Where to Market Your Writing Skills

There are a lot of great places to get gigs when you're ready to hang out your own shingle.

My partner and I get around 75% of our business from referrals and clients that use our services on a regular basis for content because they know they'll get quality content.

However, I still market our business every single day and if you're wondering where, here is a few of the places I hit on a regular basis:

Absolute Write has some great posts for writers seeking gigs.
http://absolutewrite.com/forums/

Journalism Jobs.com is another cool place to pick up writing gigs. If you're looking for casual writing, put in "blogger" as a search term.
http://www.journalismjobs.com/index.cfm

Monster.com; yes the Monster is actually a decent place to get writing gigs. I scored a fun blogging job off there for a pregnancy and wellness site.
http://www.monster.com

And the hoss daddy site to snap up writing gigs is at Craig's List. Yes it's raw and there are a ton of scams but you can usually spot them fairly easily.
Here's a good thing for anyone with a yahoo addy, you can put a 100+ cities into your "My Yahoo" and just let the feeds post and you can see what gigs are available for many cities at once at a glance.
http://www.craigslist.org/

And a tip on how to market yourself. Don't write your life story, be short and sweet and just convey that not only can you do the job, you can do it well.

Don't send samples unless asked, just write a short blurb setting up an introduction.
Then you can sell them on your services and send samples in a follow up. That way oyu aren't wasting a lot of time writing long introductory emails and sending samples all over the web.

Also, don't plead and beg for business. I have seen writers send emails that went something like this, "Hello, I am responding to your ad and wondered if you would give me a chance to write for your firm? I am a single stay-at-home-mom that just needs a chance...."

Needless to say she didn't get the gig. Instead, just tell the potential client off the bat the benefits of dealing with your writing company. Terms like "original, entertaining content" will work much better than "give me a chance".

And that's my two cents for the day.

Good luck!