Every Professional Communication Career You Can Imagine

Best skills, talents, personalities for more than 55 great careers

Chapter 1 : Introduction

This book is designed to help my audiences explore the various fields in professional communication. The careers we will examine include the job market for professional communicators of all stripes, looking at some of the skills and talents excellent communicators (writers, artists, animators, photographers, videographers, and the like) need so they can thrive in each of these different careers. By describing what kinds of people thrive in the different jobs, I might make it possible for you to have a place to begin researching that career where you think you might thrive. I cannot tell you everything you need to know about any of these jobs, but I do believe I can give you a sense of which careers you might want to research in greater depth.

The book also explains, in broad terms, how to get some of those skills and how to put together a portfolio that demonstrates that you have those skills.

In these chapters, I use the terms “skills” and “talents” frequently. Casual thinkers might conflate these terms, but they are different. For example, you might be able to do amazing things to your photos with Photoshop – you are using your skills. The force you that makes you feel the need to learn to use Photoshop that well is a talent. Photographic purists would argue that being able to shoot the perfect photo in the first place is the real skill. Their talent is their need to never have to ever use Photoshop. By definition, your talents define who you are and so cannot be easily changed (if they can be changed at all). For our the purposes of this book, your talents are the internal forces that make you behave as you do.

How many kinds of jobs are there?

One of my research areas as an academic is to follow the evolution of the professional communication job market. Between 1994 when I began my research and 2019 when I started this book, I have seen the market grow from around a dozen different careers to more than 60 (some of which have extremely large salaries). In the early 1990s a person might be a copywriter, editor, or graphic designer. Related and more desirable jobs in communication management included fields such as managing editor, ad manager, or art director.

With the advent of the Internet, however, we see an explosion of new jobs, including areas such as information architect, usability analyst, website manager (or master), technical animator, process preservation specialist (something new), audience analyst, blogger, vlogger, new media editor (also very new), social network manager (even newer), and many, many more. Moreover, the same, basic job may have half a dozen names. To complicate matters, an information architect might also be the usability specialist, landing page optimizer, and content writer. What constitute a career might include any combination of fields that can be called careers independently.

The demand for people to fill these jobs vastly outspans the available potential employees. This means that any good communicator in any area of communication qualifies (or can reasonably become qualified) for a highly paid job.

Even people who are not such good writers but love fiddling with technology can qualify. Usability specialists do not necessarily write, design, or even code. Information architects may design the structure of a site, but never write or draw anything at all. In short, many of the new communication jobs require a lot of coding, programming, and analysis and very little communication with people. People with limited writing or artistic skills, can slip into an excellent career in professional communication through that door.

Students in tech comm. programs

I have taught you guys for 30 years, and I know what your programs look like. One of the things you will want to do as you go through school is decide where you want to land once you graduate, but you need to make that decision long before you graduate. The worst thing you can do (apart from quitting school) is wait until you graduate and then start thinking about what you want to do with that diploma. When you graduate, you will already need two very important things: a strong portfolio and work experience in the career area you want to enter. By spending time considering the talents you already have and what skills you are interested in developing and polishing, you can identify the exact areas you think you would find most interesting. Having done that, you can graduate with an appropriate portfolio and actual experience doing that kind of work.

In short, the jobs in this book are the ones you are currently training for. But your college education does not educate you toward any particular career. If you are smart, you will embrace your college education, but will be preparing yourself at the same time for a very specific career path.

Creative writing and art students

I am one of you. I graduated college with a liberal arts degree with emphasis in creative writing and fine art, painting. My master’s degree was in creative writing – creative non-fiction. But between the two degrees I spent an entire career in professional communication, first as a visual designer and later as an innovations editor writing articles about cutting edge developments in construction. I finally ended my working years as a professor of technical and professional communication.

There are lots of jobs where a creative portfolio will get you through the door if you have some relevant experience. Being an illustrator is as creative as being a fine art, painter, and copywriting requires the same kind of creativity, risk taking, and excitement that fiction writing does. Functionally, copywriting and illustration are the same as what you are already doing in your writing and art classes, but you are doing it for hire. That will make you livings while you do the art you love. For the past 40 years I have been an abstract expressionist, and I still am.
See one of my works below:

Helm for Sir Walter, PhotoExpressionism, 2020, David Hailey

Competition from College Graduates

There are professional communication programs in colleges all over the country, and If you do not have a professional communication degree, you will be competing with those graduating students. But there are far more jobs than there are students. Moreover, graybeards like me are retiring in droves so you couldn’t be considering this at a better time, and your odds of snagging a great job remain excellent.

Because there are so many more jobs than graduating writing students, job ads almost always say something like, “Degree required in technical communication, English, communication, or related area,” They always have that “related area” in the ad so they can hire you if you show them you can do the job but don’t have that pesky tech comm. degree. The fact is that most professional communicators do not have professional communication degrees or the more specific, technical writing degrees. I was one of those “related area” people. Scientists, philosophers, engineers, and teachers frequently cross over to professional writing. We even had an opera singer go through our graduate program and become a Web designer.

On the other hand, employers do tend to require some experience (usually 3 years) and will usually want to see a portfolio of professional work. The 3 years is almost never “required.” Instead, job ads will usually say “preferred”. That way the employers can still interview someone who looks good on paper even if she has only a year or so of experience. If you can show a good portfolio of work and any work history, the hiring influence will usually be less concerned with a degree in philosophy or literature or political science, and may not care much about how many years you actually worked.

In short, this book maintains that virtually anybody who has any college degree and writes well can step into an exciting and well paid professional communication career.

About the author

I am Dr. David Hailey, and I have been in professional communication since 1967. During this 51 year period, I worked as copywriter, graphic artist, display manager, art director, technical writer, communications director, managing editor, innovations editor, and, for the last 25 years, consultant, academic researcher, and professor of technical and professional communication. I have published more than a hundred articles and chapters (in both academic and technical venues), plus books and fictional stories.

My research mandate for my classes was to teach the extreme leading edge of professional communication. As a result of this mandate, in 1996 I oversaw the development of the first Internet-based composition programs anywhere. It was so early in the development of the WWW that we had to build our own software (Syllabase). That new software made it possible for us to offer one of the first two online master’s degrees in technical communication (MTC) in 1997. Texas Tech began teaching online tech Comm. grad classes that same year. In our Professional and Technical Communication program, I taught digital communication design, including kiosk-based games and instruction, WWW, 3D animation, eBooks, and VR -- using HTML4, XHTML, HTML5, CSS, CSS3, XML, JavaScript, Python, a variety of other coding languages, plus a whole collection of technical software.

Finally, as I have already mentioned, I spent years studying the explosive growth of the professional communication job market. Having done this research, worked with other writers, and worked within a large segment of the jobs I discuss in this book, I am in an good position to tell you how to snag the one you want.

What Professional Communication Careers Look Like

The profession is growing so fast and in so many ways that it is difficult to find a description that encompasses everything. Not only are the traditional, mainstream jobs growing more complicated, but the profession is continuously spinning off more and more exciting new careers. Recent new and sometimes surprising careers include professional blogger and social media specialist, user experience analyst, information architect, animator, game narrator, content analyst, process preservationist, and more. The jobs are constantly spinning out other careers. Fairly recently, technical animation sprang up along with professional YouTuber. As recently as 15 years ago, the term technical writer applied almost exclusively to hardware and software documentation. The same list now tops 55 professions, and many of them regularly show up in the top three of US News and World Report and Money Magazine’s list of best careers. This past year, two professional communication careers, (content manager, and Web developer) surpassed electrical engineering to top that list.

Just as diverse as the number of professions are the different skills and talents the jobs demand. The skills and talents of an editor, for example, will be largely different from those of a copywriter or Web designer. The very meticulous and focused mindset of an excellent copyeditor is the opposite of the creativity and adaptability that a Web designer needs. As you will see as you read this book, no matter what your skills and talents, there is a place in the larger profession of professional communicator for you.

Salaries

Salaries in the many fields vary wildly. You might take an entry level job that pays a yearly salary as small as $35,000, but you might rise through the ranks to a salary that exceeds $500,000. Entry level documentation jobs often pay more than $50,000 and sometimes more than $75,000, while freelance, part time copywriters might earn less than $15,000 (but if you are homebound, this might be just the kind of job you need). Contractors and consultants with special skills can earn more than a million/year.

The salary a job pays mostly depends on the geographical location of the job, your skills, and the kind of company you work for. A startup business in Liberal, KS cannot pay you as much as Google or Amazon will pay their Silicon Valley writers. A student intern in an IBM Silicon Valley facility might earn $50K, but only $35K in the same company in Denver, and little or nothing at all in Logan, UT.

Professional writers today are almost never just writers. They will work within environments that will require at least a little understanding of the inner structures of digital media. They might do a bit of programming, they will use software typically only used by professionals (and so not necessarily easy), and they may work within complex or complicated information systems (AI).

Evolution of careers

New careers are springing up every year. In 2014, my book ReaderCentric Writing for Digital Media was published. Among the things in the book is a proposal for a new career in professional communication. I called the process that hypothetical person would do, “content quality evaluation.” Recently, I read an ad that described the same skills for a job they called “content quality assessment,” and they were offering $268K per year for that employee. This is a new career that sprang up within the past two years.

How to Read this Book

This is the first of four volumes that describe the professions and how to break in (first book), how to approach the act of professional writing (second book), what technologies you will need to understand (third book), how to work with digital media (final book). You can read the books in any order, and there is no need to read any book all the way through. The point of the first book is to help you find the professions that most interest you. Segments of the subsequent books will help you prepare for the jobs you choose.

Research in adult learning suggests that adult learners do not sit back and expect the teacher to lecture the day away like the high school students do. Adult learners attack the learning curves that interest them and are not interested digging into things that don’t interest them. I assume you are all adult learners, and you will take what you want from these books and leave what you don’t. I am happy to see you do just that.

What Is in this Book

The book briefly describes many of the entry level jobs you might be qualified to apply for. You might even apply for some of them while winding your way through these books. For example, blogging is perhaps a decade, or so, old, but professional blogging and social media maintenance is newer. To apply for such jobs you would not need a great deal of experience because nobody, yet, has a lot of experience. Instead, you would need an excellent working blog that highlighted your blogging skills. Plus, you would need a professional looking FaceBook page, a good Linkedin page, and an active twitter account, maybe even some YouTube videos. This would be your portfolio. If, when the hiring committee sees these, if they are impressed, you have a crack at the job . . . even if you have little or no professional experience.

Similarly, copywriting is an entry-level job. My first job was as a copywriter and my portfolio was a collection of college essays and fiction stories. Copywriting is a highly creative job and creative writers tend to thrive there. Many creative writers already have strong portfolios. Pad your portfolio with a few sample ads, press releases, product descriptions (all produced exclusively for the portfolio), and you have a serious crack at such a job . . . again, with little or no professional experience.

The higher paid jobs obviously demand more skills. Information architect involves designing websites and require an understanding of the specialized tools and languages necessary for such tasks. Content quality analysts run tests that identify breakdowns content quality within digital media. These people are obviously in greater demand and earn larger salaries.

Conclusion

The various professional communication positions are among the very best careers by any measure. There are so many and they are so varied that it matters little where your talents and personality characteristics lay, you will find a career that suits your personality. Professional communication careers consistently rank in the top ten best jobs, measured by salary and personal satisfaction. Moreover the path to one of these jobs is open to you if you have the skills and talents when you are ready to go after one.

Chapter 2: Advice for How to Approach Becoming a Professional Communicator

You might be surprised to discover that most careers in professional communication are entry level, which is to say you can qualify for them with little or no professional experience. But you have to be able to demonstrate appropriate talents and skills before applying for any of them. Since most of these job ads will ask of 3 or more years of professional experience (which you probably won’t have), plus a degree in technical communication, journalism, English, or comparable, you need to find ways to meet those “asks.” I have already pointed out that the “comparable” becomes your ticket past that degree hurdle. Most college degrees have a communication component, and many have huge communication components. Getting past the three year hurdle is tougher, but there are ways around that, as well.

The portfolio

What professional communication ads typically do not say is most potential employers will expect to see examples of your work (a portfolio), and there is often a test of your skills. There is no way around that portfolio. You have to have one of those before virtually any job interview. The portfolio can often get you past the 3 year rule. It needs to be excellent, and it needs to have a variety of examples, but the work does not need to have been done while working as a professional communicator. The work must be professional, but it need not have been done professionally. You can do projects for friends, charities, relatives, and even for yourself.

Fake it till ya’ Make it

This is not a prescription for cheating. It is an invitation to be confident as you attack the learning curve. If you want to do something and think you can do it . . . do it. And don't do half measures. Go in all the way. For example, HTML seems daunting, but it is not. It costs you nothing whatsoever to learn how to make a website. You can do it with any computer, and you can learn from a thousand experts in YouTube. You already write well. In a month you can also know how to code in HTML and the associated coding languages . . . if you have the courage to apply yourself to the task. That is what I mean by "fake it till you make it." Begin the task with the confidence of an expert and sooner than later you will be an expert."

If you keep your day job (even if your day job is as a student) and freelance or contract on the side while you look for the career you really want, you can be putting that portfolio together. During that time in Purgatory, you do professional writing projects, even if you have to do them for free. The key is to build up that portfolio so you can demonstrate that you can do the job. You need to be able to show that you have done professional quality work (note that I am not saying you have to have done work professionally). So if you have a friend who you think needs a new brochure or website, help her with it and put the ultimate artifact into your portfolio. The things in your portfolio need to be the very best you can produce. You should never have to explain why something is crooked or smeared because if you do, you are showing the interviewer the piece is not professional. If you have something with a glaring flaw, redo it or remove it.

Look for local, professional organizations. The Society for Technical Communication (STC) has local chapters in many cities that meet monthly. There may be one in your city. If there is, and they have meetings, you can get a lot of support there. Most of the people who regularly attend meetings are among those who recommend or even hire new people. It is good to know them. LinkedIn has professional discussion forums, including forums on professional writing and freelance writing and looking for writing jobs. People beginning in the field, ask questions about getting started all the time. Longtime professionals will usually answer their questions. You will need connections.

An aside for students

In my ungraduated classes, I would take one class period to explain to the students how important it is to be prepared when they graduated. For example, rather than see themselves as professionals once they graduate, a student could join with a couple other students, maybe an artist and business communication (a kind of Web coding degree) and put together a business doing professional work (again, even if not charging for it). If they did that, by the time they graduated, they would have two or more year’s professional experience. Income tax law allows them to deduct any expenses for software, supplies, and much of their travel, and finally, by the time they graduate, there is a good chance they are being paid for what they do. In fact, by the time they graduate, they may already be doing the job of their futures.

"Fake it 'till you make it" is not cheating

This is not a prescription for cheating. It is an invitation to be confident as you attack the learning curve. If you want to do something and think you can do it . . . do it. And don't do half measures. Go in all the way. For example, HTML seems daunting, but it is not. It costs you nothing whatsoever to learn how to make a website. You can do it with any computer, and you can learn from a thousand experts in YouTube. You already write well. In a month you can also know how to code in HTML and the associated coding languages . . . if you have the courage to apply yourself to the task. That is what I mean by "fake it till you make it." Begin the task with the confidence of an expert and sooner than later you will be an expert.

It is unethical to lie in an interview, and if you do and the employers discover what you did, they will fire you. life model that many professionals take very seriously. In terms of thinking about that model, consider the figure skater who performs at the Olympics. He was once the goofy looking kid who couldn’t keep his feet under him on the ice. Or consider the pianist at Carnage Hall. She began by playing chopsticks – badly — somewhere. Everybody who is good at something difficult was once bad at it. Every good writer was once a bad writer. Nobody ever begins any demanding area by being good at it. We all have to go through that rough and clumsy part of learning, but the successful people keep trying until one day they discover that, at some point, they got pretty danged good.

The rule everybody follows as they grow their skills, whether they know it or not is, “Fake it ‘till ya’ make it!” That is to say, they empower themselves with a level of confidence somewhat beyond what their competence deserves. When I started my first job as a copywriter writing articles, I had written a lot of essays, fiction, and a few magazine articles that never published. When I got the chance with a new job, I wrote and rewrote this first professional article again and again. When I turned it in, it was good enough. The next one was better and the next one even better. That is how you get better. After a while, I could pound an article out in a day. When I caught an editor trying to sneak his by-line on one of my articles, I knew I was getting pretty good. That’s how it works. You try to be very good until one day you look back and see that you have become very good.

Begin doing this process long before you consider going to work for someone. That way when you go to work, you won't be faking it.

Here is how it works

In 1989, I had access to a software called “Toolbook”. It allowed me to build hypertext documents. After my first document, I was hooked. I can’t even remember what that first project was, but for the next one, I built a simple parachute design training manual for the American Institute for Aeronautics and Astronautics. It wasn’t for them to use; it was just a proof of concept. And I didn’t charge them.

I worked on learning this process for the next 4 years as I worked on my Ph.D. When I graduated, I was hired as an assistant professor, not because of my studies at school, but because I had become expert with hypermedia (this was before the WWW). In my new job, Netscape Composer had not been out for a week and I was building my first website. It wasn’t a great website, but it was the first on campus. Then I built another the next semester and the next. Then I started building instructional sites for the College of Engineering. The first dozen of them were simple slide shows. But then I built some more full classes using video (you can see here that at no time was I lying to anyone). Then going full circle back to my original project work, and I built two hypermedia manuals dedicated to rigging nuclear weapons parachutes for use behind two different nuclear bombs for $70,000 each. The last man in the United States who knew how to do that job was retiring, and they needed to carefully document the entire processes (80 hours each) for their archives. Since then, I can’t even guess how many instruction sets, simulations, VR projects, or 3d animations I have done.

Building an online composition program was the same thing. Who in 1995 knew how to teach online. The first class was rough. I taught the class using email. But out of that sprang online courses all across campus. The next classes were better and as I fiddled with them, they got pretty good and sometimes really great! That is the attitude I am trying to instill into you.

The point is be ready to do what you want before you go to work

When you are ready, research the places you want to work and apply at those places. In any interview it will become clear through normal conversation that you have researched the employer and want to work there. That is truly impressive to them.

If you have an otherwise strong portfolio, when they ask how much you know about XML (or similar technology) you can say, “I know how it works, and I’m excited by the prospect of learning how to use it better.” That shows the desire, willingness to learn, and courage they will be seeking. Even if you don’t get the job, demonstrating those characteristics will have impressed the interviewers. In the end, this combination, by itself, is often enough to get someone hired at entry level – confidence, willingness to learn, and strongly expressed desire to be on the team.

More important than experience is the willingness (courage) to attack a demanding learning curve and push on until you have topped it. Employers are always looking for that kind of courage.

A Tangle of Professional Communication Careers

A number of these career fields overlap so that a professional communicator might do several as part of a job (e.g., a webmaster might also do Web analytics, content management, and UX analysis), but in all cases, there are also professionals who only do that one thing. Some of the careers are so new, they are barely emerging (e.g., metadata analyst, process preservationist, content quality analysis) and have little or no salary track record, but they offer obvious opportunities for the profession. I have found more than 60 career fields I can describe. Many of them overlap so much that I will cover some of them together. My descriptions are in as much depth as I can make them, but they are largely meant to give you enough meat to begin investigating for yourself. If you see something interesting, you can Google it to see how many thousands of jobs are available under the title and what skills and talents the best of those professionals offer. You can also look up the job titles in employment boards such as Indeed.com.

Something you should notice is that the more skills and talents the job demands beyond writing, the greater the salary. The copywriter, who needs only to be able to type, do research, and write, might make around $55,000 per year. The content quality analyst, who needs to understand search engine optimization, landing page optimization, metadata analysis, and how to identify all of the various genres, plus a good understanding of code, can make $250,000 per year. It all depends on how much work you are prepared to put into your technical education.

Skills the Professions Demand

Become competent in the areas you find interesting. If you like design, you might find Web design and management interesting. You can apply your design skills, but you will need to become competent in Photoshop and Dreamweaver, and able to use HTML, HTML5, extensible HTML (XHTML), cascading style Sheets, and (maybe) JavaScript at some level. These skills are not that hard to learn, but at first, the learning curve can be very steep.

Other jobs will require completely different skills. Copy editing, for example, requires a thorough understanding of the mechanics of English. Editors don’t just fix spelling and grammar, however. The profession is much richer. For example, organization of ideas is important, and it is often the editor’s job to propose organizational changes to the writer. Writers often write with voices inappropriate for their specific audiences. Editors can advise writers in that area as well.

Technical documentation specialists write across a very broad spectrum of media. They publish books, instruction sets, instructional websites, and online help, often presenting the same information in these different media. Often they have to write is such a manner the information fits into each medium with minimal adjustment.

There is something for everybody

If you see something in this book that you think you would like to do, focus on the skills that job demands and attack that learning curve. At first, you practice the skills on your own until you think you have them dialed in pretty well. Then “fake it till you make it” in the real world doing projects for friends or relatives or for nonprofits. Once you start doing that, your experience clock begins ticking. Keep doing that and by the time you are ready for your first serious job, you will have the portfolio and experience to qualify for it.

So what Is a Talent?

Aristotle says that a man is what he does time after time. That describes how people’s talents work. A talent is a natural tendency to repeat behaviors. In many situations, risk taking is a talent. Risk takers usually can’t help themselves. Some careers (e.g., publishing, managing editing, web design) involve taking risks on a daily basis. Early adopters of new ideas or technologies are risk takers who bring new possibilities to the corporate conversation. On the other hand, in the past, risk takers have squandered away people’s nest eggs with risky investments and have brought more than a few banks to their knees. The awful recession that ran through the second decade of the 21st century was largely caused by similar risk takers. Usually, a talent will have a dark side, but dark or light it’s always a part of your personality—part of how you like to do things. Based on that, it should be clear that a talent for one kind of job will often be a detriment for a different kind of job. A natural love of experimenting with and learning new technologies would enhance the career of an information architect, but would do nothing useful for a proofreader. With a sense of your talents, you can better identify the list of careers where you will most likely thrive.

Universal talents

Although different careers might lend themselves to different talents, some talents apply to pretty much all of the careers. Focus, for example, is the ability to work a project from beginning to end without giving in to distractions. Most projects in professional communication are fairly large, taking days, weeks, months, or even years. Moreover, they generally have critical deadlines. Getting a major project done well and on time is the professional communicator’s bread and butter.

Another universal talent in professional communication is an unquenchable hunger for new knowledge. The best professional communicators learn just for the fun of learning. They are the ones who read encyclopedias (when there were such things) just for the fun of it. Now, they spend a lot of time at YouTube and Lynda.com. There are more talents you might exhibit, but they are more applicable to individual careers.

How do you identify your specific talents?

The Gallup organization spent decades interviewing millions of employees in an effort to discover what talents make us excellent employees. What they found is that we all have natural characteristics that we cannot change. They are just a part of what we are. Some of us happily thrive in chaos (e.g., copywriter). Some of us are risk takers (e.g., indi-book publishers). Some of us thrive in an environment where snap decisions are the norm (e.g., managing editors). In contrast, some of us are naturally comfortable in consistency, disliking chaos (e.g., proofreaders, copy editors). Some of us thrive in carefully considered strategies and are reluctant to make changes once the strategies are established (e.g., documentation specialist).

Gallup published their results in three books. One of the books is devoted to presenting hiring and management suggestions—how to look past a candidate’s experience to see his talents. This book (First Break all the Rules) is required reading in many corporations. But two of the books are relevant for helping us identify our own important professional talents: Now Discover Your Strengths (Marcus Buckingham and Donald Clifton, $19,89 on Amazon.com) and Strengths Finder 2.0 (Tom Rath, $15.44 on Amazon.com). The books provide access to tests that permit you to identify your top five talents, but by reading their list of 34 talents, you can see other talents that could apply to you.

An important point to take away from this segment is that no matter what talents you may exhibit, there are careers in professional communication that have your name written all over them.

Portfolio

I have already said, virtually all of the jobs I list below require that you have a portfolio of excellent work. The jobs are different with different demands, so the content of the portfolios will be different. With that in mind, after describing the job, I describe the portfolio you should take to the interview. I also explain how you can put together an excellent portfolio even if you are not currently doing professional writing.

Chapter 3: Entry Level Careers

The following is a list of 30 careers that you can often enter with little or no professional experience. The key to entering these areas is to have a good portfolio. “How,” you ask, “am I supposed to have a good portfolio when I have never had a job?” Well, there are several ways. Suppose there is an election coming up and you have a favorite candidate. You could volunteer to work for the candidate. You could push your writing skills until you get a chance to write for the candidate. That gives you PR writing experience and stuff to put in your portfolio and resume.

Also, suppose you start a part-time writing/editing business. You could write articles for small professional magazines. With a bit of luck, and if you really are an excellent writer, you will get an article or two published. At the same time, you could find yourself editing things written by others (perhaps working with a friend’s company).

If you are a creative writer, you could publish in small, literary presses. For many of the jobs listed below (e.g., copywriting), your fiction and poetry will be of interest to employers. You could write a proposal or brochure copy or an “about us” page for a friend who works in a non-profit agency.

You may or may not make any money doing these things, but they are good practice and they get you portfolio pieces. I will discuss the problem of building your portfolio in the sections below. Many of the jobs require different portfolios. Putting together the right one for the job you want is important.

As I have already said, like most of you, I did not have a technical communication degree. My BA was in fine art (painting) and creative writing. The above paragraphs exactly describe the path I took to break into the profession. In the beginning, I had nothing but fiction stories and drawings and photographs. In my first job, I had the opportunity to do a few illustrations, shoot a few professional photographs, write a few brochures, and edit some work by others. These few things mixed in with the best of my stories, art, and photos got me my first job as a copywriter. From there, I rose to assistant editor and (finally) managing editor for Caterpillar Inc. You may find many of the jobs listed below to be uninteresting, but you should find some of them pretty exciting. The thing is this. Don’t try to qualify for all of them. Instead, find the ones that demand talents you have and look like they might be fun. Focus on qualifying for the jobs that you think you would enjoy. Typically, the more demanding the job, the more it pays, and and the easier it is to break into it (once you have taken the time to develop the right skills). Once you are looking for a job in your career of choice, focus on that one area.

[NOTE: the salaries below are what you might expect if you walked into that job as a brand new hire.]

Analog Ad Manager

This is often a job that is based on comissions, so your salary could vary wildly, but it should be around $66k/yr

The ad manager works closely with the client to find the best venues for advertising. Sometimes they specialize in a medium, but often they will have a broad understanding of the impact of all media on the public. The analog, ad manager works in all media except digital (he could also work in digital, but these skills and talents would not apply there). For example, this ad manager might arrange printed mailers designed to be sent to nearby homes or to major technical corporations around the world. He might develop radio or television or newspaper ads for a company where he works. For Example, in the technology industries, it is often the job of the ad manager to figure out how to make a new and complex message meaningful to a specialized audience. Alternatively, the ad manager might specialize in one medium and work for the company that will be carrying the ad.

Ad managers are very much like art directors except that they will typically "publish" in a much broader spectrum of media. In addition, their creative role might be somewhat diminished in that they may not actually create the ads; instead, they will usually oversee ad development and production. Typical these jobs are found in ad agencies or mid-cap and large-cap companies that have departments resembling ad agencies, but the media (radio, publishing, Internet) use them as well. I know of no instance of a freelance advertisement manager.

Skills

A thorough understanding of the media where you will be placing your ads is critical. If much of your work will deal with printed media, you will need to know how contemporary printing is done. If you work for a radio or TV station, you will need to understand how their ads run. As always, you will need a portfolio of work that demonstrates your knowledge in that area.

Talents

This is a task for a risk taker. Everything you do is on the line. You are only as good as your last project. A person who likes things to stay constant, will not like this work. This successful person is a visionary, who thrives in chaos, who loves new ideas and new challenges. There is a lot of persuading in this field, so someone who can successfully describe his vison will do well.

Salary

Author (Freelance Technical Nonfiction Articles)

You are likely to earn nothing in the beginning, but if you connect with a few publishing venues, you could pick up perhaps $1000 a month. Although, if you are really good, you may be hired to write regularly for an association of corporation that would pay $1200 or more per article you do for them.

This is an opportunity that almost every writer overlooks. I have published more than 50 of articles and chapters in national, professional magazines, journals, trade books, house organs, newspapers and newsletters. The opportunities to develop skill and a reputation in the profession of writing can be astonishing. All it requires is for you to say the following: “I think I will form an LLC and begin writing technical nonfiction professionally.” Then set about the task of becoming a professional writer.

As you write in this area, your writing skills cannot help but improve. And as you build a portfolio of articles, you are building a reputation as a writer. In many disciplines, publishing articles can be surprisingly easy. But you don’t just have to publish articles in magazines, you can create a technical website and begin blogging (more about blogging later). Don’t quit your day job, however. This is not going to make you a living. You might earn some money, but you are unlikely to ever be paid a living wage. Instead, this is your opportunity to build a reputation and a dynamite portfolio.

On the other hand, you can begin deducting, from your income tax, all of the professional tools you buy and many of the trips you take. Accepting that you are a professional writer, calling yourself a professional writer, and writing articles as if you were a professional writer makes you a professional writer. Once you do that, you have the right to deduct all expenses that go toward writing professionally – computers, printers, ink, pencils, office space, desk, chairs, travel for the purpose of your profession -- all of those expenses are deductible. Now, at some point, you have to begin making a profit or the IRS is going to wonder whether you are using deductions to support a hobby. But if you are serious about being a professional writer, you will be earning money long before the IRS begins to worry about you. And, in the end, you don’t have to make a profit. You just have to get paid for what you do.

Where to publish

Many trade and hobby publications have trouble getting good stories. For example, there aren’t a lot of people who know a lot about photovoltaics and can write well. There are even fewer who know about bio-diesel. . . . but there are lots of trade journals interested in stories in these areas. The important thing is this. You keep your day job while you write these articles and you are getting good practice at your vocation of choice. . . . and the practicing counts as experience . . . . and you have stuff to put in your portfolio . . .AND REMEMBER any travelling you do or tools you buy are deductible.

. . . and . . .

Don’t forget online publications. I recently took an extended trip to the south Texas coast. There are online travel magazines that would happily have published my adventures. Most would have been unable to pay me, but I would have had an excellent portfolio piece—a great story with lots of great photos.

How to go about it

First, you give yourself a company with a real name. It might be something like “Blue Line Editorial Services.” You get card stock at Staples and print out some business cards and then (maybe) incorporate as a limited liability corporation (LLC). Now you are a business.

Research in the fields where you have some expertise. The more mundane the field (e.g., paving, construction, farming) the less competition and the more your opportunities. Find out who the pubs are (don’t forget online pubs). Look at associations, regional publications, and corporations that produce in-house publications. Large corporations that manufacture things they would never advertise on TV or in magazines will produce “house organs” (newsletters, quarterly magazines and the like) that they send to potential buyers. You may find a money cow that throws you a project every few months. I know this model works because I did it part time for years while doing my PhD and later while teaching. Portfolio

In subsequent passages I will often use this headline to point to descriptions of what kinds of portfolios you need to apply for various jobs. In this case, you need no portfolio to start this job. Instead, you will be using this job to build your portfolio. Also, remember where I said that most jobs prefer 3 years’ experience? Well this is where you begin accumulating your experience. Skills and Talents

You need to have the nerve of a door-to-door salesman to seek out publishing venues and send your best work to them. You send articles that you are certain are masterful and get them rejected – that hurts. Often they will tell you why they didn’t want the article (e.g., wrong season, too long, not exactly where they are going with their editorial policy, they are already doing something similar, etc.). These all mean you aren’t doing it right yet. I will address this in greater detail, but there are some basic rules that successful writers follow. If you fail to follow those rules, you look foolish. For example, if you send a back to school story in August it will be clear you do not know how publishing works. They would expect a back to school story in May. It takes months to approve, edit, typeset, design the publication, etc. Publishers will spell out these rules in a submission guidelines section somewhere within the publications. Or you can contact them to see what they like, and what they might be looking for. The complete process for writing for publication is far too complicated to cover here, but if you decide to take this on, there are virtually infinite resources that will help you work out exactly how to do it.

To succeed in this area, you need to love researching, love writing, be a risk taker, and have the hide of an alligator when you get rejections. The way I dealt with rejections was to create a long scroll that I hung on the wall. I would pitch a story to a publication, and post a sticker on the scroll. If the idea was rejected, I would write “REJECTED” on the sticker with a red Sharpie. If the idea was accepted, I would write “ACCEPTED” with a black sharpie and would begin writing the story. I knew I was being successful as a writer when there were more black “ACCEPTED’s” than red “REJECTED’s”. In time, I found professional (construction) pubs that liked my work and depended on me to produce articles regularly. One named me their “innovations editor” and expected one article per month. Even that wasn’t a living wage. An article would typically net me $850 a month.

Author (Corporate Technical Articles)

You can expect to begin at around $50,000 and up as a fulltime employee.

Believe it or not, lots of corporations have people who do little more than write articles. I did this for Caterpillar for several years, until I returned to school (where I continued doing this freelance – I discuss that in the previous section). Imagine this: a corporation manufactures something that costs $250,000 and weighs 40 tons. They aren’t going to advertise that tractor or asphalt plant on TV. They make a product that is used by a small number of very specialized companies (e.g., asphalt pavers, medical testing clinics) These manufacturers will often have writers write articles about their products in use and get those articles published in national professional magazines. Often corporations use freelance writers (see above), but they often have in-house writers. Companies like these also have quarterly house organs (internally published magazines) that they send out to their customers. Their staffs of writers produce articles for these as well. Working for them, you would write very much as you wrote when freelancing, but would have a salary and benefits.

Skill and talents

The writing can be pretty pedestrian and pretty repetitive so someone who doesn’t need a lot of change from project to project will be comfortable with the work. It is useful to have a good feel for photography. If they send you somewhere to gather information and photos and/or videos, they are not going to want to send a photographer or videographer.

Portfolio

Here is what I had in my portfolio when I got one of these corporate jobs. I had some graphic designs I had produced and were printed, half-a-dozen fiction stories, some essays I had written in college, and industrial photographs I had taken for a client.

If you took the path I pointed out above, you already have the portfolio. In fact, if you did freelance work for the company you are applying to, they have your portfolio.

Freelance Author (Technical Books)

Somebody has to write those manuals, how-to guides, science books, histories, and psychological self-help books, right? First, they can be fun to write because they can be on a topic you like, know about, and enjoy researching . . . . and almost anybody with writing skills can do that. We all have things we enjoy. Maybe we enjoy restoring old cars . . . that’s something we could write about. I once helped a lady who had rolled her car in an accident. She was fine, but the road was littered with books about quilting that the she had written and was delivering to quilting show in Blackfoot, Idaho.

Suppose you worked for a while for a contractor who installed solar panels. That is an area crying out for information. I researched for two years before I knew what I needed to do to bring solar to a remote cabin off the grid. There is literally no single, comprehensive source for how to install an array of panels for an off the grid home. That is an important book still waiting for an author.

The downside of this can be it can be very hard to get anybody to publish your book. Most publishers do not let authors through the door (or “over the transom). Instead, you need to get an agent, and most agents are really booked and really picky. Still, there are options. Back in the day, self-publishing was called “vanity press,” and those books were ignored as not worth reading. But as publishers got more and more greedy, some really great authors began self-publishing (starting, I think, with Steven King). Now it is called independent publishing and it is all the rage.

Publishing independently

You can publish independently by publishing an eBook. If you publish an eBook through Amazon, they will make it available for their Kindle, put they will also publish it as a physical book in an “on demand” basis. This can be very profitable since your share of the profit is much greater than book royalties are. Amazon pays authors as much as 60% of the cost of the book. In contrast, the royalties on my last book were 7%. If you think this is a good option, be sure to research it thoroughly before you try it. But if you know what you are doing and are an excellent writer discussing a subject that is in demand, you can do really well.

Skills and talents

This is a task that really demands a creative person that is not risk averse – a gambler. You could do a great deal of work for very little reward. On the other hand, a lot of people are doing very well with indie publishing.

Portfolio

You work up to this profession, and so should have a number of examples of professional articles and chapters. You will usually not be trying to persuade a publisher. Instead, you are trying to persuade an agent to work with you. Usually, an agent will pitch your book to the publisher. If you have independently published one or two successful books, that might get you in the door. On the other hand, if you have independently published one or two successful books, maybe you don’t need to go through the door.

Writing for Corporations

Corporations publish a wide variety of manuals and guides for their products. These may be team written, although small, startup corporations often have only one writer. You may find yourself writing the book, formatting it using a software like FrameMaker or InDesign or Sigil (software for eBooks), and submitting it to a printer or eBook publisher. YOU may even be the publisher! In some parts of the country it is pretty easy to find a job writing for a startup company. Working for a startup can be dangerous because they so often fail. But if you are good, and they succeed, you will find yourself promoted and promoted again (as they grow) until you run the whole show. In such cases, you are in what's called "a silo", and it can go all the way to a vice presidency. If they fail, you still have the portfolio and experience. And nobody will hold the company’s failure against you. Writing for a startup might be risky, but you win no matter what.

Freelance Writing

This is a good career move if you are home bound or you have little flexibility with your time. You can also do it while working at a 9 to 5 job. I have done this alongside my corporate or academic work. Usually, I would earn $800 to $1200 a month. Once or twice, I earned a few thousand dollars, but not often. On the other hand, I once wrote a book that brought me a whopping $80 per quarter in royalties for about two years. Still, if you are working from home and supplementing the family’s income, or doing this part time alongside a normal job, this is an excellent option.

If an author has an interesting topic, a publisher may contract her to produce a book on the subject. A book might take a year or more to write, though some publishers tend to push really hard to have the book written in weeks. In such a case, the writer may put in very long days for a couple of months.

This is also an excellent option if you are retiring from some other professional career. When a professional retires she simply changes her direction. When I retired from my professorship, I didn’t quit working. I just began writing books freelance. I am currently writing 6 books – two fiction, four nonfiction. I am also running a blog and the Interactive Media Research Laboratory. There is never any reason for a professional who writes well to ever fully retire.

Skills and Talents

Basically, it requires you to have some specialized skill that will be useful (e.g., web design or market gardening) or interesting (e.g., cosmology, rock climbing) to an audience you can identify. More than anything else, after knowledge, it takes patience and drive. Most of us have skills others would find interesting or valuable and just don’t know it. Mechanics and car buffs, quilters, carpenters, campers (and the like) publish books all the time. Almost everybody has a set of skills worth writing about.

Writing technical books also requires a level of drive. It takes more than a little focus to write 60 or 70 thousand words about a single topic. You need to be an excellent writer, but there are a lot of opportunities for those willing to attack such a daunting task.

NOTE: You may have noticed that with the exception of the corporate writer position, none of the jobs above will earn you very much money. You should consider them because they permit you to work for a living wage while you build a portfolio. The next job will also probably not earn you a lot of money, but it has the added advantage of building a portfolio that includes an understanding of digital technology. Given the future of professional communication, demonstrating an understanding of technology is not just important – it is critical.

Blogger

While you might make some money blogging, that isn't what this job brings you. It is a place where you can get really great experience working in a digital, proComm environment while building a world-class portfolio, while making your living at your 9 to 5 job.

This is a path journalism professors recommend for their graduating, undergraduate students. Journalism positions have been declining for the past 20 years. One way to break into a very small professional field is to work on a blog while doing something else as a day job. In effect, they employ themselves as professional reporters, with a beat they design, and their news medium is a blog. This permits them to practice being reporters and build their portfolio. This harkens back to my "fake it 'till you make it" section earlier in this book. But this doesn't just apply to journalism, if you have a special skill such as photovoltaics, rock climbing, even highway construction and write well, you can make money blogging. More importantly, blogging is good practice for your writing. If you don’t feel like you have a unique skill, you can write about writing (you could even write about trying to become a professional writer). To run a blog well, you have to do a lot of research. If not, you are just blabbing opinions and showing your ignorance. So if you are writing about writing (and doing a good job), you are researching and learning everything there is to know about the field as you are practicing your new career.

Improve your skills while building your portfolio

You can improve your skills by running more than one blog, practice using different voices (e.g., friendly discussion, point-by-point instructions); become more familiar with the mechanics of writing for different purposes, create examples that you can put into your portfolio—substituting better ones for weaker ones as your writing improves.

Many writers also use blogging to improve their connections and to demonstrate their knowledge in certain areas. For example, you might take a course in solar energy and start a blog. Perhaps you write article-length blogs about the plummeting silicone costs. If they are good articles they could be picked up by one of the trade magazines, or the publishers might ask you to rewrite something for them. Then you have a publication. On the other hand, DO NOT WRITE ABOUT HOW DREARY YOUR LIFE IS. If you write negative or dreary blogs, the potential employers will almost certainly see them as they research you. More than once, I have seen highly qualified people passed over because of dreary, whiney blogs. Instead, write positive and useful material.

You Will Be Working Professionally

Commercial blog sites carry advertising. The blogger gets a little money for each click on an ad. While you will probably never make a living doing blogs, you are working professionally, and you are building a record of experience (without having to give up your day job). Also, as I have already mentioned, this is an excellent opportunity for anybody who is homebound.

Vlogging

A different variation of this is Vloging (video blogging). You can see a lot of that on YouTube as well as in personal websites. Basically the rules and conditions are the same except you are now also learning the demands of videography. With the growth of new media, this is a very useful skill, but you will need a few tools and skills. Videotaping is easily enough done. You need only any camera that will shoot a video with sound. More important is the software. You want your work to look like a pro did it. There are several free video applications . . . just Google “free video editing software.” There are several good programs available for both Mac and Windows computers. Filkmora is an excellent and relatively easy to use application for video editing, and is probably as much as you need for your purposes. There are more complicated apps, but they can be hard to learn, require tons of memory, and get pretty expensive.

Bloggers and vloggers can get sponsors and can carry ads. The ads may earn you only a few cents per click, but an association might sponsor you if you are writing within their discipline. None of this will make you rich, and probably won’t even make you a living, but it is hard to get better experience.

Skills and Talents

As with the author, above, it is useful to have an interesting or useful skill that you can talk about. In addition, you need to be creative enough to find thing after thing after thing to write about. You need to be entrepreneurial (which is to say “risk taker”). You will need the hide of an alligator because you will always have detractors. And you need to be steady, posting good information regularly.

Salary

$10,000/year and up for a successful freelance blogger.

Copy Editor

When applying for such a job, you might be required to take a test and, perhaps, be asked to present a portfolio of professional quality work. If you score highly on the test, you could get the job with virtually no professional experience. Still, I have never taken any tests. I always got my new jobs on the strength of my portfolio.

Where do we find copy editors working?

The copy editor might work for a book publisher, journal, or company producing documentation. They also often work independently as freelance editors or as contractors, sometimes specializing in niche areas (e.g., proofreading dissertations).

In publishing, The copy editor is responsible for proofreading, making certain the text is ready for publication before permitting it to go to press. As a rule, the copy editor may

• check written material--often as a final step before it is set into type--to correct errors in grammar, spelling, usage, and style,
• review text for libel risks and factual errors,
• suggest rewrites as appropriate,
• write headlines and captions,
• (possibly) monitor the news services reporting globally and make determinations regarding local interest, and
• type spec or typeset as required.

Freelance copyeditors are hired by people who need to publish something and, while those writers might be excellent, they are often not such good editors. They need to have someone go through their dissertations or manuscripts before submitting them for review. This may be the most lucrative (and easy to break into) freelance career available. This career can be particularly lucrative in university towns where foreign students struggle with language and good copy editors can help them. Someone who is homebound or cannot relocate could make spending money, if not a living, doing this.

Copyediting Skills and talents

TThis job requires virtually no technical skills. Instead, you need to be highly focused and somewhat driven. You may be carefully examining 500 pages, looking at every word for malignant minutia. It takes incredible drive, focus, and patience. Moreover, you really need a talent for being irritated by things that are out of place. You also need a thorough understanding of the language. This is a combination of talent and skill that many claim but surprisingly few demonstrate. Still, if it describes you, it can be a lucrative option./p>

Copywriter

Copywriters earn around $55K; more or less for freelance, depending on skill and reputation.

My first writing job was as a copywriter. I had some experience in graphic arts and a degree that included creative writing, but I had no experience writing professionally. This first experience, in my path to becoming a professional communicator, shows that pretty much anybody who can show a portfolio with any kind of good writing can walk into one of these jobs. Having said that, copywriting is one of the lowest paid jobs among professional writing careers, and they are among the first to be let go if money gets tight . . . so don’t think of this as a lifetime plan. Think of it as a doorway to better opportunities.

Copywriters write the texts that are used in professional publications. “Copywriting” sometimes implies “writing marketing copy” but need not. More accurately, “copywriting” implies writing to order. The same person may be simultaneously researching and writing an article, an ad, a script, press release, CEO’s speech, web page, and the technical description of a military weapon. Copywriters work in three different environments: (1) corporate PR department, (2) ad agency, and (3) freelance or contract writing.

Working for Corporations

In a large corporation, the copywriter might produce ad copy for their marketing director or might write product descriptions or articles, newsletters, and whitepapers that can market products not marketable in more traditional venues such as TV (I mentioned Caterpillar earlier). Basically, they write highly creative, original content, although some of that content might be worked into a boilerplate (a kind of template where much of the content will already be in place and the new content is added).

Working for Ad Agencies

In ad agencies, the copywriter might produce ad copy for the creative director or scripts for TV ads, poster copy, or even (in one case I know of) fiction novels. The demands on their skills might be similar to writers who work for corporations, but they will probably write for a much larger spectrum of clients, and in a much wider range of genres.

Freelance Copywriters

Freelancers can easily work in both environments. In fact, the majority of copywriters are freelance contractors. They may have an office somewhere, but that office is likely to be in a home. This is an excellent career choice for a stay-at-home mom or a person who is bedbound.

Skills and talents

Like copy editing, copywriting requires few technical skills, but unlike copy editing, copywriting requires incredible and instantly available creativity. Copywriters need to be able to adapt to sudden changes in priority, audience, document purpose, or genre. Many writers are simply not creative enough to thrive in this profession, but for the exceptionally creative, copywriting can be an exciting profession.

Editorial Assistant

Editorial assistants provide background and clerical duties necessary for producing publications. This job is the foremost entry-level position for people interested in breaking into the publishing industry. There are several of these positions in any magazine or newspaper.

In the Corporation

The editorial assistants are the physical arms of the editors during the publication process. Basically, if something needs doing, the editorial assistant does it. Their duties may range from following an editor, cleaning up after her, doing her every bidding, etc., to more demanding tasks such as writing (or rewriting) articles, proofreading, page design, etc. Sometimes they may liaison between branches of a publishing house. One editorial assistant I know works for both the Utah and Colorado branches of her publishing house. Anything that needs being done that involves both branches . . . she does it. I have never heard of a freelance editorial assistant.

Fact Checker

Like the editorial assistant position, this job will not pay a lot, but also like the editorial assistant position, this is a good first step. This is an extremely entry level job that often requires no experience or portfolio. It is an excellent place to begin if you hope to become an editor in a publishing house, magazine, news service, or commercial blog.

Like a proofreader or copy editor, you need to be fastidious to the extreme. Accuracy is your bread and butter and inaccuracy is your downfall. Basically, in this job, you are the person who checks all the claims in a nonfiction article, chapter, or book. You make certain that the names are correct and correctly spelled, addresses and other personal information is correct. You make certain that quotes, historical data and attributions are accurate. In short, it is your job to make sure the all the elements in the story are true.

There can be other jobs that lead you toward the goal of becoming an editor. You may copy edit some of the text being prepared for publication. Assist the editor or managing editor with duties. Fact checker, is a stepping stone to promotion in the editorial community of professions.

Skills and talents

As I mentioned above, this job demands someone who is fastidious to the extreme. You should also be content with repetitious work. The job involves one or two steps in the transition from manuscript to publication – the same one or two steps day after day.

You will spend a great deal of time talking to people on the telephone, emailing, texting, etc., so you need to be gracious, gregarious and patient with a lot of strangers who may or may not want to be involved in the publication.

You will need to enjoy finding things and chasing down quotes. If an author claims that something is a certain size, you will need to go find that thing and measure it (though you can usually look that kind of fact up). Relevant work experience is often not required, though a college education usually is. The same rule applies that I have mentioned before, “Professional writing, communication, or comparable degree preferred.” This, however, is a job where talent is more important degree. That fastidious bent in your personality will do more for you than any college degree.

Grant Writer

Freelance grant writers frequently write for a percentage of any funding they procure, so how much they earn depends entirely on how well they write their proposals. Fulltime employees might earn $50K/year

This is an excellent way to get portfolio examples. Grant writers develop proposals for funding for charities, not-for-profit agencies, research institutes, schools, and corporations (they are, strictly speaking, “grant proposal writers”). Grant writers must be able to research and write to meet the exact demands of RFPs (requests for proposals). This means you need to be fastidious and persuasive.

This is another career field that permits you to work from home. Many large non-profits will be continuously producing grant proposals and have fulltime writers who include grant writing in their skillsets, but in my experience, most jobs are one-off contracts dedicated to specific RFPs.

Grant writers also work within organizations that continuously seek outside funding.

Nature of the writing

The grant writer may not actually write the grant, but will art of a team of writers, artists, and editors assembling the proposal. A formal proposal might be 9 pages but it may be much longer and involve a team made up of dozens of artists and writers. I was on the team at Boeing when they advanced the proposal, to Congress, to fund the first air-launch cruise missile, and that proposal was more than 300 pages long.

Proposals may be solicited (request for proposal) or unsolicited. Either way, they need to be very carefully written. My experience has been that you need to do four things: (1) present a sexy, new idea that (2) meets a real need, and (3) write a flawless proposal that (4) demonstrates you can do whatever it is you want to do. Funders see hundreds of proposals that might go 20 pages. If yours is not well written, the funder will not read past the first few pages.

The unsolicited proposal may be submitted to an agency that invites submissions within broad guidelines. But it is also possible someone in the organization may have contacted a resource and has received agreement to look at a proposal.

The solicited proposal will be in response to a very formal request for proposal (RFP). The writer needs to carefully follow all of the directives of the RFP. It is a good idea to even use all of their heads and subheads in the same order they appear on the RFP.

Really good writers can do well here, and getting a funded proposal can be an important addition to your portfolio. Have I mentioned how important your portfolio is?

Chapter 4: Technical Skills that qualify you for better careers

The jobs in chapter 3 are good places to begin. You do not, however, want to stop there. These are the first people laid off when things get bad. If you land one of these jobs, you should immediately plan to move to a more demanding and higher paid career. The problem is that these new, higher paying jobs require that you wade into the HTML pool. A copywriter with these skills is called a “content writer” and is more valued, more secure, and more handsomely paid than most copywriters. The difference between the copywriter and the content writer is, after writing the content, the content writer has to be able to place her content into websites and similar digital environments. This means the content writer needs to be able to read HTML code and even create a smattering of it, or similar code.

Using that smattering of code, the writer formats the content so that it can be read on the Internet by people and by robots. Google, Yahoo, Bing, and others send these robots (called “webbots”) around the WWW looking at all webpages so the search engine can know how to rank them among all of the others. In this regard your audiences include people and webbots.

There are scores of resources for teaching yourself how to do these things. Lynda.com has excellent online courses. You pay a little for them, but they can teach you virtually anything from photography to Web design to network management. I subscribe full time to Lynda.com and go there anytime I want to learn a new technology. There are also excellent videos on YouTube, though there is also more than a little misinformation there. My point is that you will find learning these technologies at this level is not difficult. Anybody can learn code at this level.

How do you do it?

For the jobs I present in this chapter, you do not need a lot of technical skills. You just need to understand how coding works. What you need is to know how to prepare your information for the WWW and how to put it. That is not nearly as hard as you might think.

The coding languages in common use today for the World Wide Web are XHTML, and HTML5. XHTML is a version of XML (extensible markup language) that allows you to build simple databases. You use it when you have lists containing different bits of information that you will use in different ways in different places on a website. For example, if you want to be able to list every top ten record album since 1950 by date, title, composer, singer, with an annotation describing its production history, and another annotation describing its impact on its listeners, you would use XML (more about this later) to store the information and an XHTML page to display any or all of the information you wanted to display. You might, on one page, display only the title and date of release. On another page, you might display everything in the file, but display only one decade. All of those different presentations would be pulled out of the same database.

EBooks are another example of XHTML pages being used to provide content while XML paged drive the interactivity in the eBook. An eBook is basically a combination of XHTML, XML, and CSS files zipped up into a zip file with the file extension “.EPUB”

HTML5, on the other hand, is designed to improve the richness of HTML by providing venues for serving rich media such as sound, video, or animation.

Don’t feel overwhelmed.

At this point, I worry you may feel that you find this overwhelming, and we are only beginning. Not to worry, all of this stuff will make sense soon. In the jobs I present below, you will not be the one building the eBooks and databases and websites. You will simply be importing content into them. That is a much easier process. Basically, all you will be doing is putting bits of tagging to the beginning and ends of paragraphs and before and after headlines. You might also be tagging images, cut lines, and so forth, but it will be no more difficult than the paragraphs and headlines.

Here is what you might need to do.

As you prepare your text, you will put <p> at the beginning of each paragraph and </p> at the end. The browser that presents your page to the public will automatically put a space between each paragraph. The <p> literally means <begin a paragraph> and </p> means <end of the paragraph>.

You also have to prepare your headlines. The headlines on this page are Heading 2 in a Word document. To do the same thing in code on a webpage, you would do

<h2> Headline </h2>

This is so simple, I barely have to explain it. There is a file that accompanies all websites that controls the look and feel of the site. The file is a CSS (cascading style sheets) file. When you type <h2></h2> code in that file drives what the subhead look like. But you will not have to deal with that. Setting up the look and feel of a website is the job of the Web manager. You never have to do anything with it unless you want to learn more about what you are doing to improve your standing in the workplace.

So that’s it. For most of the jobs in the next chapter, all you need to know is how to take the texts you have written in Word or whatever and integrate them into HTML. As it happens, that is exactly what I am doing at this moment.

The pages you will be working on.

HTML5 is a new version of HTML that is easier to use than the old one and provides much more information to the webbots. The code does that by giving you specific and easy to use commands you can insert. The following describes a typical page in the WWW. As a content writer you would not build the page; you would simply need to know how to work within the code.

The page begins with the command, <head>. This is information for the user’s browser and for the webbots. It includes things such as author, paths to supporting material for the page (e.g., JavaScript, Cascading Style Sheets), what the page is about, etc. An IT professional would build the section. You might need to write some of the descriptions, but the IT guy would probably plug them in. In keeping with the patterns I showed you above, this section ends with </head>.

After </head> comes <body>. This is the body of the page. Everything the reader sees will go here. The body defines the top of the page and its bottom. It also helps control whether the page is centered or shows up on the left. The last thing you see at the bottom of a page of code is </body>. You could put your marked code between “body” and “close body” and you would have a working webpage. You wouldn’t do that though. There has to be a heading (heading) and </heading>) and navigation (<nav> and </nav>). Under the heading an HTML coder will have put <article> and </article>. You would copy your content from your Word file and paste it into the text file containing the webpage code between<article> and </article>. That’s basically it for an HTML5 document.

The copy-paste process

I mentioned a text file above. Typically, there are two copies of your company’s website. One is on a remote server using space rented from a commercial host. The other will be on a computer somewhere within your company. The one in your company is called the staging site. You would work on this one. You would open a page of code in an application designed to manage HTML and similar coding languages, and you would copy content from your Word document to that HTML coding software. Once you had transferred your content and saw that it worked like it should, an IT professional would load it onto the remote computer, test it, and thank you for all your good work.

Basically, for a content writer, that’s the whole job. Other careers I mention in this chapter do variations of the same thing.

One final note

You do not necessarily have to find a new job as content writer from an old job as copywriter. You could grow the copywriter job into a content writer job. Many writers get their first jobs with startup businesses. These businesses are often strapped for cash, so they cannot afford a Web manager. In that case, the company will have contracted their Web management out, and the content you write might be put into a content management system. Web management systems are easier for you to use because they require no coding, but they cost the company money. If you learned the fundamentals of Web management, you could take that task over, saving the company money and giving yourself a fat promotion.

Entry Level Jobs Requiring some Specialized, Technical Skills

These are all entry level jobs, but not just anybody can apply for them. Most of them are found in digital communication and usually as a part of publishing websites. Unlike the ones above, which may go back to the dawn of publishing, these are mostly brand new career fields. Some of them are so new their names and descriptions are in a constant state of change. Content manager actually has three completely different meanings, and two of them have little to do with professional communication. All of these jobs are higher paid than the ones I discussed in the previous chapter.

Content Writer

People who can do these jobs well are in high demand. I have seen students leave the university with these skills and start their new job at $70K/year.

Job ads will usually list this as “Technical Writer” and then describe the job as follows: The content writer will write original content or control the content on a website or similar environment, and in this context may work under the supervision of an information architect when writing original content or user experience analyst when rewriting content. One area where the writer may excel in content writing is in evaluating content quality and improving it. The content manager who can identify and repair defective texts as he organizes them is likely to become a valued contributor.

This writer may not have to write code, but will certainly need to write within code, and so will need to understand the code she is working with. For example, after writing an article she might have to format it in HTML5 or XHTML for dissemination on the Web. Also they would likely need to be able to write for alt tags and possibly write technical comments in the code about the code (metadata).

The writer might research and write marketing copy, articles for travel blogs, core copy for Web pages. They would need to know how search engines work to be able to write for them (the search engines) as well as their final audiences.

The writer might research and write marketing copy, articles for travel blogs, core copy for Web pages. They would need to know how search engines work to be able to write for them (the search engines) as well as their final audiences.

In the end, this is really a copywriter position upgraded to the Internet. To do this well, you would need the same skills and talents I describe above for copywriters. The difference is this job expects you to write copy for an audience and for search engines, and format it for the Web, as opposed to printed publications.

Content Manager

This is a more demanding job, and depending on their skills, content managers can easily begin at $70K to $100K/year

Content management, correctly used describes the job of working within complex databases to keep content flowing to appropriate destinations or it might mean working with content management systems. It might demand the skills of a copywriter but also demands the skills of a coder or even a programmer.

The content manager may also run the user experience tests to make certain the product develops in good directions and the finished product meets the needs of both the company and the user.

The content manager is often more organizer than writer, and so relevant skills would include an ability to visualize the finished product early on, and apply appropriate strategies to make that vision a reality. This person will be highly adaptable on the one hand and highly disciplined and focused on the other (traits uncommon in a single person).

Working with complex databases

Most information systems are pretty simple, but some can be very complex. There are artificially intelligent systems that keep track of who you are, and answer questions you might ask with an understanding of your needs based on past interactions. Amazon.com does this. Managing that content is difficult, but can be both financially and spiritually rewarding. Such content is created, bundled, and stored in databases the website can access. The website then selects content based on its understanding of the user. More and more marketing and informational websites will be doing this in the future.

Although this can be an entry level job, the employee must have a thorough understanding of Internet technologies. The list of technologies might include HTML, XML, CSS, DITA, ASP/SQL, and more, plus hardware and software skill necessary to produce products using these systems. But with those skills in place, this person will be in great demand. Computer programmers or technicians who are good writers, can often make more money here than in programming.

Managing the creation of Web-based content

In the past, when building a website, companies often paid more attention to the usability of the site’s structure than to the quality of the writing, but that is changing. A good web development team will have a writer onboard. It is the role of the writer to bring a broad understanding of communication theories to the development table. For example, the writer might examine metadata and make certain it is optimal for search engine optimization, or the writer might go through the process of making certain the text being introduced is appropriate for the genres relevant to the situation. A good writer who understands web design, is a valued contributor to the process. These are often very well paid (six figure) consultants. Since corporations typically cannot afford to keep them on fulltime, they pay more when they have access to these skills.

Managing content in content management systems

This is a particularly entry level job, since content management systems are designed to permit you to manage the content with minimal understand of the coding process for websites. There are scores (perhaps hundreds of these applications) designed for specialized websites (medical, business, blogging, etc). Some of them require IT support to keep them working bug free, but most of the time, you as the writer will not be required to manage the back end (coding and stuff) – just the content. In this environment, you might just do daily or weekly updates of information. You might have to configure the information for what’s called “single sourcing” (doing one writing project that is then used in a variety of places) or “multi-sourcing” (writing so that your writing can be combined with other writing in the end product). This level of writing is little more than copywriting within a database system.

This person is basically an editor of digital information. She needs to be detail-centric, highly focused, driven toward perfection, and comfortable with repetition and with the knowledge that the project is never done.

How to you get the skills?

The many acronyms I mention above can be somewhat confusing if you have not explored them in the past, and I won’t sugarcoat the steepness of the learning curve. Not only do you have to learn HTML, but you also have to learn HTML5 and XHTML. It isn’t easy, but it isn’t impossible either, and if you want one of the best jobs, you need these skills.

Fortunately, there is an Internet, and it provides more resources that you could use in a lifetime. YouTube has a plethora of videos on everything I mention above. You can also subscribe to a site called Lynda.com. They have excellent videos of virtually every technical process you can do with or to a computer. Also, I have a website with a blog, and a YouTube channel that discuss these problems (IMRL.org). The site is free to use and requires no login, and it asks for no personal information.

This advice applies to the rest of the jobs in this book. Almost all of them require a knowledge of computer technologies and applications.

Conversion Optimization Manager

This is another important and valued skill. Salaries in this area start around $60K/year. When you land on a webpage, the developers hope you will do something more – maybe go deeper into the site, maybe click on an ad, maybe buy something. If you do that thing, it is called a “conversion.” Also call landing page optimizers, these people specialize in getting users to do whatever the page is designed for. Being a writer with strong knowledge in how websites work is often enough to get you doing this. Reasonably few people really understand this field. A lot of people begin by freelancing for small companies with smallish websites, and if they work hard at it and are careful, they do well.

This person designs and writes and tests the persuasive possibilities of Web content. Although the person tasked with this job is often an information technologist, the goal is usually persuasive, so an excellent writer who fully understand Web design and has the right writing skills will typically thrive.

There are fewer schools graduating new students in this area than there are jobs. If you do the research, read the appropriate books, and become experienced with the processes, you can walk into one of these jobs with no professional experience at all. Having said that, this is a very steep learning curve. It requires that you learn how to build a website and how to manipulate the code in that website, and how to use the analytical software available for this purpose (fortunately many of the tools for doing this are free).

Analytics

The landing page optimizer (LPO) will use analytical software that tracks information on everybody who lands on every page. Some of the information the software provides includes where the visitor is from, what kind of computer they are using and what kind of monitor the computer has, how they came to be on the page (if they use a search engine), what they do while on the page, how long they lingered, and (of course) whether they converted. By using this information, the LPO can run tests that permit her to improve optimization. Doing this job well requires the writer understand the analytical tools, but they are not difficult. More important is the writer being able to persuade the reader to convert.

Tests

This is a position that requires a highly adaptable and deliberative researcher who is also an excellent communicator. At the same time, the professional skills are particularly demanding. The landing page optimizer will understand the various testing options (e.g., A/B and multi-variant) for evaluating and responding to user behaviors. You can easily look the tests typically applied to websites and learn to do them.

Code Analyst

Code Analyst The code analyst examines and designs software applications and digital delivery systems by establishing stakeholder needs and software capabilities to determine feasibility and architectural requirements. Code analysts are more focused than business analysts in the sense that business analysts work with businesses and projects, but the code analysts works specifically with digital projects. Salaries began around $60K.

What they Do

In detail, they (1) prepare estimates of time, cost, supplies, and personnel needed for a project, (2) examine hardware and software alternatives and make recommendations based on these findings, (3) write system documentation and the functional specifications for the project, (4) design test procedures to evaluate the application’s validity, reliability, and performance, (5) modify coding to improve performance, (6) perform a functional review of completed applications to ensure they comply with specifications, (7) perform a code review to be sure the code meets the current standards, and (8) recommend ways to maximize performance.

Where the Writer Fits in

In Web design, code is often not particularly complicated. A technically informed writer will have little difficulty reading and analyzing the code. More importantly, the technically informed writer can examine metadata and links for their value to search engine optimization.

Desktop Publisher

Monster.com is currently advertising more than a thousand of these jobs, many of which require no experience at all – just light editing, a little design, and moderately good computer skills. Salaries begin around $40K/year.

This is a perfect place to start as a beginner. You don’t need to be brilliant at anything. You have to be a pretty good writer/editor/designer with some basic computer skills that you can easily pick up on your own. The job gives you an opportunity to explore several professional communication disciplines to see which ones you find the most comfortable, and it gives you a place to pick up the experience to take on some of the more difficult jobs to land (e.g., creative director, managing editor, publications director, etc.)

Desktop publishers use computer technologies to format disparate parts (e.g., visual graphics, texts) into publication ready formats. Typically, their products involve short runs quickly created (e.g., newsletters), but with the right equipment, desktop publishers can just as easily produce a corporation’s entire publications package, including manuals, catalogues, and other book-length documents.

In the Small Workplace

There are publishers who specialize in desktop publishing newsletters and the like. They often involve a few people working independently. In such environments, desktop publishers may write the copy, scan images or otherwise create the graphics, design the layout, typeset the document, use software to produce color separations or screens, and arrange for the printing. Or even do the printing.

Working for the Corporation

In larger companies, the desktop publisher might preform the role of managing editor (described later). The desktop publisher might oversee others who provide the art and copy while the publisher assembles it into a printable package, which could easily be book-length.

Freelance desktop publishers might contract their work (often working with a printing company) or work independently with a corporation not large enough to have a publishing branch.

Documentation Specialist

Most of these jobs require a minimum of 3 years’ experience as technical writer, but small, startup companies will often waive that requirement to get a good writer at a pretty low salary. These writers often start at $70,000, or more, and someone with a good portfolio, who understands software and hardware, and who will start at $40,000, or less, can get hired with no professional experience.

What they do

Documentation specialists bridge the gap between unusable applications and the user. They write the manuals, help files, and other documents the public uses to negotiate technical problems. Their jobs revolve around coming to know the product in the context of the needs of the final users and being able to communicate that knowledge in such a way the end users will find it useful.

Skills and Talents

They might (1) come to know a new product and how it is meant to be used, (2) identify the users and come to know their needs in reference to the product, (3) produce a document in a variety of media that explain to the users, sales force, and support teams how to use the product, (4) present those to the users, sales force, and support teams and ensure the features work as these people expects them to work, (7) ensure documentation meets the highest standards of quality by running tests, reviewing and interpreting results, (8) revise according to feedback, (9) produce final documentation for distribution. Typically, the document they produce will conform to a rigid style so that users to not have to learn the new style as they are learning to use the product.

Where they work

Documentation specialists work as contractors or for software, hardware companies and manufacturers that make equipment that requires explanations on how to use it.

eBook Publisher

eBook publishing is a new field and relatively few can do it. Most eBook publishers learned their skills by surfing the Internet, and by experimenting, which places you equally informed on the subject with surprisingly little experience. This field can be broken into two areas: (1) edit and publish the books of others, (2) independently publish (indie publishing) your own books for a profit.

As an independent writer/publisher

Even if your current work is not as good as you would like, publishing your own stuff is a good way to build the experience you need to enter this field, and you have portfolio pieces. If you have no experience with web design, the learning curve will be really steep, but it isn’t insurmountable. There is software you can use (though it tends to be slapped together and might be buggy). The field is new, and in turmoil. Protocols come and go. Everybody is facing the same learning curves you are, and the upside is if you can publish a good piece of work, it will earn you some money.

There are three difficult things you have to learn: (1) how to configure an electronic book in the appropriate formats—there are more than one, (2) how to publish these formatted books in the appropriate venues, (3) how to market the book once you have published it. Once you can do these things with your books, you can do them with anybody’s books.

As a professional editing/publishing business

Once you have mastered the skills necessary for working with other people’s work, you can develop your own publishing company. It is important that you know what you are doing, and you will learn little of that in a university. You have to learn it on your own just like everybody else in the field.

As an employ in a professional editing/publishing business

With some editing and publishing skills under your belt, you can work for a larger corporation. All publishers are also publishing eBooks so these skills are paramount.