For me, the road to working for myself as a freelance writer was a lot easier than I had anticipated. During my senior year at The University of South Florida, I was a staff writer for our student newspaper and also a writing tutor at our library. However, I was looking for more. I wanted to find a way to quit my job working behind the counter at a grocery store, and start really making my writing pay.

I didn’t have any other friends who had ventured into the field of freelancing, so I relied on my old friend Google to help me find some work. I searched endlessly through websites like craigslist.com, freelancewriting.com and writersweekly.com looking for work. After what seemed like dozens of email queries to different people looking for writers, I finally got a few replies.

Initially, I began freelancing as a hobby and was writing for free, for anyone who would hire me. Eventually, my writing caught the eye of the owner of a fashion website, and I began to write blog articles for her for $3 each. Even though I was still making peanuts, I continued to search for work and market myself.

I finally found a website owner that needed lots of content for his brand new art website, whom I was able to set my own price with. I still write for him to this day. From there, work just began to pour in as my reputation from one website owner to another grew. I got commissions to write for websites selling gift baskets, stained glass windows and even pit bull puppies. Although by December of that year I held a journalism degree, I realized that perhaps writing for websites was where I belonged. I have remained successful by taking on any project, big or small, and by adhering to my deadlines. I now have a four month old son, and have created a great small business for myself. Even though I am not making tons of money, I can still pay my bills and stay home with my son, and to me, that defines success.

Wendy Owen is a freelance writer based out of St. Petersburg, FL. She graduated from The University of South Florida with a BA in journalism in December, 2005. Since then, she has worked from home as a freelance writer creating website articles, press releases, advertisements, blogs and more. During her college years, Wendy was the senior staff writer of her school’s student newspaper The Crow’s Nest, a writing tutor and also the 1st place winner of USF’s chili cook-off. Wendy is also a stay at home mom to baby Dave, and enjoys writing about art, fashion and film.

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