I had never given much thought to making money from writing until I was halfway through a round-the-world trip and thought how great it would be to write about my experiences and get paid for it. I’d been writing a blog to keep my family and friends up-to-date with my travels when I met an Irish girl in Spain who was already being paid for her travel writing and I realised I had found my ultimate career.
Unfortunately, my family and friends didn’t feel like paying me to travel and write so I when I got home I started thinking about my options and that’s when I saw an advertisement for the Morris Journalism Academy. Although it had been years since I’d done any kind of study and I had some reservations about online courses, I decided to give the Professional Freelance Journalism Course a go.
Study at your own pace.
From my first assignment feedback, I felt encouraged to keep going and develop my ideas. Being able to study at my own pace was a big incentive and I found downloading the tutorials and reading them when I was ready was a much more enjoyable way to learn as opposed to the distractions you would likely find in a noisy classroom.
In between assignments I wrote a travel piece on Antarctica and sent it away to a magazine just to see what would happen. It ended up being my first knock back, but I had another go and sent it off to my local newspaper, Gold Coast Bulletin. They decided to run the article and although I wasn’t paid, seeing my words and pictures in print was very exciting.
This online journalism course taught me how valuable it is to stay in contact with an editor so I am now writing a second piece for the same publication and this time it’s from a proposal I put forward.
Learn to write about practically anything.
Initially I thought travel writing would be my specialisation but the tutorials made me think about what else I’m interested in. I’ve learnt that when it comes down to it, with a bit of practice, a lot of research and the right tools, you can write about almost anything.
As a result, Cleo magazine has just published one of my articles and this time I’m getting paid for it. Before the course I never would have thought to try to write an article for a magazine I rarely read.
More than anything, this online freelance journalism course teaches you what not to do. Many will tell you what to do and quite often they are obvious things you already know. But what is important is knowing the little things, such as what an editor doesn’t like, what can kill an interview and what not to include in an article. This can be the difference between getting something published and getting something rejected over and over.
Thanks to the Morris Journalism Academy, I have all the information I need to do what I love and get paid for it! Thanks again!