How to Land High-Paying Writing Work (The Easy Way!)
By Mindy McHorse

Do you relate to these four “writerly” traits?

• You know it’s worth it to take educated risks.
• You like to try new things.
• You get fired up when you face a challenge.
• You’re intrigued by the idea of stepping outside the norm.

All of these traits are essential to anyone looking to build a career as a writer, especially if you’re fed up with following the “safe path” or getting mired in the status quo.

But, inevitably, being a road-less-traveled person also means you’re bound to have slipups, take wrong turns, and, at some point, perhaps even fail.

But I’ve got a safeguard to keep you on your feet, so you can still pursue your writing career no matter what — and do it the easy way.

It starts with making sure the failures don’t sting.

Now, for me, early on in my writing career, there were few things worse than putting myself out there, bare-faced and green and ready to write for someone …

And then getting denied.

So after a few awkward fails of putting myself gracelessly out there …

I found a better way.

I dove into the jobs board AWAI had carefully curated and started a daily habit of reading the entries.

This worked well, because instead of just hitting “send” and “hoping for the best,” I had insight into what clients were actually looking for … They were saying it right in their ads.

Of course, I still applied for loads of jobs beyond my training level at that point — because it was still my inclination to think, I can figure that out.

But it wasn’t as discouraging when I didn’t land those positions, because I knew there were another dozen I could go back and apply for.

In many instances, I didn’t get a rejection, which is to say I didn’t get a reply. And that was fine.

But along the way, while I was getting terrific practice in scrutinizing ideal writer jobs from online postings, and was getting good at sending out my portfolio and applying for jobs …

Something big happened.

I landed a few of those writing jobs I’d applied for through the jobs board.

Three, to be exact.

And my writing career took off from there.

• One of the clients gave me a ton of work, albeit at a low rate, that after a year, amounted to a fantastic portfolio of samples.
• One of them hired me for several projects and then referred me to a colleague of hers who then referred me to several of her own colleagues.
• And one of them gave me regular, monthly, enjoyable work. I went on to write for him for 12 years!

Just three jobs from AWAI’s jobs board have now amounted to hundreds of thousands of dollars’ cumulative pay and over a decade of steady writing projects.

Would I take that same route if I had my writing career to do over again?

In a heartbeat. Absolutely.

Which is why it gives me great joy and pleasure to point out the sheer genius of AWAI’s WritersWanted.com jobs board.

Not only is all the guesswork taken out of the writing job search, but it’s organized intuitively in a way that helps you zero in on your own writing and income goals.

With access, you can jump over to the site, where you’ll notice how you can search jobs by category, by city, or by state.

You can post your resume. Keep track of what you’ve applied to. Save jobs you want to consider down the road.

You can search by salary range or by job type (contractor, full time, seasonal, and so on).

You can even pinpoint jobs based on specific keywords or on location.

In a word, easy.

So if you’re done trying to make the “hard way” work … if you’re ready to start writing for pay … if you want all the guesswork taken out of looking for writing jobs … then check out the more than 2,000 jobs on WritersWanted.com.

And if you’re still in need of some high-quality, persuasive writing training, just click here.

Do you have any questions about getting started as a copywriter? Please let us know in the comments below.