Does anyone have any tips for going freelance?

mlarmour

As I have stated in a previous post, I am currently unemployed, though I will have my 4th job interview of the week tomorrow so fingers crossed. However, even I, do get one of these jobs I wouldn't be working anything more than about 16 hours a week.

By trade I am a journalist, I studied it at university, but they don't prepare you or help you with going freelance. We touched upon it once very briefly and went into no detail with it, it was more to do with networking and using social media. I'm thinking of going freelance to boost my benefits whilst I am unemployed and to boost my earnings when I am working. Another part of the reason I want to go freelance is because I need to feel busy, I'm bored out of my mind having very little to do. I'm bored to the point that in the past two weeks I have applied for over 100 jobs doing pretty much anything, including cleaning even though I would probably really struggle doing that with fibromyalgia. I'm not looking at sites like bubblews or fiverr as whilst they are a good idea, I want to write for magazines which is what I have been studying to do.

I was just wondering if anyone had any tips for coming freelance and using it to boost your income. If anyone knows of any good websites with information about freelancing that would be great.

Missme

Sorry, no advice on going freelance but if you're claiming, isn't there a £20pw limit on earnings before deductions are actioned?

trailingspouse

Have a look at the Writers' and Artists' yearbook, or the online equivalent. Lots of up-to-date advice.

mlarmour

Missme wrote: »

Sorry, no advice on going freelance but if you're claiming, isn't there a £20pw limit on earnings before deductions are actioned?

I'm not sure, its something I am planning to bring up with my adviser when I see her next. I will obviously declare everything I make but it is likely at first that I may not get paid which sucks for the work I'd put into it but at least it will get my name out there.

I do have the Writers' and Artists' Year Book. It was actually the first thing I got out of the library when I decided to go freelance. I love the book, I have gotten it out of the library a couple times. I think part of my issue is not knowing how to go about getting work as it wasn't something taught at university.

WolfSong2000

Try looking at sites like ODesk and People Per Hour....pay will be low initially whilst you build your credibility, but apparently potentially there is fairly decent money to be made with things like copywriting, if that's something you feel comfortable doing?

Other than that the only thing I can suggest is researching a niche that you would feel comfortable writing about, perhaps start a blog, write articles to assert yourself as someone who knows what they're talking about and then take things from there.

DKLS

Expand your searches to writing web copy and other areas that require good copy such as marketing depts, I outsource the bulk of our creative services to a number of trusted freelancers. I hired them all based on their portfolios.

So my first suggestion is if you haven't got a portfolio build one and put it online there are plenty of tools that you can build a site either for free or a small fee, also create a linkedin profile and network via the relevant sector groups.

Mersey_2

This would seem like the best site to begin with:

http://www.journalism.co.uk/cgi-bin/webdata_pro.pl?_cgifunction=search&_layout=Freelance_users&freelance.approved=1

However, you may need the post-grad Journalism qualifications?