When applying for any freelance writing jobs remember the competitive nature of the business. It isn’t hard to land the perfect jobs, but it takes a little preparation. Your aim is to have enough work to maintain your lifestyle and express yourself through your writing skills. With the help of a few tips you will be able to stay on top of your freelance writing goals. Read over these points and remember to put them into practice and see the benefits in your writing career. It may feel like a lot of tedious work, but the rewards are worth the few minutes it takes to get completely organized. Allow yourself about a half an hour for each job, to implement the steps below.
- Maintain a schedule to record all your job seeking efforts: Staying on schedule is very important. Even when you are not working treat your preparation like a job. Having a Day-Timer that you can make notes in is a necessity. You will want to record every contact you have with a potential employer and the results of that contact. Keep track of upcoming job possibilities.
- Always double check your work: Do not send any spelling or grammar mistakes in your application. You will not get the job.
- Don’t wait to get your application in: As soon as you hear about an opening in your area or even close to your area of expertise, get your application ready and submit it. This is also why you have your Day-Timer to help with knowing when jobs may be coming available. The delay in getting in on time may cost you that job. Some people wait until they have all their applications in and then go over each one before making a decision, but a lot of people just go with the first writer one that looks good to them. You want to be that one.
- Stay inside your comfort zone: If there is a job you want but are not qualified for think of how you can get those qualifications rather than applying for work you probably won’t get or if you do you will not be able to perform adequately.
- Have most of your application ready to go: You know what kinds of work you are applying for. You want to put each application together separately, but there are many things you can do to set up the process so it takes much less time. Get your samples together for each type of work. Do a mock-up of your cover letter and then edit as necessary for each new job. The main part of this exercise is organization.
- Call back after three days. If you haven’t heard from the employer and you had a good feeling about the job, it doesn’t hurt to drop them a note to see if they have filled the job. It shows you are eager to work and they may remember you the next time a job comes up.
Remember that you will probably get around 1 or 2 jobs out of 10 that you apply for. If it feels like a lot of work before you see any results, just keep that in mind. Stay organized and professional and you will see the rewards you are looking for.