Earlier we discusses finding writing jobs with the vast array of job hunting websites out there like Monster.com. Specifically, we discussed finding freelance writing gigs and writing job contracts on CareerBuilder.com. However, finding good writing jobs is not the only thing professional writers need to content with. Filtering out the wrong kinds of writing jobs, or more specifically writing jobs that you have already determined are not right for you, is just as important.

Filtering Writing Job Search Results

The first step in filtering out writing jobs that are a bad fit is determining what kind of writing job you are looking for. There are full-time, on-site, writing jobs. The benefit of these type writing gigs is that they come with benefits like paid sick time, paid vacation, health insurance, and 401(k) plans. The downside is that these are very much not freelance writing. These are straight up corporate jobs with a boss, and required work hours. There is nothing wrong with that, and for many writers the stability and steady paycheck of a "real" job is as liberating as the freedom of choosing your own work and making your own schedule is for other writers.

Contract writing jobs are difficult to generalize about. Some writing contracts are basically temporary full-time positions without benefits. The writer is expected to be in the office and work on-site during regular business hours for a period of weeks or months. Other writing contracts are essentially long-term freelance writing positions. In these cases, the writer may not even get a desk or office on-site other than some temporary work space. Instead, the writer works as a freelance writer from home, but either exclusively for one client, or part-time for one client. Either way, the work is ongoing and provides a steady paycheck, but does not provide benefits.

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Most job boards and career websites will also list temporary jobs. These are similar in nature to contract positions except that unlike contracts with a defined term and end date, temporary jobs continue until the writer is no longer needed. In other words, the end of the job is not defined up front.

Finding Freelance Writing Jobs

Unfortunately, the mainstream job listing websites are not really structured for freelancers. As a result, a freelance writer has to search through all the different job listings. Manually filtering out the writing gigs that don’t fit one’s writing business model can be time consuming and frustrating. Many writers give up altogether which provides opportunities for those freelance writers who know how to properly work the main job boards.

The key to being able to find good freelance writing jobs on websites like Monster.com, CareerBuilder.com and so on is to become adept at using filters. Filters are criteria used for job searching. Again, since these boards are not geared toward freelance writers, one needs to be creative in getting good job searching results out of the available criteria.

Be sure to start by clicking "Advanced Search" or "More Criteria" whenever doing a writing job search. Beware of trying to use the standard filters for temporary, contract, full-time, and part-time positions. Just like job hunters will find these career finder websites difficult to use properly, so will those clients posting the jobs on the job boards. As such, the person looking to hire a freelance writer to work on a project over several months, but not in a full-time or even typical part-time basis, might classify the job listing as contract or temporary, since neither really fits. Or, if there is not an actual contract, and if the human resources person doing the hiring has had bad experiences with "temps" before, they might not choose either putting the project in part-time instead. Finally, a project that may take 40 hours per week or more on an ongoing, but not steady basis, might be listed as a full-time writing job.

Instead, focus on using the Exclusion Criteria fields provided. For example, if you want to search for writing jobs, but not technical writing jobs, then use the advanced search exclusion options to filter out those jobs. Be careful how you do so, however, as you don’t want to accidentally filter out a great copywriting job that requires the ability to understand "the technical details of soap."

Finally, use exclusions to filter out repetitive job posters. Lately, the website Examiner.com has been particularly prolific in not just posting, but in re-posting its writing "jobs". Once you have determined whether or not writing for Examiner.com is right for you, it is annoying to have to scroll through 18 "new" jobs from the company every two or three days. Just add "examiner.com" to one of the block keyword search fields.

Do you have other advanced job search tips for writers? If so, let us know and we’ll share them here or check them out.

Good luck finding your newest writing gig.

Can Writers Benefit From Social Networking?

It seems like the bandwagon only bangs the drum louder with each passing day. You MUST be fully immersed in the world of social networking, and/or social marketing, immediately or else your business will fail and you will have only your stone age understanding of computers, the Internet, the cloud, and the 21st century to blame. You don’t have a Facebook page? Oh, no!

That is a slight exaggeration, but not much. Do any reading online or elsewhere and you are sure to find numerous recommendations that your business start using social networking immediately to increase sales, maximize profit, and even perform better customer service than ever before.

Of course, social networking cannot do all of these things. If it could, no one would bother with all of their other communications efforts. In fact, less than 2 years ago, the same bandwagon that now beats the drum of Facebook inevitability was banging the drum of Twitter inevitability. These days, Twitter gets plenty of love, but no one is calling it the next big thing anymore. Today, Facebook is the next big thing, and all of the things that were said about Twitter over the past 18 months are being said about Facebook now. Hopefully, that gives you some idea about what life is like in the Internet echo chamber.

Using Social Networking To Promote Your Writing and Earn Money

Just because posting on Twitter or creating a freelance writing Facebook page won’t make you rich beyond your wildest dreams, doesn’t mean you should ignore them. It just means that unless you are running a 6,000 employee corporation, there is no need for you to run out and hire a full-time social marketer or even to hire a social media consultant to help build your business brand name online. On the other hand, both Twitter and Facebook, and several other social networking websites can be a great way to help promote your writing and make sure that your articles, posts, and content are seen. In turn, that drives more traffic to your articles, webpages, and web properties that can be harnessed to earn more money writing for yourself online.

As a professional freelance writer, however, lots of free time to dedicate to building my writing brand online isn’t something that I am going to get. That means to build a successful social marketing campaign, I need to tweet, post, update, and friend as quickly and efficiently as possible without harming my brand or business image by engaging in frowned upon practices or outright spamming social websites just to get as many links as possible out there.

For me, the solution is HootSuite. HootSuite is an online application that started out as a way to manage multiple Twitter accounts. Over time it has developed into a full-fledged online social marketing service that lets you post, read, re-post, retweet, as well as tweet, update, and friend or unfriend across multiple social networking services all in one place.

I have a pretty strong technical background, but even if you are just a little bit technically inclined, you’ll be up and running on HootSuite in no time. As you get used to the service, you can add more accounts so that you can manage numerous Twitter accounts, multiple Facebook accounts, and even an army of Google Reader accounts. HootSuite also supports services like LinkedIn, MySpace, and more. Best of all, it’s all free.

I’m not sure how they plan to make money, or if they just plan to build something worth a bigger online company buying out, but for now, HootSuite is a one-stop social media manager that can let you build your online presence without robbing time from your writing business.

One of the toughest things for any professional writer, whether an experienced freelance writer or someone just starting a new freelance writing business, is to find new writing jobs. Even freelancers with a full project pipeline need to keep an eye on the future in order to ensure a steady stream of income from writing lest they find themselves evicted from the comfy work at home office and back into the faux-leather chairs of corporate America’s cubicles.

There are many ways to find freelance writing jobs ranging from using job boards and writing forums dedicated to freelance gigs and writing projects, to cold calling businesses and asking if they have any writing needs. Somewhere in between is using the major job websites like monster.com. (Here is your AP Style question of the day. Web addresses, or URLs, are not capitalized, but business names and trademarks are. According to the AP Stylebook then, should monster.com be capitalized [business name] or not [website address]? – I chose not to capitalize it because I am referencing it as the website and not the business and since this isn’t the Denver Post, I can do what I want.)

Find Writing Jobs CareerBuilder.com

One of the major job hunting websites is Career Builder. Career Builder came out after the success of Monster.com (that time it is the business name) and in many respects is simply an alternative service with approximately the same features. Think Google versus Bing, or HP versus Dell, or Coke versus Pepsi. With each of those examples, there are major differences between the brands and each company targets a different niche or consumer. Likewise, there are real differences between Monster.com and CareerBuilder, not the least of which is pricing for employers. Nevertheless, both sites work on the same model.

The problem with using big job search websites like Monster and CareerBuilder to find writing gigs is that they are not really tuned to the way writers, especially freelance writers, hunt for jobs. Just click on “Job Categories” to see what I mean. See “writer” on there anywhere?

This lack of attention to writing as a career means that writers have to do more than just type the word ‘writer’ into the search box and use the drop down boxes to limit the results. After all, writers can telecommute and work from home, and freelance projects are not always considered “contract” or “temporary”. Limiting a job search for writers by using those fields is a recipe for missing out on good writing gigs. On the other hand, just typing ‘writer’ with no limits is a one-way ticket to frustration.

The best strategy is to monitor the jobs posted for writers on an ongoing basis so that they can be quickly skimmed. A pair of human eyes is always a better algorithm than any computerized filtering. However, in order to not be a time wasting exercise, the once-over has to occur at short enough intervals. Fortunately, CareerBuilder offers email alerts with jobs for you based upon your searches.

For my small business, I set up two email alerts. The first alert email comes daily and limits writer jobs to the 30 miles radius around Denver. That way, I can pounce on local gigs. The second alert comes weekly and has no geographical limit. Obviously, this is a much bigger job list. I skim it ruthlessly to keep successful time management going.

Try setting a local and nation job posting alert for your writing business and see how it works out for you.

P.S. Keep an eye out for an upcoming post about what to do about “pest” employers who repost the same jobs over and over again clogging up your job search.

As we mentioned earlier, Yahoo has taken on the task of producing a “style guide” for the Internet. Those of you who are already in the professional writing business know about the different writing styles out there. There is AP Style, which is based upon a book by AP called The Associated Press Stylebook. Then there is the MLA stylebook and a couple of others as well.

For those of you not in the freelance writing business, the point of all these style guides is to fill in some of the language gaps that exist between the grammar manuals, like The Chicago Manual of Style, and the dictionaries of the world. These gaps come from things like fast moving technology or unofficial concepts or terminology that don’t rate a listing in either the dictionary or grammar manual, but that still have an accepted usage or spelling.

In journalism, which the AP Stylebook is the referee of, one of the common needs comes from reporting comments or briefings coming from official government sources. For example, should a reporter write, “Brigadier General Smith,” or should a reporter write, “Brig. General Smith,” or “Brig General Smith” (no period), or just General Smith (no need to split hairs on what kind of general).? — According to the AP Style Guide, under the heading Military Titles, the correct answer is Brig. Gen. Smith. (That is abbreviating both Brigadier and General, and with periods.)

What Is Yahoo Style?

If you know what AP Style is, then the next question is, “What is Yahoo Style?”

The answer is that even with the AP Stylebook throwing in its two cents on topics like whether it is e-mail or email (e-mail) there are still plenty of online and Internet related terms that are not covered in any of the style guides. For example, do I have to use the exclamation point on the end of Yahoo!’s official corporate trademark name? If so, do I use the apostrophe ‘s’ like I just did for the possessive of Yahoo!? (What about question marks?)

Furthermore, there are those who disagree with what AP says – I use email, for example – and also those who have never seen the inside of an AP Stylebook, but who still write online.

There is now a Yahoo style website you can check out if you aren’t interested in purchasing the book, which is a good thing, because until I see a freelance writing gig job posting that says, “Must be familiar with Yahoo style,” I won’t be buying the book.

There aren’t too many times anymore where I start reading a blog post or webpage about writing or writers and find myself reading something completely new and different.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t mean to say that I know everything there is to know about writing, or that there is nothing that anyone else can teach me about writing that I don’t already know. It’s just that most of the time, whatever it is that I do learn is related or directly expounding upon something that I already knew about, even if I didn’t actually know the details.

So, today, when I finally got around to reading the Firefox tab that I opened a few days ago entitled, "The 5 Best Copywriting Books: An Unconventional Guide," I expected to see a couple of familiar books and maybe a couple of books that were new, or a book or two about copywriting that I had never come across before. Although, typically, in the latter case, I often am familiar with the author.

Ironically, I don’t really bother with books on writing anymore. The fact of the matter is that most of them are woefully out of date, and even the ones that have been updated usually only pay lip service to the fast changing pace of the writing world. These days, things move pretty fast, and if you are stuck in a query, wait for response, query another editor, wait for response, type of mode, you aren’t going to keep up.

However, there is always plenty of good wisdom about the actual craft of writing that can, and should, be learned from books, both modern and "classic."

What intrigued me about this particular post was its promise of an "unconventional guide." I was not disappointed.

The writer of the article has the view that the only way to really learn copywriting is to jump in with both feet and do copywriting. He has a point. Copywriting is a strange beast, in no small part due to the fact that it morphs from person to person and from company to company depending upon needs and requirements. While the basic tenants are constant, the specifics that make up reality very widely.

Check out the list of best copywriting books which, incidentally, are unconventional because not one of them is actually a book about copywriting.

(I don’t feel like deep linking this post or trying to work any of my "automatic" links into the text, so instead, please use the menus to click around and have fun. I’ll worry about the moronic indexing spiders on another day.)

Those of you who are building your own freelance writing portfolio or producing a freelance writing blog to help increase your web presence may be interested to know that WordPress has released a new version. This update moves WordPress out of the 2.9.x realm that it has bee occupying for the last six months or so and brings with it numerous new features. As is standard operating procedure here, we’ll wait for a little while and see if there is any outpouring of angst before upgrading to version 3.0.

If you want to make the move to upgrade WordPress 3.0 right away, just log into WordPress administrator account and look for the link at the top of your dashboard that says Upgrade to WordPress 3.0. You should back up all of your posts and database before upgrading.

If you are like me and not very savvy about the little databases that WordPress uses, you might find it more useful to get a backup of your posts and then just restore one of the backups provided by your webhosting company.

Quick Writer’s Tip About Web Hosting: If your web host does not provide an automatic backup and restore feature by default via the control panel or dashboard interface on your website, it is a garbage webhost with terrible service just waiting to happen. Find a new host as soon as possible. (Of course, disregard this note if you are using some advanced hosting system with all of your own scripting and shell accounts and you think that web control panels are for babies.)

To get a backup of all your posts and images without having to mess with backing up and resorting the actual databases involved, use the Export menu item in Tools. If something goes wrong, you can re-install a 2.9.x version from your webhost back (or from scratch) and then do an Import to get your posts back.

That’s a little bit easier for a non-DBA like me to work with.

Happy Writing.

I’m not going to get all emotional or anything, but something a little bit sad happened today that happens to hit home on a personal level for me as a successful freelance writer.

When I first started my freelance writing business a few years ago, I did not really know how to go about finding freelance writing gigs without cold-calling businesses or waiting for someone who knew I was a good writer to ask me to write something for them. Obviously, this is a good way to both starve to death (waiting) and to crush your soul (cold-calling). For months I scoured the Internet looking at job boards, message boards, forums, and Craigslist, looking for ways to find freelance writing jobs.

I understand enough about business and the world in general that it is easier for me than some others to smell a rat. A lot of people just assume that whatever they read or hear must be true. The axiom that if it is too good to be true, it probably is, comes up short just enough times to make them wonder if maybe, just maybe, this time is different. Unfortunately, there are plenty of rats out there on the web, and a lot of them are all too eager to prey on entrepreneurs or beginning freelance writers. Luckily I was able to avoid them and succeed in starting a writing career on my own.

I also can read between the lines and know the difference between respect and envy. Many of the top bloggers out there are good at building traffic and selling ads and getting people to sign up for email lists and selling ad space on their websites. That does not mean that they are necessarily good writers. It does not even mean that they want to be writers at all. Many of them view writing content for websites as a necessary evil to keep from getting penalized by Google search results. Obviously, these are not good resources for those of us who actually aspire to be writers and want our success to come from the quality of our writing, not from begging other webmasters for links with the right anchor text to our keyword targeted webpages.

Freelance Writing Gigs

When I first found Freelance Writing Gigs at freelancewritinggigs.com I was skeptical. Why would someone give away lists of jobs being posted for freelance writers instead of selling access, or at least making people register and end up on a mailing list?

As it turns out, Freelance Writing Gigs was legit. It was run by a writer who just liked helping out other writers. (Sounds like someone else I know <grin>.) I never told anyone about the website even though it was one of the easiest writing job boards to find online. I figured, that filtering out the dumbest ones, the ones that couldn’t see how it was the best site out there, lowered the amount of chaff that needed to be sorted through for clients to find good freelance writers.

Like many websites and online businesses, it started out as a side business, one of those things that you hope pays for itself someday, but that you don’t really expect to ever get to use to pay the bills. Over time, Freelance Writing Gigs grew into a solid community of writers and a great resource for freelancers. I got my first writing gigs thanks to links from freelancewritinggigs.com and, more importantly, found numerous other online resources that I had not previously been aware of.

This week, the owner of FWG as it has become known around the online writing community sold the site to Splashpress Media.

I don’t harbor any ill-will toward the owner of the site. How can you complain when someone doing something valuable and time consuming for free decides to stop? However, I will be sorry to see it go. Splashpress Media indicates that they intend to carry on the FWG tradition, and they may well, but no matter if it is better or worse, it won’t be the same.

So long, FWG. You will be missed.

Although it was not my intention when I started writing a blog for freelance writers and businesses who hire freelance writers, a lot of the new readers here at the ArcticLlama freelance writing business blog come from people searching for advice on where to write online for money. In particular, people search to find out whether or not it is worth it to write for Demand Studios and if Guru.com is worth it, and lately, whether or not writing gigs on Elance.com are worth it.

(I have a review of a how to make money on Elance ebook coming up very soon to update that last one with some more information.)

Of course, I am happy to help out my fellow writers whether professional writers or those just starting up their home based writing business. After all, that WAS my intention when I started up this writing blog. Actually, it was that and to help provide some SEO juice to my freelance writing business website since everyone knows that Google rankings love blogs.

Which brings us to today’s introduction to Examiner.com. Unlike other writing website reviews I have done in the past, I am writing this one prior to using Examiner.com, and even prior to being approved as a writer there. It is written this way because I have never written for Examiner before. However, their relentless barrage of “job postings” is driving me crazy. I figure I should find out who they are and what value Examiner.com provides before I scortch the proverbial earth and make them disapear forever.

Is Writing For Examiner.com Worth It?

I will do my best to be impartial in my review of Examiner.com, but in the interest of full disclosure, I must tell you that they are currently on my sh*t list.

Like many writers, I use various freelance writing boards, job websites, and writing gigs newsletters in order to keep my business pipeline full. I get several email subscriptions with listings of writing jobs that are posted on major job boards like Monster.com and CareerBuilder.com. For a while now, however, these lists have been clogged with writing “jobs” from Examiner.com. I have no problem with any business advertising and marketing their business and products regardless of what they are. I do, however, have a problem when these efforts are not entirely truthful.

Check out my latest Capital One NoHassle Miles Rewards article.

Technically, the “jobs” at Examiner.com fall under the contractor or freelancer category. There is no salary or basic pay rate, and there are no benefit. While this is a perfectly acceptable business arrangement between a freelancer and a company, it is not a job. I don’t like that these multiple postings (and repostings, and re-postings, and…) clutter up job searches and job search results.

Again, I have no problem with Examiner.com aggressively marketing itself and I certainly have no problem with businesses actively seeking to hire quality writers. The issue is the nature of these postings and the company’s refusal to keep in them in the appropriate category (freelance, contract, or temp, but not “jobs”) and, even more problematic, it’s constant posting of multiple entries for what is essentially the same job. All of their job posts are for the same kind of “Examiner” with the same qualifications and responsibilities. The only difference is the topic. Thus, there can be 14 results from Examiner.com that are all the same job. Even worse, they are constantly re-posting those jobs to keep them “new”. This wastes valuable time and resources of freelance writers and other job seekers.

I do my writing job searches these days by entering in the job title keyword and then going into “advanced search” in order to refine the search to not include those that have “examiner.com” in them. However, I resent having these opportunities crowd off actual jobs or contracts with actual pay rates from my job board emails.

However, I have found good money making writing opportunities online and elsewhere that did not fit the traditional definitions of jobs, contracts, or freelancing, so I am going to investigate before passing judgement.

In the meantime, I will be unsubscribing from my job alerts from those websites that do not provide me a way to filter out listings from Examiner.com without also filtering out all contracting, temporary, or freelance listings.

Happy Writing! – By the way, don’t forget to check out my parenting skills for dads website.

I’ve written a handful of posts lately about my new netbook for writing that I have been using. That has led some readers to query about whether or not I had abandoned by my other computers in favor of the writer’s netbook. Far from it, my desktop computer remains my primary writing computer and a very big laptop serves frequently in the task of writing both within the home office and when I go somewhere instead of working from home on my business.

The netbook has gotten the attention here on the freelance writing blog lately because it is the newest edition to the writing family. As such, it still occasionally surprises with what it can do to help improve the writing business. The other business computers are established members of the team. They have been tweaked, customized and configured for maximum value to ArcticLlama freelance writing. Changes, other than upgrades, are not lightly made to these other writing systems. In other words, they are so useful and reliable that they are seldom noticed. Fortunately, they are not people, so I don’t have to feel bad about that :)

Best Computers For Writing Professionally

I thought it might be useful to mention what kinds of computers I use in my freelance writing business along the role each system fills and how it came to be used for that function. In that way, if you are looking to start your own freelance writing business, or if you are already a professional writer looking for tips or advice on what kind of computer hardware is good for professional level writing, you can read through these posts and get real world help.

These days, too many computer reviews are either biased – or not impartial, if you prefer – or, even more likely, based upon too little actual use of the computer system in question. It is simply impossible to get a real feel for how good a computer will be for high-end writing from just a few hours, or even a few days of testing. To really know what a computer is good for, you have to use it in multiple phases of life and business. It needs to be used during crunch time, during sunny days at Starbucks, and during those days where the sight of your home office makes you want to crawl back into bed. Only then, can you truly know what works, and what does not work.

In order to maximize the value of these posts, as well as keep them short enough that they can be read and digested by busy writers, I will spread them out of the next several days. Hopefully, by the time you get a chance to read them all, there will be some very helpful advice and tips for buying new writing computers or other gadgets.

Coming up:

Desktop Computers for Writing Business

Laptop Computers for Portable Writing

How To Synchronize Multiple Computers for Your Writing Business

Have you added the Facebook LIKE button to your website or blog yet?

Multiple big name websites, respected media outlets, magazine websites, and more have added the Facebook code snippet that publishes a "Like" button on your stories or websites. I even added them here on the freelance writing blog, although I did not add them on the ArcticLlama freelance writing business website. Having like buttons all over a professional business website just didn’t seem the way to go.

I also added the new LIKE button, which can also be set to display RECOMMEND instead, to some of my other websites that I will now shamelessly plug in the spirit of this post (You’ll see what I’m talking about in a minute.) The LIKE button is part of Facebook’s F8 initiative which before the whole Facebook privacy debacle drowned it out was supposed to be the amazing Internet changing Google killer. It isn’t really turning out that way, but the technology writers have moved on to fresher ground, like the new Apple iPhone 4 which is a major Google killer…um, wait a sec–

Adding the Facebook like button to websites such as my parenting skills from Dad website at Undefeated Daddy was easy. Like many of my sites, my personal financial tips website and my site dedicated to helping people make money by writing online, are build on the WordPress platform.

For those of you not familiar with WordPress, it is an open-source blogging platform that allows writers to focus on writing and WordPress handles everything else like formatting what that writing looks like on a webpage when someone reads it in a web browser. This writing blog is published on WordPress and I am continuously searching for the best WordPress theme for writers but haven’t had much chance to try them out lately.

Click Like on Facebook Button

Ironically, many of my readers are apparently not the click the Like button types. Most of my posts go unloved in the like realm. That isn’t a focus of mine, and I’m not sure if it has any value considering the sheer volume of likes that I see on any given day on my Facebook account which is not exactly filled with Facebook junkies.

However, that has not stopped me from liking my own writings no matter where they are published. If I see a LIKE button on something I wrote, whether on my own websites, or the websites of clients that I write for, I click it.

I can’t help but wonder how many other writers are clicking to Like what they write either. In the end, does this undermine the whole system?