First off, there is no right or wrong way to land a freelance writing job. Second, this may or may not work for you. Third, I may not have done it this way if I knew now what I knew then. And fourth, that would have been a shame because my very first client is still a periodic client and holds a special place in my little ink stained heart.

I was employed full time when I decided to try the freelancing thing. At the time I considered myself a fiction writer. I’d had a short story nominated for the Pushcart and imagined myself toiling away by day and writing the Great American Novel by night. My corporate writing and editing experience at the time included technical writing, and all kinds of marketing and web site content generation for several different companies. I had also written for my college newspaper. (Hey, every little bit of experience counts.) I say all this because by no means did I have 15 years of copywriting experience before I hung out my shingle.

At about the same time I was contemplating freelance writing, a friend of mine emailed me. She had graduated from college and didn’t want her web design skills to go rusty before she went to med school. She actually offered to build my former website for free. Yes, I realize how lucky I am. A future doctor built my website. Gratis. (Thank you so much, Lily. I will truly always love you.) That said, by the time I was applying for jobs, my portfolio on the site was nowhere near complete. This is a big no no when it comes to professionalism, and something I wouldn’t do again. I wanted pocket change at the time – don’t judge me!

Moving on, I had been talking to a friend of mine who happens to be a recruiter. She knew I wanted a writing job so she suggested some freelance writing bid sites (more on bid sites at a later date). I made an account over at Bizreef, choosing the site, frankly, because I wasn’t sure enough about the venture to spend all that money on the crazy tests and flaming hoops a writer has to jump through over at eLance. (I still never have and I still get tons of work.) Literally the next day I bid on a project and got it. The bidder – my first client! – was new to hiring freelancers and so we muddled through it together. Luckily I worked in an office where someone just happened to be a paralegal, and she helped me choose a Freelance Agreement with simple wording. The client signed it, gave me the job, I did it in the next couple of days, and that was that. First freelance writing job.

So as you can see, my first freelance experience was a combination of networking, paying a small fee for the privilege of applying for the job (oh, bid sites), getting extraordinarily lucky with web design and legal advice, and just generally muddling through with absolutely no sense that in a very short time freelance writing would be my main business. I was basically the Candide of freelance writers.

I’ve been doing this full-time for a little over a year now, and I still have much to learn about the process. I’ve made my share of mistakes down the road, and sometimes I feel like it’s a lucky fluke that I got any jobs to begin with. Most of the time though, I know I get freelancing gigs because I query every day, market myself, tell everybody I know that I write for money, and I – and this is of primary importance – am a good writer. (I have no bigger pet peeve than reading freelance writing blogs and seeing comments like “I wants to get in2 freelancing. Wut do I do?” But that is a topic for another day.)

So how about you guys? I would love to find out how you landed your first freelancing gig. Let me know in the comments.

More Resources for New Freelance Writers:

The Freelance Writer’s Guide to Writing Proposal Letters

The Freelance Writer’s Guide to Writing Proposal Letters: Audience Edition

Spy vs. Spy: Freelance Writing Codewords