A person could write about this forever, and many do. It’s a subject that many of us never get tired of reading or writing about because we are always, always, always looking for new/additional/more work for ourselves, for friends, or just because you can’t really have too many clients.
I’m not even going to try to be canonical in this post. This, instead, is some notes from an online conversation with a friend who asked where to find some additional writing/editing work.
First, I’m going to assume that your desire to find work is going to be fairly immediate. You’re more likely to be looking for work because you need money coming in now, or at least soon. I’m going to throw out a few places to look and some ideas that may be of assistance for finding work if you’re a writer/editor/what-have-you.
- Mashable has a jobs page that’s very interesting for all kinds of jobs in the social media and networking venues.
- I really love my agency, Studio B. They’re honorable, likable, and dazzlingly competent. I’m honored to be one of their authors. They’ve a jobs page that you should check out.
- Considered writing magazine articles? Magazine articles are kinda like cocktail peanuts of writing. The thing about them is that they can generate a truly impressive amount of money for the time you spend on them. (Books can frequently net you as little as a few cents a word, but magazine articles can easily generate $25-$75/hour for your time.) Magazine articles also generate lots of publicity for you and anything else you’re doing. Everything you need to know about getting into the magazine game (and probably a lot more besides) can be found in “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Publishing Magazine Articles.” Apart from an egregious copyediting error in an early edition that referred to Citizen Cane (I shuddered, too), it’s exceptionally detailed. I wish I’d had this book 20 years ago. Thanks to me telling you about it, you can have it now.
- LinkedIn has any number of job listings. There are also hundreds of groups focused on every aspect of writing that let you network directly with other writers. My last book happened because I saw someone’s post on LinkedIn looking for a co-author. There’s work to be found and money to be had.
- Even if you don’t already know me, you’ve probably figured out that I’m a big supporter of the Society for Technical Communication. The biggest reason among many is that I’ve made the best part of a million dollars being part of the STC over the last 25 years, or roughly 300x the amount I paid in dues. I got dozens of contracts and jobs both as the result of networking, job announcements, and just knowing people. In the short term, you can find jobs through your local STC chapter, through STC listserves (notably the STC’s Consultants and Independent Contractors SIG), and the STC’s job announcements themselves. There are many venues for hearing about job listings in the STC.
- Speaking of listserves, I’d also suggest hanging out on listserves like TechWr-L (which regularly lists jobs), TechComm Pros, HATT for online help writers, Writing That Works, and many more.
That’s all the suggestions I’ve got right off the top of my head. I’m going back to working on my taxes. Have a great day!
Addendum, April 3: You can also check out Tweet My Jobs, which will tweet you with information about jobs.