Writing Update

I've been doing a lot of writing lately. So I figured, right before Christmas, I could probably share with y'all (you know, since I can barely move after cleaning all day).

Scribophile, a really great site I'm blogging for, published two of my articles so far. "Writing Bootcamp: Writing Whenever, Wherever, Whatever" which is a nice little piece which I commited to ease myself into the job and get to know the audience. The second article is "Of Editing And Evolution: Why You Should Find The Perfect Editor" which is actually one of the articles I had a lot of fun writing. And I think it shows. I've written one more article for them but it will either be published after Christmas or at the beginning of the New Year.

I have to say, so far the site has been a blast and I'm looking forward to writing more for them. I actually have few ideas in my head and I'm wondering whether or not should I write them down... We'll see how much of actual free time I have during Christmas.

In other news, the article I've written for Helium Marketplace just transitioned to Helium regular title. It's about the effect catnip has on cats. I have to say, researching for that particular title was a blast. I now know more about drug using cats more than I wanted to.

I've also submitted another article to AssociatedContent about how freelancers can further their career in the new year. Again, it will probably take ages for AC to process the article, but I think it's worth the wait.

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!

On a roll, baby!

So, AssociatedContent finally published the last article I had in the queue, the one about how to make a smooth transition from day-job to freelance writing. I myself am still in the middle of that transition, but I hope I will be able to into freelance writing full time at the end of 2009. Yes, it's a huge plan but I'm hopefull. Plus I do have a contracted day job till September 2009...

Apart from that, I also got my first freelance job. Remember how I wrote that I bid on some jobs and I had one i like best and hoped I'll manage to land it?

Well, the good news is that I actually did. I got an e-mail from the site owner and I'll be starting the job soon. Of course the moment I do, I'll give you lot a link. Mostly to show of, how awesome I am :P It's a meta-writing gig, so just right up my alley. I hope I don't have t tell you how excited I am...

On a slightly worse note, I didn't do much of actual writing. Yes, I a very ashamed of myself. Not even a short review and 've been watching some very review friendly movies lately... Maybe instead of reading stories online, I could go and write something... Procrastination is evil, let me tell you. But it feels so damn good...

New Month New Attitude

Okay, so maybe the attitude isn't all that new. I still have problems managing my time and actually telling myself to write instead of watching newest episodes of NCIS. But I really am trying to work on this one.

What else am I working on?
Well two things. Qassia and Inspired.

Qassia is a place I already wrote about. IT helps you get backlinks and improve the page rank of your site. And if you're a writer (or owner of any kind of website), you know how pagerank and promotion and improve your earnings and stuff.

Inspired, on the other hand, is a new themed blog I started. I want to share or sorts of inspiration and creativity boost. Ideas for work for all creative types. And not only writers (though as a writer I"m mostly focusing there) but also artists, filmmakers and people who create things for other people's pleasure. I missed having athemed blog and I want to make this one work. Especially since it's so close to my area of expertise.

In other news, Associated COntent finally published one of the articled I had in the publishing queue.

It's called Why Having a Blog Can Improve Your Earnings. Feel free to read it and tell you what you think.

I wrote more on that subject over at Helium:
Promoting your writing on the Internet

Read more from my Helium portfolio.

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 :)

Research

Since it seems like I will have some serious expenses next year, I decided to get it all together and start earning. Preferably, earning a lot.

So I decided I not only need to start writing more articles for both AssociatedContent and Helium, but also start seriously writing for Helium Marketplace. Unfortunately all articles that are on offer there require serious research on my part as I know very littleon subject that seem to be popular there.

Thank goodness for search engines. They allow me to do proper research and write a good article. That's exactly how I wrote my article on tattoo removal techniques that sold.

I'm also glad that I'm a member of Homepages Friends. I use their browser for research and it brings me extra money. So even time spent on research isn't lost. It still earns me something.

Wish me luck. I never anticipated that I will need to start earning big that fast... Oh well, keep your fingers crossed.

Related articles you might find interesting:
Refferals to Homepages Friends that will produce maximum income
Can you earn money with Homepages Friends just for searching the net?

Not like I planned

Yeah, it's almost the end of the month and I'm nowhere near the word count I had planned for November.

I can't blame anyone but myself for being so lazy, but now I know I need to set myself a little more reasonable goal for December. Hopefully, with more days off from my day-job, I will be able to write more.

I'm also happy to see my earnings climb up faster than before and I'm thinking that it's connected closely to the fact that I link to my articles in this blog. I've written an article about that and submitted it to AssociatedContent. I will post a link here as soon as the publish it. That said, I also want to post on similar topics at Helium to see how that new upfront payment would work for me... I'll let you know how it goes (need to write said articles first :P)

For now feel free to visit my profiles on both AssociatedContent and Helium.

Helium Paid and other things

Yes, I got Payment from Helium. Over $30 as a first payment isn't all that bad, don't you think? That got me really excited about my writing and for the first time I really got the feeling that my writing can pay for some stuff that I need.

That said, unfortunately I haven't been writing at all lately. Mostly because my favourite TV shows came back and I just can't seem to say no to them, or even watch them at the later date... Yes, I have no self-control. I hope though it will not go wasted, and I'm thinking about writing reviews of my favourite episodes for reviewstream. Something short and worth that $0.40. Don't get me wrong, I love getting paid full rate at reviewstream, but I wrote reviews of single episodes for that site in the past. It's not exactly sought after material, and therefore, it's not worth a full rate. But I'm not about to say no to getting paid.

I hope to get back on the writing horse soon, though I might have a small case of writer's block. Hopefully, by the end of the week, it will be all gone. Keep your fingers crossed for me. I have potential topics I could write about, so now I just need to get it together.

Another thing is setting up priorities. MY friend asked me to write a story for her. You know, fanfic... Completely probono writing, gosh, do I even remember how to do that? Writing fiction was fun, I should definitely at least try to go back to that. Okay, enough venting. Work to do :)

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.