Productivity Times May Vary
July 16, 2008
I was having a discussion with a colleague the other day about the possibility of people being at their productive and creative peaks at different times of the day. Without going into great detail about Circadian rhythms and genetics (the suggestion of which maintains that some gene mutations are responsible for extreme versions of the Morning Lark and the Night Owl), productivity peaks are certainly as varied as people’s preferences. Read more
Blogging and Freelance Writing: Resources to get you on the Right Track
July 16, 2008
The web hosts a wealth of information regarding ways to get into career blogging and other freelance writing work. Here are some sites I enjoyed going through, and proved to be a great sources of info:
http://www.writingforward.com/freelance-writing/how-i-launched-my-freelance-writing-career
http://www.chrisblogging.com/start-a-part-time-freelance-writing-career/
http://www.dailyblogtips.com/101-blog-tips-i-learned-in-2006/
http://www.dailyblogtips.com/ways-to-make-money-online-with-website/
http://www.thegoldenpencil.com/
http://katherinehuether.com/freelance-writing-top-tips-to-break-into-a-new-market/
If you want to attend a workshop on blogging basics, check out The Digital Filipino’s Blogging 101 Workshop to get a clearer idea of how blogging can turn into a lucrative pastime, and even your full time job!
Gaming: Insane Moments in Gaming History
July 16, 2008
Got this from Michael Kwan’s blog! It’s a video about the Top 10 moments in gaming history. If you were gaming since the 80’s, you’d be able to relate!
Blogging as a Career
July 16, 2008
photo credit: Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com
You may find yourself in a 9-5 office situation wherein you’ve done all your work for the day already, made sure that the boss has gone through all her appointments without a hitch, and have replied to all company e-mail correspondence and forwarded them to concerned parties as necessary. You sit back and marvel at your industriousness as you smile victoriously while glancing towards your office issued desk clock, expecting it to read somewhere within the boundaries of 3 and 5pm. It’s usually at this point that you’re shocked to see that it’s only an hour and a half past lunch.
It isn’t uncommon for the free-spirited writer to run out of things to do inside an office cubicle, no matter how well equipped or comfortable it is. If writing is a passion and you’re in some job you don’t want to be at in the first place, you probably ask yourself over and over again one of the most fundamental questions of human existence: Why?
The principal answer to that question is money. Your day job (or whatever it is) puts food on your table, and without that you probably wouldn’t even have a table at all. But then again, are you cursed to forever living in a claustrophobic, corporate existence when you know that you’d really want to do the opposite? Blogging as a career seeks to provide a solution for both: as a way to earn money that isn’t connected to any office, and as an avenue for your writing zeal.
A great way to get into blogging as a career is to start a professional blog during your free time at your day job. Aside from it having a very, very minimal startup cost (just the fee to pay for your domain name, web hosting and, if ever, design) and a virtually low career risk financially since you won’t be leaving your job just yet, you’ll suddenly find yourself less bored at the office because there’s something for you to do that would be a source of residual income in the future.
To properly start blogging as a career, take into consideration that the actual blogging or writing aspect of it is only a part of the entire process. Aside from journaling consistently on a regular basis, marketing your blog is a definite must if you’d want to increase the number of hits to your site, such as by visiting other blogs and linking them, and joining online forums and discussion groups where subjects related to your blog are concerned.
More hits to your blog increase your viewership and potential for influence, and this provides for a win-win scenario because an increase in traffic to your site inadvertently increases the chances that visitors will click on content related banner ads from Google (you did sign up for some, didn’t you?) and products from sales partners such as Amazon.com. These services are one of the main forms with which to build a stable flow of residual income, and are integral in blogging as a career.
Blogging as a career doesn’t have to begin as dramatically as making a grand exit from the office ala Jerry Maguire. It’s a lot more practical, not to mention easier, to get started right now in the discomfort and claustrophobic atmosphere of your own office cubicle. The internet has certainly become a boon to moonlighters, hobbyists, and multi-tasking employees the world over.
Taking the Big Dive Part 1 - consider freelance
July 16, 2008
Without getting into quasi-science beliefs and moments of supernatural inspiration (get a self-help book if you want that), I really think that people go through life to complete some unforeseen and presently unimaginable goal. Being victims of circumstance, whether it be your college course or your present job, we tend to take life at its face value and accept what it brings us, regardless of its impact on our feelings and what we hope to achieve. If we love what happens, then hooray for us! And if we hate it, we revert to a defensive stance and chant a popular mantra of encouragement and self-denial such as “that’s life!”
This is all well and good, since such acts are testaments of our resiliency and the yearning for the ultimate triumph of the human soul over all worldly obstacles (such as your crabby boss). However, fighting against all the odds isn’t the only noteworthy characteristic of the human spirit.
When was the last time you checked yourself and asked if you were really happy with what you’re doing? If you aren’t even 100% sure that you are, you might want to get out of it, whether it’s with school and the course that you’ve mistakenly taken up, the job you can’t believe you’re working in, or quite simply a terrible and horrifyingly stagnant relationship with a significant other who undervalues you. It’s something to be in a rough patch that you could solve and get over, but it’s another totally different scenario to feel like you’re in some bolgia of hell.
If the problem is scholastic in nature, shifting courses or even schools is a normal occurrence in college, unlike elementary and high school wherein you more or less didn’t have a choice really but to finish and rid yourself of the bindings of our traditional school system. If it’s your girlfriend or boyfriend, you could probably figure that one out yourself.
If your problem is your job, you might want to consider leaving it and going freelance for a while. Why freelance in the first place, and not just take a nice long vacation in the Caribbean or some far-flung local province for some intense soul searching? It’s my opinion that vacations are there for rejuvenation and basically “getting away from it all.” A vacation will NOT change the reality that you’re working in a place you hate so much. You only yearn for another vacation even more!
If you’ve finally decided to leave your job, why isn’t it advisable to take a long vacation anyway? For one thing, you get out of the mindset of work and get into an everyday party frame of mind instead. That’s great and all if you aren’t supporting yourself or live on a big fat trust fund (why are you even working in the first place?) but if you’ve got bills to pay, mouths to feed and alcohol to guzzle, you can’t just stop working completely. Enter the wonderful world of freelance!
Freelance work, whether it be corporate or non-corporate, allows for adequate transition time between jobs by being a source of income to augment the finances you’ve set aside for this particularly crucial point in your career (you did save up a bit, didn’t you?). Working freelance in my opinion is a better alternative to a long vacation totally devoid of productivity because it keeps you in shape mentally and physically. Of course vacations such as these have a place in our lives beyond Spring Break, but the transition period between a job you hate and a job that you truly enjoy being in even though you’re overworked is truly significant.
Working freelance will also be beneficial for you even when you’ve landed your dream job. Although you’ll be taking on significantly less freelance jobs, the availability of sideline work gives you an opportunity to earn some by the way cash when you’ve got some extra time.
Getting into the work that you really want requires a lot of patience and determination, mainly because throughout your life you’ll be able to refine your search and realize what you really want, hopefully before it’s too late for you to be able to shift to it.
Freelance - Writing for Helium?
July 9, 2008
A lot of writers who are active on the internet and wanting to get into freelance writing get into writing communities that pay writers for their articles. The pay schemes of these communities vary, with sites such as Helium paying on what seems to be a per unique impression basis. Though you get paid in cents, those red pennies could amount up to real large amounts of cash depending, of course, on just how lucrative your articles are…and how long you’re willing to wait.
Helium presents a form of passive and residual income generation, which in principle allows you to earn money in perpetuity as long as the site is up. Since Helium doesn’t erase your articles, those same articles essentially become your workforce, earning you small amounts over a period of time. 30-50 articles may earn you just a handful of dollars, but the theory behind the profitability of Helium is to write hundreds and even thousands of articles for the site that, if for the sake of argument each earn one cent a month, stands to generate a substantial amount.
Can’t wait to get started writing for Helium? Before you begin, check out this blog and this one as well to get an idea of just what exactly’s in store for you over at the site.
If you’d like to check out what some of the articles at Helium look like, check out Preston Harvey’s Helium Page and go through his/her list of works by clicking on “Articles!”
Work for the Home of Nu Rock
July 9, 2008
Unjob No.2 - Virtual Personal Assistant
July 8, 2008
Tired of having to wake up at 6 in the morning after a night of heavy drinking just to make it to work on time even though your boss arrives 2 hours later? Losing your hair because of stress brought about by the struggle of cueing behind an endless MRT/LRT line? With the price of oil going through the roof and the cost of everything surging along proportionately, consumer spending is predicted to decrease due to budgetary constraints and people bracing themselves for the economic repercussions of an impending US recession wrought by the recent sub-prime mortgage crisis. Read more
Unjob No.1 - SEO content writer
July 4, 2008
The internet has radically transformed the way freelancing and working from home are done today. With computers having the capacity to transfer large amounts of data almost instantaneously anywhere around the world, more and more offices are offering telecommuting opportunities to its employees which is understandable given the unending rise in oil and transportation costs the world over. For enterprising freelancers, part-timers and even office moonlighters, the ability to accomplish any form of work that pays from wherever you are (granted that you have an internet connection and a computer at hand) gives them an extra line of income doing something that, in some way or other, also allows for a quick escape from the mundane tasks presented by the daily grind.
SEO content writing is a process wherein the writer provides content for a firm or agency that presents them with keywords to be used a specified number of times in their works. An example would be writing about ‘Garden Gnomes’ in a 450-word essay that pays you per word (usually at a low, yet reasonable premium. The prime requirement for any SEO content is to use the given keyword/s liberally within the article in a gramatically correct way. Though it pays very little per word, the idea is to start cashing in on your writing hobby by taking in a great volume of keywords to write (try 25-30 450-word articles)!
The beauty of SEO content writing is its potential to be a great source of by the way income which you can take on anytime you get into a financial pinch (splurging on alcohol, crazy shopping, income withheld by employer for your naughtiness, etc). It’s a fantastic unjob for hobby writers/casual bloggers to journalists/professional bloggers, especially since the only tools you’ll be needing aside from a fairly decent command of the English language are the ones you’re using right now: an internet connection and your computer!
If you want to get started, send mail to Black Ink Projects, Inc. at b l a c k i n k p r o d @ g m a i l . c o m
Now get to writing!
Swissy Debut Album She Smiles in Stores Now!
July 3, 2008
After more than a year, Swissy’s debut album under Terno Recordings is finally out! The perfect soundtrack to any rainy day, the 12-track album by Filipina-Australian singer songwriter Christina del Mundo is filled to the brim with carefully arranged instrumentation and captivating vocals that sits comfortably in between your A Camp and K’s Choice collection. Recorded at Chris Wilson Recordings in Australia and Love One Another Studio in the Philippines, She Smiles is an amazing debut that manages to hold off on pretensions and focuses instead on lean, meaningful lyrics sung by Christina with her excellent vocal control. Don’t miss out on this one!
Available at all Astrovision, Odyssey, O Music and Fully Booked outlets!
