You offer your goods and services with good standing. You have trained to be an experienced writer in your own way, or in a critique writing group, or in college. Your work has become the selling-product which customers pay good money for your guaranteed quality articles. Here are a few suggestions we do a checklist of our limitations and potentials as freelance writers: 1. Freelance writers have the most exciting work there is on the planet. Writers are versatile in the many choices of a vast range of ideas in all genre. Check. 2. Intensive research, study and writing with passion is skin deep with writers. If a writer were an onion, peel layer after layer of skin and you see a writer ingrained through and through to the core. People are sure to detect if we're just dabbling and toying around with words to come up with 500-word articles. Check. 3. Burning the midnight oil. We write. We write until we deliver on time what our clients ask for and we make sure they are happy. And deliver our article-products well. Simple as that. Check. 4. We take rejections in good faith. It's painful but, rejections are our tools to sharpen us. Check. 5.Take critiques as chiseling tool of a master's hand. A mentor, or another writer helps keep our heads on top of our mistakes in what went wrong with our writing assignments. Then write that damned thing again until we get the right rhythm and beat with our work. Check. 6. Review, research and brush up with our spelling, grammar, and out-of-the-box style of writing. Be courteous. Be a peacemaker. Sometimes our head knowledge misses the right ingredient: the heart-and-soul parts. Check. You have more to add here? Our writing skills become limitless when we do a checklist every now and then. Most importantly, research and study add spice into the flavor of our writing. The after taste should hook our readers to want more of our work. And they keep coming back for our quality articles. And then, we get the writing job. Check?
You're right on all counts but the only thing is that we really have to market ourselves because of the many people getting into online writing. The content mills pay little but when working with outsourcing companies, it helps to show off the best samples and other credentials to win the best assignment or job. Online etiquette is important because it is easy to misconstrue something due to the sender not proofing what they sent or a language barrier. My complaint is all the changes that writers have to be braced for - from algorithm changes to company mergers (the most recent being Elance and oDesk, the latter now known as UpWork). It doesn't pay to be complacent because a person is a great wordsmith.
My biggest issue has been, and will continue to be, not having the imagination to come up with original ideas that people will be interested in reading about. If you point me in the direction, and tell me to write, then I can do it, no problems. Even in college I had those issues. If the professor didnt give me a specific topic I would always ask around for ideas. My English 101 and 102 thought I was so good at coming up with these original idea, but I was actually just really good at asking the right people for ideas.
My biggest issue, as of late, has been...finding jobs! As soon as I get notification of even a decent number of jobs opening up, as soon as I log on, they are ALL taken. Most of the time when I check with some of the websites that I do freelance work for, I am lucky to see even 1-5 jobs available, and they are very low paying, or the client is simply looking for something that is unrealistic. Either that, or nothing is paying enough. Everyone seems to only want to hire two star writers, or in other words pay $2.00 for a 600 word article that is only 'so so'. I truly miss the days of when ChaCha used to be busy all of the time, and truly at any time of the day, I could sign on, and make money, question after question, either as an expeditor or a generalist. That was really a fun work from home job and I will always miss it....it was entertaining for the guide as well...some of the questions were downright hilarious!
I know what you mean HunkyDoire! I mean, I'm a novice writer, but from what I can see, 2015 has been a very bad year so far for online writing gigs. The demise of Bubblews seems to have spelt a very bleak future for online writing. For now, I have reluctantly had to put writing on the back burner because nothing I see out there is just worth my effort and time, if i'm being honest.
It's weird because although I love writing and it's the only path I envision myself treading on for the rest of my life, it sometimes becomes a painful undertaking for me. During my formative years, I was always teeming with ideas and expressing myself came so easily. Nowadays, I occasionally suffer from demotivation and feelings of inadequacy. Writing something out of nothing drains me sometimes. As a freelance writer, I write to earn money and that in itself constrains and limits me. I want to be able to write as freely as possible without feeling burdened or obliged. Anyway, that's just the overthinker in me talking. I'm struggling to complete a few novels and I have no one but my procrastinating self to blame.
I tried it for a while. But I took a break from it. That was about 5 years ago or so. Are they not still up and running? I just assumed they would be. Their service was invaluable! I used them more times than I can count... Before and after attempted to work for them.
The mention of ChaCha makes me sad I missed out on it when it was in its heyday. I wanted to sign up as a guide but my internet wasn’t up to the job, and I had no other options to connect like I do now. On some content mills there’s an abundance of work; unfortunately, the majority of it seems to be in fields in which I have no interest or knowledge. And on other sites the problem is a lack of available jobs, as previously stated. It’s pretty demotivating sometimes. Best I can do is keep looking and write whatever I can, I suppose.
I DO NOT LIKE FREELANCE WRITING JOBS. Here is why, 1)Dishonesty. After you write so well and after doing some editing, which includes spell checks and correct sentence structure and punctuation checks,a person is going to come to you and tell you that is was not up to standard, and crap like- you won't get paid because your article wasn't accepted. -scoffs- I would like a person to attest to earning well FOR A LONG PERIOD OF TIME from freelance writing, a long period means from six months to a year. I always avoid "freelance writing openings", it's a complete waste of time. COMPLETE WASTE OF TIME.
I'm so sorry @ExpertAdvice. Perhaps, you could save up a bit of money and open your own blog website where you could team up with freelance writers to write in your community? You apply for Google AdSence and monetize your blog. You will be the Admin and set up your standards for writers who should meet those standards. I'd like to do that but I don't know where to start and how, technically. I wish you good luck! ExpertAdvice is a good name!
I'm sure you are very good at what you do in your writing! You are brilliant with so many ideas calling for your attention to write that many readers would like to hear and read about @xTinx Pay full attention to those great and simple ideas flowing from that creative juices in that intelligent mind of yours. Have you been saving them in your journals? Novel-writing, novel-selling books are in your hands is an excellent idea Good luck! And go for that dream @xTinx!
Thank you for your kind words. Not all writers are overthinkers but I just happen to fall under that category because of my extensive philosophy background. Maybe I was born under weird circumstances. Perhaps this is what I really wanted to say in my previous post: freelance writing does not guarantee "freedom." You don't own the thoughts, words or ideas you wrote even though you're the one who generated them in the first place. But anyhow, it's an endeavor writers enter into voluntarily for reasons known only to them. I'm not entirely opposed to it. That's why it's advisable to have other writing projects at the same time (e.g. novels, essays, etc.).
Hey thanks for the comment! that idea sounds really great so thanks for the opinion. I've always heard about "monetizing blogs" so may be I should really check that option out, I'm like you in that- I don't know where to start, but, I'll try to start somewhere now. Thanks again!
