The Freelance Dance
In the first of a nine-part series about what I’ve been up to for the last three weeks, I’m going to talk about my adventures freelancing… or at least my adventures in bidding on freelance projects, designing some very rock’n'roll business cards, and buying a sparkly, shameless new domain name to hawk some literary goods.
I decided recently that while I love writing long-form fiction, it’s unreasonable to assume that my novels will be international best-sellers within the next year, or even that they’ll be sufficiently edited to see the light of day (that’s important, too.) With that in mind, I decided I’d like to start slinging articles on the downlow to make some cashymoney, stash it away for that little single-family I’ve had my eye on.
Away! To the Intertoobz for some getfilthyrichery!
Freelancing is not as easy as one might think. Basically, getting into freelancing is like turning 18 and wanting to get a credit card: No one will give you credit because you don’t have credit because no one will give you credit. There are resources out there to help you out, such as Deb Ng’s Freelance Writing Gigs blog. Deb is a special flavor of awesome in my book. She digs around for leads, posts them every day on the blog, and even gives some advice to the newbies on getting leads, getting noticed, and getting paid. I’ve been perusing her information, as well as checking out some of the less “pretty” ways of getting work, such as Elance and Guru.
It’s a lot of fun so far.
Elance.com is basically reverse Ebay for freelancers. You can roam the listings and bid on projects you think you want to work on. This sounds very shiny and awesome until you realize that there’s between 3 and 48 proposals for every job, there’s always some bastard who bids the minimum (Edit my 25,000 words doctoral thesis! $50 minimum bid. Some dude - whose profile reads like the product of a bad acid trip -invariably bids the $50 bucks.) Don’t get me wrong, Elance is great, but there are a lot of projects that dangle forever, get canceled for policy violations, mysteriously disappear, or get offered to the $50 guy… whether or not his english language skills lead him to believe dromedary is a synonym for boobies. Still, it’s good for building confidence and it’s a motivation to write some sample articles.. like a nifty one I just wrote about divorce. Have I ever been divorced? Nope… do I love to give unsolicited relationship advice? Yep.
I’m happy to report that I’ve actually nailed down one project so far, thus validating the $10 per month service fee, and then some. With this bounty of income I will get some business cards, and even ::gasp:: a website to peddle my wares. I feel a little self-aggrandizing buying my name as a website of course, but I’m going to do it… becuzzitswhatcha do! I’ll be able to host some examples of my work, post prices, and e-pimp myself to those needing some wordiness in their lives. It will come complete with a artsy picture and a self-important bio that only vaguely resembles the nutcase you all know in real life. I know everyone will really appreciate this. Don’t worry though… I won’t give up on Dimestore.. I’ll be posting here as much as I always do… which is to say, practically never.
