By Barbara Feder Ostrov
1. Assess your “selling points” and the kind of work you’d like to do as a freelancer. You have a great head start over many journalists: you know a lot about the marketable subject area of health care and medicine. Did you cover one sub-topic or major story extensively? If so, you’re now an expert in that sub-topic.
2. Get personal business cards. Vista Print offers very cheap business cards. You may need two or three styles of cards for the various kinds of work you want to do. I hand out two kinds of business cards, one for traditional print media work and one for online work.
3. Set up profiles on LinkedIn, Facebook, Reporterist and ReportingonHealth (Disclosure: I consult for this site). Be creative in your summary description and optimize it for search (i.e. “writer,” “editor,” “content development,” “health and medicine”). Start “friending” and “linking” to your colleagues and sources. Update your friends and colleagues about your work – but not too often.
4. Create your own Web page or blog to showcase your work on a free or low-cost blogging platform like WordPress, TypePad or Blogger.com.
5. Check out the AHCJ Freelancer’s Corner.
6. Cautiously consider membership in freelancer sites like Suite 101, Elance.com, Guru.com, iFreelance.com and Demand Media. Be warned: Some of this work pays poorly and you’ll have to decide whether it’s worth the membership costs.
7. Set up a professional-sounding personal e-mail address on Google Mail or a similar service.
8. Plan ahead. Even if you’re currently employed in a permanent job, economic uncertainties could force you into freelancing unexpectedly. Create a contact spreadsheet for your colleagues and sources and store it on Google Docs. Copy work emails, digital clips and email address books to your personal email account frequently so that you are not caught unprepared by a layoff.
9. Don’t be afraid to ask for help. It’s hard to approach your friends, colleagues and former sources for freelance work or advice about marketing yourself. Do it anyway – you’ll be surprised at the results.
Barbara Feder Ostrov
Contributing Editor, ReportingonHealth.org
Medical Writer, San Jose Mercury News, 2000-2008
barbarafeder@vahoo.com
www.linkedin.com/inlbarbarafederostrov
Freelance Panel: Building Your Brand
Association of Health Care Journalists Conference 2009
