Sometimes people amaze me at how vague they can be when posting a job. For example, someone today showed up in my feed and basically the post read like this:
I need help translating technical documents. I will give you further details when hired.
For those of you who don't know Guru has a free 10 bids per month service, but most established professional freelancers pay for our bids. That means we only bid on jobs that are good fits for our skill set because we don't want to waste a bid on something that doesn't match.
When someone posts a vague description, most of the good freelancers will not apply. Placing "keywords" that further the description is not a good idea, but in this case the only keyword was "translation."
Translators, as you might guess, specialize in certain languages. What you also might not guess is that many translators only translate one direction. In other words, I translate Latin> English but not the other way. Usually translators do not know every language in the world. This is why if you want your book translated you need to be specific:
"I want a translator for my book. The book is currently written in English. I need it translated into Portuguese, Hindi, and German."
You will probably not find one person who can do this because you specified multiple languages. Once a book has been translated you should find someone who is a native speaker of the language to edit it. Editing a translation is an entirely different job than editing a book normally.
When someone gives you a translation to edit, you need to be able to first tell the person if the translator did a good job or put it through Google translate. Note: If a translator states they can translate any language in the world- they are using Google translate. Most translators use software to improve the speed of the translation, but these translations are still dynamic and readable.
Second, a translation edit needs to maintain all the qualities of the original text as best it can. This means you cannot do any developmental editing. The keys to a translation edit is (1) does it read smoothly or does it read like a translation and (2) are all the words used correctly? In some cases, something might not have come through correctly. Unless the editor is also familiar with the language, these should go back to the translator to fix.
You can find many freelancers to translate your work, but you need to have it checked by others. Good translations usually cost $0.10 per word or more.
Monday, August 27, 2018
Monday, August 20, 2018
Do Writers Make Good Editors?
I was reading another profile on Guru, and this person said they were an excellent editor because they had written so many articles that were published. This doesn't make sense. If writers were such good editors, there would not be editors for every traditional publishing company and magazine and pretty much anything in print.
As a writer, if you submit a work that is riddled with the errors that many people make, your manuscript will be rejected. An occasional misspelled word here and there will be overlooked as well as will more intense grammar points- did you use a comma splice, oh well.
Capitals at the beginning of a sentence and punctuation at the end of sentences will not be tolerated. As an adult you should know better. If you consistently misuse to and too, that will probably get you rejected as well. But editors overlook a lot because they know the nuances of grammar escape the general public. If you are a really good story writer, they can fix those problems. Writers are not expected to know style manuals, but it is hoped the writer will be consistent in using things like serial commas (or not using them).
If you are self-publishing and the only credentials an editor has is that he or she has been published (especially with only articles or a long list of self-published tomes), you are probably throwing your money down the drain. Why? Because these people will only be able to get your book in enough shape for a real editor to look at it. They will probably charge real editor prices to do it, too.
Yes, you can have good writers who are also good editors, but this takes two different skill sets. A good editor will be familiar with a style guide, will have a style guide they prefer and will own a copy of any style guides they use. For fiction, this is usually Strunk & White. Every fiction author should also own and use this book.
A good writer and editor will never say, "I write these great articles so I am obviously a good editor." No one can self-edit well. In fact, I frequently say that no one should use fewer than two editors and a proofreader.
If you send stuff to an editor and it comes back with only a few errors marked- you probably have a MS Word editor. Spell check is a great feature but it misses almost everything, unless you frequently forget to capitalize and punctuate your sentences. Then it will fix all of that and leave the other 70 errors per page alone. Yes, when I edit, it is not uncommon on a first pass to find 70 things wrong per page. By the third pass, the proofreader should be picking up almost nothing, but there will still be things wrong. The main job of a proofreader is to ensure everything is formatted correctly, which is why spelling and grammar should be pretty clean at that point.
Teachers usually make great editors (but not necessarily good writers). They have been editing tons of papers for years. The higher the grade they taught, the more likely you are going to find a good editor.
So, I always talk about editors I would recommend (aside from myself): Pam Pieroni and Joy McCullough (not on Guru anymore). Without having used them but based on their solid Guru profiles, I would give Visual Writing Communication and Paul Words a shot. What makes these two stand out? Their profiles are well developed, and Paul Words even goes to the effort of using a semi-colon appropriately on his.
I will not link to bad freelancers nor will I post their names. If you are hiring an editor, you should be able to spot poorly filled out profiles, misspelled profile words (if you don't know how to spell a word when you are reading someone's profile, you should look it up to make sure they are not only spelling it correctly but also using it correctly), glaring errors such as using ALL CAPS!!! Do not hire someone who uses all caps. That tells me they are uncertain which words they should capitalize or they don't realize no one wants to be screamed at on a webpage.
As a writer, if you submit a work that is riddled with the errors that many people make, your manuscript will be rejected. An occasional misspelled word here and there will be overlooked as well as will more intense grammar points- did you use a comma splice, oh well.
Capitals at the beginning of a sentence and punctuation at the end of sentences will not be tolerated. As an adult you should know better. If you consistently misuse to and too, that will probably get you rejected as well. But editors overlook a lot because they know the nuances of grammar escape the general public. If you are a really good story writer, they can fix those problems. Writers are not expected to know style manuals, but it is hoped the writer will be consistent in using things like serial commas (or not using them).
If you are self-publishing and the only credentials an editor has is that he or she has been published (especially with only articles or a long list of self-published tomes), you are probably throwing your money down the drain. Why? Because these people will only be able to get your book in enough shape for a real editor to look at it. They will probably charge real editor prices to do it, too.
Yes, you can have good writers who are also good editors, but this takes two different skill sets. A good editor will be familiar with a style guide, will have a style guide they prefer and will own a copy of any style guides they use. For fiction, this is usually Strunk & White. Every fiction author should also own and use this book.
A good writer and editor will never say, "I write these great articles so I am obviously a good editor." No one can self-edit well. In fact, I frequently say that no one should use fewer than two editors and a proofreader.
If you send stuff to an editor and it comes back with only a few errors marked- you probably have a MS Word editor. Spell check is a great feature but it misses almost everything, unless you frequently forget to capitalize and punctuate your sentences. Then it will fix all of that and leave the other 70 errors per page alone. Yes, when I edit, it is not uncommon on a first pass to find 70 things wrong per page. By the third pass, the proofreader should be picking up almost nothing, but there will still be things wrong. The main job of a proofreader is to ensure everything is formatted correctly, which is why spelling and grammar should be pretty clean at that point.
Teachers usually make great editors (but not necessarily good writers). They have been editing tons of papers for years. The higher the grade they taught, the more likely you are going to find a good editor.
So, I always talk about editors I would recommend (aside from myself): Pam Pieroni and Joy McCullough (not on Guru anymore). Without having used them but based on their solid Guru profiles, I would give Visual Writing Communication and Paul Words a shot. What makes these two stand out? Their profiles are well developed, and Paul Words even goes to the effort of using a semi-colon appropriately on his.
I will not link to bad freelancers nor will I post their names. If you are hiring an editor, you should be able to spot poorly filled out profiles, misspelled profile words (if you don't know how to spell a word when you are reading someone's profile, you should look it up to make sure they are not only spelling it correctly but also using it correctly), glaring errors such as using ALL CAPS!!! Do not hire someone who uses all caps. That tells me they are uncertain which words they should capitalize or they don't realize no one wants to be screamed at on a webpage.
Monday, August 13, 2018
Why Did I Lose That Job?
I truly don't care when I lose a job to someone I feel is more experienced than me. In some cases, I have actually referred potential employers to other freelancers, whom I feel are more than competent- especially if I don't have the skills or time to complete their project.
However, it still baffles me how I can lose editing jobs to people who have misspelled words and grammar errors on their profiles.
As a freelancer, your profile should be immaculate. I still go back and check my profile for typos and not much has changed on it in years. Although I am sloppy about grammar on my blog (I don't make money from doing this), I am immaculate in my business presentation. So why would someone choose someone else who isn't?
Now I understand in some cases. One "editor" who didn't speak English as a native wanted native English speakers to edit the work he had. In other words, this was a middle man who needed to make money, so no doubt he went with the cheapest bids. One of the freelancers this person hired had stilted English (so I wonder if he/she truly is born and raised in the U.S.A.) and the other scored a whopping 60% on some of the posted writing tests they had taken. (Guru offers writing tests that are timed. You take the test and then you can post the scores on your profile if you want along with the date the test was taken.)
I would not hire an editor who could not score 100% on the relatively easy spelling test, but other people seeking editors don't seem to care. Granted, misspelled words are quickly caught by Word, but in some cases Word is wrong especially with newer words or if you are using a specific style manual. In other cases, you are writing for a British audience and need to know the differences in spelling used there. Your freelancer should be able to go beyond a Word auto-edit.
Yes, someone may say they needed someone cheap. Then why are they paying someone to edit their work at all? MS Word is free and although it isn't effective unless you know grammar and spelling rules, I question the "typo" editors even knowing that. Some may think the more eyes that look at something the better it will be, but this is false. If you send your work to Louie who can't even spell water, you can bet he knows nothing about plot development, character development, denouement, or anything else that could help. He certainly isn't going to know if you have used big words correctly or used passive sentences too frequently. And worse- he may actually introduce more typos. I have seen freelancer "samples" that did this. Does he have to know the APA style manual for a work of fiction? No, but he better be able to maintain consistency in his editing. This means if he decides to use serial commas in the first chapter, he better make sure they are always there in the rest of the book.
I don't charge exorbitant prices, and in some cases these people with typos claim to be more expensive (that doesn't mean they actually cost that much because I have frequently caught freelancers charging less than their posted prices). I don't post my prices because they vary based on the difficulty of the work and how long I have worked with the employer (I tend to charge less for long-term work unless I accidentally underbid on the first project). My rates also tend to go up a little with inflation.
There are three parts to any job: price, time, and quality. If you want it cheaply and quick, you aren't going to get well-edited. In that case, why pay for any editing at all?
Monday, August 6, 2018
Mismatched Marketing or Why isn't my stuff selling?
Any self-published author is going to need to address marketing at some point or another. But frequently you pay (a large sum) with stars in your eyes, hoping your book or materials will be thrown into the masses and gobbled up. If that happened, your marketing money would be well-spent and its returns should be much greater than what you paid.
But, in the days of the Internet, even large businesses throw away a lot of money on advertising. How do we better target people who would be interested in our stuff?
First and foremost, you need to have an excellent product to make a lot of money. Yes, you can have a mediocre (or awful product) and an expensive advertising and sell a lot. But this usually causes problems that can destroy your entire brand (think Edsel- the car people still make jokes about).
Why does modern advertising flop? Consider Google Ad-Words. I used to have Ads on my blog, but I have been removed from the program and instead of appealing the decision, I simply removed ad content. I want to make money by writing, not by selling someone else's product. I question how any blogger could make money off of Ad-Words to begin with. Google Ads work by paying bloggers for clicks. The problem in this day and age is that (1) adults are not the only ones using the Internet and kids might click ads for no reason or accidentally; (2) despite all the spyware, ads are still not easily targeted to people.
Now, my kids use the internet. I can't tell you how many times an advertisement for heart medicine, cars, and even horrible shows come up on my daughter's YouTube when she is watching a video clearly targeting pre-schoolers. She even screamed in terror when one appeared. The ultimate was a guy running for congress or some government position- this ad ran about five minutes. She was angry. I was angry. I am certain not going to vote for him... but wait, I can't. I don't even live in the same state.
As a freelancer, I have to do research for my employers. This means that all the spyware tracks me and gives me targeted ads on my research. I have no intention of buying any of the garbage Ad-words and similar spyware throws at me, but there it is- and someone is paying for it based on the cookies in my browser.
How do you market your well-written book? Well, one thing I tried was book conventions. I still believe in this as a great way to market, but frankly, I spent over $1000 getting all our books to be "featured" in one with free ads for them on the organizer's website and blah blah blah. What did I get? Maybe a few sales (read less than $100), but also I got spammed. My inbox filled up with more offers from every Joe, Luke, and Mary begging me to pay them to market my book. This was definitely a bad return for the money.
Why would I try this again? Well, first, I would only do it by renting a booth and being there in person. I could then walk around and talk to people. People could interact with me. Still, I don't know if that would work well. The people who attend these events are other people like me (and some big name publishers) who all want their books to be seen. Or they want you to pay them to market your book. However, there are several conventions in my area and I am thinking about getting a booth there. Conventions targeting you topic might be the best bet for self-publishing, but I will let you know when I retire from freelancing and can focus on my books.
Goodreads is a good platform for building a base if you join some relevant groups. But again, you have to have a quality product and you don't want to send it to everyone. If you wrote a kids book, why would someone interested in thrillers want it? I feel the pain of others who want to break into the writing arena in modern times. It used to be publishing companies took a big chunk of your paycheck to develop a marketing plan for you. Now whether you self-publish or traditionally publish you are expected to have your own online presence and marketing plan in place before you actually produce a book.
But, in the days of the Internet, even large businesses throw away a lot of money on advertising. How do we better target people who would be interested in our stuff?
First and foremost, you need to have an excellent product to make a lot of money. Yes, you can have a mediocre (or awful product) and an expensive advertising and sell a lot. But this usually causes problems that can destroy your entire brand (think Edsel- the car people still make jokes about).
Why does modern advertising flop? Consider Google Ad-Words. I used to have Ads on my blog, but I have been removed from the program and instead of appealing the decision, I simply removed ad content. I want to make money by writing, not by selling someone else's product. I question how any blogger could make money off of Ad-Words to begin with. Google Ads work by paying bloggers for clicks. The problem in this day and age is that (1) adults are not the only ones using the Internet and kids might click ads for no reason or accidentally; (2) despite all the spyware, ads are still not easily targeted to people.
Now, my kids use the internet. I can't tell you how many times an advertisement for heart medicine, cars, and even horrible shows come up on my daughter's YouTube when she is watching a video clearly targeting pre-schoolers. She even screamed in terror when one appeared. The ultimate was a guy running for congress or some government position- this ad ran about five minutes. She was angry. I was angry. I am certain not going to vote for him... but wait, I can't. I don't even live in the same state.
As a freelancer, I have to do research for my employers. This means that all the spyware tracks me and gives me targeted ads on my research. I have no intention of buying any of the garbage Ad-words and similar spyware throws at me, but there it is- and someone is paying for it based on the cookies in my browser.
How do you market your well-written book? Well, one thing I tried was book conventions. I still believe in this as a great way to market, but frankly, I spent over $1000 getting all our books to be "featured" in one with free ads for them on the organizer's website and blah blah blah. What did I get? Maybe a few sales (read less than $100), but also I got spammed. My inbox filled up with more offers from every Joe, Luke, and Mary begging me to pay them to market my book. This was definitely a bad return for the money.
Why would I try this again? Well, first, I would only do it by renting a booth and being there in person. I could then walk around and talk to people. People could interact with me. Still, I don't know if that would work well. The people who attend these events are other people like me (and some big name publishers) who all want their books to be seen. Or they want you to pay them to market your book. However, there are several conventions in my area and I am thinking about getting a booth there. Conventions targeting you topic might be the best bet for self-publishing, but I will let you know when I retire from freelancing and can focus on my books.
Goodreads is a good platform for building a base if you join some relevant groups. But again, you have to have a quality product and you don't want to send it to everyone. If you wrote a kids book, why would someone interested in thrillers want it? I feel the pain of others who want to break into the writing arena in modern times. It used to be publishing companies took a big chunk of your paycheck to develop a marketing plan for you. Now whether you self-publish or traditionally publish you are expected to have your own online presence and marketing plan in place before you actually produce a book.
Monday, July 30, 2018
Blogging
Many freelance writers do not feel blogging is important. The biggest complaints are that it is a waste of time, that it is ineffective, and that it is "giving away" your work for free. Although I have reservations about some content, I have to disagree that blogging is giving away work for free.
I obviously use my blog to vent. Sometimes, when I am bogged down by work, I have to forgo making entries, but in all, I enjoy it. I am a writer, and it is such a free form of expression it helps me to clear my mind. However, I also try to provide useful tips to my readers, so they can build their writing careers - be it through freelance work, self-publishing, or traditional publishing.
Blogging helps you build an audience for your work, if you use it correctly. I don't. First, you need to post regularly - preferably once a day, but at least once a week. I have giant periods of time where I am trying to raise funds for my family to survive on through freelancing, and I cannot post. (Blogging doesn't pay well for obvious reasons. Hence the reason I added the "Donate" button - in hopes I can get enough donations to focus more on my blogging content and providing useful tips and less on where I am going to get the money to repair my transmission.) In addition, I should push my own writing on here more often, but then I hate pushy salesmen. I have plenty of links that are visible on the page that will take you to where you can buy my work or read about it.
Now, my reservations concern what you blog. As I mentioned in an earlier post, you do not want to blog an entire book. Once you have given the whole thing away for free, your chances of selling it to someone are slim. However, you can use your blog to generate interest in your books or your writing style. Several of my Google+ and Goodreads friends have great blogs that sell their brands. Check these out for better ideas on how to set up a good themed blog for selling your books or your freelancing services (note, not all of these bloggers post as frequently as they should, but they write on focused themes that should help them sell their work):
http://joymcculloughcarranza.blogspot.com/ (Freelance writer trying to break into traditional publishing.)
http://thebitterscriptreader.blogspot.com/ (Professional script reader)
http://timothyhurleyauthor.blogspot.com/ (Self-publishing)
http://pebbleinthestillwaters.blogspot.com/ (author/ book blog)
I obviously use my blog to vent. Sometimes, when I am bogged down by work, I have to forgo making entries, but in all, I enjoy it. I am a writer, and it is such a free form of expression it helps me to clear my mind. However, I also try to provide useful tips to my readers, so they can build their writing careers - be it through freelance work, self-publishing, or traditional publishing.
Blogging helps you build an audience for your work, if you use it correctly. I don't. First, you need to post regularly - preferably once a day, but at least once a week. I have giant periods of time where I am trying to raise funds for my family to survive on through freelancing, and I cannot post. (Blogging doesn't pay well for obvious reasons. Hence the reason I added the "Donate" button - in hopes I can get enough donations to focus more on my blogging content and providing useful tips and less on where I am going to get the money to repair my transmission.) In addition, I should push my own writing on here more often, but then I hate pushy salesmen. I have plenty of links that are visible on the page that will take you to where you can buy my work or read about it.
Now, my reservations concern what you blog. As I mentioned in an earlier post, you do not want to blog an entire book. Once you have given the whole thing away for free, your chances of selling it to someone are slim. However, you can use your blog to generate interest in your books or your writing style. Several of my Google+ and Goodreads friends have great blogs that sell their brands. Check these out for better ideas on how to set up a good themed blog for selling your books or your freelancing services (note, not all of these bloggers post as frequently as they should, but they write on focused themes that should help them sell their work):
http://joymcculloughcarranza.blogspot.com/ (Freelance writer trying to break into traditional publishing.)
http://thebitterscriptreader.blogspot.com/ (Professional script reader)
http://timothyhurleyauthor.blogspot.com/ (Self-publishing)
http://pebbleinthestillwaters.blogspot.com/ (author/ book blog)
Monday, July 23, 2018
SEO Debacle
SEO is important for self-publishers since your website is what attracts others to it. As a freelancer, it is also very important because chances are good you are going to get jobs that require you to SEO. This post is about the freelancing end, but if you are planning to SEO your website, you can find some advice here, too.
I cannot tell you how many times I have applied for a job that required SEO and when hired, gotten a huge list of "keywords" with rates to stuff them. There are so many keywords that it is ridiculous. This should not be the basis of anyone's advertising plan.
Consider a recent project that I was glad did not continue beyond one article. Now the project description for this particular SEO product was to write an article of 3500 words about the topic. I was given 109 keywords to use 704 times (20% of the total content). Some of these "keywords" were "won," "it's," "often," "new," "find," "them," "how," "day," "two," "2018," "don't," and "make." Now, what was I writing about? You see, your keywords are supposed to be the words someone would use to look for your product on the web. They should be specific to your product. Got a guess?
Here is another hint: I was supposed to use 43 keyword phrases a total of 183 times (making up another 461 words unless I doubled up with some of the "keywords." These contained phrases such as "such as" (I kid you not), "New York," "York City," "e-mail address," and "mild to moderate." Figured it out yet? If I get 10 guesses in the comment section, I will post the answer to what I was writing about there.
So confident am I that these "keywords" are "non-keywords" go ahead and put these into your favorite search engine and see what you come up with. I am sensing another poem along the lines of Chicks Dig War. (For those of you who don't know, this is a poem created when the author, Drew Gardner, typed three seemingly random words into a search engine and the poem documents his results which spawned the flarf genre of literature.)
For this project, I had 1165 words of a 3500 word article randomly chosen for me, and I was supposed to write something interesting and relevant. Don't do this to freelancers who are writing for you, and don't do this to yourself!
A single word or phrase should appear no more than 1-2% of the time in your work. If it appears more than 5% you can get permanently banned from Google (or so the rumor goes). One of the search phrases I on the provided list needed to be used 1.5% of the time or once every 60 words. More importantly, look at the word totals: I was supposed to use a specific keyword or phrase every four words. Yes, some were non-keywords, but that doesn't help the situation much because I still had to make sure they were there.
Google has said repeatedly that after the first couple-few uses of a word, your topic is recognized and now synonyms count toward that. A Forbes writer took this further and discover the top ranked web pages used 0.7-0.9% keyword density. (Note this word is not plural. If you have more than 5 keywords/phrases, you are doing yourself and your writers a disservice.) Ironically, the lower the density the higher the page ranked. Why? Because it is impossible to write something that is interesting and relevant if you stuffed it full of keywords!
Which is what finally brought me to my soapbox. I saw yet another job for SEO today. The poster stated that the article didn't flow nicely. They wanted it to be readable and interesting, but the freelancer was not allowed to change the SEO (read- I have stuffed this article full of keywords to the point it could make anyone throw-up if forced to read it entirely, but I want you to rewrite it so it won't make readers sick without fixing the problem). Amazingly, people actually apply for these jobs all the time and get them. Apparently those commissioning the work have grown so accustomed to the moldy bread they are producing that simply adding a little mayonnaise makes them entirely palatable even though they still make normal people ill.
I cannot tell you how many times I have applied for a job that required SEO and when hired, gotten a huge list of "keywords" with rates to stuff them. There are so many keywords that it is ridiculous. This should not be the basis of anyone's advertising plan.
Consider a recent project that I was glad did not continue beyond one article. Now the project description for this particular SEO product was to write an article of 3500 words about the topic. I was given 109 keywords to use 704 times (20% of the total content). Some of these "keywords" were "won," "it's," "often," "new," "find," "them," "how," "day," "two," "2018," "don't," and "make." Now, what was I writing about? You see, your keywords are supposed to be the words someone would use to look for your product on the web. They should be specific to your product. Got a guess?
Here is another hint: I was supposed to use 43 keyword phrases a total of 183 times (making up another 461 words unless I doubled up with some of the "keywords." These contained phrases such as "such as" (I kid you not), "New York," "York City," "e-mail address," and "mild to moderate." Figured it out yet? If I get 10 guesses in the comment section, I will post the answer to what I was writing about there.
So confident am I that these "keywords" are "non-keywords" go ahead and put these into your favorite search engine and see what you come up with. I am sensing another poem along the lines of Chicks Dig War. (For those of you who don't know, this is a poem created when the author, Drew Gardner, typed three seemingly random words into a search engine and the poem documents his results which spawned the flarf genre of literature.)
For this project, I had 1165 words of a 3500 word article randomly chosen for me, and I was supposed to write something interesting and relevant. Don't do this to freelancers who are writing for you, and don't do this to yourself!
A single word or phrase should appear no more than 1-2% of the time in your work. If it appears more than 5% you can get permanently banned from Google (or so the rumor goes). One of the search phrases I on the provided list needed to be used 1.5% of the time or once every 60 words. More importantly, look at the word totals: I was supposed to use a specific keyword or phrase every four words. Yes, some were non-keywords, but that doesn't help the situation much because I still had to make sure they were there.
Google has said repeatedly that after the first couple-few uses of a word, your topic is recognized and now synonyms count toward that. A Forbes writer took this further and discover the top ranked web pages used 0.7-0.9% keyword density. (Note this word is not plural. If you have more than 5 keywords/phrases, you are doing yourself and your writers a disservice.) Ironically, the lower the density the higher the page ranked. Why? Because it is impossible to write something that is interesting and relevant if you stuffed it full of keywords!
Which is what finally brought me to my soapbox. I saw yet another job for SEO today. The poster stated that the article didn't flow nicely. They wanted it to be readable and interesting, but the freelancer was not allowed to change the SEO (read- I have stuffed this article full of keywords to the point it could make anyone throw-up if forced to read it entirely, but I want you to rewrite it so it won't make readers sick without fixing the problem). Amazingly, people actually apply for these jobs all the time and get them. Apparently those commissioning the work have grown so accustomed to the moldy bread they are producing that simply adding a little mayonnaise makes them entirely palatable even though they still make normal people ill.
Now, in an attempt to "stuff" this article have used the word "keyword" 16 times in this
post of 772 words, which is about 2%. Can you image how awful
this article would be if I had used it twice as much?
Thursday, July 19, 2018
Getting a Hardcover on CreateSpace II
I posted a blog post on this topic a few years ago: http://onbeinganauthor.blogspot.com/2014/05/getting-hardcover-on-createspace.html
This by far has been my most commented on post. However, sadly, CreateSpace has discontinued this service. Those of us who already had hardcover books through them were allowed to purchase until this year.
Currently, I am looking into having a local print shop (that I have used in the past) perform this service for me. I had also used Staples print service to create hardcovers (prior to CreateSpace). I will do some research and plan to have a future post about this. Until then, I am placing a note on the other post and linking to this one. I will also update this post with a link(s) when I finish this portion of my journey.
This by far has been my most commented on post. However, sadly, CreateSpace has discontinued this service. Those of us who already had hardcover books through them were allowed to purchase until this year.
Currently, I am looking into having a local print shop (that I have used in the past) perform this service for me. I had also used Staples print service to create hardcovers (prior to CreateSpace). I will do some research and plan to have a future post about this. Until then, I am placing a note on the other post and linking to this one. I will also update this post with a link(s) when I finish this portion of my journey.
Monday, April 16, 2018
To Skype or Not to Skype
As I stated in previous posts, I do not Skype, but "I do willingly call all my employers and have an international calling plan so I can do this. Being able to contact your employers verbally is important. Some employers have a difficult time writing - that is why they are hiring you after all - so offering another form of communication is important."
In fact, if an employer states Skype is required, I do not apply. Seeing who you are speaking with was totally cool on the Jetsons, but I don't think the inventors realized the implications. I have inadvertently flashed my daughter's friend stepping over her computer without realizing a Skype conversation was open (my daughter was away from the computer at the time- the only reason I know it happened was because the friend shouted, "Hi, Mrs. Reinoehl!" after I passed).
Yet again, a potential employer has asked me if I Skype and yet again I have refused.
Now, I did use Skype once-the employer was disabled and that was his preferred method of communication. (Read he was blind.) Now, that whole job experience was a disaster, so in my opinion bending the rules was definitely not worth it. Plus, once you get a Skype ID and someone is like, "Do you have a Skype ID?" I would not be able to say "No."
I am proud of the fact I will make myself available for employers at any time of day or night based on their own working hours, but I like to remain in my pajamas at 2 AM- call me quirky. And, yes, I have heard you can simply shut the video feature off, but why even use Skype when its whole purpose is to see who you are speaking with. If my employers didn't want to see me, they would not force me to use Skype. I can call them at no cost to them.
In fact, if an employer states Skype is required, I do not apply. Seeing who you are speaking with was totally cool on the Jetsons, but I don't think the inventors realized the implications. I have inadvertently flashed my daughter's friend stepping over her computer without realizing a Skype conversation was open (my daughter was away from the computer at the time- the only reason I know it happened was because the friend shouted, "Hi, Mrs. Reinoehl!" after I passed).
Yet again, a potential employer has asked me if I Skype and yet again I have refused.
Now, I did use Skype once-the employer was disabled and that was his preferred method of communication. (Read he was blind.) Now, that whole job experience was a disaster, so in my opinion bending the rules was definitely not worth it. Plus, once you get a Skype ID and someone is like, "Do you have a Skype ID?" I would not be able to say "No."
I am proud of the fact I will make myself available for employers at any time of day or night based on their own working hours, but I like to remain in my pajamas at 2 AM- call me quirky. And, yes, I have heard you can simply shut the video feature off, but why even use Skype when its whole purpose is to see who you are speaking with. If my employers didn't want to see me, they would not force me to use Skype. I can call them at no cost to them.
Monday, April 9, 2018
Why does writing from scratch cost more than rewriting?
To me, this seems like a no-brainer, and I don't know if the guy was just trying to get something for nothing or not, but this is how the story goes:
A job was posted to rewrite almost 2000 words of content and add another 2000 to it. There were very detailed SEO counts involved. I bid on about 2000 words of rewrite and about 2000 words of original content. Most people don't want to pay for good content, so they advertise for "native English speakers" and then choose people who don't even write in complete sentences on their profiles. The thing is that many of these employers fall into two categories: (1) They have no clue what good content is, and therefore, they are content with mediocre results or (2) They have no clue that good content is worth every penny, and although they know the content is cruddy they do not think good content will improve their bottom line.
In some cases, (2) is correct: If you have a poor product no amount of content and fake reviews are going to offset that. But in most cases, good content makes Google much happier than bad content (unless you are paying them for advertising, in which case they could care less). Let me tell you, if you pay your way to the top of a search engine with bad content, you would be better off paying a freelancer to write you good content. I have never accidentally clicked on a poorly written ad at the top of a search engine, but I must say that I have accidentally clicked on a well-written one and remained on the website a bit before I discovered the deception.
Anyway, this guy ended up telling me he was going to hire me. [I really wish I got paid $25 every time someone said he would hire me and didn't]. However, when he said this he said the original article was actually quite awful and he wanted me to write the entire almost 4000 word article from scratch. I promptly told him that would cost more. To this he balked. He wondered why it would cost more when he felt the job would be easier.
At this point I went into a detailed explanation, in part because I was incredulous that he would think writing an article from scratch is less expensive than rewriting it. As this article concurs, there is no research involved in rewriting an article. Something the article didn't mention (but I did) is that there is no risk either. If you are rewriting an article, you know exactly what the employer wants because it is right in front of you. Now, although I usually can figure out what employers want the first time when I am writing from scratch, there are a few times when I have had to rewrite something. In this case, I wasn't given an article title or direction, just a list of keywords (almost two pages long) and the number of times they were to be included. [This was another case of some SEO formula gone wrong. I sometimes think these people who have turned SEO into their own scientific formula really have no clue. Once I was told to use misspelled "keywords." That will actually lower your rank based on all my research.]
I find it ironic that employers who either can't write or don't have time to write (or both) think they can pay practically nothing to a writer (scribe) to do it for them. I don't know how to pump my septic system, and let me tell you, I am more than happy to pay someone nearly $200 per hour to do it! Why are words deemed to be of less value than that? (And I believe pumping septic tanks is a very valuable occupation- those guys deserve awards, too.)
A job was posted to rewrite almost 2000 words of content and add another 2000 to it. There were very detailed SEO counts involved. I bid on about 2000 words of rewrite and about 2000 words of original content. Most people don't want to pay for good content, so they advertise for "native English speakers" and then choose people who don't even write in complete sentences on their profiles. The thing is that many of these employers fall into two categories: (1) They have no clue what good content is, and therefore, they are content with mediocre results or (2) They have no clue that good content is worth every penny, and although they know the content is cruddy they do not think good content will improve their bottom line.
In some cases, (2) is correct: If you have a poor product no amount of content and fake reviews are going to offset that. But in most cases, good content makes Google much happier than bad content (unless you are paying them for advertising, in which case they could care less). Let me tell you, if you pay your way to the top of a search engine with bad content, you would be better off paying a freelancer to write you good content. I have never accidentally clicked on a poorly written ad at the top of a search engine, but I must say that I have accidentally clicked on a well-written one and remained on the website a bit before I discovered the deception.
Anyway, this guy ended up telling me he was going to hire me. [I really wish I got paid $25 every time someone said he would hire me and didn't]. However, when he said this he said the original article was actually quite awful and he wanted me to write the entire almost 4000 word article from scratch. I promptly told him that would cost more. To this he balked. He wondered why it would cost more when he felt the job would be easier.
At this point I went into a detailed explanation, in part because I was incredulous that he would think writing an article from scratch is less expensive than rewriting it. As this article concurs, there is no research involved in rewriting an article. Something the article didn't mention (but I did) is that there is no risk either. If you are rewriting an article, you know exactly what the employer wants because it is right in front of you. Now, although I usually can figure out what employers want the first time when I am writing from scratch, there are a few times when I have had to rewrite something. In this case, I wasn't given an article title or direction, just a list of keywords (almost two pages long) and the number of times they were to be included. [This was another case of some SEO formula gone wrong. I sometimes think these people who have turned SEO into their own scientific formula really have no clue. Once I was told to use misspelled "keywords." That will actually lower your rank based on all my research.]
I find it ironic that employers who either can't write or don't have time to write (or both) think they can pay practically nothing to a writer (scribe) to do it for them. I don't know how to pump my septic system, and let me tell you, I am more than happy to pay someone nearly $200 per hour to do it! Why are words deemed to be of less value than that? (And I believe pumping septic tanks is a very valuable occupation- those guys deserve awards, too.)
Monday, April 2, 2018
The Freelance Farmer
So, you ignored my last post because you know you can hire someone to do it all. You have cooked up the perfect get-rich-quick scheme where you will hire one freelancer to write books for you, edit them, format them for Kindle and Nook, develop a website, post weekly to a blog on it, and reply to any comments. The freelancer will also design a monthly e-mail newsletter keeping everyone posted on how things are coming. Plus, you have figured out that you will simply keep the freelancer working on an hourly basis- with time tracked- so you will only pay for what the freelancer is doing. You will pay a meager $10 per hour and only allow the freelancer 20 hours a week to work.
Yeah, nice pipe dream. I can think of any good freelancer who would accept this awful position. At 20 hours a week, you couldn't even get a book written for several weeks. Add that to all your other work and you would have nothing to market because it could take years to finish.
So, you will either get a new enthusiastic freelancer who has no clue what they are doing and quickly "disappears" or you will end up with a freelance farmer.
No, a freelance farmer will not show up on your doorstep to turn your beautiful lawn into an agricultural production plant. The freelance farmer is basically another middle man. They know how much it costs to live in India and plan to hire out the endless list of jobs to someone there. They will pay a mere $1-2 per hour and the work will be subpar. If they are a good freelance farmer, they will edit it themselves to prevent you from discovering the treachery or at least to ensure it is acceptable. Sometimes they will let you know they are doing this, but other times they won't. Your work will take longer to get because they have to get it first. Also, if there is a serious problem, they probably won't fix it. They might know a little bit more about what you need, and they might have a pool of decent freelancers to choose from, but if it comes down to it, they are looking at a bottom line, just like you.
There are a few businesses where the freelancers actually work together in an office (digital or not). But, if they have American employees, they need to charge more to meet certain tax requirements without taking a loss. Also, you have no idea if you rehire them what there turnover is and whether or not the same person will be working on your project.
Monday, March 26, 2018
One Stop Shopping
Hiring a freelancer can be a difficult task. For one job, I noticed 104 freelancers had bid on doing it. It always surprises me when employers hire people that seemingly have nothing to do with the job they posted, but in many cases it seems as if employers are trying to get all their projects done through one freelancer. Time and again I will see actual job posts that describe 5 -10 different jobs and the person is only looking for one freelancer. As difficult as the hiring process is, it is important to find multiple freelancers when you are looking for multiple jobs. It is also important to make sure you only have one job post per job you are looking to fill.
So, you want someone to design your website, fill it with content, advertise it, and manage it once it is up and going. Sorry, those should be four different jobs. You can recycle the actual text of the job post that describes what the project is for as long as you change the job title and keywords where the job will be listed. Some freelancers may do more than one of these things, but keep in mind if a freelancer could do all of this by themselves, why would they not just do it for themselves and make more money by getting rid of the middle man- you.
Many times, the multi-job posts are also for writing e-books. At the minimum if you want to be a successful "start-up" publishing company, you need a writer, an editor, a formatter, a cover designer, and a marketer. Most marketers will get you started and then you would need to hire someone else to continue the work on a regular basis. The editor might be able to format and write, but it is nearly impossible to edit your own work well. Formatting should be the proofreader's job- who also acts as a second pair of editing eyes. Although one person could do all this for you, you will probably end up with some jobs done poorly.
I think many people believe they can use other people to set up a business they know nothing about. This is a falsehood. If you don't know what you are doing and you plan to hire someone to do it all for you, you will have no idea what you are looking for in a freelancer. This will lead you to post a variety of projects under one title. In addition, if you don't know what you need, you won't know the right person for the job.
Monday, March 19, 2018
Why hasn't that publisher gotten back with me?
Freelancing works two ways. One way is a freelancer like myself. We bid on jobs and do them if we are hired. In general, we are ghostwriters and do not get our names on the work. The other way is similar to traditional publishing. The freelancer writes something and then sends it in to websites or magazines and attempts to sell it. This way, the freelancer usually gets a byline. The second way is more risky, but also can pay more. In general, the work is done or mostly done the second way. This means wasted time if you don't sell it. It also means you reduce deadline stress. In exchange, you get acceptance stress. I recently read this blog article on why freelancers don't hear back. This post applies to not only freelancers travelling the traditional publishing route, but also applies to writers who do not self-publish but are trying to go through traditional means.
Monday, March 12, 2018
Which freelancer should I hire?
Most employers want quality work done quickly. They frequently state they will pay whatever price, but they, of course, will go with the cheapest bidder after a review that weeds out unacceptable candidates. I am not talking about employers who want the cheapest bid and who will hire whomever is lowest--frequently choosing more risky new freelancers instead of established ones. This post is for employers who truly want quality freelancers the first time.
So, you posted a job and now have 45 bids. How do you pick? First, you probably throw out any generic bid you find, right? Uh, wrong. You see, every freelancer should read your project post in depth and insert that little keyword you embedded in it at the top of their post ("If you read this, begin your bid with the word 'Fluffy' so I know you were paying attention"), they should then thoughtfully and carefully respond. In the world of freelance, this doesn't work. If you want to hire a freelancer that is in high demand, you have to accept some canned bids.
For whatever reason, employers are completely turned off by cut and paste freelancer bids. But the fact of the matter is that although you posted one job (and might post another a week or month in the future if you have a good experience), the freelancer needs to read through an average of 20-40 jobs each day (and maybe bid on 1-3) in order to survive in our non-permanent employment world. There have been days when I have gone through more than 100 jobs. After reading 100 jobs it is easy to miss "Fluffy" in one. That doesn't mean I didn't read your job or that I didn't think I would be a good fit for it. There were probably 20 others that I didn't take time to bid on because they were not in my skill range or they were things I didn't want to do. Since I have to balance looking for my next job with working on the job I have, I don't have ten hours to spend job hunting and crafting unique bids each day. I also want to give you a well-edited, well-written bid because I am selling my writing skills. So, I have a basic bid script. I go through and update this (sometimes imperfectly- forgetting to add in "Fluffy" or saying I attached editing samples instead of writing samples). This basic bid not only saves me time, but ensures you get the best presentation of my work. Now, there is no way you would know that I use a generic bid unless I miss changing a word or unless I bid on two jobs you have posted. Good writing freelancers can craft a good, base bid without too much canned, but I have to stress that even a recognizably canned response should not automatically disqualify the freelancer.
The first thing you SHOULD look at is price. Can you honestly afford to pay that freelancer? If you can't, those should be the first bids kicked out.
The next thing you should look at is not the bid, but the freelancer's profile (and/or samples). These should be immaculate. If you are not good with spelling and grammar and you are hiring an editor, you need someone else to help you. Never hire a freelancer with a misspelled word in a bid or on a posted profile to do your editing. Minor typos happen (missed comma, etc.) but misspelled words (truly misspelled and not correctly spelled in an alternate way) show up in red everywhere when you are typing. There is no reason for a freelancer to miss those. Excessive grammar errors, freelancers who do not write with a professional voice, and freelancers who only have a couple samples that don't apply to your job in general (as long as they don't specialize in a niche known for NDAs), are further warning signs.
Never hire a freelancer to do your translating if his or her profile only talks about computer programming. But... but... I need a Hindi translator, and he lives in Mumbai! Surely he knows Hindi even if he specializes in computer programming. Plus he is really cheap! You could be right. The problem is that even if this person speaks two languages, he does not specialize in translation. He may have never translated before in his life until he saw your post and created a sample for you. He could have pulled the sample off another website and you would never know. Yes, a person with translation posted as one of their skills could do the same, but it is less likely. They went to the time and effort to put a skill profile together, so they at least planned to work in that area. In the case of the Indian computer programmer, you have someone who probably could not find work as a programmer now trying to get any job they can.
For example, I am currently drywalling my basement. I have the ability to do so, but I am not a professional. I have done a total of four drywall jobs in my lifetime. I could drywall your basement, and if I were desperate for a job, I might apply to do it, but I take ten times longer than a professional. I am working with limited tools and so there will be a lot more drywall dust and waste than if you hired a pro. In the long run, it would cost you more because you have to pay my salary too. It is cheaper for me to do the labor on my basement, but I know there will be little areas that are going to be rough when I am done. If you pay me to drywall your basement, you would probably not be happy with this.
While we are talking about mismatched profiles, I have said this before, but another big elimination reason is a blank profile. If someone posts a profile that is blank (or nearly blank compared to others) you are dealing with a new freelancer. In addition, this is not a new freelancer who really wants to get a job and is working to create an immaculate portfolio. This is a freelancer who doesn't want to commit the time and effort into making a profile. It is like showing up to court in pajamas.
Finally, toss out freelancers with a positive rating below 90% on Guru. I have said this before in my freelancer version of this topic: It used to be that Guru allowed you to dismiss 10% of your negative feedback. It no longer does this and 100% positive ratings have (naturally) been plummeting. 10% is a good amount to prevent freelancers and employers from using feedback for blackmail. In my lifetime I have deleted the feedback of about 3 employers. Considering I have worked for at least 100, that is not too bad. Without the feedback deletion, the same rules should be applied: 90% (and above) positive feedback is good. The flip side is that once it falls below this (and the freelancer is already established with more than one or two paid jobs), there is something wrong with the freelancers' work. On the hiring side, though, it gets a little more complex. For whatever reason, businesses leave much less feedback than freelancers. You might have a freelancer who has worked five or six jobs without feedback.
After making all these eliminations, you need to look at the freelancer samples that they direct you to read. These samples should show at least one of the following: The freelancer is well-versed in a variety of projects and although they did not provide an exact match of something that you wanted, they would be a good fit, or they gave you a sample of something you wanted exactly. If the latter is the case, let them know that specific sample is exactly what you want and they should be able to recreate it for your project.
Once you have finished the elimination process, then you can choose the lowest bidder. If you find yourself with no freelancers left to choose from that means you need to find a way to pay more for your project or you are going to have to choose a new freelancer and accept the risk that goes with that. New freelancers should have complete profiles. (By complete I mean that they have written some sort of introduction, have basic terms of service listed, such as I don't work weekends or I am available 24 hours a day, and have a list of skills and experience in those areas.) New freelancers will have little or no feedback. They may have some glaring typos on their page, but not too many (if they have a lot of feedback and typos that means they are not new.) They also may only have a few samples that probably don't apply to your project and might not have any samples at all. Not having a sample related to your project is different from not posting a skill related to your project at all. They should have some sort of profile image uploaded as well, but new freelancers might not have this. In my opinion, it is better to pick a new freelancer building a profile than an old freelancer with poor skills if you can't afford to have the project done by an established professional.
The hardest freelancers to hire are those who edit (especially when the person hiring them doesn't know anything about editing or grammar). There are a variety of style manuals and so one editor could mark something differently than another simply because they are both using different manuals. This means both editors are correct. However, there are certain things (such as using a comma and "and" to separate two independent clauses) that should always be marked. If you have an editing project, it is best to have a manual in mind and know a little about it. If you can ask brief questions about what the editor would do in certain situations this can help. Another good way to screen editors is to ask them which style manual/guide they prefer or which ones with which they are familiar. Ask if they track changes. Good editors will be familiar with at least one of the style manuals (APA, AP, Chicago, MLA, Harvard, IEEE, etc.) and the track changes feature. Also, keep in mind that an editor is there to help you improve your writing. If an editor has tons of feedback stating that he or she was fast and loved the book/ paper/etc., chances are good that editor was really the MS Word spell check. Editing takes time- especially developmental editing. I generally find 30-70 mistakes per page my first time through. The only time an editor might send something back with only a few marks is if it is the second or third time it has been edited. It takes about 3-4 different editors (or long breaks between edits with the same person) to ensure a polished work.
So, you posted a job and now have 45 bids. How do you pick? First, you probably throw out any generic bid you find, right? Uh, wrong. You see, every freelancer should read your project post in depth and insert that little keyword you embedded in it at the top of their post ("If you read this, begin your bid with the word 'Fluffy' so I know you were paying attention"), they should then thoughtfully and carefully respond. In the world of freelance, this doesn't work. If you want to hire a freelancer that is in high demand, you have to accept some canned bids.
For whatever reason, employers are completely turned off by cut and paste freelancer bids. But the fact of the matter is that although you posted one job (and might post another a week or month in the future if you have a good experience), the freelancer needs to read through an average of 20-40 jobs each day (and maybe bid on 1-3) in order to survive in our non-permanent employment world. There have been days when I have gone through more than 100 jobs. After reading 100 jobs it is easy to miss "Fluffy" in one. That doesn't mean I didn't read your job or that I didn't think I would be a good fit for it. There were probably 20 others that I didn't take time to bid on because they were not in my skill range or they were things I didn't want to do. Since I have to balance looking for my next job with working on the job I have, I don't have ten hours to spend job hunting and crafting unique bids each day. I also want to give you a well-edited, well-written bid because I am selling my writing skills. So, I have a basic bid script. I go through and update this (sometimes imperfectly- forgetting to add in "Fluffy" or saying I attached editing samples instead of writing samples). This basic bid not only saves me time, but ensures you get the best presentation of my work. Now, there is no way you would know that I use a generic bid unless I miss changing a word or unless I bid on two jobs you have posted. Good writing freelancers can craft a good, base bid without too much canned, but I have to stress that even a recognizably canned response should not automatically disqualify the freelancer.
The first thing you SHOULD look at is price. Can you honestly afford to pay that freelancer? If you can't, those should be the first bids kicked out.
The next thing you should look at is not the bid, but the freelancer's profile (and/or samples). These should be immaculate. If you are not good with spelling and grammar and you are hiring an editor, you need someone else to help you. Never hire a freelancer with a misspelled word in a bid or on a posted profile to do your editing. Minor typos happen (missed comma, etc.) but misspelled words (truly misspelled and not correctly spelled in an alternate way) show up in red everywhere when you are typing. There is no reason for a freelancer to miss those. Excessive grammar errors, freelancers who do not write with a professional voice, and freelancers who only have a couple samples that don't apply to your job in general (as long as they don't specialize in a niche known for NDAs), are further warning signs.
Never hire a freelancer to do your translating if his or her profile only talks about computer programming. But... but... I need a Hindi translator, and he lives in Mumbai! Surely he knows Hindi even if he specializes in computer programming. Plus he is really cheap! You could be right. The problem is that even if this person speaks two languages, he does not specialize in translation. He may have never translated before in his life until he saw your post and created a sample for you. He could have pulled the sample off another website and you would never know. Yes, a person with translation posted as one of their skills could do the same, but it is less likely. They went to the time and effort to put a skill profile together, so they at least planned to work in that area. In the case of the Indian computer programmer, you have someone who probably could not find work as a programmer now trying to get any job they can.
For example, I am currently drywalling my basement. I have the ability to do so, but I am not a professional. I have done a total of four drywall jobs in my lifetime. I could drywall your basement, and if I were desperate for a job, I might apply to do it, but I take ten times longer than a professional. I am working with limited tools and so there will be a lot more drywall dust and waste than if you hired a pro. In the long run, it would cost you more because you have to pay my salary too. It is cheaper for me to do the labor on my basement, but I know there will be little areas that are going to be rough when I am done. If you pay me to drywall your basement, you would probably not be happy with this.
While we are talking about mismatched profiles, I have said this before, but another big elimination reason is a blank profile. If someone posts a profile that is blank (or nearly blank compared to others) you are dealing with a new freelancer. In addition, this is not a new freelancer who really wants to get a job and is working to create an immaculate portfolio. This is a freelancer who doesn't want to commit the time and effort into making a profile. It is like showing up to court in pajamas.
Finally, toss out freelancers with a positive rating below 90% on Guru. I have said this before in my freelancer version of this topic: It used to be that Guru allowed you to dismiss 10% of your negative feedback. It no longer does this and 100% positive ratings have (naturally) been plummeting. 10% is a good amount to prevent freelancers and employers from using feedback for blackmail. In my lifetime I have deleted the feedback of about 3 employers. Considering I have worked for at least 100, that is not too bad. Without the feedback deletion, the same rules should be applied: 90% (and above) positive feedback is good. The flip side is that once it falls below this (and the freelancer is already established with more than one or two paid jobs), there is something wrong with the freelancers' work. On the hiring side, though, it gets a little more complex. For whatever reason, businesses leave much less feedback than freelancers. You might have a freelancer who has worked five or six jobs without feedback.
After making all these eliminations, you need to look at the freelancer samples that they direct you to read. These samples should show at least one of the following: The freelancer is well-versed in a variety of projects and although they did not provide an exact match of something that you wanted, they would be a good fit, or they gave you a sample of something you wanted exactly. If the latter is the case, let them know that specific sample is exactly what you want and they should be able to recreate it for your project.
Once you have finished the elimination process, then you can choose the lowest bidder. If you find yourself with no freelancers left to choose from that means you need to find a way to pay more for your project or you are going to have to choose a new freelancer and accept the risk that goes with that. New freelancers should have complete profiles. (By complete I mean that they have written some sort of introduction, have basic terms of service listed, such as I don't work weekends or I am available 24 hours a day, and have a list of skills and experience in those areas.) New freelancers will have little or no feedback. They may have some glaring typos on their page, but not too many (if they have a lot of feedback and typos that means they are not new.) They also may only have a few samples that probably don't apply to your project and might not have any samples at all. Not having a sample related to your project is different from not posting a skill related to your project at all. They should have some sort of profile image uploaded as well, but new freelancers might not have this. In my opinion, it is better to pick a new freelancer building a profile than an old freelancer with poor skills if you can't afford to have the project done by an established professional.
The hardest freelancers to hire are those who edit (especially when the person hiring them doesn't know anything about editing or grammar). There are a variety of style manuals and so one editor could mark something differently than another simply because they are both using different manuals. This means both editors are correct. However, there are certain things (such as using a comma and "and" to separate two independent clauses) that should always be marked. If you have an editing project, it is best to have a manual in mind and know a little about it. If you can ask brief questions about what the editor would do in certain situations this can help. Another good way to screen editors is to ask them which style manual/guide they prefer or which ones with which they are familiar. Ask if they track changes. Good editors will be familiar with at least one of the style manuals (APA, AP, Chicago, MLA, Harvard, IEEE, etc.) and the track changes feature. Also, keep in mind that an editor is there to help you improve your writing. If an editor has tons of feedback stating that he or she was fast and loved the book/ paper/etc., chances are good that editor was really the MS Word spell check. Editing takes time- especially developmental editing. I generally find 30-70 mistakes per page my first time through. The only time an editor might send something back with only a few marks is if it is the second or third time it has been edited. It takes about 3-4 different editors (or long breaks between edits with the same person) to ensure a polished work.
Monday, March 5, 2018
Plagiarism vs. Copyright
When you are writing and you are citing other people to support your thesis, you can cite in-text, with footnotes, or with endnotes. How you cite usually depends on your publisher. However, in that case, the document you are creating is something that is yours, and you are just using what others have researched to support your work. A citation is required whether you are directly quoting someone else or whether you are paraphrasing them. If you are directly quoting someone in your work, you must include quotation marks (as well as the citation) and you also cannot change even one misspelled word (as a general rule-- it would require a whole post to explain all the nuances so it is best to just stick to this rule of thumb). Not citing others is plagiarism.
In addition, as long as you cite others, you are reporting "facts." So, although The Da Vinci Code would have been considered plagiarism if it had been a work of non-fiction (because it didn't cite its source), since the book took plot lines from another book that purported to be non-fiction (instead of fiction), Mr. Brown was not convicted of plagiarism. Had both books been fiction, Mr. Brown probably would have had to pay the original authors for the rest of his life because of the copyright infringement.
(Plagiarism is using someone else's work and not including a citation. Copyright infringements occur when you don't get permission to use someone else's work, and this is why so many Youtubers get their videos taken down. If you are using a part of someone else's publicly posted work for educational reasons-like teaching children numbers and you don't add commercials into your video so you can make money- you are usually okay. If you are pasting an entire movie online when it doesn't already have free public access and adding in a few commercials or ads without getting permission from the copyright holder, you are definitely not okay.)
One problem with poetry and songs is that they tend to be short. In general (and I am not a copyright lawyer so please check with someone who is), 70% of anything you write needs to be yours or you cannot copyright it. In other words, you don't own it. Now, reverse that- if you are borrowing from something and you take 35% of it, you have plagiarized even if you do include a citation. In fact, if you use more than 500 verses of the NIV Bible in your book, you are breaking copyright law unless you obtain permission.
Unfortunately, the word "plagiarism" is thrown around to mean true plagiarism (not citing your source in an academic non-fiction work); copyright infringement (using someone else's work without permission); and cheating (turning in schoolwork that you did not do and claiming to have done it). These are three specific issues that need to be addressed in academic and other literary areas. They especially need to be addressed at the high school level. Many teens are accused of plagiarism when they either did not actually commit that crime or they were never taught what is acceptable and what is not.
In addition, as long as you cite others, you are reporting "facts." So, although The Da Vinci Code would have been considered plagiarism if it had been a work of non-fiction (because it didn't cite its source), since the book took plot lines from another book that purported to be non-fiction (instead of fiction), Mr. Brown was not convicted of plagiarism. Had both books been fiction, Mr. Brown probably would have had to pay the original authors for the rest of his life because of the copyright infringement.
(Plagiarism is using someone else's work and not including a citation. Copyright infringements occur when you don't get permission to use someone else's work, and this is why so many Youtubers get their videos taken down. If you are using a part of someone else's publicly posted work for educational reasons-like teaching children numbers and you don't add commercials into your video so you can make money- you are usually okay. If you are pasting an entire movie online when it doesn't already have free public access and adding in a few commercials or ads without getting permission from the copyright holder, you are definitely not okay.)
One problem with poetry and songs is that they tend to be short. In general (and I am not a copyright lawyer so please check with someone who is), 70% of anything you write needs to be yours or you cannot copyright it. In other words, you don't own it. Now, reverse that- if you are borrowing from something and you take 35% of it, you have plagiarized even if you do include a citation. In fact, if you use more than 500 verses of the NIV Bible in your book, you are breaking copyright law unless you obtain permission.
Unfortunately, the word "plagiarism" is thrown around to mean true plagiarism (not citing your source in an academic non-fiction work); copyright infringement (using someone else's work without permission); and cheating (turning in schoolwork that you did not do and claiming to have done it). These are three specific issues that need to be addressed in academic and other literary areas. They especially need to be addressed at the high school level. Many teens are accused of plagiarism when they either did not actually commit that crime or they were never taught what is acceptable and what is not.
Monday, February 26, 2018
Where do I get writing samples?
On Guru, it is against the terms to ask for a free sample. This doesn't stop many people from doing it, but it should. A professional has samples. Period. If you can write and have been trained to write, you have written many things. Modified school assignments can work as samples. The longer you work, the more samples you should accumulate.
Some jobs require NDAs (non-disclosure agreements). No. Don't even think about using a sample from those unless you get explicit, written permission from the employer to do so. I cannot tell you how many freelancers believe it is okay to attach samples from work on NDA projects as long as they do not post them. It is not. An NDA means you might keep a copy stored on an external jump drive solely for your records, but you do not share it.
For employers: What does the NDA mean for employers? Well, if your work requires an NDA (and certain employers always ask for them), you should be a little more lenient about specific samples. I encourage every freelancer who specializes in certain areas of business and finance to create mock samples, but few freelancers want to do the work for free, and I don't know many who would have four or five different samples they simply made up for use as samples. If you want an NDA and a freelancer is sharing several projects with you they have done in the past, keep in mind that they may share your project, too.
The same goes if an employer works in a niche area. Do you make a special sample so that it matches? Well, if you think that will sell your work and the sample is around 100 words or less, I would say go for it. But if you have to come up with an in-depth sample that will take 2 -5 hours (or more) of your time, you have to ask if you are going to get paid enough to make the unpaid sample worth your time. If you are planning to work in that area long-term, a better sample might pay off.
Some jobs require NDAs (non-disclosure agreements). No. Don't even think about using a sample from those unless you get explicit, written permission from the employer to do so. I cannot tell you how many freelancers believe it is okay to attach samples from work on NDA projects as long as they do not post them. It is not. An NDA means you might keep a copy stored on an external jump drive solely for your records, but you do not share it.
For employers: What does the NDA mean for employers? Well, if your work requires an NDA (and certain employers always ask for them), you should be a little more lenient about specific samples. I encourage every freelancer who specializes in certain areas of business and finance to create mock samples, but few freelancers want to do the work for free, and I don't know many who would have four or five different samples they simply made up for use as samples. If you want an NDA and a freelancer is sharing several projects with you they have done in the past, keep in mind that they may share your project, too.
The same goes if an employer works in a niche area. Do you make a special sample so that it matches? Well, if you think that will sell your work and the sample is around 100 words or less, I would say go for it. But if you have to come up with an in-depth sample that will take 2 -5 hours (or more) of your time, you have to ask if you are going to get paid enough to make the unpaid sample worth your time. If you are planning to work in that area long-term, a better sample might pay off.
Monday, February 19, 2018
Warning Signs That You Might Not Want to Bid on That Job...
If an employer has only paid 80% of their billed invoices... You might not want to bid on that.
Why? This employer might have valid reasons for not paying one bill, but if 1 in 5 of the invoices they receive go unpaid it is probably a sign of financial difficulty, unclear project instructions, or a generally disagreeable employer.
If a job post says, "Gets excited about the possibility of growing with a startup."... You might not want to bid on that. Why? This is code for "We are going to pay you practically nothing." This is like playing the lottery with your income. This is a new business and like any new business it plans to grow into a big business. It is being upfront in the fact that it cannot pay you well for your work, but it is being dishonest (intentionally or not) by implying that you might make a lot of money if you take a chance on them. If a business starts out paying you peanuts, what reason would they have to increase your pay even if they could afford it later? Yes, I am sure one in a million would, but a more likely scenario is that they will pay you the same thing forever. This has actually been a complaint on some freelancer boards- they don't understand why freelance employers don't feel they need to pay more after working with freelancers long-term.
If an employer has a positive rating below 90% on Guru... You might not want to bid on that.
Why? It used to be that Guru allowed you to dismiss 10% of your negative feedback. It no longer does this and 100% positive ratings have (naturally) been plummeting. 10% is a good amount to prevent freelancers and employers from using feedback for blackmail. I would say in my lifetime I have deleted the feedback of 3 employers. Considering I have worked for at least 100, that is not too bad odds. Without the feedback deletion, the same rules should be applied: 90% (and above) positive feedback is good. The flip side is that once it falls below this (and the freelancer or employer is already established with more than one or two paid jobs), there is something wrong with the way the employer deals with freelancers. If you work with this employer, chances are good you will have problems because not every freelancer leaves feedback.
If an employer has not paid out any money or hired any freelancers... You might not want to bid on that. Why? Yes, everyone is new, and of course I bid on jobs posted by new and old employers. I still felt I needed to include this as a negative reason to bid because the chances of a new employer hiring anyone are much less than the chances of an old employer hiring someone. New employers frequently don't know how much to pay for their project. When they find out that quality freelancers charge more money than what they expected and often take more time than what they expected, they simply don't hire. They are also intimidated when they get 100 bids on their project--many from people who have no business bidding. Receiving "canned" bids also is a turn-off (but this shouldn't be in most cases).
Why? This employer might have valid reasons for not paying one bill, but if 1 in 5 of the invoices they receive go unpaid it is probably a sign of financial difficulty, unclear project instructions, or a generally disagreeable employer.
If a job post says, "Gets excited about the possibility of growing with a startup."... You might not want to bid on that. Why? This is code for "We are going to pay you practically nothing." This is like playing the lottery with your income. This is a new business and like any new business it plans to grow into a big business. It is being upfront in the fact that it cannot pay you well for your work, but it is being dishonest (intentionally or not) by implying that you might make a lot of money if you take a chance on them. If a business starts out paying you peanuts, what reason would they have to increase your pay even if they could afford it later? Yes, I am sure one in a million would, but a more likely scenario is that they will pay you the same thing forever. This has actually been a complaint on some freelancer boards- they don't understand why freelance employers don't feel they need to pay more after working with freelancers long-term.
If an employer has a positive rating below 90% on Guru... You might not want to bid on that.
Why? It used to be that Guru allowed you to dismiss 10% of your negative feedback. It no longer does this and 100% positive ratings have (naturally) been plummeting. 10% is a good amount to prevent freelancers and employers from using feedback for blackmail. I would say in my lifetime I have deleted the feedback of 3 employers. Considering I have worked for at least 100, that is not too bad odds. Without the feedback deletion, the same rules should be applied: 90% (and above) positive feedback is good. The flip side is that once it falls below this (and the freelancer or employer is already established with more than one or two paid jobs), there is something wrong with the way the employer deals with freelancers. If you work with this employer, chances are good you will have problems because not every freelancer leaves feedback.
If an employer has not paid out any money or hired any freelancers... You might not want to bid on that. Why? Yes, everyone is new, and of course I bid on jobs posted by new and old employers. I still felt I needed to include this as a negative reason to bid because the chances of a new employer hiring anyone are much less than the chances of an old employer hiring someone. New employers frequently don't know how much to pay for their project. When they find out that quality freelancers charge more money than what they expected and often take more time than what they expected, they simply don't hire. They are also intimidated when they get 100 bids on their project--many from people who have no business bidding. Receiving "canned" bids also is a turn-off (but this shouldn't be in most cases).
Monday, February 5, 2018
Writing quizzes Part 5
In addition to seeing the quiz takers as money, they saw the freelancers as content producers. Well some freelancers went months with topics on their plate, we all were told we needed to hurry and finish quizzes. The deadlines became shorter. Then they hired a slew of freelancers to "get through the list" One month later, the new freelancers were gone and so were most of the easy to do movie quizzes. What was left was mainly knowledge quizzes.
Those of us who were still writing (and I will never know if those temporary freelancers just left themselves or got up one day, tried to log on and found they couldn't) were told that we could come up with our own ideas. We were given a set of criteria and then once we found an idea that met this criteria we could post it for "approval."
After a few months of this, I happened to notice that some of the "unapproved" ideas I had presented were being given to other freelancers.
Now, at this point, I almost left. I SHOULD have left. I demanded payment for my ideas (since it did take a lot of time to do the research). I was refused. I was told I could leave if I wanted and they would understand (of course they would- why would they want me around once I figured it out). But I needed the money. And getting new jobs is a bigger pain than keeping old ones. I had grown lazy in my freelancing. With warning bells going off (that had actually been going off since the start), I kept pushing forward.
A new moderator was hired, (the old one moved up), jobs that were posted irregularly were posted on Fridays between 3 and 8 pm. Freelancers would hover like vultures on the spreadsheet for sometimes five hours waiting for the release.
And this is where the system became inhumane. Again, warning bells. Sometimes they would only post a few quizzes. Maybe ten for twenty freelancers, but those who could were still allowed to get four at a time. People went weeks without one quiz. At that point, they should have looked at different variables: who has produced the most in the past year, who gets the most positive quiz reviews, who has been working for us the longest, etc. They should have explained they no longer had the volume and needed to let freelancers go. Instead, they kept promising more work. They asked who wanted to write articles (but never transitioned many to that task.) And then there would be another disappointing week with not enough quizzes to go around.
Finally, last week, they stopped responding to my questions. I had begun to upload two of my quizzes and ran into a problem with one. Someone dropped a long overdue quiz and I jumped to take it, but that guy told me I could not (and he was just another freelancer). I figured out later that he had been told to give it to someone else. Anyway, I asked if I was uploading the quiz correctly and asked them to check one of the problems to see if I needed to include more information. They didn't reply. Not for a day, but for three days. In fact, I realized I hadn't been getting responses for several weeks with some of the other questions I had asked and some of my past conversations were archived and no longer accessible (including the one where I had called them out on using my ideas without permission). Hmmm....
When I got on Friday to try to grab some quizzes and everyone was told there was a technical difficulty. We had to wait until Monday.
I got on Monday with no problem initially. Suddenly, I lost access to the chat server we use. Then the spreadsheet. Then the quiz loading site. Nothing was said to me, it just all went down before my eyes. Keep in mind, I had completed quizzes that just needed to be uploaded and I had bills to pay with those completed quizzes. I also had more than ten ideas for new quizzes posted on the spreadsheet that I had been waiting 8 weeks to hear a decision on.
I heard no word, until thankfully I was able to make an announcement about my predicament to all the group on Guru. (Guru doesn't allow conversations to be deleted. That is probably why they made all the freelancers switch to Slack about a year ago.) That got a response- "Sorry, we don't need you anymore." Uh, what about the quizzes, especially the ones I had partially uploaded? Sadly, I didn't use SafePay at this point. I wonder if the freelancers still using SafePay are the ones still employed. I did submit a bill (with the complete quizzes in Word format) for the two partially uploaded quizzes that I did not think would be paid (it was), but I am out the other two. I spent the rest of the day looking for a new job, but in the world of freelance the chance of getting something that I can turn into income by the end of the week (on such short notice) is rare.
Did they have too many freelancers? Yes. Did they need to weed some out? Yes, but long before this point. The way I was "let go" was very unprofessional. I should have had my questions answered last week so I could have at least finished uploading all the quizzes. I should have been told (preferably a week in advance) that I was being let go and not to take any more quizzes, but to finish the ones I had started. It is never acceptable to "let someone go" without first letting them know the reason. This applies to the freelance world as well as the traditional workplace. Unfortunately, in a society with dying social skills (due to the online fake social world we have created), professionalism is suffering.
As a freelancer, I had warning signs this was happening, but it is tough to let go of regular work. Finding new regular projects is much more difficult than finding temporary ones. Getting new employers to pay what writers are worth ($0.05-$0.10 per word for good writers up to $0.50 per word) is also hard. But, it was definitely time to move on. The final message to me said something along the lines of we will contact you in the future if things change, but do they really think I would want to work with them again? Steady work is wonderful, but the chance that you might not get paid for it is not. Also, not giving someone a couple weeks to find a new job in the world of freelance can be financially devastating.
Those of us who were still writing (and I will never know if those temporary freelancers just left themselves or got up one day, tried to log on and found they couldn't) were told that we could come up with our own ideas. We were given a set of criteria and then once we found an idea that met this criteria we could post it for "approval."
After a few months of this, I happened to notice that some of the "unapproved" ideas I had presented were being given to other freelancers.
Now, at this point, I almost left. I SHOULD have left. I demanded payment for my ideas (since it did take a lot of time to do the research). I was refused. I was told I could leave if I wanted and they would understand (of course they would- why would they want me around once I figured it out). But I needed the money. And getting new jobs is a bigger pain than keeping old ones. I had grown lazy in my freelancing. With warning bells going off (that had actually been going off since the start), I kept pushing forward.
A new moderator was hired, (the old one moved up), jobs that were posted irregularly were posted on Fridays between 3 and 8 pm. Freelancers would hover like vultures on the spreadsheet for sometimes five hours waiting for the release.
And this is where the system became inhumane. Again, warning bells. Sometimes they would only post a few quizzes. Maybe ten for twenty freelancers, but those who could were still allowed to get four at a time. People went weeks without one quiz. At that point, they should have looked at different variables: who has produced the most in the past year, who gets the most positive quiz reviews, who has been working for us the longest, etc. They should have explained they no longer had the volume and needed to let freelancers go. Instead, they kept promising more work. They asked who wanted to write articles (but never transitioned many to that task.) And then there would be another disappointing week with not enough quizzes to go around.
Finally, last week, they stopped responding to my questions. I had begun to upload two of my quizzes and ran into a problem with one. Someone dropped a long overdue quiz and I jumped to take it, but that guy told me I could not (and he was just another freelancer). I figured out later that he had been told to give it to someone else. Anyway, I asked if I was uploading the quiz correctly and asked them to check one of the problems to see if I needed to include more information. They didn't reply. Not for a day, but for three days. In fact, I realized I hadn't been getting responses for several weeks with some of the other questions I had asked and some of my past conversations were archived and no longer accessible (including the one where I had called them out on using my ideas without permission). Hmmm....
When I got on Friday to try to grab some quizzes and everyone was told there was a technical difficulty. We had to wait until Monday.
I got on Monday with no problem initially. Suddenly, I lost access to the chat server we use. Then the spreadsheet. Then the quiz loading site. Nothing was said to me, it just all went down before my eyes. Keep in mind, I had completed quizzes that just needed to be uploaded and I had bills to pay with those completed quizzes. I also had more than ten ideas for new quizzes posted on the spreadsheet that I had been waiting 8 weeks to hear a decision on.
I heard no word, until thankfully I was able to make an announcement about my predicament to all the group on Guru. (Guru doesn't allow conversations to be deleted. That is probably why they made all the freelancers switch to Slack about a year ago.) That got a response- "Sorry, we don't need you anymore." Uh, what about the quizzes, especially the ones I had partially uploaded? Sadly, I didn't use SafePay at this point. I wonder if the freelancers still using SafePay are the ones still employed. I did submit a bill (with the complete quizzes in Word format) for the two partially uploaded quizzes that I did not think would be paid (it was), but I am out the other two. I spent the rest of the day looking for a new job, but in the world of freelance the chance of getting something that I can turn into income by the end of the week (on such short notice) is rare.
Did they have too many freelancers? Yes. Did they need to weed some out? Yes, but long before this point. The way I was "let go" was very unprofessional. I should have had my questions answered last week so I could have at least finished uploading all the quizzes. I should have been told (preferably a week in advance) that I was being let go and not to take any more quizzes, but to finish the ones I had started. It is never acceptable to "let someone go" without first letting them know the reason. This applies to the freelance world as well as the traditional workplace. Unfortunately, in a society with dying social skills (due to the online fake social world we have created), professionalism is suffering.
As a freelancer, I had warning signs this was happening, but it is tough to let go of regular work. Finding new regular projects is much more difficult than finding temporary ones. Getting new employers to pay what writers are worth ($0.05-$0.10 per word for good writers up to $0.50 per word) is also hard. But, it was definitely time to move on. The final message to me said something along the lines of we will contact you in the future if things change, but do they really think I would want to work with them again? Steady work is wonderful, but the chance that you might not get paid for it is not. Also, not giving someone a couple weeks to find a new job in the world of freelance can be financially devastating.
Monday, January 29, 2018
Writing Quizzes Part 4
As a freelancer, I think part of the problem is that we work online. There is little to no personal interaction with our employers. We simply become content suppliers.
Over the course of several years, the quizzes became more and more important to me financially. Every week, I could go to the spreadsheet and pick the quizzes I wanted to do. If my son went into the hospital, I could take a break. If I needed to work a theater show, I could take a break.
At the same time, my employers began adding more and more work. It began with us entering the quizzes ourselves- sometimes more than once when the system failed to save. It continued when we were no longer allowed to use specific episode questions and had to move on to more general ones. Granted, once the quizzes moved on to movies instead of television, that helped. Then, we were told we needed two sentence answers. This upped the word count to 2500 per quiz and made it more time consuming to do them. Each quiz began requiring more research (although some quiz writers got around this and were not let go).
How? Well, I always tried to vary my answers and write interesting but obscure facts as well as quotes on the subject. Since I occasionally took quizzes and weekly looked at the comments about them, I know that this was not so for others especially when the edict came to make the quizzes really easy with more difficult questions at the end.
This was stupid on multiple levels. The employers believed people were leaving the quizzes because they were too difficult. In part, yes, that is true. People should be able to easily get 80 on every online quiz they take. Less than that on a difficult topic, say Calculus, would be okay. But to get the addictive "completion" feeling, you need to do well, especially on quizzes you take for fun in an area you know well.
When the edict came to make easier quizzes, this is what I aimed for. However, others produced quizzes with questions like: Which of the following is a bird? (a) A cedar tree (b) a rock (c) an umbrella (d) a robin. I wish I were kidding. Needless to say, the dumbing down of quizzes to the point a moron could pass with flying colors was not too popular. People began to complain and in some cases, such as the quiz titled something like 94% of women can't answer these questions about car parts and then the questions were so stupid a five year old could answer them, there was outrage. How did the freelancers that wrote this drivel get around the two sentence answer? Well, they weren't getting paid more so they certainly weren't going to do the research. Which of the following is a bird? A robin is a bird. It has blue eggs. No additional research required.
If you have been following me for any length of time, you know that my goal is to improve the world through writing. I wrote interesting questions, with answers that could actually be answers (although I admit some were funny to make people enjoy the quiz). Given the above, I might have had these answers if I felt the topic of the quiz was exceptionally dumb: Which of the following is a bird? (a) wombat (b) armadillo (c) Superman (d) robin. Because people mistake Superman for a bird quite frequently. :)
The fact of the matter is that the employers made the situation worse by making the quizzes "dumb." The real problem with the quizzes was not only that in the beginning some were quite difficult but also that the quizzes are 35 questions long and with all the ads you could easily spend one hour on one quiz. They needed to shorten the quizzes. When I suggested things like this, I was naturally ignored. The only other solution was to write meaningful content. I can honestly say that instead of wasting an hour on one of my quizzes, you would have learned something by completing them. But my employers saw people taking the quizzes not as those who wanted to learn something, but instead as dollar signs.
There is a certain addicting quality to online clicking. However, with the Internet one does not have to simply waste time checking Facebook and completing quizzes that tell them what pastry they are. You can actually learn something (misinformation most of the time, but there are a few interesting, well-researched facts out there). If you learn, you don't feel as if you are wasting your life. My employers didn't see or care about that, and that is the major problem with what the Internet has become. It is a cesspool of get rich quick without caring that there are real people on the other side of the screen. Then when they wonder why people aren't taking their addictive quizzes, they automatically think it is because they need to make them easier to click instead of making them more fulfilling to click. Now, my employer claims to be the top marketing firm that will get your ad to just the right person. This would be great in my case because there is nothing I hate more than doing an internet search for an employer and getting all sorts of ads based on that search. What do I care? I have no interest in the item for myself. So these ads are supposed to be smarter. They could really use the quizzes to their advantage beyond what they do, but instead they see people as dollars. You click on a Facebook quiz, they give you a cookie. They track all the quizzes you click on and build a personality profile on you to better target their ads. I assume they track a whole lot more than just Facebook quizzes (including Internet searches), but with the quizzes alone they get a much bigger picture of who you are.
When the quizzes are too hard, too dumb, too bogged down with ads, or when you realize they are inserting tracking devices and delete them because you dislike that (I would say 90% of all websites do this by the way), well, they don't get the data that can help them sell the ads. I don't know why they never shortened the quizzes. It would have lightened the freelancer load and the quiz taker load.
Over the course of several years, the quizzes became more and more important to me financially. Every week, I could go to the spreadsheet and pick the quizzes I wanted to do. If my son went into the hospital, I could take a break. If I needed to work a theater show, I could take a break.
At the same time, my employers began adding more and more work. It began with us entering the quizzes ourselves- sometimes more than once when the system failed to save. It continued when we were no longer allowed to use specific episode questions and had to move on to more general ones. Granted, once the quizzes moved on to movies instead of television, that helped. Then, we were told we needed two sentence answers. This upped the word count to 2500 per quiz and made it more time consuming to do them. Each quiz began requiring more research (although some quiz writers got around this and were not let go).
How? Well, I always tried to vary my answers and write interesting but obscure facts as well as quotes on the subject. Since I occasionally took quizzes and weekly looked at the comments about them, I know that this was not so for others especially when the edict came to make the quizzes really easy with more difficult questions at the end.
This was stupid on multiple levels. The employers believed people were leaving the quizzes because they were too difficult. In part, yes, that is true. People should be able to easily get 80 on every online quiz they take. Less than that on a difficult topic, say Calculus, would be okay. But to get the addictive "completion" feeling, you need to do well, especially on quizzes you take for fun in an area you know well.
When the edict came to make easier quizzes, this is what I aimed for. However, others produced quizzes with questions like: Which of the following is a bird? (a) A cedar tree (b) a rock (c) an umbrella (d) a robin. I wish I were kidding. Needless to say, the dumbing down of quizzes to the point a moron could pass with flying colors was not too popular. People began to complain and in some cases, such as the quiz titled something like 94% of women can't answer these questions about car parts and then the questions were so stupid a five year old could answer them, there was outrage. How did the freelancers that wrote this drivel get around the two sentence answer? Well, they weren't getting paid more so they certainly weren't going to do the research. Which of the following is a bird? A robin is a bird. It has blue eggs. No additional research required.
If you have been following me for any length of time, you know that my goal is to improve the world through writing. I wrote interesting questions, with answers that could actually be answers (although I admit some were funny to make people enjoy the quiz). Given the above, I might have had these answers if I felt the topic of the quiz was exceptionally dumb: Which of the following is a bird? (a) wombat (b) armadillo (c) Superman (d) robin. Because people mistake Superman for a bird quite frequently. :)
The fact of the matter is that the employers made the situation worse by making the quizzes "dumb." The real problem with the quizzes was not only that in the beginning some were quite difficult but also that the quizzes are 35 questions long and with all the ads you could easily spend one hour on one quiz. They needed to shorten the quizzes. When I suggested things like this, I was naturally ignored. The only other solution was to write meaningful content. I can honestly say that instead of wasting an hour on one of my quizzes, you would have learned something by completing them. But my employers saw people taking the quizzes not as those who wanted to learn something, but instead as dollar signs.
There is a certain addicting quality to online clicking. However, with the Internet one does not have to simply waste time checking Facebook and completing quizzes that tell them what pastry they are. You can actually learn something (misinformation most of the time, but there are a few interesting, well-researched facts out there). If you learn, you don't feel as if you are wasting your life. My employers didn't see or care about that, and that is the major problem with what the Internet has become. It is a cesspool of get rich quick without caring that there are real people on the other side of the screen. Then when they wonder why people aren't taking their addictive quizzes, they automatically think it is because they need to make them easier to click instead of making them more fulfilling to click. Now, my employer claims to be the top marketing firm that will get your ad to just the right person. This would be great in my case because there is nothing I hate more than doing an internet search for an employer and getting all sorts of ads based on that search. What do I care? I have no interest in the item for myself. So these ads are supposed to be smarter. They could really use the quizzes to their advantage beyond what they do, but instead they see people as dollars. You click on a Facebook quiz, they give you a cookie. They track all the quizzes you click on and build a personality profile on you to better target their ads. I assume they track a whole lot more than just Facebook quizzes (including Internet searches), but with the quizzes alone they get a much bigger picture of who you are.
When the quizzes are too hard, too dumb, too bogged down with ads, or when you realize they are inserting tracking devices and delete them because you dislike that (I would say 90% of all websites do this by the way), well, they don't get the data that can help them sell the ads. I don't know why they never shortened the quizzes. It would have lightened the freelancer load and the quiz taker load.
Tuesday, January 23, 2018
Writing quizzes Part 3
Well, after going through the learning process of uploading quizzes directly and cutting and pasting from Word, there were more changes that became burdensome.
The employer initially wanted difficult quizzes about obscure television series knowledge. I personally, tried to write questions about some of the most famous episodes (of I Love Lucy) for example, but then the employer said that these needed to be easier questions about more general information.
When that happened, I was slightly confused. After all, I knew the "hints" had to be a mainstay of my employers income. The hint was supposed to be blatant. ("Begins with the letter N" "First alphabetically" were a few I and other freelancers would frequently use for example.) When the quiz taker clicked on the hint, a commercial would play. (Talk about click bait, these guys had it down to a science.) If you turned on add blocker to prevent the rest of the ads from attacking you while you took a quiz, you would not be able to access the hints, and initially, I don't think the site would run at all with adblock on.
Now, we were supposed to use more general questions, I did not know how they would continue making money (of course there were still hundreds of ads on the quiz page and of course not everyone would know the answers). The worst part about this was that I could no longer watch the top 35 favorite episodes of the television show to come up with my questions. Now, I had to watch almost the entire series. Thankfully, they began adding movies to the list to choose from. The down side was that I had chosen Dark Shadows (the old show) and still had to make one for that. With over 1000 episodes, I was not happy. I think it took two weeks to a month just to make that one quiz, which was not worth the money.
Employers and freelancers often focus on word count (I know I do) when it comes to payout. At this point in time (the beginning of my click bait quiz employment), I was averaging about 2000 words per quiz. It worked out to about 5 cents per word, which is lower than I like, but okay for the work (at the time) of watching old movies. But, the big problem is that word count was not an accurate method of determining quiz value. By the end of my quiz career, I was writing mostly non-movie quizzes that often took two or three days to complete. $100 for 2-3 days of work is not a good or fair price. Even at the beginning, spending 2-4 weeks writing one Dark Shadows quiz was not a good deal at that price.
I think the hardest part of being a freelancer is beginning a job only to find it will take way more time and effort than what you bid on the project. In this case, hourly rates are much better. Sometimes it can be hard to judge whether a per word or per hour rate is going to give you the best deal for your time. I certainly can write a lot of words per hour- up to 2000. If I am purely writing, that means $100 for 2000 words isn't bad.
In the case of this, I switched to movies shortly after my Dark Shadows experience. With a movie, all I had to do was watch the movie and pause it when I came up with a question. That meant most quizzes were finished in three to four hours. I also did not consider quizzes to be my sole source of income. Still, it is important for employers to reimburse freelancers when they change the terms. At first this might seem silly because why would you pay more for something you can get for less, but the reason is that the good freelancers will not continue working with you. I could have been working full time for the quiz company, but I chose to do other work until more movies became available. I am pretty sure most of the other freelancers felt the same because the list in the early days did not go down very quickly. Either that, or they didn't mind making so little just to have a regular job.
The employer initially wanted difficult quizzes about obscure television series knowledge. I personally, tried to write questions about some of the most famous episodes (of I Love Lucy) for example, but then the employer said that these needed to be easier questions about more general information.
When that happened, I was slightly confused. After all, I knew the "hints" had to be a mainstay of my employers income. The hint was supposed to be blatant. ("Begins with the letter N" "First alphabetically" were a few I and other freelancers would frequently use for example.) When the quiz taker clicked on the hint, a commercial would play. (Talk about click bait, these guys had it down to a science.) If you turned on add blocker to prevent the rest of the ads from attacking you while you took a quiz, you would not be able to access the hints, and initially, I don't think the site would run at all with adblock on.
Now, we were supposed to use more general questions, I did not know how they would continue making money (of course there were still hundreds of ads on the quiz page and of course not everyone would know the answers). The worst part about this was that I could no longer watch the top 35 favorite episodes of the television show to come up with my questions. Now, I had to watch almost the entire series. Thankfully, they began adding movies to the list to choose from. The down side was that I had chosen Dark Shadows (the old show) and still had to make one for that. With over 1000 episodes, I was not happy. I think it took two weeks to a month just to make that one quiz, which was not worth the money.
Employers and freelancers often focus on word count (I know I do) when it comes to payout. At this point in time (the beginning of my click bait quiz employment), I was averaging about 2000 words per quiz. It worked out to about 5 cents per word, which is lower than I like, but okay for the work (at the time) of watching old movies. But, the big problem is that word count was not an accurate method of determining quiz value. By the end of my quiz career, I was writing mostly non-movie quizzes that often took two or three days to complete. $100 for 2-3 days of work is not a good or fair price. Even at the beginning, spending 2-4 weeks writing one Dark Shadows quiz was not a good deal at that price.
I think the hardest part of being a freelancer is beginning a job only to find it will take way more time and effort than what you bid on the project. In this case, hourly rates are much better. Sometimes it can be hard to judge whether a per word or per hour rate is going to give you the best deal for your time. I certainly can write a lot of words per hour- up to 2000. If I am purely writing, that means $100 for 2000 words isn't bad.
In the case of this, I switched to movies shortly after my Dark Shadows experience. With a movie, all I had to do was watch the movie and pause it when I came up with a question. That meant most quizzes were finished in three to four hours. I also did not consider quizzes to be my sole source of income. Still, it is important for employers to reimburse freelancers when they change the terms. At first this might seem silly because why would you pay more for something you can get for less, but the reason is that the good freelancers will not continue working with you. I could have been working full time for the quiz company, but I chose to do other work until more movies became available. I am pretty sure most of the other freelancers felt the same because the list in the early days did not go down very quickly. Either that, or they didn't mind making so little just to have a regular job.
Tuesday, January 16, 2018
Are you a professional writer or a hobbyist?
I want to say from the beginning that there is nothing wrong with having a writing hobby. As a professional writer, I not only enjoy writing (most of the time- especially my own stuff), but I also make money from it. Hobbyists can also make money, but they generally have another full- or part-time job. Hobbyists generally only write about the things they want to write about and like to write about. Professional writers may or may not write about things they enjoy. The primary difference is that a professional writer can not only write about things that they dislike, they can write them in such a way that no one would know from reading it that the actual writer disliked it.
Now, you may say, "What about Steven King? He only writes what he likes to write, and he makes lots of money, and he breaks all the rules you tell us on here." Well, Stephen King's first major success was Carrie. He began writing it because he was told his stories lacked female perspective and characters. After three pages he crumpled it up and threw it in the trash because he hated the story, he couldn't get into the head of an adolescent girl and make her sympathetic (his wife, also an English major and writer, helped him with the finished product), and he knew it was getting too long to be accepted as a short story. The book was rejected 30 times, which means he had to write a sales letter along the line somewhere (something most authors dread). And now that he is famous, I am sure he has to write many things in the name of marketing that he would probably rather not. I have developed a quiz for you to discover if you are a professional writer or a hobbyist. This is my first time trying to incorporate a quiz, so bear with me.
Now, you may say, "What about Steven King? He only writes what he likes to write, and he makes lots of money, and he breaks all the rules you tell us on here." Well, Stephen King's first major success was Carrie. He began writing it because he was told his stories lacked female perspective and characters. After three pages he crumpled it up and threw it in the trash because he hated the story, he couldn't get into the head of an adolescent girl and make her sympathetic (his wife, also an English major and writer, helped him with the finished product), and he knew it was getting too long to be accepted as a short story. The book was rejected 30 times, which means he had to write a sales letter along the line somewhere (something most authors dread). And now that he is famous, I am sure he has to write many things in the name of marketing that he would probably rather not. I have developed a quiz for you to discover if you are a professional writer or a hobbyist. This is my first time trying to incorporate a quiz, so bear with me.
Writer or Hobbyist?
Do you write because you love it, write because you need a paycheck, or a little of both? You can find out by taking this quiz.
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