Nelson got it down to a single word, “determination”.  It got me thinking about what one concept would I recommend to freelancers as the single most important element of success.  My single word is discipline.

One of the easiest, most natural things for me to do is write.  It’s also the hardest, most unnatural thing.  When the words are flowing, when the idea is fresh and compelling, when I’m knocking an assignment out of the park – well then, writing is great.  Ah, but when I’m tired, when I have to fulfill unreasonable expectations (which of course, I agreed to) and when the work is piling up and the deadlines are coming and going like flies on roadkill – well then, writing sucks.

I never believed that freelance writing was going to be a cakewalk.  I absolutely hate those ads and ebooks that hype the job and the marketplace.  Sure, I write from home.  Yes, I listen to the radio and dress however I want.  But in the end, the equation is the same as always: Work = Money.  No work means no money.

So when I see a “Work from Home as a Freelance Writer (and make super money while you laze about)” that promises the moon, I just shudder.  If they only titled it, “Bust Your Ass as a Freelancer” they would at least be telling the truth.

So, Nelson is right, determination is key.  I just use a different word.  He says toe-may-toe and I say toe-ma-toe.  For me, discipline is the most important thing.  Without a boss at hand, I have to be the hard driving boss myself.  I have to crack the whip and get things moving when there is little time and even less inspiration.

But here’s the payoff.  After a few times forcing myself to do more and to keep at it, what seemed impossible before becomes more a matter of normal.  And then, over time, becomes habitual.  The jobs I thought were too much for me a few months ago are nothing to worry about now.  Now, I have other, even more impossible jobs to keep me up till all hours.

A couple of days ago I was facing three deadlines.  Not all of them set in concrete, but each of them, if missed, would disappoint buyers and make me look bad.  I’ll warn you now – when you start making decent money, you are going to treasure buyers who pay you 10 cents a word or $25 an hour.

In any case, I panicked and wrote like a demon – about 5000 words in a single day.  That’s two chapters of an ebook at 2000 words each and three blog posts at around 350.  Oh, and there was this weird English as a second language test question set I cranked out in about an hour and a half.

I don’t know what you consider high volume, but for me, 5000+ publishable words is over the top.  Ah, but not today.  Today, I can look at that day with pride and some confidence that the next time I’m under the gun, I can do it.  All it took was discipline.  That’s a cool thing, how we have these artificial limits in our heads and the ability to surpass them, to do more than we thought doable.  I wish I could turn that switch on all the time, but I can’t.  I don’t have that much discipline.

But at least I know how important discipline is.  That’s my ultimate secret.  And now it’s yours too.

With Labor Day safely behind me, it’s time to start ramping up my freelancing again.  I’ve been working all year, but with the kids home from school I didn’t have as much time to work and so my income dropped off.  But they’re back in school now so I have my time back.

The teens leave for school at about 8:10 in the morning, and my six-year old gets home around 2:45, which gives me about six and a half hours a day to focus on working.  I figure there’s no reason at all why I can’t be productive for at least four or five of those hours.

The only catch is that I’m going to have to do a better job of time management than I’ve been used to over the summer.  The advantage of my light workload was that it was easy to find time to fit my jobs in around things like playing chauffer and listening to the stories my daughter made up.   Once I get busier, it won’t be quite as easy, though I will have to factor in time for kid-based emergencies.

That means I’m going to have to bite the bullet and use time-management software.

Right now I’m looking at using Mozilla Sunbird because I like its standalone nature.

The key is going to be getting started on work bright and early (shortly after the kids leave for school) and also making sure I have time to look for new projects.  Luckily I can probably do a lot of the searching in the afternoon after the kids get home as that doesn’t need the same kind of sustained concentration as paying work.

If any of you have any specific tricks you use, let me know and maybe we can all take advantage of them.

 

Well, you could do some yelling and screaming and run about the house tearing your hair out.  I don’t recommend it, but you could.  You could also send off a nasty email cursing the buyer and all their family to the seventh generation.

Guess what?  I don’t recommend that either.

If they were nice enough to inform you they were going with someone else then I recommend a polite thank-you note and move on.

Nothing you can do is going to get you this job so there’s no reason to worry about it.  However, the fact that they put the time into the original discussion means that they are perfectly willing to consider working with you in the future.

So don’t do anything to mess that up.

One of the most common reasons that this happens is that the client found someone else who was better for this job.

It doesn’t mean they found someone who was better overall, just better for this job.  It may be that when their next opening comes up they’ll immediately think of you and fire off an email.

In the meantime, pick yourself up and work on something else.

Networking and patience are two of the keys to a successful freelance career.

Here’s an example of what I mean by patience.  As many of you know I don’t just work on oDesk, but I use other freelance sites as well.   I recently got my first job at one of those other sites:  after only five months of trying.

I admit I wasn’t spending all day every day looking for work on that site:  there were times I had more than enough work and stopped looking on new sites.  However I was looking fairly frequently and while there weren’t a lot of jobs that caught my eye, there were some that I would have liked to have done that I didn’t get.

So I spent time polishing my profile and figuring out the ins and outs of the site.  I tried a few different methods of bidding and finally won a job.

Yes it took a while, and more than I would have liked, but since I wasn’t depending purely on that site I had the time to spend getting it right and not ranting and raving about the injustice that meant I didn’t get a job there  until now.

It would have been just as pointless as any of the other rants I mentioned at the beginning of the post.

You need to look forward not backward.

As Edward Fitzgerald’s translation of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam goes:

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
     Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.

Freelancers need to live by that dictum.  You can’t change the past, only the future.

In other news:  I’m now writing for another blog as well as this one.  If you’re interested in technology why not come over and see what’s going on at Gizmotechnet.   Hopefully I’ll see some of you there.

 

It’s not quite like hitting a brick wall

It was very gradual. I didn’t know I was burned out until it was far too late to do anything about it. In addition, knowing that I was made me even worse. If it had been sudden, it would have been much easier to cope with, but that wasn’t the case.

It all started with having a ton of work. In a professional/career sense, I was doing great. However, I kept piling up more and more work. Then, life interfered with my working schedule. That’s okay because there’s no way to avoid that. The result, though, was that I wasn’t constantly working. I enjoyed having some time off, but I took that time off too far. I never had any time on.

It wasn’t a sudden dropoff, though. I kept working on the projects I had open, finished them up. The bad part was that I stopped applying for new jobs. As a result, I ran out of work. Should that have been a wakeup call? Yes. Did I wake up? No.

Kept going on my merry way. Tried to force the thought of work completely out of my head. I had been under the gun for a long time, and I suppose I was subconsciously trying to keep myself from getting back into that situation.

Pace yourself

I’m recovering now. Taking baby steps. Trying to dispel my irrational fear for all things writing-related. Just seeing an ink pen makes me want to curl up in a ball and wet myself.

How do you keep yourself from crashing like I did? At the risk of sounding like every self-help book to ever hit a shelf, I’ll say this: schedule yourself some “you time.” As corny as it sounds, it actually helps. Treat it like you would treat any project you do on oDesk. If you tell a buyer you’re going to work two hours on something today, it wouldn’t be very smart to go back on that.

Pick a couple hours and stick to them. Turn off the computer. Turn off the phone. Don’t check your E-Mail every 15 minutes. Instead, read a book or watch a movie. Do something you enjoy which has nothing to do with work. The world isn’t suddenly going to crash to the ground if you don’t check your messages. You’ll crash to the ground if you get stuck in work-eat-sleep mode.

Give it a shot. It probably won’t be like you flipped a magic switch which makes life better, but it’s one of many ways to keep you from going crazy.

A spoof is an article or webpage you write as a satire, mimicking some otherwise serious subject. I didn’t even know there was a demand for this until someone asked if I could write ‘humor’. Turns out I can.

My first effort, Math Kills was a great deal of fun to write and it gave me some sorely needed training with pictures and charts. I’m weak on graphics and HTML in general, but I believe this is where the online writing game is headed…

The itch to niche

So, now that I’m all nichey, I’ve got to sell this puppy. First go will be contacting web warriors I’ve worked for in the past to see if they might want a little ‘spice’. And meanwhile, I’ll sit spider-like and cruise the job postings looking for my niche to come up. But not just that, I’m looking for content requests that I might be able to nichify with examples and clever suggestions.

This gives me 3 current niches. And that’s the overall strategy: keep adding oddball assignments I like to do (which translates into ‘pretty good at doing’) and use these as my fishing lures.

This, for me, is where the fun is in online freelancing. I get to try new things and see how they work out. It’s the oddest sort of synchronicity when an assignment blossoms, and it always comes as a nice surprise. The beauty part is that when you find a job to your liking, you’ve just completed a sample you can show to get your next job.

Over the transom.

I still hear the ‘plonk’. Even though it’s a virtual manuscript hitting my in-box, I hear the sound of a ream of paper falling solidly on my desk.

You never know exactly what you are going to get, but if you’ve done the prep-work well enough, you have a pretty good idea. The initial sample you received from the buyer and the subsequent discussion gave you enough information to set your rate. But there’s still the plonk.

Here’s an example:*

Creating a Healthy Mindset

Do you feel like you could have a healthier attitude toward life? Would you like to change your attitude or simply approach things in a different way? It can be difficult with all of the stressors in your life to lead a healthy lifestyle, but the way that it needs to start is through a healthy mindset. Many people think that they are just meant to be a pessimist or they just aren’t as optimistic as a lot of the other people in their life. You can achieve a healthy mindset; you just need to go about it in the right way.

How You Can Have a Healthier Mindset

Many people sit back and look at their lives and wish that they could look at things in a more positive manner. Instead of working toward being positive they beat themselves up for being negative or not having the responses or attitudes that they wish they would have naturally. This is a typical response, but it doesn’t do any good. Instead of getting mad at yourself for responding the way you do, go about the desire to have a healthier mindset in a positive way.

What the buyer had to say.

“It’s too smooshy, too loose. Can you punch it up and have it read better?”

A little Q&A revealed that this was written to be SEO friendly. The original writer had her hands tied. I explained the trade-offs between readable and machine readable. The key phrase was ‘healthy mindset’, and I promised I would try to keep as many instances as I could while still keeping in mind that actual humans were the target audience.

The Parameters

• Keep, as much as reasonable, the key phrase.
• Shorten the run on sentences.
• Remove the redundancies.
• Punch it up (by way of the above and formatting tricks)

The Process

Here’s a blow by blow for one of the sentences: It can be difficult with all of the stressors in your life to lead a healthy lifestyle, but the way that it needs to start is through a healthy mindset.

Check the first 7 words in a sentence. If the writer hasn’t gotten to the subject, there is a problem. Simply reordering improves it. The stressors in your life make leading a healthy lifestyle difficult…

But I don’t like ‘stressors’. How about, Life’s pressures make leading a healthy lifestyle difficult… ? The ‘life and lifestyle’ conflict. And I don’t like ‘make leading’ either. Another shuffle and rewording gives: Living healthy is difficult in the face of daily pressures and stress. A healthy mindset can help overcome this.

Now, I don’t like ‘in the face of’. So- Living healthy is difficult because of daily pressures and stress. A healthy mindset can help you overcome this.

18 words from 30 and one use of the key phrase in each passage. That’s how it goes.

Try it yourself.

I’ve picked out a few wordy phrases you should be able to either eliminate or shorten dramatically. Give it a shot and try out your editor muscles. There’s nothing as worthwhile as hands-on.

• Many people think that
• a lot of other people in their life.
• wish that they could look at things in a more positive manner
• not having the responses or attitudes that they wish they would have naturally.
• go about the desire to have a healthier mindset in a positive way.

Like it? Hate it? Either way, I’m betting you can do it. And like me, you will get better over time. Better, faster, stronger, editor.

*If you are the author of this example, I would like to credit you for the work. I copyscaped it and didn’t get any results. As it stands, I am relying on ‘fair use’ of this small portion, but certainly I would like to give a proper citation.

Spinning

There is an odd sort of job which pays very well if you can sell it. A buyer already has something readable (an ebook or a website or a sales letter) and they want it redone to change the tone or the target (by target, I mean the reader it is meant for).

It could be something they already paid for and published. It might be an article they got from the net. Although this is really a rewrite, you will find it posted as an editing job. From the buyer’s perspective, the material is usable and written well enough, it just doesn’t ‘fit’.

Be very careful here. If they wrote it themselves, they aren’t going to be happy when you call it the worst piece of junk you’ve seen in a year. Tread lightly.

First translate

Translate what they tell you into your own language.

As writers we think about writing a bit differently (or should). The buyer will use adjectives like: too soft, too hard (usually as it relates to sales copy); too difficult to read or too long; or the ever popular “doesn’t sound right”. Whatever they say, try to translate it into your own terms.

The way to do this is to read the copy and identify what the author is trying to say. This is going to be your theme. Whatever you end up with, this theme is sacrosanct. You aren’t out to say something else, just say it better.

Here’s some examples of what buyers tell you and what it means:

• Too long/wanders – They want it more concise. Use active verbs and specific nouns. Keep sentences short and punchy; paragraphs on point.
• Not friendly/too technical – The opposite of above, they want contractions and a point of view; consider anecdotes or a story line.
• Doesn’t have any authority – Needs facts and research. See if they will allow links or citations.
• Isn’t written for my readers – Who are the readers? Jargon and ‘insider’ talk might be needed. A good way to get a feel for any specific group of readers is to spend a little time reading blogs and forums in that subject area. Be aware the true expertise cannot be faked.
• Isn’t compelling – Watch out. This might be a copywriting job masquerading as an editing job. For this one, you need a good balance of factual content (the reasons behind the purchase) and other elements of copywriting- I highly recommend Bob Bly’s books on the subject. In any case, look to add emotional hooks and loaded adjectives with strong action verbs.
• Too much hype - The opposite of above. Usually written as a template and over the top copywriting. Trim the bull and add more factual description. Stories as examples help as well as testimonials. You combat the generic with the specific.

This list is getting out of hand, but pinning the buyer down as well as you can is essential. Expect several rounds of back and forth before you get the job clearly defined in your head.

Know these techniques

• Bulleted list to add punch and ‘readability’.
• Be able to check reading ease (see: Improve Your Writing for how to do this).
• Know how to add visuals and links to break up a long piece.
• Know how final page layout, font and form affects how a page is viewed. By form, I mean how writing is different on a button, a balloon or a cartoon graphic. How much information you can fit and where you can fit it…

That last bullet brings me to what makes editing a different animal than other types of writing I do on oDesk. When I take on an editing job, I’m also a consultant. I expect to make suggestions about presentation- what should go where and why in the final product.

And that brings me to my last point. Telling them why.

Justifying your changes.

This probably the most important thing you do when you edit, besides the actual changes. The what you did isn’t as important as the why you did it. Buyers expect you to have some expertise in communicating with the written word. And rightly so. You have to make it plain to them that you have contributed something worth the money they are paying you.

A rewrite alone isn’t enough. You have to tell buyers what you did and why you did it.

“I lowered the reading level to reach the average person browsing the web.”

“I’ve reordered the paragraphs and split them up to give a logical flow to the piece. This pattern allows for a convincing pitch at the end- they already have all the best reasons to buy in mind.”

“The article is longer than normal because people who are interested in this subject will keep reading. In fact, they are hungry for as much information as they can get.”

In my next installment, I’ll cover some real world examples and techniques.

Not one of us hasn’t had to make one or more changes to a project before a buyer would accept it.  It happens, sometimes it’s because the buyer was vague about what they wanted, sometimes it’s because they change their mind part way through, and sometimes it’s because they wanted something different from what I delivered.

As many of you know, I spend a fair amount of time on the oDesk Community boards, and one question I’ve seen come up more than once is whether or not you should charge the buyer for changes.  Some providers, especially new providers on their first job, are concerned that if they do not make the changes for free, the buyer will give them bad feedback and effectively blacklist them.

It’s a valid fear, especially when someone is just finding their feet and doesn’t feel confident about working within the oDesk system.

The problem is that except in one specific case, making changes for free simply devalues you as a provider.

You, your work, and your time are not free.

Being a professional means you work for money.  That means that when someone asks you to do more work you have every right to ask them to pay you more money.

The only exception to this is when they ask you to fix your own mistakes.

Nobody else should have to pay for your mistakes.

That’s the only time that you should be working for free.  The rest of the time you should be running the oDesk team and working on the clock.  Anything else sends the signal that neither you nor your work are worth money.

If your buyer decides that they really wanted something different, then you charge them for it.  You gave them what they paid for and you don’t owe them more work for free.

Let me tell you a story:  I was once asked to produce some articles for a client for at let’s say 800 words per hour.  I agreed to the rate and then they asked me to make the articles into presentations.  I said I’d do it but that I would like an increased time budget to do it.  They declined and said they would handle that themselves.

There’s nothing at all wrong with either side in that scenario.  As a provider I have every right to ask for more time in order to do more work, and the buyer has every right to say that they would rather not have me do it.  Buyers do have to consider their budgets.

The point here is that I had no hesitation about asking for more money (in the form of a bigger budget of hours at my standard hourly rate) in order to do more work.  Feature creep happens in all fields and the only way to handle it is to say yes you’ll do it, but more work takes longer and costs more.

Remember, part of being a professional means that you value your work.  If you regularly give it away then you are not valuing it.

Native speakers

Native speakers of English are prone to different problems than foreign speakers. Here’s an example of something I edited that had already been purchased for an article job:

An intense study on toxins has come up with the very fact that toxins tend to make a significant alterations in the hormonal regulation of the body weight. Toxins play a pivotal role in altering the metabolic activities of the thyroid hormone and receptor function, thus giving rise to a much-reduced metabolic rate. In fact toxins can cause the body to gain an excessive over-weight. This is the main reason as to why toxic lifestyle and obesity epidemic are interrelated.

Detoxification is basically the process of removal of heavy and toxic materials from the body, more specifically from kidneys and liver plays a pivotal role in the effectual weight management. The prime reason that contributes to an obesity epidemic is the fact that in the current fast-paced life, we rely on the consumption of junk food and the maximum utilization of the automobiles that tend to make us the prime victims of the obesity.

The first thing that jumped out at me was the run on feel of the sentences. The writer has something to say, they just try to cram too much into each sentence. Removing some of the excess verbiage led to this as the corrected first paragraph:

Studies prove that toxins significantly alter the hormonal regulation of body weight. They alter the metabolic rate by changing the activity of thyroid hormone and receptors. These changes explain why obesity is a consequence of a toxic lifestyle.

The steps required to edit/rewrite this are straightforward:

1. Read it and try to figure out what the writer wants to say.
2. Pick out redundancies and eliminate them.
3. Reorder the sentences so that new information comes after linking phrases (note the use of alter as a linking word and then change as the next linking word).
4. Keep the key concepts intact- you are not allowed to inject your own opinions or add information.
5. Try to keep the style consistent with the original work. No point of view changes or ‘voice’ changes.

That last one deserves some explanation. I could have rewritten it to be even plainer. It wouldn’t then be ‘true’ to the original though. This is a judgment call. How much is corrective surgery and how much cosmetic? In the end, I strive to make the final cut similar enough to the original that the changes are visible to the buyer. I want them to see (at least subconsciously) what I did.

ESL writers

In this category, you find some off-shore bulk article writers (English as a second language who write for English speaking readers) and non-native speakers who recognize their skills aren’t up to par. Forgive me the generalization, I’m not talking about skilled ESL writers or simply people who aren’t living in the US or Great Britain. Perhaps the example I used last time (from an oDesk cover letter) would make the point better:

I am one of the serious bidders for the project. With me working on your project you can be rest assured about the quality. I will always keep you informing about the progress so that you can be in loop and relaxed. I am really enthusiastic about the project. We believe in work quality, customer satisfaction and timely delivery of projects for better relations wit customers, Achieving 100% customer satisfaction and proving our best services.

That paragraph has been spell checked, but there are usage and grammar errors that make it hard to read. Editing of this type involves more proofreading than the first and less rewriting. A simple proofreading leads to this:

I am one of the serious bidders for the project. With me working on your project you can rest assured about the quality. I will always keep you informed of the progress so that you can be in the loop and relaxed. I am really enthusiastic about the project. We believe in work quality, customer satisfaction and timely delivery of projects to obtain better relations with customers- Achieving 100% customer satisfaction and proving our services are the best.

To my inner ear, this is still clunky, but the grammar and usage errors have been fixed. On this type of editing job, I send a marked up version (using the show markup feature in MS Word or Open Office) as well as a final, publishable version. This is to highlight the corrections so that buyers can see what I’ve done and perhaps add their own changes to my changes (hey, it happens).

I’ve noticed a trend on oDesk and other contract writing sites. The trend is to hire as cheaply as possible and then either the buyer edits the material into something usable or hires someone else to do it. (And when they get someone else to take a second look, you can bet the posting will include the phrase, ‘easy job’.) In other words, some buyers set out knowing they won’t get a good product out of the box and hire writers based only on the lowest hourly rate. Editing is part of how they are thinking about the job.

Feeding into this same trend are first-time or amateur authors (of web sites, sales letters and content) who realize, after struggling with a project, the results aren’t what they imagined. They are also looking for editing services.

Finally, a still rare but growing area is ‘freshening’ a website. An older site has gone stale over time; the company or product has evolved or the website just gets a worn-out feel. Although I consider a new set of clothes rewriting, these jobs are seen by some buyers as simple editing.

Can you do it?

It’s very likely that you already do.

I want to point out that ‘editing’ as used here means a skill set that includes rewriting, formatting, and reshaping the tone or spin of content. At oDesk, the term can mean anything from proofreading to an entire rewrite where the final piece looks nothing like the original material. With that in mind, my claim that you already do it should be obvious. Because you edit your own work before you submit it.

You already look for run-on sentences, grammar and punctuation errors, misspellings and poor usage… You do do that, right? Right?

Still not convinced you should bid on editing jobs? Take a look at this cut and paste (part of a cover letter put up on a message board). Read it and think about how you would ‘fix’ it. It’s fairly typical of an ESL (English as a Second Language) writer.

I am one of the serious bidders for the project. With me working on your project you can be rest assured about the quality. I will always keep you informing about the progress so that you can be in loop and relaxed. I am really enthusiastic about the project. We believe in work quality, customer satisfaction and timely delivery of projects for better relations wit customers, Achieving 100% customer satisfaction and proving our best services

I cherry picked that example to make a point. There is a great deal of written material out there that needs help. And you can provide that help.

Can you get a good price?

Yes, if you can inform/lead/educate the buyer. You need to get them past the this is a simple job mindset. And you can do this without being snide (Oh, if it’s such a simple job, why the hell don’t you do it yourself?)

Focus on the end product. This is, after all, the buyer’s primary interest. Don’t complain, just explain. This helps you get hired. You have to get them to understand what you are actually doing for them. If they aren’t writers themselves (which, if they are hiring an editor, they usually aren’t) it’s not easy. Which brings me to:

The Gold Standard

1. Get a copy/sample of the material before you commit to a fee or a number of hours.
2. Take that sample and edit it.
3. Send it back as part of your cover letter.

Why is this so important?

• It tips you off to how much work actually needs to be done and allows you to estimate your time commitment.
• It shows the buyer just what she is paying for and what the final product will be like.
• It gives you a chance to explain the process, the what, why and the how.
• It gets you interacting with the buyer and past the first date awkwardness.

I’ve tried to show you the why you should consider editing for money. In future posts I’ll focus on the mechanics. But one final tip: Never, ever be derogatory instead of calm and factual about an original piece. You don’t know when they wrote it themselves and have an emotional stake. Try to stay professional with your critiques and corrections.