An island in the Mediterranean. A beach in Africa. The east coast of New Zealand. What do all these locations have in common? A call for assistance from freelance writers elicited replies from these locations. In each of these and in many other remote places, there are writers who are freelancing with a fair degree of success. Indeed it is possible for freelance writers to work from anywhere.

How to become one Writing is only part of a freelance writer’s career. You must also spend a lot of time marketing yourself and your work. There is also the matter of intense competition.

Steps to take

• Be honest with yourself about the quality of your writing skills. Chances are excellent that a busy editor will not continue to read your submission if she sees lots of grammatical errors.

• Take a writing course or workshop if you do not have an English, journalism or

related degree. You need

to hear writing instructors and other writers comment on the quality of your work, and you need the experience of having to write well on deadline.

• Learn how to write an excellent query letter to an editor. In it you need to briefly

propose your idea for an article, give your qualifications and make it all sound as though it is the most wonderful idea ever to cross the editor’s desk.

• Use Web sites for writers to further develop your writing skills and to peruse freelance job opportunities. A simple search for “writing” or “writers” at a major search engine like Google should get you off to a good start.

• Contact your local newspaper or magazine and ask if you may submit a completed article “on spec”. This means the editor is under no obligation to pay you for your work, but is willing to read it.

Love your career

If you’re anything like the other freelance writers out there, you’re probably not in this for the money. Most freelance writers do it because they love to write. If you really want to make a success of your freelance writing career, you’re going to have to love what you’re doing, and really want to make a success of it. If your career is freelance writing, you never get to walk away.

Treat it as a business

If you want to make a living out of your writing, you’re going to have to treat it like a business. Never lose sight of the fact that your writing is, first and foremost, a business. And as with any business, you need to work at marketing it and growing.

Freelance writing is as much about selling as it is about writing. No matter how good you are at writing, there’s someone out there who’s as good or better. There are some who aren’t nearly as good at writing as you are, and yet they’re getting more jobs. Why is that?

The difference is in the selling. The mediocre writer who does a good job of getting out there and selling their services will ultimately be more successful than the excellent writer who sits at home and waits for the work to come and find them.

The golden rule

Remember the golden rule: money flows towards the writer. If you’re thinking of signing up with an agency that requires you to pay money to join, you’re already breaking the number one rule.

Be wary of bidding sites, too. Often the competition is so fierce you have to be willing to practically work for free in order to secure the job. And working for free isn’t feeding your kids.

Love your work, market yourself, and remember the golden rule.

Making a portfolio

You need to develop a portfolio of “clips,” photocopies of articles that prove you have experience as a professional writer. This is often a Catch-22 situation: You need clips to show an assigning editor, but you cannot get a writing assignment unless you have clips to show. You can volunteer your writing services to community publications or organisations and use the resulting clips to build your portfolio.

Writing for online communities can be a good way to build a strong portfolio.

Warning

You must expect rejection and develop a thick skin when you experience it.

Very few freelance writers become wealthy. Many have other jobs to make ends meet.