How to Moonlight as a Freelance Writer

Writing is a hard to profession to break into. Unless you have clients banging down your door, it's a good idea to keep your day job. Writing, especially when writing articles for magazines, newspapers and websites instead of private clients, is perfect for moonlighting.

Difficulty: Moderate

Instructions

1. Come up with ideas for articles. Be as thorough as possible, including coming up with potential experts to interview for your story. You might want to request an interview and let them know this is a query, not an actual assignment. Research papers, magazines and websites that will pay for the type of idea you came up with.

2. Query magazines, newspapers and websites daily. Set a goal of queries per week. Shoot for email queries as they are less expensive to submit.

3. Spend time perusing job sites daily. Email your resume and a letter of introduction. Even if you haven't written professionally, you want to have some writing samples on hand.

4. Don't give up. Continue to query daily and learn about the craft. When you get your first assignment, be sure to complete it on time and to the specifications you discussed.

Tips & Warnings

• Build a good library of writing books. Books on query letters, writing, and business are important part of it. Every writer must be a businessman, unless you hire an agent to do that for you.
• Subscribe to writing newsletters. Check out writersweekly.com and mediabistro.com. Joining Mediabistro's AvantGuild is worth it just for the "How to Pitch" articles.

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[sharoni]

on 6/5/2008 Thanks spinningblue! I haven't had any luck with elance yet, but use Guru quite often.
sharon
www.linkedin.com/bestwriterintampa
mahamaitri.blogspot.com

[spinningblue]

on 6/2/2008 I've written through elance before as well. It's a pretty good place to get started.

www.thegreenninja.org

[Yuwanda]

on 2/22/2008 Another great idea for those just wondering about how to break into the field is to hang out in freelance writing forums. A good one I like is aboutfreelancewriting.com. Ann, the moderator, gives some excellent advice.

[sharoni]

on 12/7/2007 thanks!

[WriterGig]

on 12/7/2007 Thanks for the tips, great basic how-to primer on freelance writing!