Hi, Joel Philip,

I’m so glad you found the article and will be cancelling your membership.

I do have to say, I disagree with you about saving the IAPWE recommendation letter. Firstly, I don’t know of a single writing job that looks at such things. I can’t imagine what an editor would think if you sent it to them. They just care about your pitches and samples. Second, if they did take the time to read it and got curious they’d find out in no time the “organization” has zero credentials. I think it would do more harm than good.

As far as Facebook groups, I’m a member of a few that are geared towards women, but I’m sure they are some out there for everyone. If you go to Facebook and search out writer’s groups plus your niche or genre I’m sure several will pull up for you. You can also search writers and editors on Twitter and begin following them there. Fellow writers can be a good source of leads and editors will often post to Twitter when they’re looking for specific pitches. Reddit has an active freelancer community also.

I’ve had luck getting freelancing jobs off of Indeed and highly recommend their job board. Plus it’s free. Blogging Pro has a pretty good free job board, too. I haven’t worked for the mills, but I know a number of people find steady work at sites like Upwork and Copify when they’re just starting out.

You can also start pitching directly to pubs. The fact that you’re on Medium will help because you can write content here and link to it in your pitches.

Good luck!