Freelance Writing Questions: Dealing With Difficulties

by Sharon Hurley Hall on February 1, 2008 · 3 comments

in freelance writing, Freelance Writing Questions

Catherine asks What did you find most difficult when you first began freelancing? And how did you overcome that difficulty?

When I went freelance, I faced two issues. One was a lack of contacts. The other was a lack of recent clips.

While I’d been lecturing, I’d done the occasional freelance piece, but since I wasn’t writing about metals or education, the contacts I’d made in those fields weren’t much use to me. The same went for the clips – I had plenty of academic papers to show, but not much normal, everyday writing.

Getting Clips Quickly

In order to get some clips quickly, I started doing some article marketing. That meant writing articles on any topic that I could think of and publishing them on EzineArticles and other sites.

I also did a lot of reviews on consumer sites. The goals was twofold: to get back into practice and to have some examples to show off. One of the articles I wrote led to me getting a paying job writing about education (ironically!) and the work has been flowing steadily since then.

Making Contacts

The issue of contacts was solved by accident, because I started blogging and happened upon a site that attracted a lot of writers and publishers. One thing led to another and I was soon getting regular work from a couple of agencies.

I’m not saying it’s this simple for everyone. I had an advantage, because I had been writing for more than 17 years when I went freelance, so I didn’t have to worry about skills but about promotion. I’ll be talking about that in another post.

Got more freelance writing questions? Ask them here.

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Tagged as: freelance writing, promotion, writing business, writing career

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Sharon Hurley Hall has been mentoring writers here at Get Paid To Write Online since 2005 to help them improve and build sustainable and successful writing careers. Check me out on sharonhh.com. Feel free to connect with me online on Google+.

Sharon has written 653 awesome articles for us at Get Paid to Write Online

Twitter: @SHurleyHall | Facebook | | Blog → Writing Portfolio

{ 3 comments }

-L- February 1, 2008 at 15:40

This is really great advice.

Suzanne Lieurance February 2, 2008 at 15:34

Hey,Good advice. Most writers deal with difficulties getting their freelance writing career started. I show them how to deal with these difficulties in my intensive 8-week Working Writer’s Coaching Program.

Sharon
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February 3, 2008 at 14:50

Thanks, L

Suzanne, I’ll check out the program. Maybe it’s something I could feature here. :)

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