To all thee semi professional website contributer people?

Hey all, um im vaguely aware some of you contribute artices, reviews etc to various blogs. I have a few questions. Does this work like freelance with money involved? Was there a vacancy open when you applied? Would it be arrogant to send an email to the editor asking for a job?

Basically, just wanna know how ya'll got involved, ta

Or not of course.

Hey Dangly, I write for thunderboltgames.com, a website Fraser let me know about - he was writing for the 'site a little while before I arrived. There's no money involved, but if you're interested in journalism as a career these kinds of smaller gaming websites are a really good start. I don't think it'd come across as arrogant to introduce yourself to websites; that's how I imagine most get involved.
By the way, if journalism is your chosen career path I'd also recommend trying to get some work experience at national newspapers - I did my work experience for school at the Scottish Daily Mail, and got an article published in the 'paper, which I was delighted with. I'm going to spend some time at the News of the World later in the summer, too. I've still not made a penny from writing (I don't know if this is the case for others on the Interhood who are looking to be career writers) but I dare say I've made myself far more employable than I would have been otherwise.

I've now made some not unreasonable cash doing achievement guides for X360. Done two so far and Simon has been very chuffed with them, getting more soon. It's surprisingly fun work, the money is good and I've got a freelance contract with Imagine under my belt - very useful indeed.

If you've bought the new issue take a look in the free book thing, it's the Splinter Cell Conviction one and next month's is Red Dead. It's challenging to inject personality into the writing, but I like to think I've done a decent job of it so far.

So email people! This started with me PMing him on X360.

If it's video game writing you want, go here: http://www.videogamejournalismjobs.com/

There's a film website listed there as well, actually.

A lot of smaller sites have "jobs" or "write for us" sections, so have a rake around. Newsposting is the most common thing, I've luckily avoided it so far, but you might have to scum around doing crap stuff for a while. Never understood why little sites ever bother with that, waste of resources when they could be working on something more interesting.

It's cool to see how you two are doing! One day when you're both editors for big monthly magazines I'll smile wistfully and remember 'groovy's first X-360 forum post.

It wud appear the ds is selling far more than the psp, which iz nice. i had minez from launch, and im enjoyin mario kart, tony hawk, sonic rush, pheonix wright n such. 2 b honest i havnt got into animal crossing much. ho hum. also: isnt this ment 2 b about the xbox 360?

The worst thing about the internet is that mistakes are permanent. What a cracking debut post.

I don't really want to write any more, funnily enough, but I still do it as a hobby - would rather be a civil servant or European diplomat in the long run.

Ugh. I could delete it now, but it's been copied and pasted to the high heavens. Ho hum.

gdf wrote:The worst thing about the internet is that mistakes are permanent. What a cracking debut post.

I don't really want to write any more, funnily enough, but I still do it as a hobby - would rather be a civil servant or European diplomat in the long run.

Trust me... if you like writing, you'll always come back to it... using this week with the mumps to start again, it's just having the energy to sit down and type it tbh...