Porn, toilet flushes, and the global economy: Adventures of a third world, underpaid freelance writer
July 31, 2008
It’s not really about the morality, the reason why I’m now adamant in turning down any porn-related writing jobs. I did try to write a sample article so that the client in question could determine if I fit the bill, if I can write blogs that were ‘dirty’ enough. It turned out that I had a limited vocabulary in that area and that I was too “literary” for their taste. Read more
Taking the Big Dive Part 3 - The Lean Months
July 27, 2008
Before leaving your day job to get a freelance career, you probably setup a financial safety net for yourself and your loved ones for the exciting (and often bumpy) road ahead. Whether you’ve built up a sizable nest egg to keep you going for a little over 6 months or you’ve substantially diversified and upgraded your investment portfolio, the truth is that there is a possibility of all that cash burning out in the future. Read more
Taking the Big Dive Part 2 - Getting Used to Your New Life
July 22, 2008
You know you’ve made a conscious decision to be free from the chains of an unsuitable work schedule when you wake up on your first day as a freelancer at your usual 7:00 AM. Instead of your tried and tested method of prodding yourself to get dressed in 30 minutes (e.g. suddenly jumping out of bed and taking a mad dash to the bathroom to wake you up enough to give yourself a hot shower), you suddenly remember that no, you don’t have to go through that insane morning ritual anymore. You sigh in total relief as you close your eyes again and drift off into lala-land after you’ve correctly set your alarm to a later and more comfortable time.
The first few days of freedom as a freelancer may be spent trying to break your normal office routine. You may find it confusing and even difficult to wake up late, have a late breakfast, and work on projects at odd hours compared to what you’ve been used to, but this is all normal; your body is beginning to adjust to your new work schedule and ethic, so just give it time to do so.
Working freelance isn’t an excuse to live without a schedule; in fact, you’ll probably have to be more disciplined when it comes to your workday because of all the enticing opportunities for distraction and leisure activities. If you’re a freelance writer, tons of these interruptions are available on the net, and are admittedly very VERY fun. As such, here are some tips to acclimatize to your new (and hopefully more productive and interesting) lifestyle:
1. Write down your ideal workday – before even plunging into freelance, you might want to describe your ideal workday, which of course involves you getting what you want while still being productive. Get a desk planner at the local office supply store that has blanks per hour so you could give yourself a rough draft of how your working day would be like (e.g. awaken at 9am, have coffee/breakfast and check mail, begin working at 11:00am until lunch, eat lunch, continue working until 5pm, meet up with Sally at the pub for drinks around 8, etc.)
The idea here is that you’re training yourself to stick to a pre-defined work hour schedule. Even though you could deviate an hour or two once in a while, it’s crucial to get into the habit of sticking to it early on in the freelance game, lest you become accustomed to a chaotic workday where you get more play done than work. Think about putting food on your table!
2. Set a “I’m Very Busy Regardless of Who You Are” hour – it’s alright to work lightly in the morning, especially if there aren’t any pending jobs to be submitted. However, you should have at least an hour of what I call the “IVBRWYA,” wherein you should be working on something such as future articles, creative writing, fancy graphic design, layout samples for your portfolio, etc. This ensures that even though you don’t have any work required of you, you don’t break the habit of practicing your craft daily. This is also that time of the day where you’re not allowed any form of distraction from friends, relatives, or your high maintenance salt-water tropical fish.
3. Set aside some time to blog everyday – Let’s face it: blogging is the next big thing in marketing. As a freelancer, it’s often easy to still look at yourself as an employee working at home, which shouldn’t be the case. As a freelancer, it’s your job to properly market your talent and creativity, close deals, and basically make things happen! You become your own business, and therefore freelancing requires some entrepreneurial skill. Make a blog for your freelance career, and you’re that much closer to learning the ropes of self-marketing.
Blogging is a personal way to market yourself in an accessible environment. Whether it be the publishing of your latest works of art or simply a retelling of how you came up with that great line of copy, blogging keeps you in touch with other freelancers and employers who are looking for people to take on their job queues. Signing up for social networking sites such as Facebook allows you to market yourself and your blog to a network defined by you through your contacts.
4. Figure out how to work around your hobby schedule – if you’re a musician and you constantly have late nights out playing with the band, you obviously cannot bring yourself to begin your workday at 6am. Setting a freelance work schedule is all about balancing your personal life, hobbies and interests with work. If you really have to do your activities late at night, figure out if your work schedule could start late and end late, but give enough leeway for your evening duties. The best part about freelancing, once you’ve learned proper time management, is you seem to have enough time for everything!
Scour the net for some schedule management seminars, articles and quick tips that’ll help you out in the initial run of your freelance career. If you’ve taken the dip into freelance and find yourself to lack in discipline regarding your work schedule, try to write it down on paper, stick it on a wall in front of your work space and try your best to adhere to it. An organized workday gives you more time to do the things you want to do.
Freelance: Tips for Musicians
July 18, 2008
photo credit: Fringe_2
There’s nothing more rewarding and satisfying than earning income doing what you love doing. For musicians, playing onstage and in the studio becomes a livelihood that, when well managed and planned, has the potential to become a stable and reliable source of primary income.
Unfortunately, being a session or freelance musician can be tough, especially if you’re just starting out. Here are some tips from other blogs that I’ve come across which might make things a bit easier:
12 Survival Tips for Freelance Musicians
Tips for Working as a Freelance Musician
If you’ve got a freelance/session musician tip post or have come across one, feel free to notify me so I could add it to this list =)
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!
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!”
