Sonia Weiser on democratizing freelancing and realizing her dream of being an advice columnist
The Brooklyn-based writer explains why she sold her beloved Opportunities of the Week newsletter.
Earlier this year, OutVoice, which owns the writing community Study Hall, announced that it was acquiring Sonia Weiser’s newsletter Opportunities of the Week, one of the internet’s premier places to find listings for freelance writing gigs.
“I’ll still be on board, but am prioritizing my writing career going forward,” Weiser, who is based in Brooklyn, wrote on LinkedIn. “This is a huge change for me after six years of trying to be everybody’s everything and forgetting that everybody includes myself.”
Weiser’s life has improved considerably since the sale, she tells Depth Perception. “The biggest thing is going from having 10,000 people bothering you about something to having no one bothering you about something, because [OutVoice has] an actual support staff,” she says. “It does amazing things for the mood.” Meanwhile, she recently began writing a journalistic advice column called “Accidentally Qualified” for Study Hall.
Depth Perception caught up with Weiser to find out what she’s learned from aggregating writing opportunities all these years and what she thinks of the current freelance journalism landscape (warning: her take is pretty damn bleak!). The following has been edited for length and clarity. —Mark Yarm
Why did you launch Opportunities of the Week?
I started it in 2018, for a bunch of reasons. One, it was just something I was doing already. I was really active in Binders Full of Women, a Facebook group that launched a thousand Facebook groups of varying niches. I was really active in those at the beginning of my freelance career, and I tried to share opportunities there. And that was just kind of always my shtick. I’ll text friends at 3 in the morning being like, “Oh, did you see this job?” I am just always looking for me, so it’s not exactly selfless.
I was sharing it all for free, but I got to a point where I was like, “This is not compatible with living in New York.” I can’t do a free thing for 20 hours a week and then try to take on additional work, so eventually I said, “It’s donation-based, but you can get it for free.” And that turned people into paying customers.
How did the newsletter grow after that?
Word of mouth, almost entirely. I don’t think I ever paid for advertising. I mean, people really like when you do work for them. And they like it when you do that work well, so people just kept promoting it. Eventually, I ended up being on [Writer’s Digest’s] list of best writing websites. At its peak I had 10,000 people subscribing. How many paid? I don't even know anymore. I barely kept track. My business strategy was like, “Do I get paid enough? Yeah. All right.”
Keep calm and query on: "Just keep pitching like everything is fine”
Depth Perception celebrates journalists, and it features great, practical advice from some of the best in the field. Dig into our archives, like this piece with freelancing guru Tim Herrera. What was the best journalistic career advice he’s received? “Don’t pull up the ladder behind you,” Herrera says. “Throw down ropes.”
There are a number of other newsletters out there that list journalism opportunities. How do you think yours stands out?
It was just there for the longest time? I don’t claim that it’s any better than any of the other ones, but it has longevity.
Is there competition between the various newsletters?
Probably, but I kind of stopped caring. I mean, the more newsletters there are that people can access work from, that’s ultimately a win. Like if I were trying to hoard all this stuff for myself, and for just my subscribers, that defeats the purpose. What I originally set out to do was further democratize freelancing by sharing these opportunities with people who can’t be on Twitter all the time. So if more people are doing that, fine.
Why did you sell the newsletter, which is now affiliated with Study Hall?
When I started the newsletter, I wanted to be the anti–Study Hall. Because at the time, Study Hall was owned by different people and was run far more like a monarchy than anything else. It wasn't particularly accessible; there were a lot of accusations of racism and all sorts of policing. And it wasn’t free. But then, very quietly, they switched owners. Matt Saincome and Issa Diao [co-founders of parent company OutVoice] are both lovely people from the punk scene. And they’ve run it much more like how I ran Opportunities of the Week, which is making it more accessible, making it more open for changes and for communication.
I was always thinking, “This is not something I actually want to be spending my time on. So how can I burn it to the ground?” I was on vacation in Puerto Rico with my boyfriend, and someone sent me this email asking me to do shit for them. And I was just like, “That’s it. I can't do this anymore.” So I immediately DM’d Matt [who had reached out prior] being like, “Take this. I don’t want it.” And it turns out that selling it is much better than burning it to the ground.
Just to clarify, you’re still running Opportunities of the Week?
Yes, I’m still working on it. And further down the road, my role might change. But I’ll always be a consultant of some kind. Right now I’m doing [Study Hall’s] advice column, which I hope will continue. Because that’s been a longtime dream of mine, to have an advice column. And finally, I have a platform that's risking the lawsuits to give me one.
Speaking of advice, what’s the best journalistic career advice you ever received?
One of my journalism professors said to me, “You don't have to be so clever.” And I think a lot of us want to show everyone how clever we are. But ultimately, it kind of bogs down your writing and makes it less accessible. So that’s always something that has to go into the back of my mind when I write something: “Is this actually telling a story or is this just me boasting that I’m a liberal arts graduate?”
“I was really active in Binders Full of Women, a Facebook group that launched a thousand Facebook groups of varying niches… and I tried to share opportunities there. And that was just kind of always my shtick. I’ll text friends at 3 in the morning being like, ‘Oh, did you see this job?’” — Sonia Weiser
Running the newsletter, you see all the freelance opportunities out there. I know that they’ve shrunk considerably over the last number of years. What have you observed?
That’s something that I have talked about quite a bit, like, “Is this a product that even needs to be made anymore?” Because there are so few opportunities out there. When I started it, there were so many that I would just have to say, “Okay, I can't keep adding to this all day. At some point I do need to send it out.” It used to take me days to add everything, and now I can do it all in one morning.
There are just so few people with jobs left; the budgets are all being cut. A lot of editors realize that they get overwhelmed if they post calls for pitches on Twitter, so they don’t really share them, or they've switched to LinkedIn, where you have to DM them privately. But a lot of people can’t DM you privately if they don't have Premium. So that keeps it very much within their bubble, which is probably what they were intending to do with Twitter before we all realized that we could aggregate them and send them out.
Also, the joy of seeing new opportunities is now just diminished. Just looking at them and being like, “Oh, here’s more people who won't respond” or “Here's more people who won’t pay enough.”
You’re a freelance writer yourself. Are you going to stick with it?
Until other things come along. I’m allegedly working on a book proposal. But I mean, I’m just as eager to get out of journalism as most other freelancers are.
So what would you do if you didn’t have this career?
Oh, no idea. And that’s the problem. I think a lot of people are in journalism because they are good writers and they don’t want to be stuck in a corporate job or doing communications for a bank or something like that. When you compare a journalism job to any other writing job out there, a journalism job is probably going to be more interesting. So I feel like we’re all kind of trapped in this, because we’ve had a taste of a more interesting life. And we don’t want to go and work for JPMorgan doing internal comms. So yeah, we’re all fucked.
Correction 7/30/24: An earlier version of this story misstated that Opportunities of the Week was acquired by Study Hall. It was acquired by OutVoice, Study Hall's parent company.
Further reading from Sonia Weiser
“Dear Accidentally Qualified: Motivation And Having Fun” (Study Hall, July 22, 2024)
“I Used to Run a Popular Newsletter. Then Things Started Getting Weird” (Slate, June 8, 2024)
“How to train for a marathon on vacation” (The Washington Post, April 25, 2024)