Freelancing isn't get-rich-quick, yet I'm getting hassled. How to deal?

Matt - you mentioned Jacksonville...as in Florida? I just got back home from our annual visit to family in St. Augustine, and the local papers don't seem to have a very high bar for reporting (the Record made me cringe every morning). The local papers are in serious need of real reporters. If you're any good at all, I think you could snap up a job as a stringer for a local paper. I do stringing for my local paper, covering city hall and school board meetings, and I used to do real estate profiles...it's easy money, respectible work, and it gets you out of the house doing "real work". (And sometimes you'll get story ideas for more stuff.) I also noticed lots of local magazines at the tourism info center. Maybe pick up a few copies and send queries to them... AND if you're living in a vacation hub like Florida, you can query local mags in other cities and offer up travel pieces. Us pasty Midwesterners love to visit sunny Florida! Regional mags are supposed to be easier to break into, and the clips look very nice indeed.

Also, I'd suggest breaking into Demand Studios or Examiner. Demand pays $15 a whack for their goofy articles, and Examiner will get you writing on a regular bases. (See the threads on either at the SEO part of this board.) Examiner might take a while to build up money, but it's easy writing. Either way, you'd start getting a regular paycheck, which will boost your confidence.

Matt, I don't mean to sound mean or anything...but sometimes to make a buck we write things we're not perfectly happy in, until the perfect job comes along.

While I'm not saying to report news or write something you just can't stomach...are you setting your mark so high that you're not going to get a gig? Just wondering if maybe that might be part of the problem.

Matt,
I just had an idea. Why not pitch your column as a syndicated column to newspapers across the country? This is easy because you can send virtually the same pitch letter to *hundreds* of papers. You'd just need something (an angle) that would translate to print, as your blog relies heavily on graphics, etc. Of course, the more readers you have on your blog, the better your case for pitching a column... so it may be something to keep in mind as a future goal.

Okay... back to audiovisual writing for me.