Can you still start a freelancing career?

After announcing I took a step away from freelancing, a legal aide with aspirations of a cushy freelance career shot me an e-mail.

“Can people still even start a freelance career?”

I did it for just a year and did so out of college, so I don’t pretend to be any sort of expert. Yet, as writing — like publishing — as a commodity falls in value (and the prices that come with them), I sure feel like it’s worth making clear my experience.

I first made clear that, even without clips, you can start freelancing. People can still get paid, but what was always hard is becoming harder.

I shared the advice that others gave to me:

1. Don’t choose to freelance right out of college or without established contacts
2. Don’t (start) freelance(ing) in a bad economy
3. Don’t (start) freelance(ing) when the industry is in the midst of a revolution.

Here are some posts I also shared with the reader.

• Five rules of freelancing I didn’t always follow
• The pros and cons of my freelancing career
• Every college journalist should be freelancing right now
• The four reasons for a freelancer to decide to write a story
• A freelancer needs a niche to survive