Should I Be a Freelance Writer?
I got offered a position as a freelance columnist on one of the top World of Warcraft news sites (WoW Insider). It’s a paid position which offers up to $200 a month. This requires four 500-1000 columns on a weekly basis about the "Priest" class in WoW. It’s a pretty cool gig and I’m still mulling it over. It doesn’t help that exams are coming up within 3 weeks and I have a paper due next week. I have no problems at all coming up with ideas or executing them. Throughout high school, I’ve always loved to write and I’d write about the strangest and weirdest crap at times. If I take this position, it means I lose a certain degree of creative flexibility. Heck, my blog alone has over 300 subscribers and it’s only going to go up higher. Obviously what I write for WoW Insider isn’t going to have much of an impact on my blog. I allot a certain amount of time during the week for school, WoW, writing, and sleep. It would only be a matter of restructuring my time management schedule.
Pros
I get paid to play and write about WoW legitimately. It does NOT get any better than this.
Exposure for my blog. It’s almost guaranteed that my visibility will go up more.
Looks good on the resume. Whoa, you wrote for a blog that gets 5 million views per month?
Women (Maybe).
Cons
Deadlines. I hate deadlines. But it shouldn’t be a problem. I usually build up a weekly buffer of posts on my blog anyway.
Potential backlash. Oh the flame wars will be numerous. I will constantly be attacked as a writer for my opinion.
Quality goes up. I set a very high standard of quality for myself. By going for this gig, I’m only going to scrutinize myself even more so.
When I first started blogging, I did it for fun and mostly to teach players to become better players. I always had ideas about writing for WoW Insider and for their head guy to come out and actually e-mail me is a tremendous surprise for me.
Maybe I should pursue this. It’s definitely safer then law enforcement. But ugh, freelance writing can be stressing too. For now, having a source of income is better then none at all.
One Comment, Comment or Ping
Softi
I think it’s a great opportunity for ya Matt and I’m glad you’ve decided to do it. There will always be some people who won’t like what you write regardless of how good it is, but I’m sure in your case they will be few and far between
I mean it can’t get any better than having your BA friends backing ya up in your posts now can it?
Mar 26th, 2008
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