With that said, I love my work!!
Great site you have here!

This said, more people fail from not trying than fail from trying so I like a post that encourages anyone to get out and do it.

And don’t worry about having too much competition, most people will not do it.

This was a great article! Not only do I agree with the amount of hard work you need to put in to this, but it’s also brought up an area I need to work on–networking. I’m extremely bad at this aspect, and I really think I could do better as a freelancer if I could network better.

At the risk of sounding like a “me-me-me”er, do you have any advice on networking for dummies?

Chris

Btw, I did get an assignment through an advertisement linked on your blog. Thanks for what you do here!

Too funny. Yeah, sounds like your friend won’t get anywhere. I don’t know about the rest of your, but I find they’re/their and you’re/your to be some of the most annoying mistakes people make. Maybe it’s distasteful to say so, but I knew the difference in elementary school, so it really appalls me when adults make those mistakes… Particularly when they claim to want to be writers!

I think today so many people undervalue writing as a profession because “anybody” can blog and “anybody” can start a website and “anybody” can write 500-word comments to an article. A friend of mine likes to tell me how he used to get A’s on his English papers, so of course he can write. I tell him that I can pull together a spreadsheet, so does that mean I can be an accountant? Or I can write simple HTML code, does that qualify me for being a programmer?

It’s like any job — there is much more to it than meets the eye.

Oh dear, may be I should have stopped her in her tracks and asked her what novel she had published because let’s face it a lot of people assume that’s what us writers do.

Or, I could have asked, “Really? With what publication and how many articles do you have in print?

I wonder what the answer would have been LOL.

The truth is that as a professional freelance writer, you know that ‘Not Everyone Can Do it!’

It really does anger me when people view my job as something less than what it actually is – hard work!

A friend of mine has a co-worker that found out about what I do. Since then, she’s been hounding my poor friend to death asking if I could tell her the website I go to in order to write.

In her mind, it seems she believes that freelance writing is nothing more than hopping online, going to a web page, and writing away. Hello! It takes a lot more skill than that, I’m afraid.

I remember being at a party one time and someone gave me the line that writing was so easy and any dolt could make a living at it. I couldn’t stand this person anyway and by then I’d had enough. I handed him a piece of paper and a pen and I said, “Here, you write me a 500-word article on Topic X, and when you’re done, I’ll edit it and hand it back.” He was smarmy, wrote the “article,” and handed it to me. I found a red pen and gave it a good solid edit. The guy fumed. “How dare you do that!” Everyone else laughed.

In addition to all the things Deb wrote, I’d say this isn’t a career for people with thin-skin. You have to be able to handle rejections and having your words edited.

Like Katharine, I certainly have no problem helping people out, hence my website for beginning freelance writers. If someone wants to learn, I’m happy to point them to a book or a website, but I’m not suited to be a personal tutor, and I don’t think just anyone can succeed freelancing.

Karen, I know what you mean about the isolation thing. Took me a while to get used to.

There are a lot of factors people don’t consider. They see online writing or blogging as easy money, and they don’t see the rest of it.

If anyone can write, why aren’t these people who think that writing themselves? Perhaps they have more important things to do, huh?

She then turns to her 20-year-old, drop-out son who has never worked a day in his life and says, “Did you hear that, honey? Amy makes money on the Internet writing articles. Maybe you could do that!”

Oy vey.

@Phil: You are just confused because of the “big words” Bill used. LOL