It has occurred to me that not everyone who wonders whether they can work as a writer knows what kinds of writing jobs are available on the internet through freelance job posting sites like Elance, oDesk, and Guru. Stephanie Romero wrote a great post about what it is like to write web content. If you are reading our Home Business blog or any of the other great blogs here on Families.com, you can see what kinds of things people write when they work as professional bloggers. There are many, many other types of writing assignments that are available online.
If you have ever taken a professional licensing exam such as the bar exam, teacher certification exam, or CPA exam, that test was written by one or more people. At some point during that exam, you may have vowed to track down the person or persons responsible for generating some of those questions. If you are a technical writer, you can be “that guy” or “that girl” who writes the questions for the test. There is currently someone looking for a technical writer to write a three hundred question practice test for the NCLEX exam. The NCLEX is a professional licensing exam for nurses.
If you can speak and write fluently in more than one language, there are online writing jobs out there for you. For example, a natural health web site owner wants their site to be translated into French. Someone else needs instructions translated from English to Spanish. A Chinese company needs a contract translated into English. There are plenty more translations needed too, in many different languages.
Editing, transcribing, grant writing, writing newsletters, writing children’s stories – these are just a few of the many things that people are looking for writers to do for them right now. Do any of these things sound interesting to you? Even if you have never done them before, if you could see yourself doing them and your writing skills are strong, you could potentially land a job with an employer who is willing to work with you to help you develop any specialized skills that are particular to that kind of work.
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