“Freelancing is a treadmill of pain. As writers we just hope that someone will come along and give us work so all the running can amount to something.”

Yikes! A treadmill of pain? I think that’s a little harsh, otherwise no one would ever want the job.

Honestly, I don’t take it too personally when I don’t get a response. A few others have mentioned these things, but I tend to send out queries in bulk and NOT expected a reply. I also follow up if it’s something I really wanted, but I don’t worry about it if it wasn’t. I always have plenty of work, so I don’t worry about it overly much.

I’ll take your advice and e-mail most of them. Honestly I’m shocked when job searching when I can’t fax or e-mail for regular jobs so to speak. Thanks.

I wouldn’t use mail, I’d use e-mail then follow up with a phone call. E-mail might get lost in the shuffle, but snail mail certainly will.

Also make sure you know the pub’s policy. Some use no outside help (even if they did at one time).

I am still looking for a steady gig (fingers crossed) and not giving up is the best answer

They don’t tend to pay as well as a print publication or an ezine, but if I can get about four more clients such as the ones I already have, I won’t be stressed out every time I receive no response at all to the writing gigs I apply for every single day.

Sometimes it’s more beneficial to a writer to get steady small income over a large one-time payout. It helps mentally as well. The pay scale for most blog sites is $50 per post, and most posts are only about 400-500 words, so you don’t have to kill yourself trying to come up with wordy and witty articles on a daily basis.

If it is a job you really want, send a follow up email (giving a decent waiting period, of course — I usually give a couple of weeks). State that you are following up on the initial email and include the initial email in the follow up.

I found the response rate increases dramatically on follow ups. I think most editors appreciate the initiative of a writer who will take an extra step. But I also know I’ve gotten responses from editors who have said they never received the first email (spam filters are weird — I learned to constantly check my bulk folder). Or editors may have planned to write you back but got busy. Or they were reviewing the emails from everyone before responding.

I also learned to never give up. It’s not unusual to get an email out of the blue from an editor you contacted months ago.

But I do have to admit, it is frustrating when the editor contacts you and engages you in a dialogue and then never answersot even the follow ups. That’s the one I don’t understand.

Personally, I have never thought it was rude or unprofessional to follow up on a job application, provided you’re not stalking your prospective client.

But I do agree with what Julia in Umbria wrote when she hypothesized that, maybe, a lot of these jobs just don’t exist. It ends up being very demoralizing to continue to send cover letters and samples for project after project without any feedback OF ANY KIND! So you wonder, “Was it my introduction? Did they not like my work? Did my email get filtered into their junk folder? Should I change my approach?”

Freelancing is a treadmill of pain. As writers we just hope that someone will come along and give us work so all the running can amount to something.

perhaps you could let me know how to unsubscribe from receiving emails when a new comment is posted on thos subject. I get a little message at the bottom, but no box to uncheck. Is it me?

Mark

I apply for gigs in one of my specialties that needs to be written in my two languages. How many exactly like me can there be? Not many. Maybe not a single other person exactly or equally qualified. If I don’t even get a return email, then I suspect no one got the job.

I’d write letters carefully, type up a resume, and send it off into the void. I’d almost never get a reply. That’s not good for the ego.

My work as a direct mail freelancer, though, has taught me a few things. And if I knew then what I know now, I’d never apply for jobs one at a time. I’d get a mailing list, print up a thousand letters and resumes, and mail them all.

It’s a numbers game. There’s just too many applicants for too few jobs. The more you mail, the greater your odds of hitting a business with an opening or opportunity that’s right for you. You could do the same for freelance work too.

I’ve had clients that I’ve quit working with because they didn’t respond (confirm they received work, acknowledged invoices, or respond to queries about late payments). Life’s too short for that.

I e-mailed a pitch to one offering that I know I’m perfect for — I did similar work for a competitor until it hired an in-house person — just a couple of weeks ago. They didn’t respond. Yet I have so much work right now (after some slow months) I don’t know how I’d squeeze them in if they did respond.

Others don’t respond because they don’t have time to acknowledge hundreds of inquiries. That’s not being rude, it’s that the person in charge of responding is likely busy doing a lot of other thngs that must be done immediately. Heck, I’m surprised when I get a response.

And, I have to admit, I simply don’t have time to respond to every e-mail I get. Yes, a response is proper etiquette. But when you get hundreds of e-mails a day (I get 30-40, about half of that spam), and need to prospect, do billable work and do everything else involved in running a business, one can’t always send a response.

What cheeses me off is when someone contacts ME for a potential job and agrees to my rates–then seemingly vanishes off the face of the earth.

For example, b5 contacted me a week ago about an interview for a blogging positon … but God only knows when they want that to happen, because I haven’t heard anything since. All I can do is carry on, look for more jobs and hope I’ll be pleasantly surprised down the road. It happens.

But I guess that’s just how it goes and you have to move on and find new gigs to replace the ones which fell through.

I talked him through the pre-writing process and explained how getting the thing published worked. I believe he may have realized just how much goes into creating a book from scratch and got overwhelmed.

Good advice, if it works. I point people to my website, which seems to have about a 1/4 rate of getting them to it AND getting a response of any kind. That doesn’t seem good, but it may be all anyone can expect.

I’ve also had a LOT of clients that meet with me and sound really interested, but don’t get back to me for a long, long time. Often they are people who don’t understand the process and/or what they can get, and need to check back with a boss or a Board before they make the decision. Thus it drags on. The problem with getting gigs on the internet is that you haven’t even had that initial meeting, so it’s all so impersonal.

The more I read about living off of internet gigs the more I realize how much I like making a living face to face. I’ve had good luck with internet-based gigs, but … not enough to live off of. They just fill time.