Getting a Variety of Experience in Freelance Writing

Video Transcript

"REBECCA SATO: Hi. I'm Rebecca with ExpertVillage.com. And we were just talking about portfolios but a lot of people will ask: Well, how do you get your very first writing sample? That isn't just something that you wrote, but it's actually published. So you can show it to someone, a prospective client, and say, "I wrote this and it was published." Well, you have to start somewhere. So I'll just tell you what worked for me and then you'll figure it out as you go. But sometimes you can start small and use these small projects that don't pay well. Maybe it is little pay; maybe it's a lot of work, and you don't feel like you're getting the credit you deserve. I wouldn't recommend doing that for very long. But I recommend doing it a couple of weeks until you have a few decent samples and then you feel like you can start asking for better pay for bigger jobs. So one way I broke in was when I first decided that I really wanted to be serious about freelance writing, I just went and looked and saw what was out there. And I noticed and I was careful to not look for projects that we're just way beyond my expertise and my experience. I think that you have to be realistic. But I noticed that they needed a writer to cover the Slamdance Film Festival. And the Slamdance Film Festival runs concurrent with the Sundance Film Festival, which is a big deal. But Slamdance is becoming a big deal, too, but it's kind of more fun and indie, and they weren't a good writer but you don't didn't have to be published in all these amazing places before they consider you. So I actually ended up just sending them a few little samples that I've already done and they liked my writing and they gave me a job. So I went out there. I interviewed people, and I wrote some articles about the Slamdance experience and I did some movie reviews. So that gave me some great clips to start with. That was nice. And then from there, I actually moved on to writing copy for a cosmetic company, and that wasn't my dream job to be writing about how this lipstick was going to make your lips luscious and glow but it was a springboard for other jobs. You can say, "Here, I've been published in this cosmetic catalog and whatnot, and I've written a good copy." And they could see that I knew what I was doing. I knew how to write. And if you're a good writer, you can just write about anything."