A few weeks back, I talked about the importance of submitting and sharing your work if you want to move into professional freelancing. I mentioned blogging, nonfiction magazines and social media as places to start getting your work into the world. Here are three more markets open to beginning writers.

4. Commercial Websites

Hundreds of thousands of small businesses have websites, and only a few dozen of those contain effective copy. Talk to the businesses you frequent, and your friends who own or work in small businesses. This can be a great way of getting a bit of a paycheck while building your resume. Once you’ve done a few of these, you can move up to the larger companies — and the bigger bucks.

5. Local Magazines

These don’t pay great individually — often less than $100 for a short article — but you can sell the same article to several different publications. Write a good article on Halloween Safety, for example, and you can sell it for $50 bucks to parenting magazines in 50 different metro areas. Not bad for a thousand words. Even if you only sell to your local area mag, these are usually hungry for good material and eminently open to freelance contribution.

6. Guest Posting

Know somebody who has a blog? Offer to write a post or two for them. Like a blog but don’t know the writer? Introduce yourself, the offer to write a post or two for them. Not all blogs pay guest posters — although any blogs that make money should — but this is a fantastic way to get used to the idea of people reading your work.

It’s been a few weeks since I posted part one of this. What have you all done to get your work out in the mean time?