Job banks, publishing marketplaces
Where to find writing and editing jobs, gigs, clients, marketplaces
Job banks, job boards, and publishing marketplaces
More ledes for job, gig, and career hunters and for freelance writers and editors
Internships: Paid or unpaid?
Unemployment insurance
Content mills (sweat shops for writers)
Freelancer directories
Mastheads of magazines, newspapers, and other publications
Aptitude and other testing services
How to ask and answer questions on job interviews
Résumés, CVs, and alternatives
Freelancing, contracting, telecommuting (on its own page)
How much to charge
(range of reported rates for various types
of function and types of products)
For editors and publishing professionals
Where to find work (for editors and publishing professionals)
Tips on marketing your editing, and proofreading services
Many organizations for writers, editors, journalists, indexers, and other service providers have their own job banks and referral services, generally for use only by members and potential employers, service purchasers, or licensees of rights. Remember that when you are looking to hire someone, and check out relevant listings for specialty organizations.
As for figuring out how much to charge, remember the all-important questions (and this doesn't generally apply to writing magazine articles, for which the pay these days is totally inadequate):
How long will a writing job take (the hardest thing to learn how to estimate realistically)?
How much is your time worth?
How high a fee or price will the market for that product bear (in a local market or an industry market)?
How eager are you for the work--or how willing to walk away from a job or project?
For other resources, check Local and Regional Organizations. Networking with a local group may be one of the best ways to find jobs and outlets for your writing and editing.
Internships, paid or unpaid?
•Why Paid Internships Matter (Laura Rowley, HuffPost, 1-8-13). Main point: "[U]npaid internships add to the widening gap between the wealthy and the rest of America -- leaving talented middle-class students to flip burgers or babysit (if they can even find those jobs) while their well-heeled peers make important advances into the work world." If "unpaid internships are auditions for jobs," add them "to the exclusive array of privileges -- SAT tutors, Mandarin lessons, overseas service trips -- that upper-class students already enjoy." Rowley wrote this in response to another interesting essay on the subject, by Steve Cohen.
•Minimum Wage for Interns? It Misses the Point (Steve Cohen, WSJ, 1-7-13). "Yes, I did unpaid grunt work. But guess what: It was also an invaluable experience....An internship isn't a substitute for minimum-wage work. It is an audition.....Changing internships from the exposure-audition model to a minimum-wage model may serve labor activists, but it won't serve ambitious college students or the companies seeking them."
• Unpaid internships 'should be banned to build diversity in publishing' (Alison Flood, The Guardian, 7-9-15) Novelist Kerry Hudson is setting out ‘a provocation’ calling for wholesale change to encourage and reflect broader spectrum of voices. The industry’s predilection for unpaid internships excludes those unable to afford working for free. Spread the Word’s recent Writing the Future report found that only 11% of publishing house respondents had recruitment ties with non-Oxbridge universities. Publishing should commit to a living wage for entry-level publishing positions, in order to “create a workforce which is able to relate to, and champion, more diverse voices, thus making them more visible.”
• What an Internship in a Publishing House Is Really Like (and How to Get One) (Jodie R Reed, FalWriting, 11-18-17) Publishing houses (annoyingly) don’t typically advertise internships so your best bet is to check their websites and/or contact them directly.
• How I Got An Editorial Internship at a Publishing House with No Experience (Malin Curry, Blank Page, 1-26-21) Understanding internships in the publishing industry and the things you’ll need to get one
• How to Find a Publishing Internship (Ariel Curry, 12-28-11)
• My Experience as a Literary Intern: A Guide to a Career in Book Publishing (Elise Tecco, Klio, 4-22-21)
• PublishersLunch Job Board
Job Banks and Publishing Marketplace
• ACES Jobs board (American Copy Editors Society, freelance and staff copyediting jobs for ACES members and others)
• Amazon Mechanical Turk "Access a global, on-demand, 24x7 workforce." But see I Found Work on an Amazon Website. I Made 97 Cents an Hour. (Andy Newman, NY Times, 11-15-19) Inside the weird, wild, low-wage world of Mechanical Turk. On Mechanical Turk — named for a chess-playing “machine” from the 18th century that concealed a living chess master — scores of thousands of humans earn pennies or dollars doing tasks that computers cannot yet easily do.
• American Medical Writers Association (AMWA), paid ad listings available to AMWA's 5,600 members
• Aquarius.net (online marketplace for translation and localization projects--for translators, interpreters, subtitlers, multilingual copywriters, localization engineers, and multilingual DPT specialists)
• Aquent (agency for marketers and designers)
• Artisan Creative, a creative staffing agency that places talent of many kinds (after screening for actual talent): writers, coders, designers (print and graphic design, Web, broadcast design, production, UI interaction, etc.), social media strategist, Drupal theme developers, and many other freelance specialties. See Open Jobs list.
• ASBPE job bank (American Society of Business Publications Editors)
ASJA Freelance Writer Search (not easy to qualify to join American Society of Journalists & Authors)
• Association of American University Presses (AAUP) jobs list (a career and human resources service for nonprofit scholarly publishers)
• Association of Health Care Journalists (AHCJ) job postings
• Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP,career placement for members only)
• BBC Vacancies search and apply
• BiblioCrunch (a literary services marketplace and platform that matches indie authors with publishing professionals -- a community of rated and reviewed publishers, authors, designers, editors, proofreaders, conversion specialists, marketers, app developers and enhanced eBook experts).
• Blogging Pro job board for freelance bloggers
• Bookjobs.com (jobs and internships in book publishing)
• CareerOneStop (basic jobseeker tools, U.S.Dept of Labor)
• CE-L directory (Copyediting-L)
• ClearVoice,
• Cloudpeeps
• Communications Roundtable (PR, marketing, advertising, and communications professionals
• Contently
• Copify
• Copyediting-L (CE-L) Scroll down for list of freelance copyeditors.
• Council of Science Editors job bank
• Craigslist media jobs
• Creative Hotlist
• Dice.com (tech jobs)
• Duotrope (this subscription-based service for writers and artists offers an extensive, searchable database of current fiction, poetry, nonfiction, and visual art markets, a calendar of upcoming deadlines, a personal submissions tracker, and useful statistics about the publishers and agents they list)
• E/byline
• Editor & Publisher (jobs page for E&P, which publishes newspaper industry news)
• Editorial Freelancers Association (EFA) Job List (where you list job specs and editors get in touch with you) and EFA directory
• Ed2010 (young magazine editors share job and other info)
• Elance (here companies can outsource to vastly underpaid freelance professionals) Merged with Odesk.
• eLearning Guild Job Board (for eLearning professionals)
• Finding Work (KOK Edit's excellent Knowledge Base, geared to editors and with descriptions of jobs boards)
• Fivver (for the lean entrepreneur--hiring firm doesn't want to pay much--"starting at $5)
• FlexJobs . This links to "Writing remote, part-time, freelance, and flexible jobs."
• Foundation Center's Job Bulletin (sign up for weekly summary of recent job postings in Philanthropy News Digest)
• FreelanceDaily.net and Freelancedaily.net FAQ. Subscription $97 a year, but there is a free one-week trial to see if it suits your needs. Posts job leads 5 days a week. compiled listings from craigslist and other job boards.
• Freelancer.com (outsourcing for small businesses)
• FreelanceSwitch Job Board (design, development, writing, illustration, Flash, and miscellaneous jobs)
• Freelance Writers Den
• Freelance Writers Search (ASJA) , formerly Dial-a-Writer
• Freelance Writing Jobs, (FWJ, relistings of writing gigs, comments from the site's fairly active community).
• Freelance Writing jobs page
• Freelance-Zone.com (freelance jobs, resources page)
• FreshWebJobs (FWJ, a job board for Web pros)
• Glassdoor ("an inside look at jobs & companies). If you are job-hunting, you may appreciate this free inside look at jobs and companies (with salary info, company reviews, and interview questions — all posted anonymously by employees. Here, for example, are employee reviews of Author Solutions. The HR Capitalists writes, Is Glassdoor Going the Way of Yelp? (allowing negatively reviewed companies to change the review). The "pros" and "cons" formats of the reviews offers helpful insights into companies. You can search under a category, such as reviews of book publishing companies.
• Gorkana Alert (job opportunities in journalism and/or PR)
• GovLoop (government jobs)
• Guru.com (find, hire, and manage affordable freelancers--and, freelancers, you know what that means!)
• The Hittlist (formerly Jobslist -- Emma Hitt's free subscription email sent out weekly (usually on Tuesday morning) with info about science/medical writing/editing jobs, both staff and freelance)
• Hubstaff Talent ( free new resource for companies looking to find remote talent across the globe)
• IABC Job Centre (International Association of Business Communicators--new jobs fewer than 7 days old available only to IABC members)
• Indeed, as reviewed on this interesting review site (Viewpoints): PROS:easy to use interface (7), pulls job postings from all websites (6), minimal advertising (5), good overview of jobs in a location(3), one stop job shopping (1). CONS: sometimes unreliable results (5), inconvenient (2), repeat job postings even if job is filled (2), jobs lie about salary (1).
• IRE and NICAR job listings (Investigative Reporters and Editors and the National Institute for Computer-Assisted Reporting)
• Jobs for Writers (Poets&Writers job listings)
• Journajobs.eu
• JobsCoop -- Nonprofit Jobs Cooperative (a one-stop source for job seekers searching for nonprofit jobs, and for employers to easily publish job opportunities within specific regions)
• Jooble (an international job posting search engine, an international job aggregator that operates in 65 countries, collecting postings from other job sites, headquartered in Ukraine)
• Journalism.co.uk
• JournalismJobs.com (Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism site, geared to West coast)
• Journalism.net's Journalism Jobs
• The Journalism Shop (former Los Angeles Times staffers for hire)
• Krop (job board and career resource website for creative professionals -- design, Web, general creative)
• The Ladders (executive jobs)
• Ladies Who Launch (Vendor Matching Service in Partnership with Resource Nation For Women in Small Business)
• LinkedIn ProFinder: The Match.com of Freelance Job Sites? (Mighty Marketer's fairly negative review). See another here: Is LinkedIn ProFinder Worth the Expense? (Marcia Layton Turner, Association of Ghostwriters, 10-10-19) "Ultimately, it looks like LinkedIn ProFinder has a long way to go before it offers genuine value to creative professionals like ghostwriters. The platform itself still has logistical problems.
• Mashable's Job Bank (digital and tech jobs)
• MPA Job Bank (Association of Magazine Media)
• Media Bistro job listings. (type "freelance" in search box) , jobs and recruiting for media professionals in journalism, online content, book publishing, TV, radio, PR, graphic design, photography, and advertising. Lots of competition .
• Media Job Pod (job search advice for multimedia journalists and production majors)
• MediaMatch jobs board ("your daily link with the tv and film industry")
• MinOnline (media and publishing jobs)
• Miscellaneous journalism job sites (SPJ, Journalist's Toolbox)
• Monster Board (huge jobs database searchable by location, job category, or keyword)
• The Monster List of Freelance Job Sites (Freelance Switch, 2011 Edition, seems not to be available now)
• Morning Coffee (updated freelance writing jobs in newsletter issued on Tuesdays)
• M Squared (a headhunter)
• National Association of Science Writers (NAWS) , jobs list goes to members who subscribe
• NatureJobs.com (recruiting for science jobs--search on "writer" or "editor," etc.)
• Ned Lundquist's Job of the Week (JOTW, jobs for communications professionals)
• NewsJobs.net (links to other job sites, including large publishers' sites)
• News Nerd Jobs (Code Out Loud). The news business needs people who can code in the public interest and build the digital news products of tomorrow
• nSight (Boston-based temp service and headhunter for editorial professionals)
• oDesk. Online work teams, particularly popular in Silicon Valley. Remote staffing for long-term work -- employers hire, manage, and pay a distributed team as if everyone were in their office. Merged with elance.
• PeoplePerHour (buy and sell freelance services)
• Poynter job search
• ProBlogger Job Board (for bloggers)
• ProFinder aka LinkedIn ProFinder. See Thinking About Trying LinkedIn ProFinder? Check Out These Findings (Elaine Pofeldt, Forbes, 9-20-17)
• Programmer Meet Designer (a site for programmers,web developers,designers, entrepreneurs and writers to find each other and work together to create websites that look and function great)
• PR Talent (fulltime and freelance communications work)
• Publishing Professionals Network job opening (formerly BookBuilders West)
• Reedsy ("where authors meet the best publishing professonals"). See Self-publishing’s rise has led to a boom in freelance editing services where Simon Owens writes about "Reedsy, an online marketplace that vets freelance editors and designers prior to allowing them to advertise their services on the platform. 'We received over 6,000 applications — people who filled out profiles on Reedsy...And a lot of the worst ones, they sent us emails after their submissions saying, 'Am I accepted on Reedsy, when can I find authors on Reedsy?" Out of 6,000 applications, we’ve only selected 300 (5%).'"
See Reedsy and the Copyeditor, Part 1: How Much Does It Pay? (Erin Brenner, Copyediting, 4-22-16);Reedsy and the Copyeditor, Part 2: Are Its Rates Reasonable? (5-16-16); and Reedsy and the Copyeditor, Part 3: Should You Work for Reedsy? (5-13-16). When you take a job through Reedsy, you are paid by • Stripe, which pays Reedsy's 20% share directly to Reedsy and your share to you.
• Retired Brains (retirement work)
• Scripted (a content writing technology company with a network of thousands of writers). Reviewed by Alexandra Romanov (ghostwriting, no byline, work on your special topics -- "one of the greatest formats for applications on the Internet," great dashboard with deadlines, etc., kill fees 50%, fees average $30 to $45 for 350-500 words, payment weekly) and Alex Mouravsky (Scripted and the Continuing Death of Good Writing: what kind of writer are you getting at $0.14 per word? pathetic white papers? "This is one of the tragedies of Scripted and it’s ilk: the devaluation of content, even as content moves more and more to the forefront of the web."
• Skyword
• STC Job Bank (Society for Technical Communication)
• Student Freelance
• Simply Hired (job board aggregator)
• SPi Global (outsources work associated with providing digital content and managing customer relationships)
• SPJ job bank (Society of Professional Journalists)
• STC Job Bank (job listings for technical communicators)
• Sunoasis Jobs
• Talent Market (promotes "liberty by providing talent for critical roles within the free-market nonprofit sector")
• Textbroker (providing custom content)
• Threads An active and popular site; log in with your Instagram account.
• Thumbtack (you pay a $35 fee when you see a gig you want to apply for).
• Top 30 Job Sites for Careers in Broadcast Journalism (Molly Canfield, Journalism Journeyman 6-14-11)
• Twago
• Twitter Job Finder (Journal Crunch)
• Upwork (very low $) In 2013 Elance (1998) and oDesk (2003) merged to become Upwork, which gets 20% of what you earn from any client they connect you with. Be careful about sharing personal information, as "bad actors" try to use the Upwork platform to commit fraud. See Upwork Pros and Cons for Freelancers (Diana Kelly Levey)
• USAJobs (one-stop site for all federal U.S jobs and employment information)
• Washington Book Publishers job resources
• We Work Remotely
• Writer Access (very low $)
• Writer's Market (available in many public libraries, and somewhat useful to people looking to sell magazine articles). There are many magazines it doesn't cover, and it doesn't cover trade or state or local magazines, which often pay better than The Atlantic, etc., and are easier to break into.
• Writing for Dollars (don't now how useful this is)
• XPlace (freelancers pay monthly fee but no commission)
• Zerys
• ZipRecruiter (free job search app)
• 31 of the Best Freelance Writing Sites (Jackie Rapetti, Writing Tips Oasis)
• 11 Best Websites to Find Freelance Jobs and Make Extra Money (Anna Johansson, Entrepreneur, 2-1-19) Info about Upwork, Toptal, Freelancer, Craigslist, Guru, 99designs, Peopleperhour, Freelance Writing Gigs, Fiverr, College Recruiter, and Kolabtree.
• Top 15 Best Freelance Websites to Find Jobs (2019) (Matt Moran, Remotely Working, 10-17-19) Comments about Upwork, Toptal, SimplyHired, Freelancer, Craigslist, Guru,99designs, Peopleperhour, Freelance Writing Gigs, Problogger Jobs Board, Fiverr, College Recruiter, Stack Overflow Jobs, Indeed, and Project4Hire.
• 71 Great Websites to Find Freelance Jobs (Heaven Stubblefield, FreshBooks, 10-19-15)
Résumés, CVs, and alternatives
• Want An Unbeatable Resume? Read These Tips From A Top Recruiter (Kerry Hannon, Forbes, 8-24-11) "It has to be simple. No more than two pages. The average résumé gets read in 10 seconds. Be sure the content is on a level any high school senior could understand." Prepare it in a simple Word format that can easily be viewed on most computers. Not a table format or template. Use reverse chronological order.
• REZ-oo-may or RAY-zoo-may? Resume, resumé, or résumé? (Grammarphobia blog, 1-14-15) In Britain and France, a “résumé” is a summary while a list of accomplishments is a “curriculum vitae.” We think the time has come for “résumé” to be naturalized as “resume,” says Grammarphobia. (Frankly, though, I read those as two different words.)
• CV vs. Resume: The Difference and When to Use Which (The Undercover Recruiter, 2-10-17) A resume is a brief summary of your skills and experience over one or two pages, a CV (Curriculum Vitæ) is more detailed and can stretch well beyond two pages. See also What Recruiters Really Want to See on Your CV (Indiana Logan)
• Resumes suck. Here’s the data. (Aline Lerner, 11-10-14)
• The 7 secrets of successful CVs (Ian Harrison, CV Library, 6-2-17)
• The secret to writing your CV (Marc Lockley, The Guardian, 10-4-11) Careful research into the firm you want to work for and a CV tailored to each application is far better than a generic approach. The words curriculum vitae mean "course of life," but don't take that literally. Employers are not interested in your journey so far, more whether you can do the job required and fit into their organisation.
• How to Craft a Winning Résumé (Science) Links to many articles, from the positive How to Write a Winning Résumé by Peter Fiske (10-18-96) The most common mistake that science-trained individuals make in their job search is submitting a resumé that looks too much like a CV." to the negative: Regrettable Resumes (Adam Ruben, 1-25-13) A reality check.
• How to Write a Great Resume: The Definitive Guide (Raw Resume)
• Top 10 Resume Writing Tips for 2018 (Ali Hale, DailyWritingTips)
• 43 Resume Tips That Will Help You Get Hired (Erin Greenawald, The Muse)
• How to Write a Great Resume: The Definitive Guide (Dale Cudmore's helpful website)
• 6 Universal Rules for Resume Writing (Indeed Resume) plus 139 Action Verbs to Make Your Resume Stand Out
• 44 Resume Writing Tips (Daniel Scocco, Daily Writing Tips, 5-19-08)
• What Your Resume Should Look Like in 2018 (Kristen Bahler, Money, Time.com, 1-2-18) Resume design matters--download a template.•
• This Resume Alternative Could Land You Your Dream Job Tracey Wallace, Mashable, 12-28-13)
• 5 Alternatives to a Traditional Resume Format
How to ask and answer questions on job interviews
• Pro Tips on How to Nail the Interview (HuffPost)
• How To Answer ‘Why Should We Hire You?’ (Liz Ryan, Forbes, 1-6-16)
• 3 impressive questions you should ask at the very beginning of the job interview (Jacquelyn Smith, Business Insider, 6-28-16) 'How did this position develop?' is a good conversation starter.
• 10 of The Hardest Interview Questions & How to Answer Them (The Undercover Recruiter)
• An Effective Way to Answer the Interview Question “What Is Your Biggest Weakness?” (MBA@UNC Staff, Kenen-Flagler Business School, UNC, 3-2-16)
• 10 Toughest Job Interview Questions — And How to Answer Successfully (Jillian Kramer, Glassdoor, 8-10-18) #1: If your current employer had an anniversary party for you, what five words would be written on the cake to describe you? #5: 5. Sell me on one idea, and then sell me on the opposite of that idea.
• Offbeat, unusual, unconventional & interesting career interviews (The Interview Portal)
• 10 most common job interview questions (Monster)
• How to answer the 31 most common interview questions (The Muse)
• How to answer 5 common trick questions designed to trip you up in an interview (Amanda Augustine, Fast Company, 10-11-19) Here’s what employers are hoping to glean from these simple questions—and how you can prepare to answer them with confidence. 'Tell me about yourself.' 'What do you know about us?' 'Do you have any questions for us?' etc.
• How to Ace Common Interview Questions (Resume Tip Tuesday, Career Bliss, 2-16-16)
• 10 Interview Questions You Can Ask the Interviewer (ThoughtCo) When they ask "Do you have any questions?,” ask these.
• "Why Should We Hire You?" (The Interview Guys)
Mastheads of magazines, newspapers, and other publications
You won't find mastheads on all of these, but you can check out the publications. For a specific publication, Google "masthead" and the name of the organization.
• Magazine Directory
• Mastheads and editorial calendars (MediaBistro)
• Mastheads.org (the writer & photographer's guide to editorial mastheads)
• NewPages Guide to Literary Magazines
• Newspapers.com
• Newspapers and other news sources (Writers and Editors)
• New York Times Newsroom Navigator with jumps to sections on Net Search | Journalism | Reference | Directories | Publications | Politics | New York Region | Commerce | Travel | Entertainment | Sports | Miscellany. Plus separate sections:
---Business Navigator
---Politics Navigator
---Health and Medical Guides
• Online Newspapers (of the whole world)
• Links to Directories of Magazines, Newspapers & Other Media (Writing-World.com)
Aptitude and Other Testing Resources
• Johnson O'Connor Research Foundation (an expensive, top-notch facility for testing aptitude and personal strengths and providing career counseling). This firm's site has some interesting articles and links to other resources.
• Myers-Briggs Type Indicator personality inventory (a personality test that tests for where you are in terms of four measurements: introversion/extraversion, sensing/intuition, thinking/feeling, judging/perceiving.
• Keirsey Temperament Sorter (the four temperaments: Artisan, Guardian, Idealist, Rational.
• The ASVAB Test The Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB) is a timed, multi-aptitude test (not an IQ test), which is given at more than 14,000 schools and Military Entrance Processing Stations (MEPS) nationwide. It is developed and maintained by the Defense Department (DoD). I list some sites for practice tests but have no way of evaluating which are most useful.
---Ace the ASVAB (practice tests from ASVAB itself)
---Free ASVAB Practice Test (ASVAB Advantage)
---ASVAB Practice Tests Online
• Self-Directed Search (SDS) A direct product of a theory of personality types and environmental models developed by John Holland. Holland’s theory posits that people can be categorized according to six personality types—Realistic, Investigative, Artistic, Social, Enterprising, and Conventional—known collectively as RIASEC.
• 10 Top Free Career Aptitude Tests (Resume Spice)
• Career Fitter
• MAPP Test
Freelancer Directories
Many writers and journalists organizations have freelance directories, so for publishers and clients looking for an independent writer, journalist, editor, etc. make sure you're listed in the directory of organizations to which you belong -- and join the ones whose directories are likely to be searched. I'll list more as you make me aware of them:
• Association of Health Care Journalists (AHCJ's list of independent journalists)
• Editorial Freelancers Association (search by state, skill, specialty, hardware, software)
• How to Find a Personal Historian (links to local chapters)
• Publishers Marketplace (not an organization but a place to announce your availability as seeking writers etc.)
• Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ)
• Local and regional writers organizations . Get to know other writers and editors. Getting personal referrals requires putting in some time making friends in the business.
• Specialized and niche writing (join organizations with the specialty you write best about)
Unemployment insurance
• Introduction to Unemployment Insurance (Chad Stone and William Chen, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, CBPP, 7-30-14)
• How Do I File for Unemployment Insurance? (U.S. Department of Labor) Unemployment insurance is a joint state-federal program that provides cash benefits to eligible workers. Each state administers a separate unemployment insurance program, but all states follow the same guidelines established by federal law.
• The Unemployment Insurance System Is Set to Get a Tech Makeover — but It Needs Much More, the Biden Administration Says (Cezary Podkul, ProPublica, 9-10-21) The Labor Department has launched an overhaul of the technology that runs the unemployment insurance system, which was overwhelmed by claims and plagued by fraud during the pandemic. But the agency says Congress must act to fix deeper problems.
• Unemployment Insurance Modernization: DOL Town Hall (Cezary Podkul, ProPublica)
• Memo on UI Service Modernization (Cezary Podkul, ProPublica)
• How Unemployment Insurance Fraud Exploded During the Pandemic (Cezary Podkul, ProPubica, 7-26-21) Bots filing bogus applications in bulk, teams of fraudsters in foreign countries making phony claims, online forums peddling how-to advice on identity theft: Inside the infrastructure of perhaps the largest fraud wave in history.
• Chart of Inequity (Robert Pavosevich, CRUIS, Center for Research on Unemployment Insurance Systems) A large difference, in 2020, between the amount an average claimant who receives all of the available weeks of benefits, would receive in the highest paying state (Washington): $13,937, versus the lowest paying state (North Carolina): $2,811.
• The Department of Labor Should Overhaul the Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics Program (Andrew Elrod, People's Policy Project, 9-14-21) The current survey was designed for a single use: determining wages for guest worker visa programs. Yet occupational earnings data have a deeper origin and purpose in full-employment planning.
• What Michal Kalecki Meant by Full Employment (Matt Bruenig, People's Policy Project, 5-12-21) 'In one meaning of the term, “full employment” just means employing every potential worker in the country. If there are 3 million people who could work but aren’t, then you don’t have full employment, and that’s bad because you are not maximizing production and employment in the economy. Under this meaning of the term, if cutting unemployment benefits pushes more people into jobs, it moves the country closer to full employment. 'In a second meaning of the term, “full employment” refers to a labor market situation where employers have a hard time finding people to hire. This is what Kalecki meant by the term in his canonical text “The Political Aspects of Full Employment.”
Content mills (aka Content farms)
(sweat shops for writers)This is a mere sampling of negative things you'll hear or deduce about content mills. Anyone hiring from these services is not looking for professional writing. It's more often grammatically correct typing in the $5 an hour ballpark.
• Inside 4 New Content Mills: What Freelancers Need to Know (Allen Taylor on Carol Tice's blog, Make a Living Writing) Guru.com, Demand Media (now Leaf Group) were the old guard content mills. "Not all content mills suck," writes Taylor, although " Setting up a bunch of profiles on content-mill sites might earn you some extra money. But it’s not a reliable way to market your services and find enough clients that pay pro rates to pay all your bills." Taylor gives details about working for the new "Move-up" mills: Contently (founded in2010), ClearVoice (2015) Skyword (2010), eByline (2009). Read the many comments for more insight into this kind of "find-a-gig" work -- possibly a good place for rank beginners.
• The Reality of Writing for Content Mills — 14 Writers’ True Stories (Carol Tice, Make a Living Writing, April 2015 and onward). Carol posts experiences of 14 writers from Freelance Writing Den, who comment on Demand Studios, Textbroker, Writer Access, Yahoo Contributor Network (Associated Content), Suite 101, Seed, Examiner, Blogmutt, CopyPress, Internet Brands, Break Studios, Media Shower, Content Authority, Epinions, Web Answers. Comments follow.
• Doonesbury Takes a Whack at Huffington Post. No Hard Feelings, Says HuffPo Bureau Chief (Rebecca Rosen Lum. Fog City Journal, 4-25-12) on HuffPost expecting bloggers to post for "exposure," not pay)
• My Career as a Content Mill Writer (Hannah Whiteoak, Medium, 1-8-18) "Most content mills don’t require professional writing experience. What matters is the ability to produce a grammatically correct writing sample that clearly communicates factual information." "Need to complete a 500-word article? Set a 30-minute timer and try to finish before it goes off.""I write about 1,000 words an hour during a focused work session." Content mills mentioned: Textbroker.com, Scripted.com, CrowdContent.com, WritersDomain.net, OneSpace.com, WordApp.io, and Copify.com.
• The Ultimate List of Freelance Writing Jobs and 100+ Paying Websites Good explanation of how a content mill works, and a list of them that includes studioD, Writers Department, Constant Content, Articles Base, Scripted, Textbroker, Zerys, and so on through 101 firms.
• Media Startups Try a Lower-Cost Model: Unpaid Student Writers (Austen Hufford, Wall Street Journal, 6-21-17) Chapter-based, for-profit media companies like Spoon University and Odyssey have been popping up in college markets across the U.S.
• Experience at a Price (The Accidental Medical Writer) "content mills like the ones mentioned in Hufford's article is that they reap huge financial gains from advertisers off the backs of writers who work for free in the hope the "exposure" will get them somewhere."
• Fiverr "Freelance Services Marketplace for The Lean Entrepreneur."
• Demand Media's eHow Learns Hard Lessons: Strategy Began to Fall Apart as Google Changed Search Algorithms (William Launder, WSJ, 10-20-13). eHow's traffic and value plunged as "Google introduced changes to its search algorithms to weed out content its computers showed wasn't what searchers sought... The [new] goal, in part, is to pass muster with algorithm changes that try to weed out articles that appear uninteresting, such as ones that generate lots of back clicks by Google users or appear to duplicate text on other Web pages."
• Are content mills worth it? (Shaista Singh, Write Upon Demand, 1-15-19) An unrealistically positive take on earning $15 per article (for a GOOD content mill).
• The Answer Factory: Demand Media and the Fast, Disposable, and Profitable as Hell Media Model (Daniel Roth, Wired Magazine, 10-19-09). "Plenty of other companies — About.com, Mahalo, Answers.com — have tried to corner the market in arcane online advice. But none has gone about it as aggressively, scientifically, and single-mindedly as Demand. Pieces are not dreamed up by trained editors nor commissioned based on submitted questions. Instead they are assigned by an algorithm, which mines nearly a terabyte of search data, Internet traffic patterns, and keyword rates to determine what users want to know and how much advertisers will pay to appear next to the answers."
• Content Mill Demand Media Expands Its Reach -- To More Newspapers! (Erik Sherman, CBS MoneyWatch, 5-21-10) "For its normal web pieces, a typical Demand Media rate for an article of a few hundred words is $7.50, with copy editing paying about $3.50 an article, according to many freelancers I've communicated with who work for Demand."
• Content farm (Wikipedia-- firms that use freelancers to generate "large amounts of textual content which is specifically designed to satisfy algorithms for maximal retrieval by automated search engines"
• List of Probable Content Farms (Library Services, Austin Community College)
• Writers Explain What It's Like Toiling on the Content Farm (Corbin Hiar, MediaShift, 7-21-10)
• How Much Are Examiner.com Writers Really Earning? (Writers Weekly, 5-13-09)
• Are Content Mills the Future of Online Publishing? (Aaron Wall, author of SEOBook--read his blog )
• 3 Ways to Escape the Content Mills and Earn More as a Freelance Writer (Linda Formichelli, The Renegade Writer, 5-21-12)• ProCreative Writers (this group comes up first when you search for "content mills")
Academic budget cuts, rising tuition,
and the decline in professorships
(for those considering academia as your base, from which you will write)
The closing of American academia (Sarah Kendzior, Aljazeera, 8-20-12) The plight of adjunct professors highlights the end of higher education as a means to prosperity.
• Gap Widens for Faculty at Colleges, Report Finds (Tamar Lewin, NY Times, 4-8-13). “Public colleges and universities, reeling from immediate and long-term cutbacks in their state funding, have sought to reduce spending on the back of their students, increasingly substituting lower-paid contingent faculty members for more fairly paid tenure-track faculty members,” reports the American Association of University Professors.
• Academia's indentured servants (Sarah Kendzior, Aljazeera, 4-11-13). Outspoken academics are rare: most tenured faculty have stayed silent about the adjunct crisis.
• Adjuncting Mystery (Steve Saideman's Semi-Spew, 4-9-13)
• The PhD's Job Crisis: Why Professorships Are Dwindling and Adjuncts and Postdocs Are on the Rise (Online PhD.org). Budget cuts and the higher education crisis.
• Is Graduate School a Cult? (Thomas H. Benton, The Chronicle of Higher Education, 6-28-04)
More ledes for freelance job and gig hunters
• About.com's Salary Wizard National average salaries adjusted by location. But note: Do a search for "average writer's income" or "average editor's income" on Google and you'll find a wide range of estimates. There is no way to determine an average income or salary because writers and editors don't report their fees or earnings to a central database and many of them are freelance.
• American Society of Business Publication Editors (ASBPE) Solopreneur events (such as Creating Bullet-Proof Contracts to Avoid Scope Creep & Negotiating Rates) explore the business of contract journalism. ASBPE’s “Solopreneur: Exploring the Business of Contract Journalism” is a 10-part webinar series that dives into the business side of freelance and contract journalism. During this series, they cover key considerations and steps to launch, build, and sustain a successful contract journalism business:
---Transitioning from full-time staff to solo freelancer
---Determining your services and niche
---Creating a business plan
---Meeting federal and state business regulations and requirements
---Researching and setting rates
---Finding contract jobs, crafting contracts and negotiating rates
---Mastering project and time management
---Pitching stories to editors and working together without a hitch
• Authors Den An online literary community of authors and readers.
• The Best-Paid Moonlighting Jobs in America (Kimberly Palmer, U.S. News & World Report, 8-23-12) High-paid gigs for freelancers.
• Boxers, Briefs and Books. John Grisham's op-ed piece on what hard work writing is, one theme of the forthcoming collection Don’t Quit Your Day Job: Acclaimed Authors and the Day Jobs They Quit, ed. by Sonny Brewer (with stories by Grisham, Pat Conroy, Rick Bragg, and many other authors).
• Content agencies (aka content marketing agencies) are teams of professionals who help businesses achieve marketing goals. They provide support and advice for businesses as they develop such digital content as blog articles, social media posts, newsletters, and website content.
• Closing the Content Gap: What We Learned From Talking to 400+ GTM Pros (Beam Content) Content marketers are not order takers. They’re strategic partners... storytellers and interpreters and deep thinkers who make their customers and audience the stars of the show.
"What is a go-to-market (GTM) strategy? A GTM strategy refers to the tactics used by a company to bring a product to market and drive demand. Not to be confused with a marketing strategy, your go-to-market strategy is a short-term plan driven by a specific product. [See Foleon's notes for miscellaneous examples and explanations.]
• Content Marketing Glossary (Clickworker)
• Contently An enterprise content marketing platform that aims to turn modern marketers into content superstars.
Described by Columbia Journalism Review in 2012 as a new platform to connect journalists and publishers . See content marketing case studies and Ask a content strategist.
• Don't Quit Your Day Job: Acclaimed Authors and the Day Jobs they Quit edited by Sonny Brewer. Autobiographical short stories by writers dealing with some of the trials they endured en route to, either by design or accident, becoming successful fiction writers.
• Do You Owe Writers Money? Advice For Deadbeats! (Angela Hoy, WritersWeekly.com, 9-13-06) The articles are old. The ads for freelancers are current.
• Enlisting a Global Work Force of Freelancers (Kermit Pattison, NY Times, 6-25-09)
• FLX: Freelance Success Chase a business, not assignments. A subscription community for freelance writers who want to grow their business. In existence since the mid-1990s, FLX concentrates on ways to improve your business areas, namely landing clients (marketing, negotiating, leveraging platforms, snagging referrals), honing skills, maximizing your time, and project management.
• Game Writing: An Emerging Domain for Content Creators (Mediabistro)
• Grant Writing Basics, 11 Things You Need to Know (Instrumentl, 3-3-22) Not your basic fantasy job as a writer, but if you can master writing grant proposals, you can probably find work.
• How Brooklin Nash Went from $40K Freelance Copywriter to $1 Million Agency Owner (YouTube video with transcript, Jacob McMillen, 3-20-24) In this live interview, Brooklin Nash tells how he went from making $40,000 per year as a freelance copywriter to co-founding a content agency that is currently bringing in over $1 million a year in revenue.
• How Much to Charge? for various functions and for various types of product (elsewhere on Writers and Editors site)
• How to Overcome Age-Based Excuses (Ladders, 2009)
• How to set your prices as a freelancer or consultant (Writers and Editors blog)
• Synergistech Communications (56 FAQs for candidate technical communicators in Bay area) "Medical, Financial, Energy, and Government-related Writers can expect a better fate, near- and medium-term, than local computer-industry Technical Writers.
"They can also expect lots of competition. These roles are, for the most part, legally required to be performed domestically (due to the same lax foreign privacy and intellectual property laws we referred to in item 3), but there's no reason they won't be affected by the same cost-control pressures that are now so visibly eroding the livelihoods of the Bay Area's technical communicators. Look for more opportunities in low-cost locations, fewer in the rest, and ultimately the same demand to 'generate profit or perish.'
"If you opt to transition to one of these niches, the same ground-rules apply: gain subject-matter expertise quickly and persistently, gravitate toward those who generate profits (if you can't generate them independently), and don't let yourself become 'surplus' by straying too far from the path of the individual contributor."
• Your GSA resources in one place. The General Services Administration (GSA) is an independent agency that manages and supports federal agencies. It was established in 1949 to centralize administrative functions, streamline the acquisition of supplies, and manage federal buildings. The Pricing Intelligence Suite provides contract and task order pricing information.
• 10 Digital Skills Every Media Pro Needs to Master (John Lombard, Mediabistro)
• The Web Analytics Skills You Need to Know ( Christopher White, Mediabistro) Learn how to tell who’s visiting your site, and what they’re doing there, to become a digital MVP
Boxers, Briefs and Books. John Grisham's op-ed piece on what hard work writing is, one theme of the forthcoming collection Don’t Quit Your Day Job: Acclaimed Authors and the Day Jobs They Quit, ed. by Sonny Brewer (with stories by Grisham, Pat Conroy, Rick Bragg, and many other authors).
Contently (powering the next generation of publishing). Described by Columbia Journalism Review as a new platform to connect journalists and publishers . "Contently aims to help journalists to build their brand online and connect them with publishers looking for writers." The Contently platform is said to "streamline your editorial calendar and add efficiency to content creation--for agencies and high-volume publishers." The Content Network "empowers professional journalists and bloggers to build careers doing what they love." Through that network, Contently publishers can "scale up freelance talent for projects and ongoing work with our vetted Network of magazine-quality writing talent." We'll see how it all works out later. Report on your experiences!
Freelance editing rates in Australia on Jean Weber's site, Technical Editors' Eyrie (Resources for Technical Editors)
How Much to Charge? for various functions and for various types of product (Writes and Editors) Pricing Strategies, Setting Rates, for Writers, Editors,
and Other Creative Professionals
HOW TO'S
• How to set your prices as a freelancer or consultant (Writers and Editors blog post).
• How to Enlist a Global Work Force of Freelancers (Kermit Pattison, NYTimes, 6-24-09), and good luck to all
• How to Overcome Age-Based Excuses (Don Straits, The Ladders) Focus on the future — not the past — to overcome the age-based excuses mature job seekers often tell themselves. Lots of good articles on the Ladders site.
• How To Pitch (X magazie) (Avant Guild's smart page--with specifics about many publications)
'Huffington Post' Employee Sucked Into Aggregation Turbine. Horrified Workers Watch As Colleague Torn Apart By Powerful Content-Gathering Engine (The Onion's delightful take on Huffington Post as a Content Mill 2-2-12)
Job Hunters Bible, online job search resource hosted by Dick Bolles, author of What Color is Your Parachute?
Job Interview Questions (and Best Answers) (Alison Doyle, About.com)
Journalism jobs
• Miscellaneous journalism job sites
• J-Jobs (Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, University of California at Berkeley)
• Journajobs.eu
• Journalism.net (journalism jobs)
• The Journalism Shop (former L.A. Times staffers for hire), an example of how to market one's services
• Journalism.co.uk
• News Nerd Jobs (Code Out Loud). The news business needs people who can code in the public interest and build the digital news products of tomorrow
• Media Job Pod (job search advice for multimedia journalists and production majors)
Lessons Learned in Auditioning for Job (Alina Tugend, NY Times, 12-3-10, on how to handle prospective employers' requests to produce creative samples or give business advice -- when to do it and how to protect your work).
LinkedIn, this social-networking-for-business site can be a good place to find gigs IF you join and PARTICIPATE in specific social networks. People who like what you say when you join a conversation may check out your profile. And you can build a network of your own by connecting with connections of your connections!
More journalists and fiction writers are shifting to writing videogames (Stephany Nunneley, vg247, 11-19-10)
Occupational Outlook Handbook (useful guide from the U.S. Department of Labor, about the most common career fields, job trends, educational requirements etc.)
100 best places to live and launch (CNN Money)
A one-minute story may be key to a storied career (Penelope Trunk, Seattle Post-Intelligencer 7-6-03)
O*NET OnLine (detailed descriptions of the world of work for use by job seekers, workforce development and HR professionals, students, researchers, and more--conceived by U.S. Department of Labor as a definitive resource for counselors, educators, human resource specialists, and the public to learn more about occupations)
Online Job Search Resources (Johnson O'Connor Research Foundation, an expensive, top-notch facility for testing aptitude and personal strengths and providing career counseling)
Publishers Marketplace (free) and Publishers Lunch Deluxe ($20 a month). Lunch Deluxe gets you daily e-mails listing new deals in book publishing and news about sales, reviews, agents, editors, and the industry, as well as access to Who Represents (database of authors and their agents). You needn't subscribe to Lunch Deluxe for access to the Publishers Lunch Job Board, and Publishers Marketplace is a good place to advertise your services (e.g., as a ghostwriter).
Top 30 Job Sites for Careers in Broadcast Journalism (Molly Canfield, Journalism Journeyman 6-14-11)
The Wealthy Freelancer: 12 Secrets to a Great Income and an Enviable Lifestyle by Steve Slaunwhite, Ed Gandia, and Pete Savage (available by Kindle or as paperback). The blog: The Wealthy Freelancer
The Practicing Writer. On this website, Erika Dreifus sells three e-books for writers, including the "Guide to No-Cost Literary Contests and Competitions," "Directory of Paying Essay Markets," and "Directory of Paying Markets for Book Reviewers." For $6.95 I decided to check out the directory of paying essay markets. Strangely, it did not include The New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, Newsweek ("My Turn"), the New York Times Magazine, Salon, or any of the women's magazines, all of which pay much better than most of the publications listed. Perhaps this is because she listed only publications that posted writers guidelines, with pay rates, on their websites--but this excludes most of the best and best-paying essay markets. Save your money.