The ups and downs of freelance

One of the things that has always attracted me about a career in writing and/or editing is the freedom it gives you to choose your own hours and workplace. What could be better than working at home in your pajamas?

However, I'm not quite as excited about the prospect of doing freelance work as I once was. It would just be so much easier to have a 9–5 job where I showed up every day, did my work, and then went home. Freelance work requires a lot more patience and motivation—you have to actually abide by the hours you set, and a lot of the time (at least for beginners like me) you have to risk not being paid much for awhile in order to work your way up. I have a very hard time getting myself to do something if I don't know exactly what's in it for me—this is the biggest reason why I want a stable, full-time job.

Unfortunately, the search for a full-time job has been a bit of waste of time to say the least, so I have been putting forth more of an effort to find freelance work. And believe me, it's not a whole lot better than searching for a "real" job.

However, I did make a few breakthroughs during the month of November. I applied for a copywriter position in Provo and, typically, was their second choice, so they decided to keep me on as a freelancer. I've only done one project so far, and I'm starting to doubt that I'll get another one because it's been a few weeks, but it was exciting to negotiate a pay rate that was worthy of someone with a degree.

In addition, I also found a job as a writer at Examiner.com. I found several websites that hire freelance writers, and Examiner.com was the most popular one for the search engines. I was flipping through the openings in the religion section, and was delighted to find one entitled "Narnia, Hobbits, and Christianity," which is basically what my senior capstone class at BYU was all about. I never dreamed that I would ever actually make a profit off what I learned in that class, but it seemed like I had found a possibility. So I applied, submitted one of my analysis papers from the class, and waited.

A few weeks later, I got an email from Examiner.com saying that they wanted me to be the "Christian Speculative Fiction Examiner" for the Provo area. While a little sad that I wouldn't be writing about Narnia and hobbits all the time, I was pretty excited to get such a long job title. It makes it sound a lot more important than it really is. I've spent the last few days figuring out how the system works, and I think I am going to give it a try.

Here is where you all come in: most of the money I can make is generated from traffic, session length, and publishing frequency. So while I still have no idea how much money I could actually make off of this little column, I decided to try it out because (1) I need something to do, and (2) I am running out of money. It's time to take desperate measures. And, if any of you would like to write about your area of expertise on Examiner.com, there is a referral program and I get 50 bucks for each person I bring along . . .

So, the URL to my page is http://www.examiner.com/christian-speculative-fiction-1-in-salt-lake-city/angela-carter. Really long, I know, so thank goodness for the copy-and-paste function. This is very much an experiment and if anyone has any questions or suggestions, I would greatly appreciate any help I can get.

I apologize in advance if you get sick of reading my stuff. :) And to prove my sincerity, I am going to log off now and do something that doesn't involve thinking or begging. Farewell.