News and Announcements: November 1, 2009

Taking care of the housekeeping!

Comments Contest

Thanks to the entire FWJ community for participating in our comments contest. For many members of the community, it was business as usual and I appreciate your continuing to provide thoughts and insight to our discussions here. We also met a few new friends. Welcome! I’m tallying up the comments to choose the winner. This is going to be trickier than I thought because even though we had community members participating in the discussions throughout the month someone came along on Friday night and commented on about a hundred posts. While there was nothing in the rules that said someone couldn’t come in at the last minute and add tons of comments just to win, I want to also be sure to reward those who have been participating from the very beginning.

Giving Back

You may have noticed ads for charities in the sidebar, these are all up at no charge. If you represent a charity and would like us to place your ad in the queue, please contact me at wegetletters@gmail.com. Also, FWJ is hoping to feed a few families this Thanksgiving. Every time someone ReTweets a post from FWJ, a nickel is donated to the Community Food Bank of NJ. If anyone would like to match or contribute to the donations, please contact me at the same address.

Coming soon

We’ve been working on some cool projects for the FWJ community. In addition to our series on grant writing, John Hewitt is coming by over the next few weeks with a series on technical writing and how to begin, what it entails, and more. Thursday Bram is doing a series for us regarding freelancers and taxes and James Hendicott is weighing in with a one off post regarding freelancing taxes in the U.K. We’re also negotiating a few other series including breaking into print and copywriting.

Also in the works:

• A newsletter
• FWJ premium: a site featuring multiple goodies for writers
• A rate calculating tool
• More about the various freelance writing specialty areas. (If you specialize and would like to pitch a series, contact me at wegetletters@gmail.com)

FWJ Community

I soft launched a forum a few weeks ago but didn’t really do anything to promote it. We had one at the beginning of the year but lost it in the Great Server Crash of 2009. Lara put up a new one for us but we didn’t do much to advertise so there are only a couple of members at this point. If you’d like to join other members of the FWJ community and build up the forum, please do so. We also have an FWJ social network on Ning and an FWJ Facebook page, if you’d like to stop by and mingle. Also network with me @debng and receive FWJ updates @FreelanceWJ.

HireVine

HireVine is a brand new project I’m working on with Christina Jones and David Peralty. It’s a social networking job search site for those looking for social media jobs. We hope to rock the beta launch next week but already have some jobs up.  If you’re looking for social media work and would like to add your resume, sign up to vote on gigs, or take part in the discussions, do stop by and check us out. When it’s running to full capacity, HireVine will be a place for job seekers to network with employers and each other. Vote on resumes and jobs, ask questions of employers, recommend gigs to others, and more.  We’re also taking video resumes and video job ads. The blog will discuss social media gigs, and also job hunting tips. Though HireVine isn’t necessarily a haven for freelancers we do have some freelance and telecommute jobs listed.