The secret to making a living out of writing does not lie in job boards and content mills.
You gotta HUSTLE.
Maybe you don’t know anything about the journalism industry. That’s fine. But you do need good ideas, to put yourself out there, and pitch. To magazines. To big blogs. To corporates whose websites need a revamp. Whatever. It’s not enough to be creative; you need to get business savvy. In other words, targeting better-paying markets. Real markets. Scary, I know.
Writing is a profession. If you want to make a living from it, treat it as such. Professionals take their business very seriously. They cultivate and maintain relationships with editors. They spend a lot of time on marketing as well as admin (invoicing is probably half a job in itself), and they’re organised enough to juggle multiple projects, multiple deadlines and multiple clients. They carve out niches for themselves; while a broad base is important, specialising is often where the bucks are.
You can bet they wouldn’t waste time writing for eHow.
I see Miranda M out there a lot. I think she said she makes over six figures freelance writing, so I think it’s doable!
I feel like this is a bit of a steal from ING’s slogan – and i love it…it really applies to so many things. Don’t want to pay banking fees? Then Don’t.
Ha, we don’t have ING here, so I didn’t plagiarise, promise!
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I love this post! I’m a freelance writer and I agree — you can get paid well if you’re constantly pitching AND if you’re selective about only writing for publications that pay enough to be worth your time.
My early mistake was accepting any/all work. These days I know what my “floor” price is — the absolute bottom hourly rate I’ll accept — and I won’t work for less than that, UNLESS I believe that the assignment is a “stepping stone” to more lucrative opportunities.
Ehow.com is NOT a stepping stone. It will not open you up to more opportunities later in life.