Start Your Writing Career - What if you live oversees?

A reader came to me with a question - how do you go about starting your writing career if you live in a country other than the US? This particular reader lives in the Philippines. But my response is the same whether you live in the India, Philippines, Italy, Germany, South Africa, etc... This is an important question.

The beautiful thing about being a writer is that you can do it anywhere. The short answer is that you can use all of the advice I am giving you to make money anywhere in the world. But, there are some sites, like Associated Content, who will only pay you for your articles if you live in the United States.

So, I went and looked for some ideas. How can someone who lives internationally make money as a freelance writer? First, I suggest you check out Mridu Khullar - just do a google search and you can find her website. She lives in New Delhi and makes a very good living as a writer. Here are some more ideas:

• Pitch articles to magazines and newspapers. You can find market listings at places like writersweekly.com. It doesn't really matter where you live with most of those markets. The publications will send you the check no matter where you are.
• Submit articles to Constant Content. Unlike Associated Content, Constant Content caters to the international market. You can easily make extra money writing articles and submitting them to this site. Just take some time to learn about what they expect from their writers.
• Start a blog. This is a good way to showcase what you can do. Choose a niche topic to write about. If you have several areas of interest, start a blog for each of these. You can use blogger.com - it's free and easy to use.
• Use freelance job boards. Places such as Rentacoder and Getafreelancer let freelancers from all over the world post their profiles and bid on jobs. Set up an account with each and make it a goal to apply for jobs each day. I pitched for five jobs per day for a solid month before I landed my first gig.

This should help you get started. You can use your blog and Constant Content articles as samples to help you get clients. And, you may want to only submit pitch letters to the magazines that accept work from new writers until you have a few things published.