Writers, beware of freelancing job sites

If there’s one piece of advice I could pass along to any aspiring freelance writer just starting out, it would be to steer clear of third party job sites that entail dealing with a middle man. I would encourage them to work for themselves and only themselves from the beginning. My reasons for this are many and varied, but I will attempt to cull the list down to the most important points.

 

You’re paying fees without guarantees.

 

Most of these website charge you some kind of fee, whether it’s a membership fee or ‘credits’ you must purchase to use to make contact with buyers on the site. This is money out of your pocket straight out the gate and you haven’t earned a penny yet.

 

The middle man is making his living off you.

 

If and I stress if – you are able to land a gig at one of these sites, the middle man takes a cut of the final price, which will likely be lower than one you negotiated on your own. So the middle man is paid twice before you’re even paid once. Fair much? Not really.

 

You’re limited in the amount of self-promotion you can do.

 

Serious writers who have decided to make a career of freelancing know the importance of clips and having their own websites and blogs. When you’re working through one of these third party sites, you are limited in the amount of self-identifying information that you can give. You can’t tell a prospective client, “Hey – I can do this. I can prove it. Look at my website at the following URL.” Why? Because these sites don’t want you giving your contact information to prospective clients from the site because if they contact you directly to make a deal, it cuts out the middle man’s commission.

 

You have to work under someone else’s terms and conditions.

 

Anyone who is in business for themselves will create a service contract to protect themselves – themselves, first and foremost, not you. So when you are working for these third party sites, it’s very easy to get burned as a freelancer because most of the rules and protocols that are in place are soley to protect the interest of the company. This leaves you to fend for yourself when it comes to unscrupulous clients. Fair much? Again, not really.

 

Feedback is easy to fake.

 

Most of the time when prospective clients hire freelancers from third party sites, one of the first things the look at is a freelancer’s feedback. While those who are more versed in how easily any feedback system can be skewed will recognize how unreliable such a system is, others swear by it. So while you are working hard to establish a strong and proven track record on the site, others may be creating accounts to post bogus feedback on their own pages – or even having their friends do it for them. So they get the recognition because of numbers (fake as they are) while the better writers go unnoticed as buyers gravitate toward those with higher clout.

 

Regardless of what any of these third party sites promise, the truth is they are in business for themselves, not you. They are always going to do what is in their best interest, not yours. So why not brand yourself as a business and follow suit?

 

Writing E-books For Fun, Not Profit

You’ve read countless ads for e-books online, promising to reveal the secret of never-ending wealth, happiness and success. You’ve pondered writing some yourself, but were discouraged because you couldn’t find a topic that wasn’t saturated and hadn’t been “done to death”. Writing e-books is no small undertaking. Even if you’re just “borrowing” ideas to repackage and re-present them, there is still a lot of work and planning involved in the process. After a while, it can become downright tedious. So what can you do to avoid e-book burnout?

 

Write them for fun instead of profit.

 

There’s an old saying that goes, “Do what you love and you’ll never work a day in your life”. This is true for writing, too. Write what you enjoy and it won’t seem like work at all. It’s so easy to get bogged down in the day-to-day monotony that comes with stiff business writing. You need a little change of direction from time to time.

 

Pick any topic that you’re passionate about and versed in. It can be about anything, anything at all – from poems and prose to fairytales to a set of memoirs. Put it all together in an e-book and put it up on your site for people to download. You can decide to charge for it or opt not to. It doesn’t matter. The important thing is that you enjoy doing it. Not only are you creating yet another sample of your work, you might even generate a few dollars from it along the way!

 

Organize Your Home Office Day 2011

Today, March 8^th, is the official Organize Your Home Office Day. When is the last time you actually took time to do that? If you can’t remember, then it’s been too long! Yeah, yeah – we know the excuse “But it’s an organized mess!” Really, it isn’t. Even though you know just which junk pile everything is in, the clutter is still affecting your productivity. And if you aren’t productive, you don’t get paid. And if you don’t get paid – well, things tend to go downhill real quick.

We shouldn’t need a special day to remind us to tidy up our workspace. It’s so much easier to get a handle on and to establish a system that works (a system other than the junk pile one you’ve been using) if you tackle it often. Even if it’s just for a few minutes every other day, you can still make real progress. So the next time you’re about to shut down for the day, add one last thing to your To Do List and clear away some of the clutter. A few minutes here, a few minutes there – and pretty soon, you’ll notice those (un)organized junk piles disappearing before your very eyes. Hey! You might even find a desk under there. You never know!

Know When To Hold ‘Em, Know When To Fold ‘Em

In the infamous words of Kenny Rogers, “You got to know when to hold ‘em, know when to fold ‘em, know when to walk away and know when to run.” Of course, he was talking about poker games, but the same logic can be applied to freelance writing, too.

Sometimes you land a great gig with a great client – or so you think at the time. It’s going great, everybody is happy – and then something turns. You’re not sure how it happened, but little by little, all the progress you made seems to have fallen apart.

Your client starts nitpicking every sentence you write, inventing errors that aren’t there. You begin to take it personally because you know you did your best and that the material is good, but he chooses to cast a bad light on you anyway.

This is what I refer to as the Jumping Off Point.

Do you stay on the project you committed to, even though both of you are unhappy and it’s apparent – or do you bow out gracefully, cut your losses and wish him the best of luck in finding a suitable replacement?

We, as writers, should always do our best to make our clients happy. Our livelihoods depend on it. If our clients aren’t happy, they’re going to tell everybody they know and probably a few people they don’t know. Word of mouth advertising is a double-edged sword. It can be the best or worst publicity that a business can get. Too much bad publicity can have serious adverse effects on your business.

But what’s more important in the long run? Holding on to a disgruntled client or realizing when you’re in a no win situation?

Whatever you decide, there is one sure way to know whether or not you made the right decision. If you walk away from a project feeling an overwhelming sense of relief, it was definitely the right thing to do.

And I don’t regret it one bit.