sootyj
Friday 2nd November 2012 4:28pm
51,287 posts
and here it is again
So you want to write online?
So you want to make money working on line?
Ok first of all this is a guide strictly for making money from writing assignments and jobs, of course you can be a VPA (virtual personal assistant, do you have to pinch your own bum or is there an app for that?) or you can of course program stuff. But I know nothing about such things so ask some one else.
But I've made a nice bit of money on the side in my spare time and this is how I did it.
1 Choose your website; there's odesk, elance, freelance, guru and all sorts of others. Basically, at this stage don't choose anyone who makes you pay (guru), is too complex to use easily (odesk) or seems unpopular (freelance) or even does too much to protect you. There was a lovely Irish site called the wittery it specialized in witty writing, had a minimun cost for a job. You had to prove you were talented. They were so nice they folded in 6 months.
2 Set your profile. Give a good idea of what you can do, your background and do that in 200 words. You can sound a little human. Say you've got a cat. Don't describe his butt worms. Take skills tests if the site offers them, particularly English language ones. Put samples up (if you've got no samples what kind of a writer are you honestly?) Don't sound wacky, wacky and psychotic are damn close. Be realistic about setting your skill levels if you think your writing is only 50% Why would anyone hire you? If you set it at 100% then your samples had better back it up. If possible get some one else to read it. Spelling mistakes, poor grammar and you're dead in the water.(Being dyspraxic myself I have to admit I find this a chullong but just make sure the finished product measures up) Get your tags writer to focus them on what people are likely to go for. Give yourself a nice name e.g. 'The write stuff' or something like that but again not to cute.
3 Going for your first jobs. Ok here's where it gets tougher. You are going up against millions of other writers. Some are academics who can write a researched 3000 research document for beer money in the 15 minutes before they go down the pub. Sometimes you'll get a writer who can equip his entire pirate fleet for a fiver and that's all he wants.
So the first 10 jobs will suck. Swallow your pride and get stuck in. SEOs, captions for iphone camera apps and all sorts of other crap (if you don't know what an SEO is wiki it I'm not telling you). Set your rates low, prepare to get rejected. My first job was 70 jokes for £60. I used to charge £30 a joke. My second job was £70 for a 1000 captions (that took one very long day).
Any event then however low you set your rate, you'll probably be rejected. Just get on with it. Once you're past the first 10 you'll be in the top 1% then life gets much easier. My rate leapt from £4 an hour to £60-£100 an hour. That took a year.
4 Don't get intimidated by other bidders. Most jobs attract 30-40 bidders minimum; but out of those a chunk are farmers (bidding for everything at a low price and then getting some poor sap to do the same job for slightly less), snipers (using automatic bidding software) and the truly desperate. It means you need to get lucky, expect to get 1 in 10 bids.
5 Take a chance. On most sites you can only put in a bid. You can't actually chat with the client, so get it right. Reflect their job in your bid. If they seem like they like to proverbially be ruffty tuffty then match them. If they're looking for a comic be funny. I've got at least 2 good jobs by being really quite offensive in my bid.
6 Don't lie. Do exaggerate. If you claim you wrote Titanic and Sherlock Holmes then a quick trip to IMFDB or Google will find you out. But if you wrote for Weak ending or News hack then they're legit BBC comedy shows and your name will be in the credits.
7 Don't cheat. Most clients use software to check for plagiarism you will get found out. You won't get paid, you'll probably get suspended.
8 Stick to site rules. Most sites forbid working without an agreement or exchanging personal contact details and will ban you for breaking these rules. And if you complain to the site managers about none payment, its like going to the police to complain someone stole your heroin.
9 Ensure good feedback. It counts seriously. One duff rating can set you back to square one. So if your client is being a fussy sod, it may be better just to cancel the job rather than complete and get a bad rating. Be careful you never commit to do more work than you can't afford to lose. Most sites offer a stage payment system, use it for anything over £200. Anything under £200 is just being a nuisance. nb most sites offer an escrow system where the site holds the money for you. This is great as it means you will get paid. The problem is you don't think you're paid till the funds are released, and the client thinks they've paid you once they load the escrow,
10 Get a good idea of what a realistic amount of work is. 4 500 SEO articles should take an hour, a 2000 word researched article (especially a top 10) may take 2-3 hours if not more. Some clients will try and take the m
Michael. One guy offered $200 for SEO articles. Sounds great, but not when you realise it was for 20,000 articles. I've dropped a client for expecting to have 10 re-dfrafts on a £40 job. Don't ever put up with rudeness.
11 Lower your expectations. OK there's a lot of advantages to working online. Your bed is your office, your y-fronts your business suit, your cat your sour colleague. If you're writing plays etc you're not competing for funding with a 1000 other hopefuls. Once you've got the job you will get paid (probably). But first of all lower your expectations. A screen play may go for a minimum of £5000 in the real world. In the online world you may be settling for a £100 and damned pleased for £500. An article will rarely go for more than £100. Be a mackerel, mackerel eat all the crap the fancier fish won't touch. I like mackerel because being a bottom feeding fish makes them nice big, fat, oily fish.
12 Careful about writing for professionals. I mostly write comedy (what do you mean you never would have guessed? piss off!) Standups will pay half what some desperate best man will pay for a funny routine and will expect you to be funny. Always aim to provide a skill the client doesn't actually have.
Thats it? What are you waiting for get on with it!
I honestly can't be bothered to separate it line by line again sorry
