What I do

You know I freelance, but I thought it was time I actually said what it is I do. It's a little complicated. I never fully switched from web developing to writing, and I tend to oscillate between the two. I'll be honest, for those of you looking to start an online career. I spend part of every day looking for new work, but most of my work comes to me unsolicited, through recommendations from people I've worked for. Which is why it's so hard to get started from scratch. I've got contacts that go back years. I'm just sorry I didn't have a blog going the entire time, and I'm also sorry I never put much stock in social connection sites. I was dumb enough to think I'd retire with my job still intact . I won't actually retire until I cannot physically work anymore, because not working makes me so antsy I can't sleep. literally. I went a little crazy last week at Mom's. She's on dialup and between the slow connection and the desire to spend as much time as possible with my family, work was impractical. But I didn't sleep much. Too many ideas pounding the inside of my skull, I guess.

Anyway, as I've stated before, I primarily write for Phemomenal Content, and what I turn in for them is distributed to various projects and remains uncredited. That's usually true of a content service. When I have a few minutes to spare, I also seed articles at unpaid article databases like ehow.com (note: they claim to pay a revenue share, and I'll let you know if that adds up to anything) and ezinearticles.com, and the purpose of these articles are simply to publicize both myself and Phenomenal Content. Not that I really have much time to do so.

I also write for Brighthub. Can't say it pays all that well, so in order to compensate, I write faster, shorter articles with less detail. There's something wrong with that concept, but many content and article services use it. They wish to sell articles, but putting out a truly saleable article takes me much longer to craft than the pay allows. So I just crank out something readable and accurate without much thought to saleability. I suspect this business model will fail, but I hope not, because it's a steady source of income.

Recently, I've been guest blogging at uptake.com. I've done half a dozen or so hotel-related blog posts, and I hope that they will hire me as a full time blogger, but there's no point in applying until my personal blog is earning some traffic.

Lastly (at the moment), I blog for GrowingBolder.com. My blog there is personal and opinionated. Because it's a site aimed at people finding a new lease on life as they grow older, I write about life in general. Memories, history, politics, work, family, media, you name it.

I also put up web sites, both independently and for the company that used to be my full time job, do graphics work, and contract out for flash, notably a viral marketing video that came out pretty well, for a web site that never got off the ground. My most current projects are developing a web site to answer the needs of affiliate marketers through the company, and doing a series of static web sites to sell to builders...a builder approached me about this product after recommendation from a friend whom I built a web site for a few months ago. Basically, I'm going to build a template and he's going to sell it, and we'll work together to put up the sites. Could be very lucrative. Could go nowhere. We'll see.

No matter how many projects I have on my plate, I spend a part of my day trolling for new work. I just put in an application for about.com to be their web hosting and development guide. I'd love to work for about.com, because the visibility and traffic is tremendous. I applied previously to be the humor guide, but they turned me down. I'm guessing a million people applied for that one. Personable geeks are more rare, though, so maybe I'll have a better shot at web hosting and development. One of my friends called about.com the holy grail of blogging :D It's a good description. Steady pay, high visibility, natural attraction for search engines, and it's credited. Pays very well, too. If they hire me, I'll cut down on some of the random stuff, because they pay is potentially high enough to command my very best work and the promotion that goes with it. Keep your fingers crossed.

I get a few random gigs here and there off sources like craigslist and freelance boards, but there are so many people out there looking for slave labor that it's discouraging. To people who want to pay $4.00 for a 500 word article, I say: you get what you pay for, and you deserve it. Surf the web sometime. Read some articles. Some of them are barely coherent. The ideas are confused, the information is sketchy at best, and the grammar and spelling is atrocious. That's what you get when you pay peanuts (and sometimes when you try to do it yourself).

So that's what I do, best described as a little of this, a little of that. Generally speaking, I work 7 days a week, but I work at my own pace. Some days I'm hugely productive and turn out article after article, other days my imagination flags and I spend more time looking for new work or building my social network. I really don't spend enough time doing that, but I should. I should also push my blog harder, but I don't. At least not yet. I want to build it up a bit first. All I really want is to be interesting.