Freelance Writing

One of the biggest issues of a career in freelance writing is finding new jobs. Not only can this be difficult due to the competition, but many of the leads that are floating around are “dead.” What is a dead freelance writing lead, you may ask?

I categorize a dead lead as one that has been posted for several days, and really offers no hope of converting into a job. Even though you may still want to apply for a job a few days after going live, your chance of getting a response is quite low. The reason for this is that most freelance writing job posters get bombarded with emails within minutes of adding their job to a popular website such as Craigslist or Freelancewriting.com. In the past I have posted smaller jobs on these sites, and over the course of two to three days received more than 50 emails. As you can imagine, the pool for the hiring party to choose from is quite great. This is why I say that a lead is as good as dead after a couple days.

Unfortunately, there are some leads that start out dead because the person posting the job has no intention on hiring anybody. If you visit a bidding site such as GetAFreelancer, you will see this time and time again. One of the oldest tricks in the book is for somebody to ask for a sample on the topic that they are going to “hire” you to write about. This allows them to get samples from several writers, in many cases 10 or more, and then never hire anybody. In turn they can collect a large number of unique articles without having to pay for them. And since every freelance writer is trying to win the job, the quality of the samples are usually good. There is nothing wrong with sending a past sample, but writing one just to have a chance at a job is a bad idea. More times than not, those asking for these types of samples are trying to get articles for free.

There are a lot of dead freelance writing leads floating around the internet. But remember, this does not mean that all leads are a waste of time. As you become more comfortable as a freelance writer, you will be able to quickly determine which leads to follow up on and which leads to ignore.