My answer: I don’t. At least not much. The original and continued goal of this blog, which I started shortly after being laid off in June 2008, was to write about being an unemployed dad and what it was like raising my daughter while my wife went back to fulltime work. I wrote about my job search and found that other unemployed people appreciated the honesty and stories I had to tell.

I’ve since changed the subtitle to “Tales of an Underemployed Dad” after finding various freelance work, mostly for AOL’s WalletPop.com blog on personal finance. I’m still looking for fulltime work with benefits, but expect being underemployed is going to be a way of life for awhile.

It was this blog, in fact, that led me to AOL. It’s a story I’ve told here before, but in short: I found a college friend on Facebook, told her of my job hunt, she told her editor, who read my blog and hired me as a freelance writer. I now edit for the site also, and write for a few other AOL sites.

My best advice for getting traffic to your blog: Be sincere and write about what you know best and the readers will come. I do Search Engine Optimization work for AOL and while I could use that in writing posts in this blog, I don’t think that will get me anywhere and prefer to stick with writing about the continued job hunt while underemployed. The site is also meant as a way to showcase my work so potential employers can read it and contact me, as well as public relations executives for stories I do for WalletPop.

As far as getting someone to pay you to blog, and move traffic from your site to theirs, I think that if you can show them what you can do on your blog and then reach out to sites on the same subject, it could lead to some work. But first you’ve got to find a muse, which I’m constantly working on.

I’m looking for the unemployed people from Detroit who were in this movie and interviewed as real-life examples of what happens when you lose your job.

“I don’t know what I’m supposed to do,” is the first thing many people say when they’re laid off. It’s those people I’m looking for.

“Up In The Air” is a fantastic movie that looks into that issue.  I want to look into it more for a story for WalletPop.

I’d like to interview a few long-term unemployed people in Detroit about their job search in such dire unemployment, and what it’s like living there. If you know anyone who would be like to be interviewed for this story, please contact me.

AOL
Aaron Crowe has been appointed a Section Editor at AOL’s WalletPop.com where he oversees the career, recession, sports and money, technology, and swine flu beats. Aaron was previously an Assistant Metro Editor at the Contra Costa Times. He can be reached via Twitter at www.twitter.com/aaroncrowe

Here’s the announcement I put on LinkedIn:

I’m a section editor at WalletPop, a personal finance blog owned by AOL: http://www.walletpop.com/blog

One of the areas that I write and edit for is technology and money. I’m looking for a SF Bay Area reporter to hire for WalletPop on a freelance basis. It’s a part-time job with flexible hours that pays per post. The hours worked are up to you, but preferably 10-20 hours a week and averaging two posts per day of 300 words or more.

Must be an excellent writer and journalist with experience covering personal technology in the Bay Area and beyond. I’m looking for someone who can break news and cover technology that affects personal finance, such as Web sites that offer financial help. I’d be your editor, so there would be some stories assigned, but mostly it’s up to you to find stories to write.

If you’d like to discuss, please send me two to three writing clips on technology, along with your resume:
aaron.crowe.consulting(at)gmail.com
Include your phone number.

If you’d like to be interviewed and taped for a similar story, please contact me. It’s an interesting way to get your name and face out there for employers, and lets others learn how difficult it is to be unemployed and looking for a job in this recession.

The latest story I’m doing on solar is for WalletPop.com about SunRun, a San Francisco company that for about $1,000 in initial costs will put solar panels on your roof and then sell you the electricity generated from your roof.

It’s a great idea. Read the story to learn more.

On June 27, 2008, I was laid off after working at the Contra Costa Times for 13 years.

I’ve used this blog to keep track of the journey. The search for full-time work continues in a recession that may be getting better. I hope it does. For me and the millions of others out of work.

But I’m lucky. I have a wife who works full-time, a 4-year-old daughter who will soon be 5 and who has been a lot of fun, and enough of a challenge, to raise during my year of looking for work.

And since November 2008, I’ve had a part-time job writing, and now editing, for WalletPop.com, a personal finance blog run by AOL. It’s interesting, exciting work, and I  hope it turns into a full-time job for me sometime this year.

I continue looking for full-time work — between part-time jobs and taking care of our daughter — and it’s enough to wear a person out. The job hunt continues as I try to expand my journalism skills and adapt to a new news environment.

I’ve also spent much of the past year working as a freelance journalist, writing and editing stories, along with editing and writing newsletters for businesses. That’s the next stage of my career change that I hope will grow in the coming year.

I’ll continue writing here about the travails of looking for work in a recession, and I hope you stay tuned.

Faces of the unemployed:

My jobless landlord is moving,

and so am I

More

Filed under: Real Estate, Career, Recession

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