Freelance Writing Jobs (www.freelancewritinggigs.com) is a great site for finding work, especially from Craigslist posts around the U.S. and Canada. Posts are laid out categorically and organized by date, so start with the most recent posts and work your way down to less recent gigs that may have already been filled. As you scroll through the listings, try to keep an open mind. FWJ posts writing gigs covering everything from health and nutrition to air conditioning units. Some are looking only for an article writer who pays for each accepted submission, while others have a more involved structure with mandatory submissions, reviews of other articles; sites; and blogs, and even full and part time work at a specific location. There is really no limit to the variety of work you can find, so keep an open mind and remember: the people that usually succeed in the current freelance market are generalists who can write flexibly on a variety of topics. Don't get pigeon-holed, and certainly don't pigeon-hole yourself (that wouldn't make any sense would it?).
The real benefit of using FWJ is the amount of potential employment that you can access at a glance. Anyone who has used Craigslist to find work writing or editing can tell you what a long process it can be searching the gig listings of cities you may not have even heard of for work that can be done at a distance. With FWJ the work is done for you, at least to an extent. Don't just stop with FWJ if you don't have enough work to keep you busy, do your own digging! You can search Craigslist for jobs just as well as the next person. Just select an area and go to the gigs>writing or jobs>writing/editing sections. Any city or area on Craigslist will likely have at least SOME writing or editing jobs, but there are ways to organize your searches and maximize not only the number of jobs you find, but the income you will likely receive from those jobs.
Though you can start out with a certain state and plow through the writing/editing and gigs sections by city, you can focus your search and increase your chances of finding work that pays well by skipping around a bit. Start with major cities and see what is available; something may have been posted after FWJ placed their daily post. All advertising in major cities requires a small fee for each post, making these markets more targeted and reliable on the advertiser's end of things. The rational for starting here is that a company or person who has money for advertising is also more likely to have money to pay you, so start with major cities where paid advertising is required and move on from there. Remember to flag emails you send out in some way so you know which posts you have responded to. If it appears in the daily list for FWJ the following day (and you respond similarly with the same contact information), then you'll be the one who gets flagged — for being disorganized.
A good strategy to expand your search from there is to select cities near major cities. Not everyone is willing to pay the Craigslist fee for posting an ad, especially not for a work-from-anywhere type of job. Many posts are relegated to the next largest town over that allows free posting. For example, an ezine publisher wants to find writers to cover cuisine in Portland, OR. He or she isn't sure there are many freelance writers in Portland, and doesn't want to spend money making a post that doesn't get enough responses to justify the cost. This advertiser would then place an ad in Salem, OR, which is free to advertise in, and which has a pretty signification population and is also close enough to Portland to frequent its restaurants. As long as writers take the time to check the smaller Salem listings as well, the publisher wins by saving money and still getting the response he wanted from writers and foodies. Even if the project you are looking for doesn't require you to be local or do any traveling, advertisers are still going to be drawn to the largest audience for the lowest price.
