“I've been receiving tweets from you with links to companies offering writing work. Would you explain how one should approach these job opportunities? Advertisers say what they want & will pay but expect the applicant to bid to get the job. Is this like vanity publishing?”
This question came in recently from a member and the short answer is … no it isn’t the same as vanity publishing as you will get paid for your work. The long answser is somewhat more complicated!
The web is full of entrepreneurs who are looking for quick fortunes, but unfortunately can barely string more than a couple of sentences together. Generally speaking these are penny pinching time wasters who will expect you to write for peanuts. There are however, plenty of good writing jobs to be had, but competition is fierce and looking for them can be time consuming which is why we do the initial searching.
The Twitter tweets you receive from us are provided by our own writing job board which is a clever piece of software that visits all the major job listing sites and amalgamates all the writing positions.
When you click on a job which you think you can do, the link takes you to the job site that is listing it where you will find full information. Our tweets only give you minimum details.
To apply for a job you first have to join the individual site. There are a lot of them! Most of them are free with a paid level offering extra benefits. Be warned though, free is not always best. A lot of businesses looking for good writers will only allow bidding on their jobs from writers who are paid members. This ensures some kind of quality control as due to the free mentality of the web the majority of people refuse to pay for anything which they think they can get for nothing.
In most cases you do have to bid for the work, but it isn’t always the lowest bid that wins the contract. In fact, a reputable company looking for quality writing will almost certainly not take the lowest bid as these will come from sub-continent writers with inferior English, submitting blanket bids to all new listings.
To benefit from these sites you need to decide your minimum rate, spend some time creating a compelling profile which lists your skills and contains writing samples, ask questions before submitting bids and then craft a carefully worded proposal which does not contain spelling or grammatical errors.
If you can offer additional skills above and beyond what is being asked for, that will give your bid a second look.
For the newcomer, I would advise joining as many sites as possible at free level and learning how they work. There will be differences from site to site. Don’t expect to win many of your pitches unless you put in ridiculously low bids.
Related Posts:
Freelance writer 
