Monday, January 28, 2013

New Opportunities

I've been wanting to expand my work in social media for the past couple of months but decided to hold off until after the holidays. Not only were the holidays a busy and stressful time (and the 10-day vacation would have put a crimp in my starting new work), but I thought I would make tax time slightly easier by not starting a new job at the end of the year.

When I returned to San Diego around New Years, I decided to post an ad on Craigslist looking for freelance writing and social media work. I wanted to take on a couple extra clients that I could work on from home and easily fit into my existing schedule. 

For the first couple of weeks, I received almost nothing. I began to wonder if Craigslist or my email was broken. I was feeling discouraged and beginning to doubt if this approach would work.

Then, about two weeks ago, the emails started coming in. First one, then two and eventually I received around six emails from people looking for either writing or social media help (or sometimes both).

I'm currently trying to get four of these new jobs off the ground. I've met with one client in person and talked with two others via the phone. A couple have sent over the information I need to get started and the others are working on compiling a list of everything I need to get started. 

The next couple weeks will help me determine which jobs are going to stick. I'll see who is reliable in communicating their hopes and needs with me and who is a pleasure to work for (being happy in my work is something that I greatly need). 

Hopefully, I'll find that at least a couple of these new opportunities transition into part-time, permanent gigs to coincide nicely with my current social media jobs. 

3 comments:

  1. You can use me as a reference, Abby! As long as you can still squeeze in time for our website.

    Alan

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  2. Thanks, Alan! I will definitely make time the website too! Just trying to round it all out and do this full time. :)

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