Water (paying work)
Without water, your survival efforts will come to an abrupt end in a matter of days. Similarly, without paying work, your efforts at freelance success will slowly die of thirst.
The good news: look around. Unless you’re in a cave somewhere, you can’t turn your head without seeing words. Words that someone, somewhere was paid to write. The sheer volume of work out there to be had is staggering.
You’ve gotta like those odds.
Assess your skills, your hobbies, your family, your past, your education…look for areas you can mine for potential work. Assess your local business environment, your personal, educational and professional networks. Don’t just do this passively. List all of your contacts and experiences, and go through one-by-one and see if you can come up with one-to-three ways you can turn that asset into paying work. The more you stretch, the more potential work you will turn up.
Don’t worry about whether they are in the market for copywriting work or whether or not you can land the job, yet. Just open your eyes to every possible opportunity out there, and make note of it.
The search for water is an exploration of the surrounding environment looking for the signs. The search for paying work is much the same.
