I am on a furlough day today. After catching up on “The Office” and “Community” on Hulu.com this morning, my attention naturally drifted towards searching the Internet for freelance writing gigs. As a full-time entertainment news writer suffering a severe pay cut, I feel the need to support my writing habit with…more writing jobs.
So I begin a serious search for gigs once again for the first time in nearly two years. I honestly don’t remember where I found the good gigs before. Some quick searches today showed me that ads online for gigs haven’t changed much in two years. I used to apply for any and every appealing gig I saw–and took every single one I was offered. I had to; freelancing was my primary income. I would like my freelance income to supplement my main income today, as I do have a full-time job and therefore not as much time to freelance.
Branding
The other thing I want to accomplish with freelancing now that I didn’t think about before is personal branding. Each gig I take now is an opportunity to increase my personal brand. I can write about anything. Freelance writers are generalists and being able to write about any and every subject assigned to you is survival. But there are a few things I am really good at like music news, entertainment news, podcasting, being a radio personality, writing for the web, national news, and anything pop culture. Actually, increasing my pop culture brand is the best thing I can do right now.
My Brand: Pop Culture
I think that’s a good goal above all else: increase my brand as a pop culture writer/content provider. Because I can create pop culture content for the web, print, and broadcast. I hope you’ll join me as I blog about my career recreation right now. Is it a recreation? A makeover? A re-branding? I am not sure which word applies best to what I am trying to do. I guess we’ll see as time goes on how this evolves…
Writer Heather Larson 