How to apply to writing jobs and actually get them

If you don't value your talent, no one else will - regardless of feedback.

 

After about a year of hiring writers, here's what I look for:

1. An individual bid. If you tell me about your company or where you went to University, I'll yawn and bin you. I didn't ask for a company/personal profile - I asked for a contract bid.
2. Inclusion of any key phrases or information requested. And not just pasted in at the top.
3. A non-template bid. The only way I'll read a template bid is if it's introduced as such (i.e. follows the actual bid text and is preceded by "In case you're interested, here's the usual junk I tell everyone:").
4. A message that doesn't make me wish you'd STFU about how wonderful you are. I bin those instantly. Hell, I bin bids from people whose freelance names include buzzwords (or "wordsmith"... Gods, I hate that).
5. A bid that is funny, clever, different or totally demented. I once gave the highest-paying contract I had to someone who didn't even explain why he was a great choice or ask for the job. His text was totally abstract, utterly bizarre and completely hilarious. Best hire ever! (Site gets about 20k uniques a month without any updates or anything... awesome.)
6. A bid that includes the possibility of negotiation and flexibility, whether it's on price, deadlines or anything else.
7. A bid that includes questions. Anyone who asks something simple like "Hey, you said this was about [insert subject]... so is that in [this way] or [that way]?" gets read several times. Bids that offer ideas or indicate the person has thought about the work move quickly up my list.
8. Personality.
9. Honesty. I've hired more people who have said "I'm not completely sure but I'll give it my damndest" than I have people who say they can do anything.

The biggest negatives, in my opinion, are dishonesty, claiming to be capable of "writing about any subject" (ooh, your research must be pathetic) and the big killer... claiming to write "perfect English". That last one gets an instant refusal. No one writes perfect English and anyone who claims they do simply doesn't understand how many versions of English there are!


@Senobia: the FAQ page on your site has some messed-up colours, milady. On my screen it's showing yellow on mauve text, on a black background. Zoinks!

 

"Dear Sir" is gender specific and rather insulting to boot. It assumes that this person in authority who you wish to work for must be a man. If you approach a high level female with that...it might not go over very well.

 

Dark yellow on black should be correct, yep - sitewide. I didn't use mauve anywhere and I'm not seeing it myself. The whole setup has been having issues this week, tho. *sigh* I appreciate you!

 

I didnt know you had a site going Considering you were the only writer that I have ever worked with that did a truly amazing job, it is great to see you with your own site.

Congrats

 

Thank you kindly. It was my pleasure.

 

I had not understood it in that context.
Thought they were saying that you should never write that at all.

 

Maybe it's just a Chrome thing. Or maybe it's because it's a Yolo "We don't know what we're doing" site. I had one of those once and their site builder killed more brain cells than I got visitors.

Incidentally, the "Dear Sir or Madam" thing is also really outdated. Yes, it sounds respectful but it's also oddly out of place on the Internet. "Hi" or "Hello" work a lot better... oh, and for non-native English writers, please avoid putting "dear" in front of anything else: it's quite disturbing to receive emails saying "Hello dear TIEro". Seriously. It makes you sound more like a stalker than a freelancer!

 

Most of clients on those websites are looking for freelancers with good feedback and experiences so a good freelancers get invited or have private jobs without applying or bidding .

 

But you're being 'invited' by people looking to pay $5 for a gig. Personally, I don't want those kinds of invites.

 

i'm talking about websites such Elance or odesk where some writers make thousands of dollars each month from invitations to jobs they receive.

 

Ah, ok.

 

I would suggest being careful about picking out which ads you want to apply to. I have heard from newbie writers who tell me they have applied for everything and they end up spending more time haggling with the wrong clients than writing informative inquiries to the right ones. It was a problem that I had in the beginning myself, when I was willing to do literally anything to up my reputation to eventually improve my rates.

When you are reading the ad, ask yourself about the language used by the poster. Do they seem especially demanding? Are they asking for a lot and suggesting they might not be able to make up for it in budget? Are they saying they will send 'daily work' and need someone who is on at all hours of the night to talk to?

These are the kind of people I have learned not to work for. Which means not wasting my time writing them, and instead focusing on spending more time crafting messages to the ones I do want to work for.

The good news is that over time, you tend to get better about your approach. When you aren't wasting hours on stock messages to people who aren't a good fit, you start to figure out the line between too little information/personality and too much information/personality. Once you have the perfect mix down, you're golden!

 

I don't think you should write it at all. The number 1 reason I hate it is because I'm female and the number 2 reason I hate it is because 99% of the time I know that what follows the introduction is going to be a load of rubbish. The amount of emails I have received that say "Dear Sir, you must pick me. I am Ezine Articles expert author which is highest level" are unreal. Nothing makes me hit the delete button faster. And on a side note - you will never stand out when you start a message like this.

In addition no native English writer starts an email with "Dear" any more... or at least none that I've heard from in the last three years so it's the first indication that the writer is foreign. Now I'm not necessarily saying foreign writers are a bad thing, I work with too many to say that, however it is a dead give away and when I'm looking for a native English writer I ain't gonna be swayed by anyone else, no matter how many articles you have published on the holy grail of article directories, which by the way almost anyone can get articles accepted on but that's another story.

So yeah - if you want to apply for an article writing job and want a chance of getting it, start your message with a "Hello", "Hi" or "Hey" - I bet your success rate increases.