Seriously, if another person comes up to me asking me how the terrible, terrible economy is hitting me, I am seriously going to consider running away. Or merely turning my computer off and never ‘chat’ with another soul again. Sure, we’re all hit by the ailing economy…and as writers, we are hit harder because not only do we have to contend with really good writers, we now have to contest for the same job with mediocre but really cheap writers too.
This can’t be good for a writer like me…and here I am, telling it as it is (again) that, yes, we’re hit. Writers are hit….just like the man who sells soya bean paste, and the guy who sells noodles, just like Nike, just like the manufacturer of baby products.
But here’s where the freelance writing market is different. With the economy in such a state, more and more people are out of work…and not all of them are cut out for work as a writer (phew!), so they explore options like online businesses, network marketing or start selling scrapbooking materials, etc.
When there’s a new business…what do we have? YES! Online marketing and promotions! Well, not all of them are going to market themselves online or sell a single damn thing online but at the very least, they’re going to need some web content work done, right? Absolutely.
From my point of view, even if they don’t intend to have a website or a blog, they are going to need someone to write their brochures, newsletters or…say…their proposals?
If you’re a budding writer, here’s where you fit in (cue: title track from Indiana Jones) and you’ve already got your freelance business all set-up and ready to rock and roll, you’re going to be the first few in line for these new projects.
Bloomberg is correct. So’s CNN. We’re nose-diving financially but this does not AUTOMATICALLY mean that there are no freelance jobs out there for freelance writers. There are plenty. All you have to do is to look in the right place and be patient.
And oh…remember to promote yourself too. It’s a dog-eat-dog world out there right now.
I am ashamed to see that I’ve not blogged in this dearly beloved blog of mine for so long. Please forgive me, my readers. Anyway, I am back. One thing I am not very keen on admitting and submitting to is the somber outlook that most people have about the economy and how people are actually shrinking their marketing budgets till they’re next to nothing. Impossible! If we’re to remain in the game, we have to be aware of one fact….and that is if you don’t take full advantage of the fact that many giant companies are shrinking down THEIR budgets, we’re going down with them.
They can bolster it with many things….but we, smaller and much less significant entities, cannot.
What we can do while they’re down is to take it upon ourselves to aggressively grab their customers from them while they shrink their budgets. Trust me, when I say aggressively, I don’t mean it in the financial sense. What I mean is to explore other options open to us and methods that we’ve ignored in the past.
Anyway, this is just one of my thoughts about the sinking economy. Nobody can do anything about it and yet, we have to continue to feed the kids and send them to school. We’ve got to do something and that does not include sitting there on our laurels sinking into depression or stressing over things that are inevitable.
Things that we can do:-