Of Deadlines and New Year's Resolutions

So I have this love/hate relationship with deadlines. I love them because they force me to write, but at the same time I hate them because they force me to write...

Yes, I know it might sound slightly confusing, but I am perfectly capable of loving and hating something for the exact same reason. See, sometimes I need a push to do something. Deadlines provide me with that push.
But sometimes, I really don't have the muse to write anything but I have to force myself to do so, because... well, I'm on a deadline....
Getting into freelancing I was aware that I will have to make nice with the deadlines, because once I start getting work, I will start getting deadlines as well... Doesn't stop me from whining about it to my cat. Thankfully, my cat ignores me no matter what I whine about.

So that is my little rant about deadlines.
Next step: New Year's Resulutions.

Everybody I know always makes some sort of resolutions come New Year. I decided that I should do something similar regarding my freelance career.
Especially since soon it'll be Christmas and I will have some extra free time.

So here is the Great To-Do List for the year 2009:

1. Start using BizReef, Guru, Elance and oDesk. Complete profiles and start bidding on jobs that interest me.

2. Create a profesional website for my freelancing

3. Pay more attention to my blogs

4. Go back to writing for Helium, AssociatedContent, Ciao and ReviewStream.

Yes. Only 4 points. But when I look at them I see a lot of work before me. Especially since I also have a full-time job, school and family life to take care of.

But I'm sure I will be able to handle it all. Because I rule and it's Christmas soon. What with miracles and stuff :)

Happy Holidays everyone!

November

So November came to an end and I've decided to sum up what happened this past month.

I've written over 7000 words in reviews and articles. I was planning on writting 15000 words, but obviously it didn't work out. For December, I'm planning a more realistic number: 10000 words. This time I'm taking into the account all the free days I'll have because of the Christmas AND at the same time, I'm not assuming I'll write 500 words a day.

I wrote ONE article for Helium Marketplace. I was planning on writing more, but titles were completely out of my area of expertise. Researching legal matters online turned out to be slightly more difficult than I thought. So for now, I'll stick to something that gives me less problems.
The title I did write for is currently pending final decision. I'll let you know when the publisher decides which article (out of 34) they will buy.

I started to write for two new sites. Ciao and AssociatedContent. While I'm sort of indifferent to Ciao (it's nice enough though not brilliant), I am slightly irritated with Associated Content. I've written 3 articles for them, two of which are still pending. I am told after 3 first article are published, it should go much faster. But for now I'm not feeling much love.

I sent my bid for 3 jobs. One of which is really interesting and I will thank all the Gods if I actually get it. But this is somethin I started doing only recently, so I don't know when it actually start paying off. Though I'm checking ads every day. So keep your fingers crossed.

And finally:

I requested 2 payments. From Ciao and myLot. I should get them at the beginning of December.

All in all, while I think November could've been better, it wasn't bad either. I'm sure December will be better :)

Writing bids and other writing related things

So far I'm writing reviews for both Ciao and Reviewstream and articles for Helium and AssociatedContent. I also write for Helium Marketplace (I'm waiting for a decision on one of the topics I submitted my article to. Keep your fingers crossed).

But I decided not to limit myself to just those venues... I've read a lot about writing jobs that you can bid on and the client decides who they want to hire. So I decided to start submitting my bids to jobs that interest me.

Since I'm not very experienced in that area, I'm not sure how long one have to wait for the final decision and whether my bids are written the way they supposed to be.
But I'm not planning on giving up.

I did some research on what is expected and what should be written in a bid. But it's all theory and I need to get some first-hand experience. Wish me luck :)

Time Off

Yes, I admit that. I took time off during weekend. Mostly to watch the second season of Profiler. But I really didn't feel like writing anything. I'm still waiting for the payment from Helium and that being my first payment, all the waiting is making me anxious.

My article at AssociatedContent got published and I wrote a review of Profiler Season 2 DVD pack for ciao and reviewstream, so I'm back on the writing horse :)

Profiler Season 2 DVD set. (ciao.com)
Get Paid to write with ReviewStream.com.

Writing Pays

Yeah. I think it's high time to talk about the money that I earn with my writing.

November is actually the first month hat I will be receiving a payment. It's mostly due to the fact that I became serious about my writing only las month and I actually pursued the paying aspect of the net.

So, any day now I should be receiving money from Helium. Most of it will be for the article I sold, which actually made me qualify for payment. But not all. Almost $8will be the performance payment. Meaning the money I earned from the page views of my articles. And given that I have only 21 articles, I don't think that it's such a bad turn out.

But I can be proud of myself, because after 5 days of November (implementing my November plan) I managed to finally reach payout at mylot.com (after months of slacking and half a month of actual participating) and payout limit on ciao.com (I've been a member there for like 3 days).

So it's 2 payments I'll be receiving for sure in December. And knowing that at the very beginning of November makes my mood a lot better.

And to close the tpic, I'm still waiting for AssociatedContent to publish my first aticle there... We'll see how that plays out :)

The Boondock Saints review
A Dog's Breakfast review
My Ciao profile
My Helium portfolio

Ciao Baby!

Because I've read a lot of positive things about Ciao on MyLot, I have decided to give it a try. And not just registering with the site and not writing for it. I decided to actually be active there. It took me some time to actually understand how Ciao works. 
But I don't think I will really get it untill I see the results.

Ciao (like Reviewstream) is about writing reviews. But it has a far more professional look to it.

You can rate, review and comment on products. And even more, you can friend people and rate their reviews. From the first look of it, it really does look far better than ReviewStream.

It pays for the ratings your reviews get. Though apparently some ratings are worth more than others and some aren't worth anything. I am yet to learn which are which (though it's safe to assume electronics are worth more than the rest as it's a really hot topic).

If you're already a member at Ciao, do tell me, I would love to add you as a friend.

I think I will end up reviewing a lot of DVDs and books as those are the subjects I really like writing reviews about. And to be honest I think I will try to write a good review for Ciao and then re-write it for ReviewStream. That way I'll be able to cash twice on the same subject. I'll let you know how that goes. :)

My Ciao profile.
Profiler Season 1 DVD pack review.
Stargate: Ark of Truth DVD review.
Stargate: Continuum review.

Also. In the navigation bar on your left you can see my progress on my November challenge. It's going nicely so far. Please keep your fingers crossed for me.