Technical writers needed

In the latest time we have found the profession of Technical Writer is becoming more and more valuable.
On specific sites US and UE companies are looking for experienced freelancers and software companies offering their services in writing technical documentation.
Its a good way to start his own business for someone who has needed skills. Avr salary is $17-23/hour for freelance providers and bit more for specific companies offering such services
Here are some advices how to start.

What do you need to know?

1. You writing English skill (not like mine) should be perfect. This doesn't mean that you have to be from US or UK, but you still have to be excellent in English. That's is good chance for people from India, where cost of living is not so high and English is a native language.
2. You should be familiar with quoting and styles needed for writing technical documentation
3. You should be familiar with SW development area and have at least basic understanding of SW processes, SW development and principles of software documentation
4. You should be familiar with writing and formatting tools. You need to be able to write in Word convert it to PDF or HTML, be able to insert video/audio tutorials on customer's request.
5. You should be familiar with pictures editing basics as you may need to create screenshots and edit them
6. If you are working on HTML documentation customer maybe interested in making it SEO optimized so you should know SEO basics too.

How to start

Create you portfolio. This will be the first thing that customer ask you on your interview. Spend some time on creating few articles about technology you know best, document some functions. Don't be afraid to spend to much time for that - include pictures, notes and all needed to make your documentation reealy nice! If you have nice blog about techniques and SW - don't be confused to include it as well. But don't include blogs about your favourite dogs and cats

TIP: Don't try to steal something from Internet in most cases its evidently catching by companies. You just loose you chance to get work. 2-3 YOUR good examples is quite enough to get a good job.

Post your CV on job sites. Use sites like guru.com, elance.com. Do search via Google for others.

When you discuss your salary you should be clear with how much you you will get in hour.

Say customer says: You will get $50 for every page! Wow! How much! Then you realize that you every page contains 2000 letters, few screenshots edited in photoshop and even video tutorial. So it would take 5 hours of you time and you salary would be just $10/hour which is really low.

So every time be clear on how much time takes every average task, this will help you not to be cheated.

These advices could help you to earn something about $3,000 - $3,500 per month

Feel free to comment and ask details if you are interested.