Yes, I am an American living in Europe and want to be hired full time legitimately by an established company. I am a very competent writer and have samples to share. Does anyone know how to find actual businesses that are hiring writers?
Where in Europe are you. I have no knowledge of writers, and firms that hire them, but if in you are UK perhaps search on internet for specialist recruitment agencies.
Why don't you you to freelance sites. Here are the lists you may visit http://www.elance.com/ http://www.governmentbids.com/cgi/en/index.prep http://www.adveres.com/ http://cgilance.com/main.html http://www.coswap.com/ http://www.designquote.net/ http://www.codelance.com/ http://www.developreneurs.com/ http://aquent.us/home/index.htm http://www.freelanceauction.com/ http://www.freelanceauctionnetwork.com/ http://www.getafreelancer.com/ http://www.guru.com/emp/index.aspx http://www.hirecoders.com/ http://www.ifreelance.com/ http://www.noagenciesplease.com/ http://www.freelancedirectory.org/ http://www.outsourcetoday.net/ http://www.php-freelancers.com/ http://www.freelancesuccess.com/ http://www.freelancefree.com/ http://www.freelancewriting.com/ http://www.freelance.com http://www.freelancewebprojects.com/ http://freelanceseek.com/ http://www.devbistro.com/index.jsp http://rfq.programmingbids.com/ http://www.project4hire.com/ http://www.rentacoder.com/RentACoder/DotNet/Default.aspx http://www.scriptlance.com/ http://www.ework.com/
I am not sure of the legitimacy (which is why I didn't apply )of the poster. However, I saw a post on wickedfire forum where a guy was employing full time blog posters for $3000.p.o. Chk the "buy and sell" section on that forum and you can get more information over there. You may want to scroll backwords to hunt that thread, as the post was made few days back.
Hi, By all means try the freelancer sites but you'll be competing heavily on price and often buyers are looking for bargains. I'd recommend you start with the publishers. After that look at the specialist news sector sites covering specific industry sectors. Write to them, show them your samples and see what you get back. Best of luck with your search
I'm not sure if you want an office job. But if you want a full-time job working at home, eLance and oDesk are some of the sites you could look for work. If you want an office job, I suggest you look into local classifieds be it newspapers or websites. At least they're more specific to the location of the work you're after. Aside from that, more established companies still prefer to put up job postings on newspapers and established classifieds sites. I hope that helps.
Online is the ultimate best place for novice writer to begin. Try it online first before going reality and you might just fall in love with it.
There is quite a bit of competition on the freelance sites, and lots of writers who are prepared to write for very little money. Set your rates, and when you bid for work, sell yourself, and clearly show why you're worth what you're charging. Otherwise you may find it hard to compete with people writing for $3-5 per article. I have an honors degree and many years of experience in my niche, I only ever write on subjects relating to my niche, and I get plenty of work charging $15-25 per 500-800 word article. So, it can be done. Good luck!
Visit www.freelancewritinggigs.com - Deb Ng recently posted a list of 50 places hiring writers (good for newer writers) and then later posted some higher paying markets that would be easier for more established writers to get into.
You didn't mention your language skills. If you can offer your services as a translator/writer you might find a good deal of work; particularly if you can do technical writing or web content writing.
@Awundrin, In addition to the good advice here, I'd say it's important to assess your skills and specialties as a writer before picking sites to approach about your work. What do you want to specialize in? Answer that question and you're well on your way--you can rule out the sites your specialties don't match and save a lot of time. I know a lot of people who don't recognize their basic expertise or skill sets until you point them out. "Hey, you're a single parent, why not write about single parenting issues?" My favorite example of this comes from my own life. I spent almost 14 years writing about finance, travel, medicine and insurance topics. Because I was doing it for Air Force Television News instead of writing articles for print and the web, I never gave those topics so much as a look until I was hired to do a series combining military issues and finance. Then it dawned on me that I had plenty of expertise in those areas. Chances are, as a new writer you have some "a-hah!" moments waiting for you like that...take a long look at your skill sets and you'll start to see where you can pitch your writing and how. Joe
Writing is sometimes boring, though that doesn't happen often. But I personally prefer writing as freelance job.