Increasing My Income – Redux

Part of any good debt reduction strategy is to try and increase your income as much as you can. Step 1 for me was getting the new job last summer, as that increased my monthly take-home pay. Step 2 is to possibly get a part-time job to supplement my income on a temporary basis. So this year I started drumming up my freelancing writing career. If I haven’t mentioned it before, I work as a technical writer for a software company, and have been doing it for the last 8 years now. Over the course of that time I’ve always had full time positions, even though the majority of tech writing jobs tend to be contracts. This summer I realized that I really wanted to work contract rather than full time, and so when I started looking, I was looking for contract jobs. But then that really good full time job fell in my lap, and since I thought I wanted to move out of the big city, I took it.

Turns out I was wrong! I am a big city girl now. Phew, okay, I said that out loud. I feel better now.

Plus I’m just tired of “working for the man” and having to go into the office, so 2009 is the year of the freelancer…me! I spruced up my freelance website, and have started networking and applying for freelance jobs. I’m quite excited about this on a number of fronts, but the main one is simply that I could possibly bring in a few extra dollars here and there. That is the number 1 goal for doing it. But if I can get the monthly income and client list up to a decent level, I am most definitely going to chuck the full time job.

But wait, what about the current state of the economy? Aren’t you worried?

Surprisingly no, I’m not worried. Technical writing is a small enough market that if you’re good at it, you’ll always have a job. And it’s one of those types of jobs that lend themselves to contracting because it’s a great way for companies to save money. They get you in to work on the project they really need done, they pay you a fair wage, and they don’t have to pay you any benefits or retirement savings matches. One other cost-saving measure for them is that I am able to work online, from home, so they don’t even need to set me up at a desk in their offices. Technical writing covers such a gamut of topics that I’m not worried at all. Tech writers work for software companies, hardware companies, banks, insurance companies, the government, the military, your local transit commission…I could go  on here. So I’m not even limited to just tech companies.

This is why I am excited about starting on this adventure. While I haven’t landed any freelance contracts just yet, I know that with my current efforts, I should land some soon. Wish me luck!