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 February 7, 2011 at 5:33 am
Just about anyone who freelances their skills online is all too familiar with the steadily degrading state of the industry. Outsourcing to countries like India is driving down rates and quality concerns are running rampant, all of which is conspiring to create an increasingly difficult to navigate freelancing landscape. Well, talk about a spew your coffee moment, imagine the acid buildup I experienced when I read this recent news item. Apparently, India has a new scheme in the works. One that raises questions we would never have to ask in the U.S., and adds to popular sentiments of offshore outsourcing being a prime suspect in some of the worst trade corruption today.
In what can only be viewed by most of us here in the West as exploitation, India is going to be turning its prison population into the next source of cheap outsourcing labor. As if their free citizens did not do enough to degrade rate averages and add to the perception of outsourcing as being a minefield of unreliable services, they will now be literally “training” their inmates and putting them behind computers. Yes, the next time you call to dispute your phone bill, the next time you place a job on a work board, you may just end up with not only a foreign national you can barely understand, but one who may be serving time for murder and spent 6 weeks training to be your “professional” service provider.
Kind of makes you feel all sharp and pointy inside don’t it?
Read more at the Guardian
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Posted by paul novak on February 2, 2011 at 5:22 am
If you were having any doubts that content indeed truly is king, look no further than the new brouhaha revolving around Demand Studios and its successful debut with an IPO that not only opened higher than initially expected, but ended 35% higher. To further cement the fact and add a big fat exclamation point, Google in turn immediately makes public that it is all of a sudden so concerned with the quality of the content it is returning in its search results that it is going to be changing its algorithms to address the problem of content mills. Apparently content is not only king but it is in and of itself, regardless of its quality, enough to build an entire $1.4 billion dollar company around. There lies the problem as it’s not the quality of the content that’s made this possible but its sheer volume. It’s almost enough to make a web content writer forget all about substance. Almost.
Despite Demand Media’s successful first outing, there is a huge question mark of whether or not this content er, company *cough cough* has a sustainable model. Demand’s CEO, of course, in disputing the unattractive content mill label his company has been saddled with is quick to point out all the great plans for expansion his company has. But the truth is Demand Media has yet to show a profit, which has caused many would be investors to question whether Demand is even viable as a business model. Sure Demand can rake in the traffic, but at this point in time Demand appears very much like a paper tiger. They can make a lot of noise and pull in a lot of traffic, but once you get past all the theatrics the substance is hollow and disappointing.
In an interesting peripheral development, Google’s Matt Cuts less than two days after Demand’s successful outing announces Google’s plans to begin aggressively dealing with the problem of content farms. Now, Demand Studios has been around for six years and in the last 3 or so has pretty well buttoned up the top slots in Google with its Ehow and Answerbag sites. What is interesting about this is the fact they have done this with what must be honestly called poor content. Oftentimes, very poor content. If you have any doubts about this, I invite you to have a look at this list put together last year by Jeff Bercovici. It’s enough to make me want to do penance considering I’m an “approved” Demand writer. I’m fortunate I stuck almost entirely to simple fact lists and never wrote about how to put on a pair of eyeglasses or anything equally asinine.
What Demand has done is nothing more than exclusively exploited Google’s own expressed interest in promoting fresh and consistent content. While many of us were busy building the BEST possible content we could, Demand threw quality to the wolves and went full bore after producing a lot of fresh content on a regular basis that was targeted to some of the most common search terms currently in demand; a whole LOT of content. We are talking anywhere from 3,000 to 7,000 new articles a day. What this amounts to is nothing less than a brute force attack on Google’s fondness for fresh and relevant content. More importantly, it exposes the weakness in the Google algorithms by showing us that far from quality being as important as Google has repeatedly stated it is, simply dumping tons of content regardless of quality will cement you in the top rankings and make you an ad revenue hero. I can’t help but imagine that some of the Google bigwigs must be feeling somewhat chagrined to find that not only has someone revealed just how little importance Google really places on content quality, they demonstrated this by creating a 1.4 billion IPO around it.
As you can probably see, it’s not surprising Google would now decide the time is right to address the “problem” of content farms. This is annoying because there are a lot of damn good writers out there turning out some amazing content, yet they are consistently buried in the SERPS because several others have decided to load tons of well optimized garbage into a site. Many of us have known for years that the true value of quality content lies in its ability to form the bedrock of your online presence. It establishes your skill, your knowledge. It builds your network and authority. Building ranking though? Not so much. That’s better done addressing search engine algorithms and feeding the search bots. It’s almost ironic that little startups like Blekko with little presence or chance of dethroning the big guys like Google and Bing have already added controls allowing their users to block results from some of Demand’s outlets from their search results.
Once again, Google is behind the curve and only shows real concern when we catch a glimpse of the man behind the curtain.
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