My husband freelanced for many years but got the work from contacts he had in his field when he originally worked full time. (He writes in a certain technical field.) Since our children were born he went full time again.

All my freelance editorial work has come from contacts.

What kind of writing do you have experience doing? If you want to get into journalism you need to develop clips. A blog could help with that, or writing for very local venues (for free). If you want to do freelance copywriting or communications writing (which is what I do), you have to develop a portfolio of that kind of work. I have gotten most of my work through personal contacts and networking. It's not easy to get work and there is tremendous competition - pay is very low and getting lower as the market gets flooded with unemployed journalists. I would build on your contacts and the kind of writing you have done for work as that is likely to be your most marketable angle.

Thanks to both of you for the helpful responses! Honestly, I'm just looking to add a couple of hundred dollars here and there as "fun" money, not to mention a diversion from my otherwise tedious day job. I haven't the faintest idea how much to expect to make but I figured it would be nothing to start and minimal after that.

Do you have any contacts you can pitch to? I don't do much freelance any more, but I used to write some for the Post and for a few websites. The Post gig I got by pitching them an article that I had mostly already written. Then as I established a relationship with the editor I got more frequent assignments. One website I've written for I got hooked into because the director of the site is a former colleague of mine. So basically my advice is write on spec and use your contacts. Also, don't expect to get paid much. Good luck!

The few freelance writers I know who started from scratch first started blogs. They used the blogs to show they had established content, and when their blogs went "live" they had been quietly publishing for 6 months to a year so that they already had content built up. It was successful for the two women I know, in that they have been able to get hired for projects and fill a part-time schedule with them.

How did you get started as a freelancer?
I'm interested in doing some occasional work to supplement our income. I have ten years of related experience but all written products are proprietary and I can't use them as writing samples. So, I'm curious - how did you build your portfolio and how did you build your client-base!