Posted by paul novak on June 8, 2011 at 2:01 am
After over twenty years, I’ve seen a firefly. Big deal you say. Well, for me it is indeed a big deal. The last time I recall seeing fireflies was around 1984 when an amiable old B movie actor was in the White House making Russians nervous, and Berkeley Breathed’s “Bloom County” was educating the masses as to the finer points of politics. Bill and Opus, Two For America!! The Beak and Saliva Ticket!!!
It was a rough time as well as a glorious time considering that during the eighties I was in the midst of full blown teen angst fueled by the high octane hormones that come with the appearance of puberty. While I sure as hell wouldn’t want to relive such a period of my life, and maturity has made certain such naïve but fun antics as jumping through campfires never happens again, advancing age has softened the blow by allowing me to fondly reminisce without having to recall all the bitter pieces.
What’s really strange, however, is how something so simple as a smell, a taste, words, or in this case a firefly, can trigger a complete change in our thought processes. It’s as if our minds are a record player and someone has come along and bumped the needle to another track in mid song. Whatever we were thinking, whatever we were feeling, is somehow pushed aside as a flood of feelings and memories wash over us, taking us on a ride we have little control over and little inclination to stop if we wanted to.
What this lone firefly managed to do, was instantly transport my mind to another time and place and invoke feelings and memories long forgotten simply by flashing his little light in the hopes of attracting a mate.
It occurs to me that this is something many good writers do to us and that what really makes them good, is that they can do it almost at will.
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Posted by paul novak on May 19, 2011 at 8:12 pm
There’s no denying it. Love it or hate it, outsourcing is
here to stay. Technically speaking, if you’re a freelancer then you’re part of
the outsourcing trend and quite possibly the problem. No, no need to start
taking a mental inventory of your moral standards, outsourcing per se is not a
bad thing. A whole world of opportunity has been created with the increasing
demand for talent and affordable services that the growth of the global
marketplace has made available and it would be silly to ignore such an
opportunity. There are, however, some unfavorable facets of this outsourcing
trend that can leave a less than enjoyable aftertaste if you’re not fully
prepared for the challenges it represents.
First and foremost, let’s allow that yes, outsourcing has
resulted in the loss of jobs that were once the sole domain of the full time skilled
employee. The very real and reasonable reasons why this is include the fact
that employers are able to contract with individuals outside the company on an
as needed basis. Rather than carry staff fulltime who may only be utilized to
their full potential part time, employers can contract out work only when it is
needed. This has the added benefit of also allowing companies to expand their
range of services and offerings while keeping expenditures and outlays to a
minimum. As more and more companies do this, yearly revenues continue to show
sustained growth despite a reduction in the size of the overall workforce.
The downside of course is the drying up of positions and
more importantly, the adverse effect on wage scales and freelancing rates that
have occurred as a result of unregulated and unchecked competition for these
opportunities. With the advent of the world wide web, it has become possible
for employers to shop through a global marketplace of workers. While this is in
large part responsible for the wealth of opportunity that freelancing offers,
it also creates serious issues as workers from highly disparate economic
conditions compete for the same jobs. Without regulations of any meaningful
kind in place to regulate this global marketplace, the wildly differing economic
conditions among providers have acted to depress the value of all workers and
their products. When someone from India can subsist happily on the equivalent
of 10,000 dollars a year and his counterpart in America requires at least twice
that for the same living standards, a serious problem arises.
Although capitalism and free market principals are the
backbone of beneficial and healthy trade, they are not foolproof or perfect.
Without any means of control or moderation, the natural tendency to buy low and
sell high runs rampant in the freelancing marketplace. Providers from country’s
with weak economic conditions are able to bid on work at rates that would
quickly ruin their counterparts in countries with more expensive living
standards. Where market values for a skill may have run in a comfortable range
for the western worker, the sudden and unregulated introduction of workers from
the Philippines, India, China and other nations has worked to devalue these
skills as western employers find themselves unable to resist the lure of
extremely cheap labor. Despite the problems that have arisen with quality
control, worker integrity and communication and the fact that many employers
are now retreating from the online labor marketplace as a result, the overall
trend towards depressed rates continues.
As much as I would like to offer an easy solution, this
simply is not possible. I will say, however, that if this trend towards poor rates
and unrealistic competition is to ever change, the solution will certainly have
to start with the providers and not the employers. For my part, I now refuse to
even consider rates less than ¾ of my chosen standards. I no longer travel the
diplomatic route and instead strongly encourage those interested to avoid
patronizing mills and work for hire sites that encourage unrealistic bidding. I’ve
even been preparing to launch a bidding site of my own geared towards
regionally specific employers and providers.
As a freelancer or online entrepreneur, the question here is, if you see this as a
problem, what are you going to do, if anything?
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Posted by paul novak on March 24, 2011 at 12:50 am
It’s gotten a bit dusty in here. In my defense, I’ve been embroiled in the always traumatic multi-state change of address. After 12 hours in a 26 foot moving truck, towing a pickup truck, with yet another truck and trailer following along, we have arrived in North Carolina. This move was necessitated by a gradual degradation of our nerves and sanity due to the pack them into every square inch mentality Florida has succumbed to. The past three days have been the first in years where I have not heard the non stop boom boom of look at me gangster wannabemobiles, the repeated screaming of ambulance sirens, and the overall 24-7 anxiety brought on by being packed into an area like rats in a sadistic lab experiment.
I’m currently working like nuts to get caught up with jobs, get projects set for launch and get this content development gig into high gear. Thanks to those folks who have continued to visit despite my poor attendance and I promise to share some of the amusing anecdotes and insights that come from being trapped for 12 hours in a moving truck with a psychotic cat;)
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Posted by paul novak on March 7, 2011 at 6:38 am
So it’s been over a year now since I began making my living exclusively from writing and I figured now would be as good a time as any to make some assessments. This is basically a summary of some of the most important facts I’ve learned the hard way.
I spent my first few months writing for Demand and a few other mills. Nothing new here, and it seems that a whole ton of would be freelancers start the same way. In that time, however, I did a great deal of research in order to better decide which route I wanted my freelancing to take. Writing for mills is not that route.
A couple things I determined
Writing for any of the content sites will make you very little money unless you invest massive amounts of time and energy in them. Even then, if you make enough to just get by, you will be investing so much time that the return will be incredibly lopsided against you. For the amount of time and effort needed, you would be much better served just developing your own site and product and promoting that instead for much larger returns. Yes, it’s THAT bad. Why work to drive thousands of visitors to your articles and get paid pennies, when that same traffic could make you hundreds per article on your own site?
None of these places are good for your portfolio. If you are hoping to grab some serious work, these places will have little beneficial effect on a potential client’s perception of you and can very possibly have a detrimental effect. Think of it as someone working for Burger King then applying for a job at the Four Seasons. Chances are, the management is not going to be impressed.
These places are good as a supplemental or extra source of income when you feel like producing content for them. I try not to tell folks not to write for them and I certainly do not attack anyone who does since I still do from time to time and understand all too well why folks do. Until you get some clients under your belt and some steady gigs, any money is welcome money. If you need to make an extra $300 one month, then Demand Studios can be useful. If you are going to rely on them for regular income, prepare to work 10 hours a day and make $400 a week if you’re lucky.
What I did though was shift my focus away from expecting ANY real returns or future from writing for mills and instead concentrated on constantly pitching potential clients, bidding on jobsites and only on postings that may have real potential (no posting on the $5.00 dollar an article jobs) and focusing on finding work through the traditional means. I set a real rate for myself and will not allow myself to be insulted by those who are only willing to pay $5.00 for 500 words. They are not serious; I am, so why work for them?
Within 4 months of changing focus and approaching freelancing this way, I landed some very good clients and have been swamped with work ever since that pays 3 times what I made at a regular job. Sure things were pretty lean and still are to a point, but had I kept plugging away at content mills, I’d be nowhere nearer my goal of a sustainable career and a better life.
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Writing for Content Mills might hurt you
Most of the mass produced content sites are viewed with a jaundiced eye. They are viewed as content mills where quality is sub-par and the writers willing to accept poor rates. This makes it possible that a potential client will see them listed on your portfolio and assume you are willing to produce, or only capable of, sub-standard work and since you are willing to write for those sites and accept $15 for an article, why should THEY pay you $100?
There’s no certainty to this happening, but I’ve seen it. I’ve learned, it is a matter of making those companies work for YOU, not the other way around and just plain outright using them like a tool while giving them as little benefit as possible in return. I write for them once in awhile and they get EXACTLY what they require and nothing more. If they want heavy research, creativity, and most importantly, heavy promotion to send traffic to a piece, then they should pay for it.
I think of it this way. If I write 500 words, work 5 hours to promote and send 5,000 hits to it, and they get even ten advertiser or affiliate sales totaling a few hundred bucks and pay me $5.00, who is really benefitting?
Recent Google algorithm changes were intended to target poor content and the content mills that were producing it to stop them from loading search results with spammy and poorly constructed content that had little value. Top among those hit by this change were Suite, E-Zine, AC and Examiner. This is something that should make anyone considering writing for a content farm stop and rethink their plans.
The bottom line on 6 months of Content Mills
How you market yourself and the value you place on your work is entirely up to you. If you find value in the long hours and weak returns that writing for these places holds, then it suits your individual needs and no one else needs to worry about it.
I believe, however, that those serious about freelancing are better served putting that kind of effort into locating work that pays real rates, building a portfolio of reputable work with no association to sites of questionable value and placing a higher value on themselves. Believe it or not, some of the best writers in the world found good work and built portfolios without writing for content mills.
As I have said earlier, I too wrote and still sometimes write for those sites. I will not, however, allow myself to fall into the trap of believing they hold any value beyond the poor compensation they offer. I only hope what I learn and share will encourage others to place a higher value on themselves and their work than those sites do.
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