3 Ways To Get The Best Freelance Writing Gigs On Craigslist

By Dan Smith

I don’t spend a great deal of time looking for freelance writing gigs these days. I’m fortunate that over the past few years, I’ve diversified my skill base and networked regularly enough that most of the new gigs I get are through recommendations.

One of the resources I do continue to check, however, is Craigslist.

Often disregarded as a poor quality platform for freelance writing jobs, I’ve seen some great success with Craigslist and there are three key steps I follow to ensure I get the most when searching for new projects.

Check it regularly…but not too regularly

One of mistakes I made when first using Craigslist — and other websites — for gig hunting was that I’d check them a few times a day. I could easily waste an hour or two every day doing so.

You have to realise that someone who posts a job on Craigslist isn’t going to hire the first person who replies. Sure, you don’t want to be applying weeks down the line, but it’s not going to make that much difference whether you apply 3 hours after the job was posted or 3 days.

Work some ‘Craigslist’ time into your schedule and stick to it. If you have some free time during the week, take an extra look, but don’t put off work for the sake of checking Craigslist.

Learn to spot the non-starters

When you first starting using Craigslist to find freelance writing jobs, you’ll probably apply for everything that looks remotely suitable. However, you’ll soon find that out of every 10 gigs you go for, only 2 or 3 will actually be suitable.

Being blunt, there’s a lot of crap on Craigslist. Some people want everything for nothing (or very little), whilst other adverts are completely misleading, with you having to do something slightly dubious to get paid.

After a while, you’ll naturally be able to spot the gigs that you shouldn’t even bother applying for. If you take the time to work out what these are beforehand though, you’ll be able to save yourself a substantial amount of time.

For example, I never approach no-fee gigs, as even though there may be a revenue share on offer, it very rarely works out anywhere near what you would normally charge, even at your lowest rates.

Similarly, anything that seems too good to be true probably is. It might be a bit of a cliche, but it really is true.

A couple of grand for a few hours work each week? Writing basic 100 word reviews for $50 each? Working from home doing some forum research and getting paid hundreds?

I’m not saying every job like this on Craigslist is a scam or a fake. What I’m saying is because of the volume of the poor quality ones, it’s not often worth your while trying to find the ones that are half-decent and are simply poorly advertised.

Have a standard e-mail that you can tweak

One of the issues when applying for freelance writing gigs on a regular basis is that the time it takes to create suitable e-mails can be considerable — you could easily spend more time writing e-mails for projects than actually finding them.

Whilst I’m not saying you should have a generic e-mail that you send to every position that catches your eye on Craigslist, what I personally do is have a template of an e-mail that I can tweak.

So as an example, I always open with the same text — I use a salutation such as ‘Dear Sir / Madam’, I explain that I’ve recently seen their advert for a xxx on Craigslist (linking to the advert) and say that I would like to offer my services / apply for the role. I then go on to give a brief overview of my experience and a few sentences relevant to the role, focusing on certain things within the advert and how my skills tie in.

I might add a bit more here and there and the e-mail in general works out to be around half a dozen paragraphs, but I’ve personally found that that’s enough. Craigslist is a high traffic website and people advertising jobs on there receive dozens — if not hundreds — of applications for every role. They don’t have time to read through an essay of a cover letter — something short and succinct is likely to be much more effective.

Craigslist often gets ignored when it comes to looking for freelance writing jobs, but I’ve always found it to be quite successful. As long as you know how to look and respond, you should be able to come across some particularly great, good-paying gigs.