Where are all our freelancers?? What types of writing are our freelancers doing?

Actually, I am interested in getting into freelance medical, real estate, and law writing. Currently, I have my eye on some great gigs.

I'm a writing whore. I write about whatever someone will pay for. Currently I'm doing mostly small business advice/help, firearms and sporting goods, community attractions/PR and an occasional medical article. Pay sucks, lots of troubles getting paid in some markets, every editor seems to be able to get a cheaper writer somewhere else. So I tend to end up sticking to some very narrow markets and clients and not looking for new work, which makes the income suffer.

Of course, this was the same 30 years ago, so either the business really hasn't changed or I haven't. Probably both.

Jeff

I am back after a long hiatus. Right now, I am not really working on my writing and it makes me sad. So I came back. From 2009-2012 I lived in Germany and at the same time, I made a ton of friends, traveled a lot, dealt with a traumatic family death, and then experienced the falling apart of my marriage (the last two happened at the same time). I then became burned out from writing and am just resurfacing. I work full time now and am not a 100% freelancer anymore. I have money so I don't need to do any writing I don't want, but I have no idea what I want or where to start. It's such an odd place to be - I had a thriving freelance writing career at one point. Now I have the luxury to be picky about which projects to take on. A good thing, I guess. We'll see what happens! I remember you, by the way. I think we joined here around the same time.

Hi jdkiggins,

I now write mostly for regionals in ways that support my fiction. So I still do a lot of art articles and keep my book column plus continue for a couple of private (corp) clients. That's it.

At one time, I tried expanding into nationals as a way of maybe giving up my day job but then realized just how much work was needed for, say, a $200 article. When you break it down hourly, it just was not worth my time. Plus, I needed to focus on my fiction so, instead of freelancing, kept my day job, cut back on freelancing, and now am back fully to my creative writing.

I think the market is there if you focus on high-quality publications that pay well. It takes a while to build up your client base. You will be competing at first with bloggers who are willing to write in exchange for a few clicks to their blog. But if you're for real, if everything you publish is of great quality, you can jump out of their markets. If you prefer writing non-fiction, it is definitely an option.

Like anything else, you can build your rep and start attracting bigger and bigger paychecks.

Just one opinion,
Lucie

I just do translations of boring crap like arms trade contract between militaries and governments...

I'm getting my foot in the door with the beading magazine market. My second article went out Dec 1. No pay but I have 3 months of free advertising (which I'll be promoting freelance services) and I think there will be a small payment starting sometime next year.

It's a niche market that I'm familiar with. Hopefully it will lead to some unique opportunities next year as I branch out.

I do freelance work, but I'm incredibly picky about my clients. (call me a recovered writing whore, I guess) I have a small group of clients I've had for a while, and it's a weird range - organic food, eco-lifestyle, and home decor. I also have a few clients for whom I write sex and relationship content. That's a fun conversation at the husband's company holiday party, believe me! I was doing ghostwriting for a while, but finally gave it up because frankly, I hated it and I was always haggling over pay rates (too many clients care more about cost than quality). I still take on occasional editing projects, but I have to really love the piece to take it.

I'm finally getting rolling with freelancing and am surprised to say I'm doing things I didn't envision at the beginning. I'm doing zero magazine writing and have instead found myself with a small handful of commercial clients. I'm hoping to add magazines to my lineup next year, after I get a good system going with what I already have. I'm ghostwriting columns that run in the newspaper that laid me off in February (HA!), doing social media and online management for a local small business and handling the internal newsletter for a really big company here. That one's new, and it's scary.

I do freelance copy-editing and proofing ~ and also book reviews.

I write copy for commercial websites.. home pages, about pages, landing pages and the like. I would love to write more broadly but for the moment this is where I get the work. I have a much broader knowledge of web marketing than just being able to use words well; this helps me get a lot of this work. Clients want someone who understands the strategy and understands where each piece of content fits in the sales process.

Freelancing is no fun. Unless you're into being ignored, taken advantage of, watching your work shredded, disrespected and screwed over. Then it's a blast.

Back in September, I wanted to run an article by an editor friend of mine for his opinion. JUST his opinion, I must specify. He took a while to get back to me and then he responded:

I have very little to suggest to improve a piece like this because it is so inextricably linked to your pain and passion over this issue. It is very effective and powerful. It is a piece that people will either love or despise. It will not be ignored. It will go viral. It has that hum about it. Get ready to be invited on talk radio shows (and maybe cable news) across the country.

I had a momentary rush of euphoria, but it was measured and it was tempered. Measured because he wanted to publish the piece and because I stupidly hadn't specified, "I only want you to look at it, not publish it," but not wishig to piss him off and seal off a contact, I replied with something tactful like, "Wow, cool! Glad you liked it."

And that, as they say was that. It's a long, sad, boring story, but for reasons beyond my editor friend's control, the article never saw print. No publication. No radio shows. No cable shows. No fame. Definitely no money.

It has taken a while for me to lick my wounds and decide to hop back on the freelancing horse again. One can only be thrown from it so many times before one says, "Damn, this shit HURTS!"

nighttimer said:

Freelancing is no fun. Unless you're into being ignored, taken advantage of, watching your work shredded, disrespected and screwed over.

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Dealt with all of that writing full time at an agency.. don't experience it as a freelancer.

I'm freelancing a bit, mostly through UpWork. I too am a "writing whore" - I'll write whatever, as long as it pays well. Gotta pay the bills after all... It's fun from time to time tho, when a nice project comes along.

handsomegenius said:

Dealt with all of that writing full time at an agency.. don't experience it as a freelancer.

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I've been working freelance for ten years or so and have experienced all that exactly once - from one client ...

I'm still freelancing every now and then but am mostly working as a literary translator now. Translating books pays less per word but it's long-term work and leaves me a lot more headspace to work on my novel.

I write for a language learning website. It's a great gig. I wish I had about 5-10 more like it so I could carve out a career.

I'd like humor writing work, but it seems impossible to break into. Bah.

I've been freelancing since 1995. Holy Smokes! Is it that long? I work in the marine trade magazine field.

I specialize in the West Coast fishing industry for one magazine and in Canadian marine casualties (accidents) for another.

I have a regular monthly column in the fish magazine and usually do a couple casualty articles in each edition of the other.

I tried the local entertainment rag with rock band profiles for a while, but it didn't sit well with me. I have had one and only one article in a really big magazine and it was only about 500 words in Field and Stream about the body of a First Nations man from about 150 years ago found in a melting glacier by hunters.

I don't seek more work, it comes to me. I've been with the fish mag for about 24 years now and the other one close to eight years if not more. It's not way to get rich though. I have had a writer for a trendy hipster rag laugh at me when I told her what I earned.

I nearly told her to go fuck herself.

Relative newbie to freelance writing - landed a few small clients, but am desperately looking to get some ink in a bigger magazine or website. Am very flexible with subjects and range.

Big reason is that I'm in an odd place as a journalist, and want to make the jump from newspapers to magazines/web for a simple reason - I've got too much experience for the small jobs they dump on newbies, but not enough to get my foot in the door higher on the totem pole or at bigger papers. The last few years have been devastating on all the middle ground between the two apparently.

Its... been a struggle. I think I'm a solid writer, I have solid pitches, I send out queries almost daily. Depressingly, I almost never hear back. Even less do I get a bite.

I started freelancing not quite two years ago - writing in German (my English is not good enough to offer anything for money) and translating into German. It turned out that translating jobs are easier to be found and better paid, especially compared to two big German "write for money" websites. But I got the one or the other nice customer, sometimes blogarticles about legal topics (that's my field, or used to be), some about horses and the odd one out.
Last thing I got to write a short romance novel (20k) - that was quite fun.
Most of the time I translate - I got picky there, try to have decent clients and no product description or this type; during the last year I got lucky and some self-publishers let me translate their novels. Just now I have a YA fantasy novel on my desk - that is not work, that is pleasure.

The downside: my own writing suffers extremely. After sitting and writing translations or texts for hours I want to get away from the laptop. I am struggeling because there are so many stories waiting to be told ...

I've been freelancing for more than a year now. It's been a way to get income when I've otherwise had very little of it, but I'd be lying if I said that I didn't want better pay rates than I'm getting currently.

Most of my current clients are through Upwork. Upwork is definitely home for a lot of exploitative people, but I have a few current clients there that are becoming long-term clients that I'm happy to work with. I'm also working with a content marketer who I found on Reddit's hireawriter sub. (Again, a major source of bad gigs, but the occasional good one is there.)

I'm kind of a misanthrope by nature, so I prefer writing content that doesn't require me to speak to many people outside of my client. I write for them and don't have to worry about editors and the like. To my surprise, I've taken to writing about B2B technology, which I actually enjoy and there is a definite market for it. (If there were a huge market for writing about cats, crafts, and science fiction/fantasy, I'd go for that, but there doesn't seem to be. I could be wrong on this.)