Monday, June 29, 2009

Enhance your Writing from Cyber Resources


Sometimes it is impossible to hit upon everything there is to know about writing, the trends and overall job tips. No matter how experienced you are, even the pros need to be reminded of how this business changes and the need to listen.

To start off your Monday, which on a personal level is the start of a new beginning; the following five recent articles should not be miss. Refer to them and make this content part of your writing career bible.


5 Ways to Instantly Become a Better Writer
by Mason Hipp

The information is so simple, yet very important advice to consider as a writer. Freelance Folder has advice for all types of freelancers and not for writers only, but when they come up something in our niche, it’s terrific.


To Query or Not to Query: That’s a Question for the Pros!
by Jennifer Mattern

Jennifer created a series involving seven well established writers; Chris Bibey, Angela Booth, Jenna Glatzer, Kristen King, Deb Ng, Allena Tapia and Anne Wayman using a question and answer format. The series began on June 15th and should be coming to a close soon.


Avoiding the temptation of easy to score but low paying gigs
by Jennifer Mattern at Freelance Writing Jobs

Jennifer stopped by Deb Ng´s fabulous site and offers a wealth on infomation that we all are guilty of – low paying gigs. Deb, herself, is an adament foe of the cheapies.

How to Increase Your Freelance Writing Rates by Anne Wayman

After reading about Jennifer’s tips to avoid low paying gigs, a must is Anne’s guidelines on how to increase your rates. I know you are probably afraid to do so but if you want to make a living out of your love of writing then this article is a must read.


Writing: how to get more great ideas every day
by Angela Booth

Although Angela is a prime marketer of her numerious eBooks on writing, her blog has been bookmarked as very informative. Sink you teeth into it.

Topics such as these are what make the web a worthwhile resource for a writer. There are hundreds of thousands of others in cyberspace. We all narrow down the ones we prefer. Why not list some of your favorites here as a reference for others?

Friday, June 12, 2009

Freelance Update From The Field

So, I told y'all I would be back with an update on my freelancing adventures. Here is a run down of the sites I have tried so far:


Elance - very good for getting new and repeat business. We get most of our income through this site. As expected, job awards tend to come in clusters so there is some downtime. We use this to work on our own website and put in bids on other freelance sites such as:


iFreelance - no luck here so far. I think this will end up being a waste of money. There are very few assignments that are even worth bidding on (maybe 2-3 projects a week). We haven't been awarded anything so far. This site doesn't charge commissions, so that is good. At this point I just hope to land 1 job to get back my 6 month membership payment.


Guru - just started bidding on this site on June 1st. No awards so far but there are a bunch of good projects and buyers. You get 100 "bids" a month, so I am burning through them. I asked the Guru helpdesk if I could link to my Elance profile to show my feedback and they said yes! That is good since I won't have to start from scratch building a reputation there.


Demand Studios - started turning in work on Monday and just got paid for my first article. These are simple to write but tracking down images takes a little time. The format for entering the articles on the site appears to have a couple of bugs (the bullet lists don't show up correctly), but nothing major. Just follow the Writer's Guide closely and you will be fine writing for this site.