable directory if possible.

The plan as of now is to add a writer’s market directory to this blog shortly after the marketplace is launched. But again, I’d like your feedback. The only downside I can think of is that you won’t get new writer’s markets in the AFW RSS feed like you do with normal posts. So which would you prefer? Post formats that might be harder to search among everything else on the blog, or a more easily browseable directory format, but you’ll have to check it yourself instead of having new listings via RSS. I might be able to get a directory plugin that features its own RSS feed, but can’t promise that.

You can leave feedback in the comments on this post. I appreciate the input in making these tools what you really want.

There are a lot of different sites that post adverts for freelance writers. Since October, I have used Craigslist, Journalism Jobs, Problogger.net and Media Bistro to find gigs and apply for them. I decided that I wanted to challenge the conventional wisdom that the best way to get gigs that you apply for is to apply for a lot of them. Let me explain.

The Freelance Writing Rumor

There was a time when I believed, like many others, that you needed to apply for 15 or more freelance writing gigs each day in order to get a reasonably good response rate. I went into this challenge believing the same thing and never have I been proven quite so wrong. The key to scoring a lot of gigs when applying for them is not about bulk it is about:

• Applying early
• Making a really strong case for yourself as the best candidate

What this Freelance Writer Did

Between October 7^th and December 16^th I applied for a total of 11 gigs. That is just over 1 gig per week. I applied for only financial writing gigs and I applied to many without knowing what the pay would be. I used my standard response which talks about my experience in the financial industry, industry licenses, writing experience within the industry and attached my resume and industry-related samples (unless the ad instructed that applicants do otherwise). I cannot stress enough just how focused my approach was.

I received a total of 5 responses from the 11 ads. That’s just short of 50%. Now, I know many readers query and network to get gigs—but a lot of you also apply for them when they are posted. When was the last time 45% of your responses to ads generated an email back?

The Results

Okay, so an email back is one thing—but how many of the gigs did I score? I scored 3 of them and accepted 2. The pay on one is extremely low but it actually does have fantastic exposure, so it is worth it. The pay for the second is $0.55-$1.33 a word. Ironically, that one was listed on Craigslist.

The Trick to Scoring Those Freelance Writing Gigs

Apply for those gigs you are irrefutably qualified for by experience, knowledge, and education. Attach only those clips that show your experience in the subject matter and attach a niche or industry-specific resume–just like you would when applying for a regular desk job. Even if you are a generalist, you should be able to craft a few industry-specific resumes that strengthen your appeal to someone posting a job within them.

Also, apply early. One of the posters of a gig I applied for told me they had already hired someone for the gig but would have hired me if I had responded first.