Using the Web to Find Writing and Editing Jobs

Revised 6/29/07

In the days before the web, job searches could be difficult, slow, and in many cases expensive. Your main free resource was your local newspaper classifieds, and it only told you what jobs were being advertised. The classifieds didn’t have a word to say about how to get those jobs. To get career and job search information as a job seeker you needed to visit career counselors, employment agencies and job services. The web has made the process of finding a job much easier. There is just as much work involved as before (maybe more) but there is no longer a lack of information. If anything, there is too much information, which is why I am presenting this handy guide to finding writing and editing jobs using the web.

Figure out what you want to do

You can’t begin a job search until you know what job type or set of job types you want to pursue. If you’re reading this article then you at least know what field you want to work in, but there are many different jobs within this field that you may want to pursue, from proofreader to public relations writer to proposal writer to web content writer. There are many resources on the web that you can use to research writing careers. Here are a few:

Glossary of Writing Careers
Salary.com a guide to pay ranges for different careers
Designing Your Writing Career
Writing Career Finder

Write a Resume

Until you have a resume, you’re really just fantasizing. There is a lot of advice on the web about writing resumes. Different people advocate different approaches. I have been on the employer side of a few job searches, and in my experience there is no single best way to write a resume. The most important general rules are to keep it professional looking, don’t use more than two pages and make sure your name and contact information are at the top. Beyond that, opinions vary greatly. For writers, a list of publications in which the writer’s work has appeared is often included. The important point to remember is that, as a writer, a well-written resume is more important for you than for just about any other career. A person looking for a job as a lab technician or a computer programmer might get away with a poorly written resume, but a person who wants a job as a writer had better be able to produce a well-written resume. Here are some how-to guides:

Purdue Resume Lab
Trinity: Write a Resume
University of Kentucky: How to Write a Resume
Wooster: How to Write a Resume
Florida State Resume Prep

Here are some samples of writer’s resumes:

Journalist Resume
Intern Resume
Staff Writer Resume (PDF)
Technical Writer Resume

Another excellent method to develop your resume is to use online tools such as the resume generators at monster.com and dice.com. You are going to want to have your resume listed on these services anyway, so you might as well use their tools to help you along.

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The Five Habits of Successful Freelancers

Successful freelancers present well

To be a successful freelancer, you need to look like a professional. You may write in ripped jeans or pajamas, but your work should be immaculate. Your queries should be well-written, clean and perfectly formatted. Your finished products (and anything else the client sees) should be of equally high-quality. Every time the client deals with you, the client should feel as if that they are dealing with a professional who will deliver a professional product. Nothing you ever show the client should look rushed or casual.

Successful freelancers finish on time

Nothing is harder on the freelancer / customer relationship than missed deadlines. Do not commit to a deadline unless you are sure you can handle it. Once you do commit to a deadline, never let it slip. For the most part, this means working toward finishing all of your projects well ahead of schedule. If you agree to produce an article in three weeks, your goal should be to finish it in two. Do not leave tasks until the last minute. If your work requires input from an editor, an expert or a client, get that input as soon as you can. Don’t wait until the day before a deadline to ask your questions. By then you are already running the risk of failure.

Successful freelancers follow instructions

While it is true that you can give a customer exactly what they asked for and still not give them what they want, your best chance at success is to follow their instructions. When a publication publishes submissions guidelines, read them and follow them. When an editor tells you how long they want your article to be, make it that long. When a customer gives you unclear instructions, ask for clarification. Make sure you know what is expected of you and do everything you can to meet those expectations,

Successful freelancers never stop marketing themselves

At some point in your freelancing career, you may have assignments stacked up for months and so much work that you can’t possibly imagine looking for more customers. Even then, take at least some time out of your week to promote your services. You never know when the magazine that ordered five articles from you over the next five months might go out of business. You never know when a customer who promised you “a ton more work” as soon as you finish the current project might suddenly lose a contract or decide to hire a permanent employee to do the job. The best way to prevent lulls in work is to always have more assignments coming. If you get so busy you can’t seem to handle all the assignments coming at you, there are always solutions. You can farm out some work to fellow freelancers or hire yourself an assistant to research articles, handle your accounting or even do your laundry. The solutions to not having enough work are always harder to find than the solutions to having too much work.

Successful freelancers know when to say no

Don’t be afraid to put an end to a situation that no longer works for you. You may have started off with a real passion for writing about travel. After a few years though, you might begin to think that your own bed is the only bed you want to sleep in. You may have a client that never seems to pay their bills on time. You may have a client that pays well, but is simply too hard to please. These are the sort of stressors that can make freelancing seem less and less attractive. Before you give up on the whole concept of freelancing, ask yourself what you can change to make the situation better. Sometimes you have to let clients go, or change your focus or just take a vacation. If money becomes an issue, you might consider a part-time job while you review your options. Whatever the case, don’t let bad situations linger. Control your freelancing career, don’t let it control you.

Five Things a Freelancer Should Know Before Querying a Magazine

Know the magazine’s submissions / writer’s guidelines

The easiest way to find out what a magazine wants is to let them tell you. Many magazines post their writer’s guidelines on their web site. If you can’t find them online, contact one of the editors and ask for them to email or snail mail you the guidelines. A directory such as Writer’s Market can be helpful for your initial search, but don’t rely on them for all of your information. Any number of things can change between the publication of those listings and the day you decide to send your query. Not only do writer’ guidelines tend to address content issues, but they can also tell you what format the publication prefers their submissions in. One magazine may want you to email them a text file, another might want you to send a paper copy and a third may want you to upload a Microsoft Word file. You won’t know if you don’t do the research.

Sample Guidelines:
The Atlantic Monthly
Antioch Review
Birder’s World

Know who the magazine’s editors are

Knowing the right person to send your query to is one of the little details that can make a big difference when you are trying to make a sale. If you query the wrong person, any of a number of bad things can happen. The person who receives it might dismiss your query and throw it away because it isn’t what they are looking for. The person who receives it may know who should get it and plan to give it to them, but never get around to doing so. If your query does finally get to the right person, they may hold the fact that it was addressed to the wrong person against you. Always take the time to find out who the right recipient for your query is. Check the magazine’s masthead for the latest information and don’t be afraid to call or email to confirm your choice.

Sample mastheads:

New York Magazine
Backpacker Magazine
Time

Know the magazine’s editorial calendar

In addition to guidelines, many magazines have an editorial calendar that covers such things as publication lead times, deadlines for holiday or seasonal items and upcoming special editions or subject focuses. Some magazines dedicate issues to a single topic. Knowing what a magazine is looking for and when they are looking for it can give you a serious advantage over the competition. When you request submission guidelines, be sure to request the calendar as well.

Sample Editorial Calendars
Variety
Information Week
Expansion Management

Know the magazine, front to back

Don’t assume you know what a magazine wants just because you have read their writer’s guidelines. The proper way to research a magazine is to read it. Get your hands on a copy of the magazine (the more copies the better). Check the magazine’s website if they have one. You don’t have to read every word of every article, but take the time to get familiar with the different sections and the general writing style. Be sure that what you are proposing fits in well with the publication’s approach to content and style.

Know how to write a query letter

Your query letter needs to demonstrate both the quality of your idea and the quality of your writing. Additionally, it should demonstrate that you know how to follow the magazine’s submission guidelines. Many editors receive dozens of queries each month. For major publishers, the number of queries can climb into the hundreds. This may seem intimidating, but the number of queries that are actually well-written and well thought out is quite small. Most queries are terrible. They are badly written, inappropriate or fail to follow the magazine’s guidelines. It is easy to rise above the crowd if you know what you are doing and you are willing to make a genuine effort to create quality query.

How to write a query letter

Blogging as a Publishing Business: Personal Blogs (Diaries)

The personal blog or web diary is a staple of the blogging community. These blogs contain the thoughts, opinions and experiences of the blog author. The person writing the blog wants to share their life with the world and perhaps get a little recognition from their readers. They may also have motives such as finding romance or publishing their stories and poetry. This is by far the most popular (from the standpoint of number of people running their own blog) form of blogging today.

The concept of blogging grew from these personal diaries. While these blogs are at the heart of what was originally considered blogging, they are rarely the type of blog that will make a profit. That isn1t usually a problem because most of the people who create these types of blogs aren1t in it for the money. If you want to make a profit blogging about your life, you1d better have a very interesting life.

A good place to get a look at a lot of personal blogs is at myspace.com.

Blogging as a Publishing Business: What is a blog?

The term blog is short for web log. The original meaning of the term was any diary or journal kept online. The goal of blogging was to create a site in which one person or group wrote about their lives and invited other people to comment on what they wrote. The concept began to grow, however, and now encompasses a far wider variety of subjects and providers. There are now corporate blogs, professional blogs, job blogs, political blogs and many other types of blogs. Just about any topic can be turned into a blog, so the concept of it as a diary is a little outdated.

For our purposes, a blog is more about the technology and the presentation than the subject discussed. Blogs use server-side software to present their information. In other words, the person writing the blog typically does little more than type and format the article. The programming and presentation are automated using software that originates on the web site, not on the person�s computer. Blog scripting allows a publisher to automatically post information. This greatly increases the speed in which a site can be developed and updated.

One of the most important features/limitations of blogs is that blogs are chronological. The most recent entry appears at the top of the page and subsequent entries appear below the first entry or on separate pages. The relevance and positioning of an article is determined by time. The timeliness of the information presented is vital. People are most likely to read the most recent blog entry and less likely to read older entries. This is what differentiates a blog from a standard web site. On a standard web site, the designer decides what information goes where and determines the relative importance of the articles/links that appear.

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