How I started freelancing

Someone contacted me on Twitter recently and asked how I went about getting work when I first started freelancing. So I thought I'd write a post explaining my story in the hope that it might help and inspire you...

I have had two periods of freelancing in my life so far. The first was when I was at the start of my career. I had just finished a graduate course in broadcast journalism and the job market for radio journalists was looking pretty slow so while I applied and interviewed for staff positions I made some money by doing freelance shifts for local radio stations. Without much real experience on my resume and at just 22-years-old without much real life experience I basically had to just rely on enthusiasm and persistence.  

My approach was this:

1. Write to every radio station within commuting distance asking for freelance work and including my resume

2. A week later phoned every editor I had emailed and asked if they had received my letter 

3. Offered to come in and work for free for a day to show them what I could do (hardly anyone turns down a free worker and it's all good experience)

4. Followed up all meetings and work experience days with calls - and I kept checking back with emails week after week.

After a month or so I had three regular radio stations offering me work and within five months I had been taken on as a staff reporter.  Now it makes it sound simple but cold calling and chasing contacts is hard work, sometimes depressing, sometimes embarrassing. (for example I got the brush off from maybe four out of every five places I tried)

Now in my second period of freelancing things are slightly different for me for two main reasons.

1. I have over 12 years of experience behind me in radio, TV and online journalism and more contacts in different parts of the industry.

2. The Internet has happened!

It seems hard to believe now but in my first staff reporting job, which was for a major broadcaster in the UK, we didn't have Internet in the office for two years. We used to have to rely on local knowledge, paper clippings files and each other for information. Now I can't imagine how we did without the web. So my approach to freelancing now is split three ways:

1. Networking with contacts in the journalism industry

2. Bidding for or having work commissioned on sites like elance.com

3. Building my own passive streams of income through my own websites and passive income article sites like eHow, Infobarrel and Squidoo.

In my next post I will explain how you can use these different approaches to build up your own freelance career as a writer.