I’m now officially a freelance writer. Although I’ve been at this a few weeks now (and signed off the dole last week since I was finally working enough hours to do so), I’m not sure that it’s sunk in yet.

When I lost my job last December, my first reaction was to update my CV and then apply for as many new technical writing jobs as I could find in Northern Ireland. By some fluke, I managed to find six to apply for (it’s usually rare for there to be even one vacancy out there), and over the course of January, I applied for them all.

But I decided not to just sit back, claim Jobseeker’s Allowance, and wait. I also signed myself up for a trio of websites which match freelancers to jobs: oDesk, PeoplePerHour, and Elance. I put together my profile on each, took some tests on oDesk (such as Technical Writing Skills and US English Vocabulary), and started to apply for work.

Each of these sites seems to work slightly differently. I started with PeoplePerHour, by completing my profile and then bidding on a job. That involved writing a bid proposal – something I was new to, and found quite daunting. I put it off for at least a week after I’d seen a job advertised that I wanted to try for! In the end I went for it, although I still have no idea whether the way in which I structured my proposal was at all correct, since I didn’t get the job.

I found it easier to apply for jobs on oDesk, since here it was a simple case of making sure my profile was complete and then applying for each job with a customised cover letter. And lo! I picked up some work, started it on February 7th, and felt rather proud of myself.

And it turned out to be just as well, since I hadn’t heard much that was encouraging from the jobs I’d applied to. I had two rejections, where I didn’t meet the job criteria. I had been interviewed by phone for another job, and invited to a face-t0-face interview… but by this time I was 2 weeks into the freelance work, having picked up enough to keep me busy and to get me off the dole, so I decided not to go to the interview. (If it had been a local job, I might have, but another reason for wanting to stay freelance is that I can’t bear the thought of commuting across Northern Ireland again.)

So here I am, slowly building up a portfolio of clients. I’m tackling a nice variety of work: installation and user guides, web content, article writing, proof-reading and editing, and I’m even having to expand my areas of expertise to things like SEO. It’s all interesting though, and I hope it’s a decision I don’t regret.