Am I Good Enough?: Re: Going solo: getting on to being a professional freelancer

» JonathanBall - Re: Going solo: getting on to being a professional freelancer

In response to message posted by retroqueen:

I'm going to send this message to you via that SuiteTalk thing as well, but I thought I'd post it here because I still don't fully understand SuiteTalk. Becoming a freelancer is a tough thing. I can't answer all of your questions, as I only freelance part time and work at the University of Manitoba the rest of the time. Hopefully I can give you a bit of advice. Sorry for not responding to you earlier, but I've been out of town.

You've got a great advantage as a freelancer, in that you have knowledge of crafts, cheesemaking, and other such specialized things. There are a ton of publications that salivate for articles on these kinds of subject regularly. I would advise getting a writer's market book for magazine articles if you haven't already gotten one (as up to date as possible) and sending queries for article ideas or full-blown articles, whichever the specific market wants. I'm not sure how much you've published in the past but if you're new you may want to pick up a book or find some Suite101 articles on how to write query or cover letters.

Only you can judge whether or not you can move into freelancing work full time. There are certain tax issues that you need to seek out information about and what kind of things you write will dictate what kind of equipment you need. If you're going to write magazine articles then a simple word processor, email, and space for a desk would do fine. If you're going to do corporate newsletter design things could get a bit more complicated. As well, depending on how set up you are financially at the moment, freelancing could be a big cut into your lifestyle while you start up. If you have cold feet at all I would recommend you work part time until things are busy enough and you feel confident enough that you can make a living as a full time writer.

Hopefully that helps a bit, if you have any other questions I'll do my best to answer them. You can visit my lousy in-progress web site if you want at www.jonathanball.com or email me at jonathan@jonathanball.com

-- posted by JonathanBall