So you’ve read The Quick and Dirty Guide to Landing Freelance Writing Jobs, Part 1 and you are poised to get started. You have your website up, your unique selling proposition showcased and even your great aunt Myrtle knows that you are looking for freelance writing work.

You’re prepared like Rocky. The championship next great gig is about to come rolling into your inbox, right?

Not quite yet. Now it’s time to do the legwork. Here is a list of the way that freelance writers get jobs. Warning: it’s so big I had to divide it up into two posts. We freelance writers are a diverse lot.

Blind query

These jobs are posted on Craigslist, FreelanceWritingJobs, the ProBlogger Job Board, AllFreelanceWriting, and a godzillion more places on the internet. It seems like new freelance writing job boards pop up every day, so go into blind querying with open eyes.

When blind querying, the key is reading the ad carefully, researching the editor or company if at all possible, and then writing a query that expressly states why your expertise makes you a good fit for the job. If that sounds daunting, be sure to check out my “Freelance Writer’s Guide to Writing Proposal Letters” and its companion “Audience Edition.”

Keep in mind that while blind queries can lead to some awesome jobs, and sometimes, especially at first, they are one of the only ways to start building your business, often times blind querying is not the best way to go about getting a freelance writing job. First, blind querying can take quite a bit of time. For instance, I have RSS feeds set up to help me find writing jobs and these things overflow every day. Just sorting through them takes hours, and if I let them go for a few days… Forget about it.

By the time you’ve found a job (or more likely, many jobs) that sound right for you, you then have to spend time querying. And let me tell you, writing a good query is an art form. While you can use a template, if you fail to personalize it, you might as well not even send it. To a serious client a generic proposal smells like week-old sushi shoved behind a bookshelf. (Just keep that image in mind next time you are tempted to forego personalization when applying for a job.)

Important note: After you’ve been sorting through freelance writing job ads for awhile, you’ll notice buzzwords like “write for exposure” and “good job for a college student.” These phrases are usually synonyms with “we’re going to pay you peanuts, if at all.” See this list for a smattering of dastardly freelance writing job ad code words.

Specialize & Build a Platform

Remember how, in The Quick and Dirty Guide to Landing Freelance Writing Jobs, Part 1, I said that we would get back to the whole “pick a specialty” thing? Well, we’re here. Specialists have an easier time of it than generalists for a couple of reasons: they already know a lot about their subject so they can spend less time searching out clients and more time billing, and their target audience is smaller so they find marketing their services easier.

Imagine this scenario. You are at a networking event and a kindly potential client asks you what you do. You have two options:

Option A: I’m a writer. I writer things. All sorts of things, really.

Option B: I’m a corporate blogger. I write blog posts that allow companies to attract attention on the internet and engage more fully with their customers.

This kindly potential client might be the head of marketing for a multinational corporation, and they might be looking for a blogger. If so, then you and your Option B answer have piqued his interest. Alternatively, this potential client may also know someone looking for a press release writer, a copywriter and a grant writer, but because you went with vague Option A, perhaps he didn’t put two and two together and you just missed a valuable connection.

Specificity is rewarded. If you bill yourself as a relationships blogger, you may not get the next science writing gig that comes along. But if you build your platform sturdily enough, people will remember you as “the relationship blogger” and keep you in mind next time they need your services.