Do you ever apply for unusual writing jobs?

Posted by Allison on Nov 18, 2009 in Finding online writing gigs |

I did today. Let’s face it, most of the writing jobs you find online tend to fall into the same groups over and over again. It’s not often you see a job asking for quizzes, so I applied.

Now actually I have written a handful of quizzes before, so I did have something of a track record to help me with my application. I haven’t heard anything back yet but it is early days and who knows, I might not hear back at all.

Have you signed up for any unusual writing contracts lately?

But the point of this post is to encourage you to think outside your usual box a bit when you are looking for writing jobs. I’m always saying how important it is to look for new writing jobs all the time, even when you have lots of clients lined up and plenty of work on the go. You just never know when one of them might disappear, or something might crop up and a job finishes sooner than you thought it might.

But there is another advantage to applying for unusual online writing jobs. It gets you out of that habit of thinking along the same old lines all the time. My main focus for writing is SEO articles, short articles and web pages, and blog posts. I also write eBooks from time to time and I tackle the odd press release every now and then as well. But that doesn’t mean I won’t look for anything else when I am searching for fresh sources of work.

There is a fine line to tread here though with regard to experience. For example I won’t touch academic writing or medical writing. So even if I come across a job ad that requires an SEO writer, if it is for academic or medical writing I’ll leave it for other writers to have a go at.

So you see the trick is to push the boundaries of what you are good and and what you know, without actually pushing them so far that you end up taking a job for something you haven’t a clue about. It can be tricky striking a balance but as you get more experienced with this idea you will push those boundaries back further and further, and you will find even more writing jobs that you can confidently apply for.

So today, when you start looking for new jobs (you are going to, aren’t you?) try going beyond what you would look for normally. You might just get some results that push your writing career forward to the next level. Let me know how you get on.