How I Look and Apply For Freelance Jobs

I should have a banner that says “Work smarter, not harder” printed up and hung in my work area. There are only so many hours in the day and I have to make the best of each one of them. Being productive is highly important to a freelance writer’s success.

One of the biggest time wasters for me was looking and applying for new writing gigs. I would spend half the morning looking and  applying for new writing gigs. Before I knew it, it was lunch time and I hadn’t done any work for clients or myself. Instead, I started looking for gigs after lunch and sending applications at the end of the day.

I’ve spent time on different job boards and from what I’ve seen most of them are updated in the morning. Typically I’ve already looked on a board for a job before the new ones have been posted. I spend about 15 to 30 minutes after lunch looking for jobs. I don’t apply for them. I just email them to myself to work on later.

Then about an hour before quitting time, I go through the jobs and apply for them. Applying for jobs all at once works better because you remain in the “sell myself” frame of mind the entire time. If you were to look and apply at the same time, you’d break the marketing momentum. Make the application process faster by having a copy of your resume open and using prewritten templates. Don’t forget to customize your email for each job.

Using this process to look and apply for freelance writing jobs gave me back at least two and a half hours in my day, quite possibly even more. Pay attention to the way you apply for jobs and see if you can somehow streamline the process.