Welcome to bwritenow.com

It can be intimidating to sign up to a freelancer site (ala ELance) when you don’t have much writing experience. You do have some kind of experience, though–unless you’ve been living in a box. It’s a sure bet you can angle that experience in a positive direction. Even if you really have been living in a box. (Although in the latter case, I suggest you skip right over eLance and go straight on to Hollywood.)

How do you angle your non-writing past? Pretty much everybody has some kind of experience they can turn into a specialty. Just quit your ten-year job at Auto Hut? Looks like you’ve got a specialty, pal. Cast yourself as the auto-parts (or auto-anything) writer, and you’ve got an edge over more experienced generalists who apply for the same job.

“But wait,” you’re saying. “I quit Auto Hut so I’d never have to think about autos or huts ever again!” Well that’s okay. You don’t have to write about huts forever. But if you can use it to wedge your newbie-self into three or four projects, well, that’s three or four projects you didn’t have before. That’s a list of recent projects you can put on your profile/resume. And, hopefully, a good testimonial or three as well.

Content-specialty isn’t the only way to angle your past experience. Ever work in sales? Customer service? Waited tables or worked behind a bar? Let your potential clients know this, let them know it taught you how to connect with people and make them happy and sell to them. Let them know it how it helped you develop that warm, winning personality everybody loves you for. Then, show your client that warm, connecting, “I can sell pies to a pie-factory,” personality of yours by writing a an actual profile–and not just a job-list or “please pick me, I speakie good English,” paragraph or three.

(My first profile on eLance bascially said just that–”Hi I’m a native English speaker and I cost more than those guys from India but not too much more.” So don’t feel bad if yours is the same…just be sure to change it!)

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to go check some provider profiles and check a few things NOT to do. Thank you both very much for reading this–I’ll try to provide a little bit more in the future.

Brad