Have you had it with the office politics of advertising agencies or the bureaucratic morass that often afflicts in-house marketing communications departments? Do you want to have more control over the creative and business aspects of your work? Then you ought to consider becoming an advertising freelancer, say professionals who have taken that path.

"I like having no hoops to jump through to get the work done," says Valerie Christensen, an independent ad copywriter in Pasadena, California. In May 2000, Christensen left her position in marketing communications at Sprint PCS Group in Los Angeles, to spend more time with her small child. Nancy Thornton sounds a similar note. "I got tired of the battle between creative and the account people," says Thornton, a copywriter in Siloam Springs, Arkansas. "There was a lot of infighting," she says. Until four years ago, Thornton worked at ad agencies in Atlanta, Georgia.

Demand for free-agent ad professionals is good, and will likely increase in the foreseeable future. "It’s getting more difficult to have an agency structure -- nobody wants to pay for it," says Joe Shansky, a graphic designer who works with a stable of vendors in a loose organization he calls Shansky Works, based in Barrington, Rhode Island. And Shansky believes there’s little or no stigma attached to freelancing. "It’s rare that I lose a bid because I’m a freelancer," says Shansky, who began his advertising career in New York City in 1969 and went on his own in 1979.

How do freelance ad folks drum up business? Christensen mined her good relationship with former employer Sprint PCS and made the wireless communications giant one of her first and best clients. Shansky, even with all his experience and connections, still knocks on doors to sell his services, though he also gets a lot of repeat business. "I haven’t found that word of mouth has helped me a lot," he says. Shansky says that although his Web presence doesn’t draw new customers on its own, he does point prospects to the site as a virtual portfolio of his work. "They say ‘Oh wow.’ They can see what kind of work I do."

These freelancers’ satisfaction with the creative aspect of their work seems to vary according to how long they’ve been on their own. Christensen, who’s only been freelancing for less than six months, finds she takes on a fair amount of work writing resumes to pay the bills. But Christensen gets lots of satisfaction from her advertising projects and their creative potential. "The quality of work is to my own standard," she says. "I can say, ‘This is what I want to do, and I’m going to do it.’ "

Thornton believes copywriters at agencies generally get more interesting work. "To me, freelancers don’t get the most creative work -- you get the down-and-dirty," she says. Not to say that Thornton doesn’t occasionally land a gig with a prestigious client; through an agency, she’s written copy for Internet carrier UUNet.

But Shansky, who’s been his own boss for two decades, often gets the most creative fulfillment when he does contract work for agencies. For example, he may be asked to come up with concepts for advertisements and then leave the nitty-gritty to the agency. With his direct clients, he gets a different kind of satisfaction. "If I work for a company, I’m going to be doing everything." For Shansky, this may mean subcontracting for services ranging from photographers to technical copywriters. Shansky marks up these vendors’ rates to compensate himself for the time he spends coordinating their services.

Shansky also likes to work with account executives who have left the agency world to do their own thing. "I can become their creative department," he says. This puts him in a position to call all the shots, while keeping his own workload manageable. Sounds like nice work, if you can get it.