This past Saturday, I attended a talk, hosted by a writers group I belong to, from Hana Haatainen Caye, a woman who makes an honest-to-God living as a freelancer, with no other day job. She shared how she's been conducting her business over the past five years since she started and how she's found niches for her writing. What struck me as the most practical information, to me, was the fact that she now has a relationship with a particular magazine and writes for it monthly, and the gig started with her putting a bid on a job on www.Elance.com. I had never heard of that site, but she described how individuals and businesses looking for writers post jobs, then writers with Elance accounts can place bids, and then the poster hires someone based on those bids. I have very little knowledge of that whole system, but apparently, there's more than one: FreelanceWriting.com, Freelancer com, Guru.com. For Elance, there is a membership with a fee, but there is also a basic free membership that allows only 10 bids per month--but for the amount of time I have as a during-nap-time-freelancer, that's all I'd ever need!
I checked out Elance.com and started setting up an account. I'm quite busy right now, but when I am looking for other opportunities, I think I will really give that a shot. But as I looked through the postings, some of Hana's words rang very true. Some of the listings were way below what I'd consider doing and merit complete ignoring. There were posts from people looking for a writer to write the content for their business website, and they wanted to pay no more than $1 for each 100 word article, or even less. (Consider the percentage that Elance takes for the service of connecting you with the employment, and it's even more ridiculous...plus the percentage taken to process the PayPal payment...)
I am glad I heard advice from a seasoned freelancer who has gotten good work from such a site--to hear her suggestion that it's only worth doing if the writing is on topics you know--if you have to do much research before you write, jobs can turn out to be extremely low paying.
There were some that looked decent though, so I think it's a good resource to know about.
Articles I've written:
Lyme Disease: Surprises in Recovery
Acidity in Your Diet Linked with Weight Loss Struggle, Depression and Degenerative Disease
How to Determine If Your Child is Ready to Begin Kindergarten
His Eye on The Sparrow? Review of The Novel, The Prayers of Agnes Sparrow
No comments:
Post a Comment