Archive for the "What not to do" category

Changes isn’t just a David Bowie song. 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 [...]

This scam has been mentioned before, but I want to highlight it in this post. It has been thrown at me a few times (even recently), and I bit the hook a couple times when I was younger. Also, it’s not just on oDesk–it’s widespread across the freelancing networks and even raises its ugly head [...]

I was reading an article on the Inquirer the other day that was talking about how the graphics chip maker Nvidia was responding to a spate of problems they’ve been having with some of their laptop chipsets. The thrust of the article was that Nvidia is blaming everyone from the chip foundry to the companies [...]

I’m still fairly new at writing for money. I took the plunge January 1st, this year. In many ways, I’m still a rookie. So when buyers contact me directly with an invitation, I am delighted and a little amazed. The usual pattern is: read the job board, find something that I can do within a [...]

It’s a simple question, do you answer your phone, or do you let it ring through to voicemail?  For that matter, do you leave voicemails or just send emails or texts? When you’re running the oDesk client you usually don’t want to be interrupted.  It can be annoying to suspend and restart the client half [...]

In a previous post, Becoming Invisible I mentioned some errors that shock readers out of the spell you are casting with your fine writing. I’ve accumulated more for my list and here they are. Gaffs to avoid These are mistakes I have collected from writing I have read or edited (and some I’ve made myself). [...]

I don’t do all my work through oDesk.  Like many freelancers I use other sites too, and while I was checking out one of those other sites I came across an interesting piece of advice:  Don’t put a bid in your original comment. This was on Rent-a-Coder which uses  a different system than oDesk, but [...]

I was reading a writer’s forum the other day, and came across a post by someone who had been receiving files in .docx format and wasn’t quite sure how to handle them.  At it’s a helpful forum, various other people chimed in and explained that it was the new format for Microsoft Word that was [...]

So, the other day I was looking though my interview invitations and was surprised to see one in web programming. I’m a writer, not a web programmer, but I opened it anyway in case it was someone wanting content who just happened to cross-post a writing job under web programming because it was for the [...]

So here you are, spending some time searching out work on oDesk and you keep seeing references to “Affiliates.” That leads to two questions:  What’s an affiliate?  And, is it good for me? The principle behind oDesk affiliates is simple:  more people can do more work than one person.  That’s why some people on oDesk [...]