A freelancing first anniversary!

November 2008. After six months of pain, struggling to stand and learning to walk normally again, I finally accept that – since this is the second time I’ve been wiped out trying to do “normal” work – I’m unable to be the office IT geek any more.

Instead of getting depressed about having no income, no future and a collection of other problems the size of a small continent, I decide to look online for work. “There has to be something out there,” says I.

Here’s the story of that first year.

At the start, I almost drowned in the number of web pages and emails offering instant multi-million-dollar businesses for two hours’ work a day. At the most desperate of times, I even signed up for a couple of their “free” sites – all of which, of course, were simply ways to add my address to a massive spam-list, to send a crappy “report” on making money and to offer me their amazing system at the reduced price of only $279.

Thankfully, I’m not an idiot. I already knew the first rule of earning online: never give anyone any money – they should be paying you. You’re the one working.

I began looking into the strange new terms: PTC, PTP and other PTs that I can’t remember. I registered with a few. I clicked ads, I filled in surveys and I had discussions for a couple of weeks. I got scammed (for which PTC is notorious) and soon discovered that the returns were just too low to make a difference in the short term.

Of the sites I tried, I am still a member of three¹:

MyLot: low-paid discussion forums, where the biggest advantage is the community’s knowledge and willingness to share information. It’s overrun by “make money online” conversations, but there’s plenty of other discussions going on.

DonkeyMails: tiny amounts of money for visiting sites (for 15 or 30 seconds). I still haven’t hit the $5 mark after almost a year, but the ads keep me in touch with current trends and remind me to watch out for scams.

Valued Opinions: I only fill in surveys worth around £1, as a rule. There aren’t hundreds of them, but in a year I’ve hit the £10 mark three or four times and traded in for vouchers I can use to buy sushi for my lady!

Next, I moved into blogging for money. I’d blogged before, so the milieu was familiar, and the networks were helpful and interesting. It didn’t take long to see that this was another long-term proposition – and one which was frequently weighted in the network’s favour rather than mine. Shared ad revenue is great, but only works when you’re using a network that has decent processes in place to pass traffic around. Otherwise you might as well blog for yourself.

The best I’ve found is Orble. They may not have the highest revenue-share ratio, but the network’s layout very much encourages visitors to click between pages and read a lot of different articles. The admins can be slow and I personally ran into terrible trouble with the resident psycho troll, but otherwise it’s a pretty safe option.

Finally, I began to change focus to writing and editing, putting together the Beginner’s Guide that’s available in the Free Stuff here at ScrawlBug. Surprisingly, nine months later, the vast majority of what I learned in my first two or three months of research is still applicable. So much for innovation, eh?

Thankfully, I’d had some experience in both producing and correcting content for a web magazine in one of my previous incarnations, so I didn’t feel too much like a fish out of water. I started writing for content directories, seeing a very small but steady income each month. This made more sense: putting content out there, building a reputation by having my name on articles and learning the idiosyncrasies of the trade as I went along.

Associated Content was the first I tried. It’s low income per article, based on the number of page views, but your content is always there and brings in money every single month. They’ll take almost any subject and don’t have strict editorial rules, making them one of the simplest to use.

Helium is a tougher forum: again based on hits, but article ranking is mandatory for payouts and the higher-ranked writing generally get more visits (and thus more money). Quality counts here, but (free) membership gives access to their Marketplace and several other income-generating options that can be quite lucrative.

HubPages works on revenue share, but has grown massively over the last year or so. It’s a much prettier place, with each article being a webpage in its own right – with graphics, video, links, affiliate options and so on. There’s a great crowd to help with critiques, too.

The big change came when I sold an article through one of those sites. Bizarrely, it was about Internet pornography, but suddenly making $40 in one hit made me sit up and pay attention. It was more than I’d made on all the previous attempts – in one go.

From there, it was a small step to move into proper freelancing: writing directly on demand for clients, putting content into an article marketplace and setting up on the bidding sites. Slowly – oh, so slowly – work began to trickle in. Other obligations still kept me from working full time (and still do), but the return on time spent in front of the keyboard was finally paying off.

You can read about the various bidding sites in a previous blog entry – but please go through the comments as well. There’s some very interesting extra input there which offers different opinions and even a response from one of the sites covered.

Now, twelve months on, I can say with more than a little satisfaction that I’m getting established. It’s still small-time. It’s still odds and ends, with no regular, well-paid work – but it’s a bit of extra income from doing what I love.

There have been some lows: getting turned down for interesting work, having clients disappear without warning, working at a client’s blog that dies and, of course, being underpaid – or not being paid at all.

But there have also been some real highs: the first time a client approached me (rather than the other way around), publishing an ebook, editing a successful ebook for a client (£1,000 in sales on the first day it was available and probably headed into paper-print!), researching and learning about new subjects like online gambling and stretching my fledgling skills into previously-untried content formats.

What more could I ask?

¹ In the interests of disclosure, yes – some of these are referral links. And no, I can’t guarantee the sites will pay out and I don’t endorse them. I’m just passing on a bit of info. You’re a sentient being, use your noggin and make your own choices.

The change in the weather came suddenly, unexpectedly – one day there was sunlight and warmth; the next, grey clouds and biting wind. The same can be said for my workload. Feast or famine. Summer or winter. Rarely is there a steady period of lazy picnics on mild afternoons.

As some of you have guessed, things at Maison ScrawlBug have been a little… hectic of late. I don’t often talk about The Great Beast¹ in my posts, preferring to concentrate on other subjects, but for the past two months that Beast has been gnawing at my meaty bits. So much so that I’m surprised there’s much of me left. Explanations are in order.

Firstly, ScrawlBug is not on a one-way trip to Boot Hill. Yes, posts have been erratic. I’ve perhaps been less inspired, fumbling around for things to say, boring, demented (nothing new there) and generally off-form. It’s hard to say, since I’m inside my head and can’t give you a visitor’s impression. A guided tour, perhaps? On your left, the thalamus; keep together and we’ll make our way to the frontal lobe. Please mind the gap.

Secondly, the Earnings Blog is also still breathing, albeit with the aid of life support. Its host is unwell and, given the beautifully poetic nature of the site’s symbiotic relationship with said host, I’ve not been able to get it out of Internet Hospital long enough for an update. This, too, will pass.

Thirdly, a period of inanimate revolution has befallen the household. VHS cassettes are angrily chewed and spat onto the carpet; the DVD player shouts “No Disc” and laughs in my face; the toaster and kettle are plotting a coup d’état in the kitchen; even my oldest ally – the computer – has been recruited, BSODding me into a state of despair.

And finally, The Great Beast has been hungry these past weeks. It has eaten my time, energy and motivation – not to mention several packets of chocolate biscuits². It has left a sticky snail’s trail of stress, pressure, depression and pain which has glued my virtual shoes in place and slowed progress. Walking barefoot through slime is not the most pleasant experience, even for other snails.

However, much like the British weather changing in the blinking of an eye, it appears things are looking up.

Silent clients begin communicating. Work begins to flow a little thicker. New possibilities and jobs appear on the horizon, be they mirage or not. Ideas crawl out of the dark recesses of my brain. There are more chocolate biscuits in the cupboard.

That cold, winter wind may be bad for the complexion, but it’s blowing away many of the dark, troublesome clouds and – although it’s only weak – a wintery sun can show its face at last.

It may even have a hat on.

¹ That’s Real Life, for the uninitiated.

² OK, so that was a lie – I ate the biscuits.

This image will haunt you for weeks.

It was a hit. It was an uncontrollable monster of music that soared up the charts on demon wings, looting and pillaging as it went. It left a trail of scorched musicians behind it and established Take That as the quintessential boys band, proud conquerors of the genre the New Kids On The Block had begun.

It wheedled its way into a million heads across the globe, lodged itself firmly between the frontal lobe and the place where annoying music goes around and around… and refused to be dislodged. For months at a time¹.

But that has nothing to do with freelancing, does it?

In a way, it does. In a way, it has something to do with any kind of work, any kind of job, any kind of vocation. I don’t know the lyrics, but the title is something we all need sometimes: a way to rekindle the flames of passion that drive us to do what we do.

Bizarrely, almost anything can do the job of putting a spark to the kindling hidden deep down inside, no matter how damp and inflammable it may seem. It could be an idea that appears on a blog. It could be a chat with someone that kicks off a chain of ideas. It could be something you see when you’re out doing the shopping.

Heaven forbid, it could even be an infuriating tune that gets stuck in your head and refuses to go away. That you find yourself humming in the shower or singing, even though you don’t know the words. That drives you absolutely nuts at two o’clock in the morning and makes you want to drill a hole in your head to let it out.

Whatever it is, hold it close. Nurture it. Tell it how beautiful it is and take it out for dinner. Feed it expensive food and champagne, take it to the movies, then bring it home and cuddle it on the sofa. Because wherever it came from, whatever angel delivered it, that idea just saved you from sitting around, despondently moping and destroying your business through inaction.

Come on, baby, light my fire.

¹ If you’re feeling truly masochistic, you can find it on YouTube.

Since I’ve been babbling on about ways to keep going when your blog is a bit stuck – thanks to a swift kick in the derrière from Steven – I thought I would recount a little victory from yesterday. A victory of tenacity, from a sense of justice and from being downright stubborn.

Many moons ago², my lady and I ran into a little trouble with a catalog company. You know, those wonderful people that allow you to order online and have a courier turn up at your door with fake Armani gear, footstools in the shape of elephants’ feet and teapots made out of old dustbins. We’d ordered on account, paid for some and returned the rest… and they lost it.

Over the weeks that ensued, the company became aggressive. “We want our money!” they shouted. “What money?” we replied – and, under our breath, “Get lost!”

Every time they sent a letter, they charged us. Every month that passed while we argued, they charged us. They called in a debt recovery service, who were equally useless, and charged us for that, too. They talked to solicitors – or at least pretended to. By last month, the bill had gone from about £30 to around £280 – all for a single item of clothing that we don’t have.

Eventually, the company agreed that we had returned most of the goods, but didn’t zero our balance and still harassed us for one final item. That is until yesterday, when another letter arrived. The tone was completely different – all the aggression gone and very conciliatory. They want to settle. They’ve had enough of throwing away money in bureaucracy.

Bear in mind that this is a company who had called in debt recovery, solicitors and a bunch of other folks in the legal business and that’s one heck of a victory. Of course, it helps that we’re in the right – even if we can’t prove it very easily – but it’s still a combination of tenacity and justice that pleases me.

And then it occurred to me: this is just as important in freelancing.

It’s on the list of essential tools. Tenacity: the ability to brow-beat an opponent unceasingly, until they do what you want them to. Politicians, salesmen and people who deal with robot-voiced ISPs have it³. Do you?

¹ I don’t actually own any books like that. Honest. It was another search term. Hah!
² Eleven, actually – ten months, but the moon doesn’t run on the same schedule.
³ That’s you, Paul.

Not a Tibetan sculpture. Just a desk accessory.

If you believe Hollywood, freelancing is the best career choice you could make – barring being a secret agent or lawyer, of course. Freelancers always have huge apartments, on the corners of beautifully-located skyscrapers in the middle of Manhattan (or some other, equally trendy place), with massive windows overlooking parks or a bay.

They work at hand-crafted desks made of glass and carbon fibre, upon which their $10,000 computer sits, with a gorgeous flat-screen monitor the size of Texas and the hand-crafted sculpture they picked up during their year of meditation in Tibet.

That is, of course, assuming they’re working at home. Sometimes, they need to get away from the bustle of city life, so they go to their holiday home – the one in Tuscany with a lake in the back garden, twelve acres of green hills to wander and a local grocery store where everybody loves their “visiting artist”.

They never worry about money or, if they’re a “starving artist”, they have to limit themselves to only having sushi delivered five times a week. If things are really bad, they may even have to sell one of their original Picasso paintings or write something “pulpy” for a magazine instead of a romantic best-seller.

Hollywood is, apparently, in another dimension.

The reality of freelancing is more likely a wobbly Ikea desk with a cheap, plastic keyboard and an old CRT monitor on it, next to several empty coffee cups and a pile of (as yet) unpaid bills.

It’s an apartment above a funeral service, with 1970s shag-pile carpets, horrible choices of paint for the walls and a damp patch in the bathroom that won’t go away no matter how many plumbers look at it.

It’s a tiny garden, probably shared with half a dozen other tenants or at least with neighbours who burn sausages on their cheap barbecue and get noisily drunk every weekend, then dump their beer cans into the overgrown patch of flowers you’ve been trying to cultivate for a bit of colour.

Its holidays in Skegness or Bognor, sitting in a deck chair as someone else’s noisy, drunk neighbours kick sand up, which the wind blows into your Mr Whippy ice cream. The local stores only sell cheap plastic sunglasses, “Wish You Were Here” postcards with pictures of the pier and “Kiss Me Quick” hats – and the owners don’t know you from Adam.

But it’s still a pretty good career choice. You get to set your own hours. There’s no boss breathing down your neck. The bills get paid (eventually). You get to write and create on your own terms.

So stick with it: you may never own a hand-crafted flat-screen monitor from Tibet, but you’ll never have to work in a cube farm again.

Yet to me this is a terrible double standard. Society makes a huge distinction between the geek who trawls the Internet and collects every single Miley Cyrus picture, who can repeat entire Monty Python sketches or who plays video games eight hours a day, while at the same time lauding sportsmen (and women) who spend those same eight hours a day training, artists who repaint a work twenty-seven times to get it perfect or businessmen who work seventy hours a week.

I believe that obsession is a tool.

Reworking a paragraph to make it perfect, moving a sentence, changing a word, choosing the right expression – all of these things are obsessive behaviours. Re-editing a chapter of a novel, changing the joke about pilau rice to one about boiled rice¹, filming the same scene fifty-eight times because the intonation of the lead’s lines was incorrect – again, all obsessive behaviours.

Of course, obsession – like any deviation [thanks, Stephen] from the mental “norm” – can be dangerous. Playing those video games for twenty-seven hours straight and having a heart attack because of accumulated stress is, obviously, not a smart thing to do. But in a lesser form and carefully maintained with a bit of intelligent understanding, it can lead to great things.

I’m obsessive about a small number of things, none of which are dangerous and some of which help a great deal in this frighteningly complicated world. Producing the best possible content for a client is one of them.

What are your obsessions?

¹ This was something I saw on a documentary about the making of Blackadder or about Ben Elton or something: Rowan Atkinson suggested the change. Boiled rice is, apparently, funnier than pilau rice.

In the six months or so that I’ve been freelancing, I’ve discovered that some of my more bizarre skills or experiences are quite useful. Many of these skills have come from bad situations or crappy jobs that had no apparent redeeming qualities – unlike the good jobs, which I expect to add to my portfolio in some way, these have been unexpected bonuses.

I thought I’d list a few of the more surprising ones for you today:

Latin

I have an ‘O’ Level in Latin. I never thought it’d be much use, to be honest, but it turns out that it’s surprisingly helpful – especially since I’m currently editing a massive number of documents about animal species. I can spot the typing mistakes in the species’ names without Wikipedia.

Son Of A Preacher-Man

My father was a preacher. That continual mental hammering I received as a child has stood me in good stead for several reasons: fewer prejudices (he wasn’t Catholic), lack of aggressive competitiveness, acceptance of who I am, a solid grounding in religious stuff and an iron will. It’s probably the main reason I haven’t given up on freelancing yet: nothing, but nothing can beat me when I put my mind to it.¹

Living With A Clinical Psychologist

Apart from the obvious advantages of living with someone who’s used to dealing with lunatics, having a frighteningly intelligent partner is an real boon for a writer. She’s my muse. Whenever I’m stuck for an idea, I just have to talk to her. It also helps that I edited her two University theses (in French), as that gives me much more than a layman’s view of another, specialised subject area.

The RSPCA

Working for one of the biggest animal charities in the world is an eye-opener. Not only does it correct some misconceptions of charities as a whole, but it means working with some incredibly passionate, talented people. Being exposed to some of the more horrific things in life also puts a new perspective on day-to-day events.

Bar And Restaurant Work

I was an assistant manager in a pub once, for about six months. Quite apart from the social skills learned in that situation, I can now carry two glasses (without handles) and three or four plates at the same time. I can also do the washing up and vacuum a room quicker and better than anyone I know. That’s incredibly useful when your home is your office.

Those are just a few examples of past experiences that have been much more useful than I would have imagined. There are a lot of others, which I won’t bore you with right now.

¹ With the exception of our pet cat, who almost always gets her way.

Do you have a skill that you didn’t expect to be useful, but has turned out to be a real blessing?